1.

"Meticulous renovation?" As someone pointed out yesterday, VS reinterpreting a Neutra-design reduces the value, considering much of the value of the house lies in it being a Neutra. Hope they didn't do too much damage. - oh and I hope there's an original Picasso in the art gallery, maybe that's why they think it's worth nearly $20M.

2.

I hear Ellen was sniffing around, hence the inflated price tag. When Courtney flips her Lautner, the capital gain could be spent here. Celebreties are just like everyone else, only richer!

3.

pool ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

4.

I thought their last pool was way more inventive, especially with that bridge over it from the bedroom to the living room. THAT's the one I still lust for in my mid-cen-modernist dreams.

5.

#4
They still have their Hal Levitt design house with the pool bridge thingy. It is an awesome house, too. I can't really say which is better, I've been to the Neutra and seen tons of photos of the Levitt. They are both incredible. The best Neutra in Los Angeles, in my opinion, belongs to Tom Ford and is in Bel Air. It is the epitome of amazing taste.

6.

I saw it! It IS owned by Vidal and his wife Rhonda. They paid $6M for it in 2004 after it languished on the market for over 18 months, reduced from an original asking price of $7M. They completely reconfigured the space, turning a row of 3 bedrooms into the kitchen, the old kitchen into living space, the old carport into bedrooms, built an entirely new wing for the master suite. Other than the old living room and one original bathroom (complete with original Formica and in-wall spinning toothbrush holder) there's virtually nothing left of the original house. They did a nice job of replicating and re-interpreting the original bedroom built-ins. It's a fantastic house - but, sadly, it's no longer a Neutra. Is it worth $20M? Only if some celeb is willing to overpay. I'll bet it goes out for about $12-13M.

7.

JetSetRnv8r is right. The house has been changed in many ways that are outright hostile to Neutra's entire approach to domestic architecture - including devices and finishes he knew about and always rejected and others that he would have had nothing to do with if he had known about them. It's just NOT Neutra now, and it's all but fraud to market it as Neutra. Yes, they saved one Formica bathroom, just for old times sake, I guess.

This project has much of the California and world-wide architectural community in an uproar. The damage to Neutra's vision has been noted by at least one major magazine expose, and anyone who is foolish enough to buy this house had better keep in mind that he's paying for something (Neutra) that's been systematically stripped out.

The size of the addition - where the Neutra content is zero - seems to be deliberately understated in the marketing. The Wall Street Journal [http://www.realestatejournal.com/columnists/private/20070723-private.html?mod=RSS_Real_Estate_Journal&rejrss=frontpage], for example, reports that the Sassoons "expanded the 1959 home to 5,500 square feet from 3,400, says listing agent Barry Sloane." But when the home was sold to the Sassoons, it was described in Architecture for Sale as having only 2,490 square feet. [http://www.architectureforsale.com/address_notable.php?property_ID=9] If that AFS number is correct, the Sassoons have more than doubled the square footage. The addition is so dreadful and banal that the seller doesn't even provide the designer's name. There is talk of Neutra's family organizing some kind of protest over what has been done to this property.

There is STILL the very real suspicion that Sassoon may not be the real - as distinguished from the nominal - owner and developer of this property (or, to put it charitably, Sassoon may be a "minority partner" in the real economics of the project). The Wall Street Journal says that he never lived there, but he did "throw a few parties there." The circulating skinny seems to be that some developer and the broker (Barry Sloane) got Sassoon to contribute a few dollars and his name, with the developer providing almost all of the money and real work.

Barry Sloane now often works with developers who have a rather long track record of not obtaining permits on very large and expensive properties. Indeed, he just had a $2.7 Million sale in Los Feliz fall out of escrow over exactly this issue. The house was cited by the city as an "abandoned property open to the public" in 2005, but is now pristine - but the only permits pulled in the past two years are for a gas valve, some window and door and fixtures in the guest house. Nice trick! Another larger Sloane Los Feliz sale is reputed to have required a "give back" of more than $1 Million to compensate for new, unpermitted work. Ever heard about someone enclosing thousands of square feet and re-roofing a house without a single permit? - and then trying to sell it for $7 Million? Barry has - he was in on it, again in Los Feliz. The actual price was about $6 Million, but they got caught by LA B&S and forced to pull permits and inspections. The expensive delay enfuriated Sloane and his partner/developer, who helped stir up such a fuss that the inspector was transferred from Los Feliz to the Valley! But I digress.

The city building code requires that when an addition this large is tacked onto an original house, the entire original house (including foundations and sheer walls) have to be brought up to current code. That's very expensive, especially for a 1959 house. So Mr. Sloane's involvement has people asking if the real developer (Sassoons or not) had all of the required permits for the new work.

But the greatest tragedy is the loss of this house's original identity. If one doesn't like Neutra, then why mangle a Neutra and then try to sell it as a Neutra? A beautiful house died for what has all the trappings of a tawdry scam. Tragic. Is "archicide" a word ... or a capital crime in California?

They'll be lucky to get the cost of the undeveloped land minus the cost of demolishing the now-pseudo-Neutra.