The Razor House – Alicia Style

For more than a decade, Razor House, the stunning cliffside mansion by architectural designer Wallace E. Cunningham in La Jolla, California, has alternately been described as a “magnum opus,” an “architectural masterpiece,” and “America’s coolest home.” But since purchasing the modernist gem in 2019, Grammy Award–winning singer Alicia Keys and her husband, renowned music producer Kasseem Dean (a.k.a. Swizz Beatz), have preferred to call the home where they and their two sons, Egypt and Genesis, now reside “Dreamland.” Explaining the name, Keys says the expansive, nearly 11,000-square-foot residence, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean and is rumored to be the inspiration for Tony Stark’s futuristic bachelor pad in the Iron Man movies, is “a place to create dreams and to be bold enough to dream your wildest dream—for us to even be here is a wildest dream.”

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/inside-alicia-keys-and-swizz-beatzs-art-filled-modernist-home-overlooking-the-pacific-ocean

This new song was filmed there:

Mitt Takes The Bit

Mitt Romney has sold his oceanfront La Jolla home for $23.5 million.  The Utah senator, and former Republican presidential candidate, completed the sale June 30, according to the San Diego County Recorder’s Office.

A small part of American history, the home became an example of what opponents in the 2012 presidential election said was an example of Romney being out of touch as he attempted to build an elevator on the property for his cars.  The “car elevator” house was often tied to Romney’s opposition to the bailout of the auto industry during the Great Recession. “The cars get the elevator, the workers get the shaft,” said former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm in one of the most often-quoted speeches from that time.

The sale price makes it the fifth-most expensive home sale in San Diego County history, and the third-most expensive for La Jolla. The biggest purchase in San Diego County history remains the 2007 sale of an oceanfront home in Del Mar for $48.2 million. The same house was later sold to Bill and Melinda Gates for $43 million in April 2020.

The grant deed said the Romney home was sold to William Rastetter, and his wife, Marisa. Rastetter has been a force in San Diego’s biotechnology and venture capital scene for more than three decades. He’s perhaps best known for his 20 years at IDEC Pharmaceuticals, where he served in leadership roles including chief executive, president and director. While there, he was the co-inventor of Rituxan, the first monoclonal antibody cancer treatment approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. IDEC merged with life sciences giant Biogen in 2003 for $6.8 billion.

Rastetter also served as board chairman of gene sequencing giant Illumina for 11 years, and has been a director at myriad other local life sciences firms. They include Neurocrine Biosciences, Regulus Therapeutics, Fate Therapeutics and Receptos, which was acquired by Celgene Corp. in 2015 for $7.2 billion.

Romney and his wife, Ann, purchased the property at 311 Dunemere Drive in 2008 for $12 million. The existing 3,009-square-foot home was torn down to build an 8,153-square-foot mansion with five bedrooms, six bathrooms and 65 feet of ocean frontage. It is one of roughly 30 beachfront homes in La Jolla.

The home was sold off-market, making a photo of the notorious “car elevator” hard to find. A 2020 assessment of the property, valued at $15.3 million, said the four-car garage was completed.

Room for parking in San Diego beach communities is rare. The most expensive La Jolla home sale, $24.7 million at 8466 El Paseo Grande in January, has a two-car garage. Romney’s campaign in 2012 said the lift was necessary to create a four-car garage because he has many children and grandchildren.

Romney revealed he had sold the home in late June in a virtual discussion about infrastructure sponsored by the Salt Lake Chamber, and was first revealed by The Salt Lake Tribune . At the time, his staff declined to discuss the details, including the price.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported in 2015 that Romney had been considering selling the home near the end of its rebuild. The project was opposed by several neighbors and conservationists for what they said was an out-of-place design in La Jolla.

Romney was not the only well-known person to live at the property. The original home was owned by former San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor and her late husband, Bob Peterson, founder of Jack in the Box restaurants.

Link to UT Article

From 2008:

Mitt Romney recently paid $12 million to buy a home on the ocean in La Jolla, Calif., near San Diego. His son Matt lives in the same area.  The former Massachusetts governor, whose main residence is in Belmont, Mass., says he has no plans to become a California resident, and the purchase has nothing to do with a possible future presidential run.

“I’ve always wanted to have a place on the beach where you could hear the crashing waves,” Romney says. “And you know, I’m 61; I’m not going to live forever. I said, ‘Ann, I want to get a place on the beach. I don’t care what size it is, but I want a place on the beach.’ And this spot, it’s not a huge home, it’s 3,000 square feet, but it is right on the beach, and you open the windows and hear the waves crash. It’s heavenly.”

From 2012:

La Jolla Lots, 1979

More from the 1979 series on Channel 8. I love this quote in the article:

“House hunting, today it’s a frustrating, time consuming and often times depressing process,” said Janet. “True, San Diego is the most expensive place to buy a home in all of the Continental United States, but that doesn’t mean only the affluent can buy here.”

Link to Full Article

Here is one of the houses built here – it sold for $4,100,000 in 2018:

https://www.zillow.com/homes/5727-Baja-Mar-La-Jolla,-CA,-92037_rb/16855861_zpid/

La Jolla Shores

There are 22 homes on my favorite stretch of oceanfront – it enjoys ample sand and is relatively private for a public beach.  The last sale on this street was the 9,320sf home that sold for $16,000,000 cash in August, and it’s the only other sale ever that closed above $11,000,000 here.

This just closed for $24,700,000 cash! Take a look around:

https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=UvRbLYMo4Yw&sr=-2.75,1.08&ss=30

More NSDCC September Sales

We’re only three days into October so there will still be more reporting in the coming days….but September sales are pouring in!  We had 52% more sales than we had last year in the La Jolla-to-Carlsbad market!

NSDCC Detached-Home Sales, September:

Year
Sept. # Sales
Med SP
Med $/sf
2016
271
$1,175,000
$417/sf
2017
271
$1,237,500
$448/sf
2018
220
$1,312,500
$493/sf
2019
234
$1,361,500
$488/sf
2020
355
$1,475,000
$518/sf

Until recently, you could expect that $10 million would buy you an oceanfront home in La Jolla.

But just in the last 30 days there were oceanfront sales of $14,000,000, $16,000,000, and this one in Bird Rock just north of Pacific Beach that sold for $19,250,000:

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