Jeffrey Katzenberg just wrapped up the third-priciest home sale in California history, unloading his Beverly Hills compound in an off-market deal for a cool $125 million, sources confirmed to The Times.
It’s a huge return on investment for the DreamWorks Animation co-founder, who recently turned his efforts toward the short-form streaming platform Quibi. Records show the movie magnate paid $30 million for the property in 2009 and erected a 26,000-square-foot mansion three years later.
Details are scarce, but an aerial photo shows the U-shaped home is approached by a tree-lined driveway and expands to a spacious lawn with a swimming pool in back. It spans more than 6 acres on a promontory lot overlooking the historic Greystone Mansion and the Sunset Strip.
The 26,619-square-foot home sits on a 6-plus-acre promontory lot in Beverly Hills.
(NearMap)
The sale, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, ranks among the priciest in California history. It’s topped only by Jeff Bezos’ $165-million purchase of the famed Warner estate this year and Lachlan Murdoch’s $150-million purchase of Bel-Air’s “Beverly Hillbillies” mansion last year.
The mammoth sale is the latest splash in Southern California’s red-hot summer real estate market. In June, David Geffen dropped $68 million on the modern Beverly Hills mansion of Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee president Casey Wasserman, and this week, it was revealed that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle paid $14.65 million for a 7-acre estate in Montecito.
Katzenberg, 69, spent a decade as chairman of Walt Disney Studios before co-founding DreamWorks Animation with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. After serving as the studio’s chief executive, he left in 2016 to lead the media and tech investment company WndrCo before founding Quibi in 2018.
He’s no stranger to huge real estate deals, but this is his largest by far. In 2012, he sold a 9,000-square-foot Mediterranean in Beverly Hills for $9.283 million. Last year, he hauled in $11.6 million for his 14,100-square-foot vacation home in the mountains of Utah.