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It's her money. She's free to do what she wants with it. But she bought it for the location or view or whatever with intentions of tearing it down, which is fine. She bought the lot. But that's a lot of money, yes it is!
We bought a fabulous lot with great views. It has a funky house, too. We considered tearing it down, but decided it's too much work. Most of our neighbors have replaced their original houses with larger ones.
Prices are rising in this area. I expect we'll make a tidy profit when we sell, then the new owner will tear out our house and build a big new one.
Okay, our place isn't going to be worth millions, but it's just a matter of scale.
Would this be a case of the land & location being worth more than the brick & mortar? True it's her property now she can do what she wants but in 10 years she also would've had a100 year old house that might have been a selling point.
Given that it was a 4/3 3400 square foot home, yes, obviously the value was in the land.
Not on the same scale, but sometime in the 1990's I read someone bought a house for $750,000 in Short Hills, NJ, tore it down and put up a $2 million house on the same lot. First time I heard about that being done, but it just goes to show you that you can do what you want with your money.
Unless the house is a designated historic site, which is a reason some people fight against their property being so designated!
Lots of desirable areas contain old houses that are not worth renovating. The old floor plans and room sizes just don't work with today's lifestyles and trends. Neighborhoods where there are few available lots and little for sale other than unworkable homes often see sales of homes like this. Sometimes they even list them as "tear-downs". It's not all that weird, except for the price tag, but it is acreage in Brentwood after all...
She couldn't possibly have earned it in her 20+ year acting career, or her other business ventures. She's a woman, so you assume she got her money from a man. Brilliant.
Oh I don’t know. How did the richest woman in the world get her money?
This is happening all over the country. Certain areas of the major metros, even down to specific blocks, are desirable. Others are not. Small houses on the desirable streets are torn down and another house is built there. Sometimes entirely on spec. People pay a significant premium for location.
Ten houses (out of 50) on my father's road in Kansas City have been torn down in the past few years. The last two were over $3 million as tear-downs (one of which was a 5000-foot brick colonial built in the 1960s, so neither small nor old).
Some people want NEW houses. Only a few houses in the 6000+-foot range that is now in vogue were built before the war (and those are also going for a lot of $$$ even before renovation). So if you want one of these monsters, especially on one of the prime blocks, you are probably going to have to tear down and start over.
The authorities appear to be uninterested in preserving historically any structure built after about 1935, even the modernist and postmodernist landmarks. They do fight like hell for the 1920s stuff, including the storybook cottage crap, that is frankly less interesting than some of the postwar premier properties.
It is her money, and she does have every right to do whatever she wants with it.
However, that being stated, I just wonder how many very low income apartments could be built if all the celebrities (and politicians) with multi-million dollar homes would settle for a home that cost half as much as their new homes (a $4,000,000 home instead of an $8,000,000 home, for example) and pool the savings to build housing for the poor.
And of course this is just a question out of curiosity. To reiterate, I do believe in the right of people to spend their earnings in any way they choose.
This is very common in L.A.. Happens all the time.
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