Roughly seven years after it first popped up for sale with an impressive $57.5 million ask, a blufftop mansion in western Malibu’s desirable Encinal Bluffs neighborhood officially traded hands last month for a discounted but still hefty $38.4 million—ranking as one of 2024’s top five priciest Los Angeles County deals.
Property records reveal the buyer is Andrew Schwartzberg, managing partner of Washington, D.C.–based Pennant Housing Group, which specializes in the preservation, development and acquisition of affordable housing properties throughout the U.S. He also serves as a principal of SSC Partners, the Affordable Housing Management Group and Subsidized Rental Housing Investments, which collectively own more than 25,000 low- and moderate-income rental units.
The sellers, per The Real Deal, were investors Mark Cirlin and Man Li-Yeh, who paid Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman and her now ex-husband Michael Skloff $10.7 million for the home back in 2017. The investors subsequently spent several years and millions more razing and rebuilding the premises in collaboration with architect Doug Burdge.
Schwartzberg’s newly acquired Cape Cod-style residence is perched atop a gated blufftop parcel spanning 1.7 acres and offering sweeping ocean vistas. There’s a two-story, elevator-equipped main home rife with wide-plank oak floors and floor-to-ceiling windows, plus a separate guesthouse—for a total of six bedrooms and eight baths filtered across roughly 4,000 square feet.
Among the highlights: a spacious great room showcased by a fireplace, built-in cabinetry and a wall of custom French doors spilling out to a terrace. An adjacent gourmet kitchen is outfitted with a stone-topped island, top-tier appliances and a breakfast nook with banquette seating, while other amenities include an office and a formal dining room.
Elsewhere is a lavish upstairs primary suite resting beneath a high arched ceiling, and sporting a wraparound ocean-view balcony, fireplace, and dual closets and spa-like baths; and outdoors, the picturesque grounds host a pool and spa, an open-air pavilion warmed by a fireplace, a sunken fire-pit, and an al fresco kitchen with a grill, pizza oven and two stone-clad bars. There’s also an attached two-car garage flanked by a motorcourt, along with steps leading down to a secluded beach.
In addition to his new Malibu property, Schwartzberg and his wife Jaime have long owned another lavish Los Angeles home—a $16.5 million, 3.4-acre spread in the Pacific Palisades enclave of Rivas Canyon, which has eight bedrooms and 12 baths in over 10,000 square feet of living space.
Source: Luxury - robbreport.com
