Last week, word got out that Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti had found a buyer for his Echo Park home. For $1.705 million, the new owner walked away with the deed to the mayor's 1953 midcentury Modern home, lovingly preserved and maintained by the mayor and his wife Amy Wakeland since 2000.
But who took home the prize?
Curbed LA got the scoop from Neil Rain Persad, owner of Kensington & Beverly, the high-end Beverly Hills estate agency that represented the buyer, Dexter Randazzo, owner of the Silver Lake talent agency The Department of Sales.
Anyone concerned the home was bought as a short-term investment need not worry; it's not going to be a flip or an Airbnb—Randazzo plans on settling in for the long term. We're told she's respectful of the "personal touches" that the mayor and his wife added to the home during their stay and is quite intent on preserving and highlighting them.
Randazzo only has one change planned for the home: she will be removing the spiral staircase Garcetti and his wife installed near the kitchen. That space will eventually be used to house her record collection, but that sounds like a pretty reasonable remodel. Chances were high with any potential buyer of an Echo Park midcentury that a sizable LP collection would have to be accommodated in some way.
Persad offered a few fun facts about mayoral real estate and the house itself. Though the house was on the market for months, don't expect to see any pictures of excited homebuyers checking out the mayor's digs. Apparently, when the mayor sells his home, visits to the property come complete with mayoral secret service agents and a strict no-phone policy. Think of all the backyard sunset Instagrams that were lost to the ages.
And even though the mayor and his wife famously completed a major restoration of the house (even landing a feature in Dwell for their work), the house still maintains some of the grit from an earlier, rougher incarnation of Echo Park—Persad says a few of the windows still bear marks from stray BB gun pellets. The scarred glass remains as a reminder of the changing history of the neighborhood.
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