Inside Brad Pitts New $40 Million Home in Beachy Carmel, California

Table Of Content

• The Home’s Original Owner was Related to Outlaw Jesse James, Whom Pitt Famously Played
• The actor and architecture aficionado has invested in a picturesque property located in the Carmel Highlands.
• Winner of $2-billion Powerball jackpot drops $25.5 million on Hollywood Hills mansion
• The Wild History Behind Brad Pitt’s New $40 Million Carmel Highlands Home
• Record deals and tax-avoidance maneuvers: Southern California’s priciest sales of 2023
• Brad Pitt Explains Why His Premiere Skirt Is the Best Summer Style

The abode is particularly notable for its use of locally sourced granite and limestone, which gives its facade a sense of timelessness, as though it’s just as fundamental a part of its environment as the rocky cliff it sits on. No matter how you slice it, it would appear that Carmel may have many more days in the sun after all. The cliffside property was previously owned since 1999 by an LLC linked to Chicago Research and Trading founder Joe Ritchie, who died earlier this year. The sale reportedly marks one of the most expensive real estate deals ever made in the Carmel area, where the former beachside home of Golden Girls star Betty White sold last April for ​​$10.775 million, at $2.825 million over the asking price. A departure from the typical mahogany and teak wooden compositions designed by Greene and Greene, the D.L. James House, also known as the “Seaward,” was built with locally sourced sandstone and granite.

The Home’s Original Owner was Related to Outlaw Jesse James, Whom Pitt Famously Played

In January, Pitt put his Los Feliz compound with its 6,692-square-foot, Craftsman-style main house on the market, even though the property had special meaning for him. Getty’s property should allow the movie star to have a more modest home base in Los Angeles while he reportedly makes his $39 million clifftop estate in Carmel Highlands his main residence. The property encompasses 2.51 acres of rugged land with multiple structures.

The actor and architecture aficionado has invested in a picturesque property located in the Carmel Highlands.

So you can count on panoramic views of dramatic sunsets in the 2,466-square-foot home with four bedrooms and three bathrooms. Other special features include a stone fireplace, a hand-carved front door, a built-in bar and a detached guest studio with private entrance. A property in the picturesque Carmel Highlands coastal community, an enclave popular with celebrities, is for sale for $8.8 million.

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James House, known as 'Seaward', in a deal described as "one of the priciest ever closed in the Carmel area" by the Wall Street Journal. Hearst Television participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites. The sale in Carmel Highlands follows another celebrity sale in the area, the former home of the late actor Betty White, which sold for $10.775 million. The $40 million deal marks one of the priciest to ever close in the Carmel area, according to local agents.

Brad Pitt says he’s been in love with new Carmel home since the 1990s - Long Beach Press Telegram

Brad Pitt says he’s been in love with new Carmel home since the 1990s.

Posted: Tue, 09 Aug 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]

According to The Gamble House, which preserves the history of the architectural firm Greene & Greene, "the house’s composition, arched windows, and tiled roof reflect a Mediterranean influence." The sale marks the latest celebrity home in and around Carmel, where former mayor Clint Eastwood lived in Mission Ranch. More recently, the former home of the late Betty White sold for nearly $5 million over its $7.95 million asking price. According to The Wall Street Journal, Pitt splashed out $40 million for a historic home in the quiet cliffs of the unincorporated Carmel Highlands area (think Big Little Lies). While Pitt still owns a 50 percent stake in the French chateau Miraval, and is still believed to own his longtime home in the Los Angeles area, the new purchase adds a seaside retreat to Pitt’s property portfolio.

Brad Pitt swaps LA mansions with Getty heiress as Carmel becomes ‘main’ home, reports say - The Mercury News

Brad Pitt swaps LA mansions with Getty heiress as Carmel becomes ‘main’ home, reports say.

Posted: Fri, 07 Apr 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Seaward is generally considered one of the masterworks of the California architecture firm Greene and Greene, one of the definitive cultivators of the Arts & Craft movement. The actor reportedly sold the longtime home he had owned for nearly three decades for $39 million. He had at one point referred to it as his six children’s childhood home.

Record deals and tax-avoidance maneuvers: Southern California’s priciest sales of 2023

The pair are known for developing their large and stately “Ultimate Bungalows,” which they designed and built mainly in Pasadena. Greene moved his family north to live in the artist colony of Carmel in 1916 and took on the commission of The D.L. James House two years later. Quarried from local stone, the project took approximately five years to complete. The home sits perilously close to a steep and rocky clifftop just meters from the beach and boasts a "wooden aesthetic". It was built from granite and sandstone quarried from the cliffs.

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While not next-door neighbors, Pitt’s new home is in the same area as the one used to film the home scenes of Nicole Kidman’s Big Little Lies character, Celeste. (The same home was also used in the filming of Basic Instinct.) According to Google Maps, the properties are just a two-minute car ride away from each other. In fact, the BLL home is actually currently for sale as well—for a cool $29.6 million. We reckon he’s enjoying this phase of life as he’s said in one of his famous quotes “Personally I like aging.

Obviously, It’s a Significant Architectural Treasure

After he and his wife died, Seaward went to their son Daniel James. Daniel was an award-winning author, who wrote both plays and novels. He made Seaward his permanent home in the early 1960s and lived there until his death in 1988. During a press event for his movie “Bullet Train” in August, Pitt told “Extra TV” that he purchased Seaward after many years of staying on site. The Bullet Train star’s purchase offers a welcome refresh to Carmel-by-the-Sea’s long dormant position as a favorite getaway of Hollywood’s top celebrities, a mantel that has been held by Montecito, California, in recent decades.

Brad Pitt’s headline-making purchase has drawn attention to exactly what made Carmel so interesting in the first place—its gorgeous architecture. For such a small place, it is chockfull of architecturally interesting properties, including a seaside Frank Lloyd Wright home and work from prominent figures of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Greene and Greene. James House and Seaward, is a historic structure designed by Greene and Greene themselves in 1918.

Nearly every window in the house offers incredible views of the coastline and ever-changing sea and, to the north, unobstructed views of majestic Point Lobos. James House, named after the American writer who commissioned its design in 1918. The house was designed by Charles Sumner Greene of the influential 20th-century architecture firm, Greene and Greene. The home is located atop a steep bluff on the oceanside of Highway 1 and was constructed out of locally-quarried sandstone and granite. It also has a tiled Mediterranean-style roof, arched windows and ocean views. The historic, Craftsman-style home was designed by architect Charles Sumner Greene—who pioneered the California bungalow style with his brother Henry Mather Greene—for author D.L.

The property was sold off-market to Pitt by Searock, a limited liability company tied to the Ritchies. In 2008, the actor paid $60 million for the 1,200-acre French estate Château Miraval, intending to raise his children with ex-wife Angelina at the winery. His surviving spouse sold the native stone house in 1999 to the late Chicago financier Joe Ritchie, who paid $4.5 million for it, according to Dirt. James Seaward house last year, the 'Bullet Train' actor is ready to move into his Carmel Highlands castle. The D.L. James House is just the latest get in Brad's impressive real estate portfolio.

To go back even further in time, following his break up with Jennifer Aniston, Pitt bought an ocean-front beach house in Malibu in March 2005 for $8.4 million. The mid-century 4,000-square-foot home was later sold to Ellen Degeneres for $12 million in 2011. ​The Los Feliz estate was built by midcentury architect Neil M. Johnson in 1960 and garnered the nickname “Steel House” due to its steel-and-glass exterior. Over time, the actor bought four neighboring houses to spread his estate across almost two acres of land. The 53-year-old actor has reportedly put down $40 million for a historic home overlooking the ocean in the Carmel Highlands along California's central coast, according to public records, per the Wall Street Journal. Photos are scarce since the house never officially hit the market.

In July 2022 the actor broke local real estate records with the purchase of a historic house with an outstanding stone structure in California’s Carmel Highlands — which he’s now turning into his primary residence. TMZ reported last month that Pitt had sold the Los Feliz estate he’s owned for almost three decades — a property he once referred to as the “childhood home” for his six children with Angelina Jolie — and was moving to Carmel. TMZ said the Oscar winner plans to move to Northern California, where he purchased “Seaward,” a historic, castle-like oceanside home in Carmel Highlands last summer. James commissioned famed architect Charles Sumner Greene to design a granite house on his land in the Carmel Highlands, high on a rocky outcropping above the Pacific. The design of the home was based on the ruins of Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, England. Greene—together with his brother Henry Mather Greene and their Pasadena architecture firm, Greene and Greene—was a towering figure in the American Arts and Crafts movement.

Charles Greene moved to Carmel around the time he was commissioned to design Seaward where he lived until his death in 1957. The elaborate stonework is featured throughout the property, and it has an intricate layout of rooms with arched windows and a tiled Mediterranean-style roof. The Gamble House also states that as part of the design, Charles "built up the outer walls so that they appear to be growing out of the cliffs". He also designed the property so it would not interfere with nature on the plot of land, with trees and shrubs growing around the home since it was first built.

Before joining The Times as an intern in 2017, he wrote for the Columbia Missourian and Politico Europe. By closing the deal in the waning days of March, Pitt avoided the so-called “mansion tax,” which took effect on April 1, charging a 5.5% transfer tax to all L.A. At $39 million, the “Bullet Train” star avoided a $2.145-million tax bill. Pitt has purchased Getty’s three-bedroom, midcentury-modern home in Los Feliz for $5.5 million, after she bought his $33 million estate in the same Los Angeles neighborhood, the website Dirt reported this week.