Flea Reportedly Buys Retro-Futuristic Two-Home Compound for $4.25 Million
Less than two weeks after putting one of his houses on the market, Flea has purchased two. A new report states that the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist and his wife, model Frankie Rayder, bought an "architecturally significant" 5.7-acre compound in La Crescenta, Calif. They paid $4.25 million.
Variety says that the sellers are artists Lari Pittman and Roy Dowell, who first listed it three years ago for $7.9 million, and have since dropped it to $4.5 million. It consists of two houses next to each other. The first was built in 1952 by mid-century modern architect Richard Neutra for his secretary, Dorothy Serulnic, and her husband, who owned it until Pittman bought it in 1998. That 1,350-square-foot home, which has two bedrooms and one bathroom, has been restored, but also updated with a modern kitchen.
A few years later, Pittman and Dowell built a one-bedroom, one-and-a-half bathroom house on the property that was designed by Michael Maltzan and completed in 2009. Where the Serulnic house is wedded to the look of the mid-50s, the new house's design is practically futuristic. The seven-sided home, with a courtyard in the center, sits above a hillside, offering "cross-canyon mountain views" from a terrace. The two buildings are connected via a driveway, and the compound features an "open-air entertainment pavilion set amid a scrupulously groomed desert garden."
Variety adds that the home in Los Feliz that Flea and Rayder put up for sale is in escrow. They also own a compound in Malibu's Encinal Bluffs that they bought for $10 million in 2006.