From the Los Angeles website: News broke today so absurd it must be true: Larry Flynt of Hustler is interested in buying the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills and making it the Hustler Mansion. And while it may be a publicity stunt, it’s starting a discussion about the true value of the property.
Representatives of Flynt said there is no way he is shilling out the $200 million asking price placed on the mansion when it hit the market earlier this month, especially since the 20,000-square-foot home on five acres of land comes with a pretty major stipulation: that Hugh Hefner remain on the property until he dies.
“We are not going to offer half that much,” Harry Mohney, whose Déjà Vu company operates Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club, told the New York Daily News.
Josh Flagg of Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Realty and Bravo TV’s “Million Dollar Listing” agrees that the listing price is significantly overblown. He told The Real Deal the property is worth $90 million, tops.
Flagg marketed a home adjacent to the mansion last year for $150 million. That home sits on 10 acres of land, twice the Playboy Mansion’s acreage. If that rate of $15 an acre was applied to the Playboy Mansion, it would ask for just shy of $75 million. If you add $15 million for the cache of the property, he said, you get $90 million.
What’s more, Flagg stressed that is only a more acceptable asking price. What the mansion might actually get could be lower.
“I could see someone possibly paying [$90 million] because of the cache along with the value of the land,” Flagg said. “A home is worth whatever a buyer is willing to pay for it and for someone who wants to own the Graceland of the West, the home could achieve such a price.”
The mansion, which is the priciest listing of the past year, has 29 rooms, including a wine cellar, a home theater and a gym. Other amenities include a game house, a tennis court and a swimming pool with a famed cave-like grotto. It was built in 1927 and purchased by Hefner in 1971 for just over $1 million.
Gary Gold and Drew Fenton of Hilton & Hyland share the exclusive listing with Mauricio Umansky of the Agency.