We heard just this week that the Playboy Mansion was going to be sold to the mogul next door, but there weren’t any hints as to whether the Holmby Hills mansion would sell for its very confident list price of $200 million.
Now we know.
The LA Times says it hears from "sources not authorized to comment on the sale," that it will be a lot lower than the original asking price—a mere $105 million.
That would still be high enough to break the record for Los Angeles County. The current record holder, Fleur de Lys, sold for $102 million in a transaction that had the added outrageousness of being an all-cash sale.
The Playboy Manson's buyer is Daren Metropoulos, an executive at the private equity firm Metropoulos & Co., which his father founded. Metropoulos is also an owner of Hostess Brands, which makes Twinkies and SnoBalls.
The 29-room main estate was built in 1927 for Arthur Letts Jr., whose father founded Holmby Hills. The interiors of the mansion have a stately glamour to them, with carved wood panels in the grand hall and intricate molding, as well as the kind of things one would expect from the home of an eccentric, party-loving rich person, like a wine cellar with access through a secret door and an in-home theater a built-in pipe organ.
The residence will have an interesting additional feature when it sells to Metropoulos: Hugh Hefner. A condition of the sale, which the buyer has agreed to, is that Hef gets to stay in the house until his dying day.
Metropoulos already resides in a mansion next to the Playboy property, which he bought from Hefner in 2009 for $18 million.