Casa Encantada, the historic 8.5-acre Los Angeles estate at the center of a prolonged foreclosure struggle, was sold at auction for $130 million.
The Wall Street Journal reports the buyer was “a blond man dressed in black” who “declined to identify himself” the newspaper’s reporter. The buyer provided the auctioneer with several cashiers’ checks to cover the purchase.
The property’s seven-bedroom mansion was built in the 1930s and spans roughly 40,000 square feet. Hotelier Conrad Hilton and Dole Food executive David Murdock were among its former owners. The property’s last owner was financier Gary Winnick, who acquired it in 2000 for $94 million, a record price at the time.
Winnick made headlines in 2023 with an audacious $250 million listing price, with the hope that the sale could cover debts from one of his business entities tied to the real estate firm CIM Group. Winnick’s business entity borrowed $100 million in 2020 from CIM but fell behind on its payments, which ballooned to more than $150 million. Winnick died in 2023 and CIM ordered Casa Encantada and a Winnick family home in Malibu to be sold at auction. Winnick’s widow, Karen Winnick, filed several appeals to delay the auction before a court ruled against her.
The Malibu home, which was willed the Winnicks’ three sons, will revert to the lender after it submitted a $20 million credit bid during the auction.
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