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BY CATHERINE SEIPP | What do people in Hollywood want in their homes today? They want gleaming, brushed-steel Viking ranges and sub-zero refrigerators and down-on-the-farm dining tables that cost $3,000. They want soundproofed windows. They want -- they all want -- family rooms off the kitchen, even if they don't have a family, and his-and-her bathrooms off the master bedroom. They especially want original, classic Spanish-style architecture from the '20s and '30s. Juliette Lewis replaced the French Normandy roof on her Hollywood house with red tile because it was more in keeping with the building's Spanish architecture. Kevin Costner bought a 9,000-square-foot Spanish hacienda on the Westside last year for around $3 million. Penny Negron, a top Fred Sands realtor on the Westside, says a day doesn't go by without a call from someone looking for a vintage Spanish house. Major players want l-o-n-g gated private driveways that take half a city block to reach the front door and that say to strangers, "Keep Out!" A cable TV show called "Driveways of the Rich and Famous" once spotlighted Barbra Streisand's interesting gated driveway, which is bordered by a fence topped with shards of broken Michelob bottles. Outside the house they want land. This brings us to Southern California's most famous new listing, the O.J. Simpson estate. Fred Sands agents began showing the property last month to qualified buyers, after brightening up its rather gloomy Country English interior. At one full acre -- an unusually large lot for that part of Brentwood -- the Simpson place is remarkably spacious. Those involved feel the Simpson house will have no trouble selling for at least its $3.95 million asking price, despite its notoriety. Besides, says Jody Fine, one of the three listing agents: "I have a client on Rockingham and he tells me the looky-loos have dropped to almost nothing" since Simpson lost the house to foreclosure and moved out. Such confidence is just another sign of how heated up the market is now for the high-end Southern California real estate favored by the entertainment industry. Nowhere is this truer than the Golden Triangle of Brentwood/Pacific Palisades/Santa Monica, the new neighborhoods of choice for young Hollywood. Fine says that "because they're young and family-oriented" this new crop of buyers sees the Golden Triangle as "less pretentious than Bel-Air or Beverly Hills." Plus, the air is better. After a long, depressing slump, houses in this area are now practically selling themselves. One example: a small two-bedroom Pacific Palisades home that sold a few weeks ago for $100,000 over its $425,000 asking price. On the Westside, that's considered a starter home for a couple in their 20s. Move up a few years (and dollars) and you get to the vast mid-range of this market. A typical Westside sale -- for, say, $1 million -- is made to one of the bazillions of young writers who've made their fortunes in sitcoms after graduating from the Ivy League. On Sundays they invite their friends over, sit around the pool (heated luxuriously to the temperature of an amniotic sac) and complain that Los Angeles isn't more like Boston. So I wasn't surprised when veteran Realtor June Scott told me that "clients in the $3 (million) to $6 million market are now 31 to 42 years old. Before, people were in their 60s before they could afford a house like that." But with a changed market comes changed tastes. The monstrous manor manqué squeezed to the limits of its lot is passé. No one wants to be compared to Candy Spelling, with her infamous rec-room-sized closets and separate gift-wrapping room. "I have a house now that's 11,000 square feet, and the broker tells me to say it's 9,000 ... plus the screening room," says an agent. "Because who wants an '80s home? 11,000 feet is too ostentatious." Since their home is their base when they're not on the set, those in the Industry want everything close at hand. They want home offices. They want home security systems. They want state-of-the-art home screening rooms filled with jars of candy and cookies that will be worked off later in the home gym, and if not that, at least a home media room. They want ... N E X T+P A G E+| The room you hide in when the stalkers come |
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