Bruce and Suzie Kovner (The Kovner Foundation)
Hedge funder Bruce Kovner is looking for nine figures for his 22-acre compound in Santa Barbara County.
Kovner is asking $160 million for a stitched-together property in Carpinteria that he has expanded and developed over the last 14 years or so, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A sale near his ask would be among the priciest ever in California. Jeff Bezos set an all-time price record last year when he purchased David Geffen’s Beverly Hills estate for $165 million.
Kovner’s estate comprises five parcels. Kovner said he’d like to sell them together, but acknowledged that “there’s certainly more of a market if one breaks it up.”
The properties include two neighboring bluff-top parcels overlooking the Pacific Ocean, each home to 8,000-square-foot mansions.
Kovner and his wife Suzie Kovner expanded one of those mansions and built the other.
The original mansion and its surrounding 10 acres are for sale separately, asking $80 million.
The other three parcels are landscaped and marketed as buildable.
Two of those parcels — 6.6 and 6 acres — can each accommodate 12,000-square-foot homes and other structures. The third is three acres and can accommodate an 8,000-square-foot home and other buildings.
Kovner claims he spent around $110 million over several years to buy up the parcels and another $50 million to landscape them, expand the main house and build the second home.
The Kovners own property in New York City and north of the city, as well as in Florida. They sold an estate on the Caribbean island of St. Barts in 2017.
[WSJ] — Dennis Lynch
