Since suffering a burglary at one multimillion-dollar home in the hills above Los Angeles, Brad Pitt has traded that one in and purchased another, it was revealed Tuesday.
Pitt has purchased a Spanish-style estate in the Hollywood Hills for about $12 million, around the time he sold a smaller, historic mid-century modern home in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, according to the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal and other outlets. The Los Feliz home was ransacked in a June 26 burglary, allegedly committed by four young street gang members who also had targeted other celebrities’ homes in Los Angeles, police reported.
But even with Pitt’s new, six-bedroom Spanish-style mansion, which is said to offer optimal privacy and security, previous reports have said that his “primary residence” continues to be more than 320 miles to the north in the Carmel Highlands.
In 2022, he paid $40 million for the “architecturally significant,” Tuscan villa-style D.L. James House, which almost appears be built right into a rocky bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, according to the Robb Report.
Brad Pitt’s historic ‘bachelor pad’ near Carmel. (Wikipedia)
As recently as June, the Daily Mail reported that Pitt and his new girlfriend, Ines de Ramon, like to spend as much time as possible in Monterey County and in the spectacular-looking home, which also is said to resemble a small medieval castle. The house also is known as “Seaward” and was built with locally sourced sandstone and granite in 1918 for local writer and businessman D.L. James. The architect was Carmel-based Charles Sumner Greene, who was known for being a specialist in the Arts and Crafts style.
“Brad and Ines sightings in Carmel are regular,” one local resident told the Daily Mail. “They hit the fancy restaurants and shop at boutiques like Tancredi & Morgen just like all the locals. Brad has been seen with a hat and sunglasses on at Nielsen Brothers Market.”
“No one hassles celebrities here because the locals don’t like to make a fuss,” the resident also said. “They think approaching a celebrity is classless. So Brad and Ines get their space.”
But over on the Carmel-by-the-Sea Facebook group, which says it has 87,000 members, locals said last year that they had yet to see Pitt or de Ramon around town.
“I live here in Carmel half of the time and definitely wouldn’t mind running into him at a coffee shop or on the beach,” one person said, while another who lives nearby said the the house looked uninhabited as of a year ago. That person assumed that Pitt’s real estate portfolio, which is known to be “massive,” meant that the Carmel Highlands house was mainly purchased for investment purposes, not as primary residence. But another person followed up by saying that “someone I know was staying nearby and could see furniture being moved in.”
A woman who identified herself as a former city clerk for Carmel-by-the-Sea said that it’s good manners to merely wave or say hello to a celebrity like Pitt or Clint Eastwood, another famous resident who once served as the city’s mayor. “But don’t invade on their privacy,” she said. “It’s a cool place for them to live.”
When it comes to Pitt’s real estate portfolio, it was estimated to be worth around $130 million in June and to include the Carmel home and the Château Miraval winery and estate he purchased in the South of France with ex-wife Angelina Jolie in 2012, the Robb Report said.
In June, the portfolio also still included The Steel House in the Los Feliz neighborhood, which Pitt purchased for $5.5 million from oil heiress Aileen Getty. Before buying The Steel House, Pitt sold his longtime Los Feliz compound in a separate $33 million deal. The compound was the family home that he and Jolie shared with their six children, before she filed for divorce in 2016.
Pitt’s new Hollywood Hills home was previously owned by Dave Keuning, the guitarist for the rock band The Killers, and his wife, interior designer Emilie Keuning, the New York Post reported.