It needs a new kitchen. Several bedrooms require sandblasting and repainting. Rubble fills the swimming pool.
And it’s for sale for $25 million.
This is Pebble Beach’s famous Byzantine castle, and some might call it a fixer-upper.
But what’s in a phrase? It’s location that counts, and these coveted 2.9 acres are covered with gnarled cypress trees on a bluff that overlooks the Pacific Ocean and the spectacular rocky shoreline a hundred feet below.
Realtor Mike Canning, who is the listing agent, said it was difficult to find comparables for the 17-room estate.
“It’s more like pricing art than real estate,” said Canning of Coldwell Banker Del Monte Realty.
Canning sold the highest priced property to date in Pebble Beach, the former Leonard Firestone estate, situated at the 14th hole of the golf course. The estate sold for $11 million.
But this property — the only Byzantine castle in the United States, according to Canning — will reach a new record for a very simple reason.
`It’s head and shoulders above everything else in Pebble Beach,” he said.
Canning said the buyer will undoubtedly pay cash. “Nobody at this level would take out a mortgage.”
Canning acquired the listing this year and said that selling a property of this type usually takes up to 18 months, but he has a hunch it will go more quickly.
He will not market the home locally, he said, but nationally and internationally, mostly by direct mailings to the super-rich.
He placed an ad in the Wall Street Journal that netted two dozen responses. Only several hundred people in the United States can afford this property, he said.
And two parties who are “capable” — Canning’s word for qualified buyers — have already toured the property and expressed substantial interest.
He would not divulge names but gave a few hints: They are both Fortune 400. One lives in San Francisco, the other in Southern California. This would be a second residence and not their main home.
If market studies bear out, the next owner will either be a Californian or a Texan. The current owner is an Arab, whom Canning will not name.
Part-time occupant The current owner spends three months a year at the castle and travels with his entire family as well as servants and security staff.
He paid $4.5 million for the castle in 1981 and since then has done some major remodeling, including installing central heating — much needed in a house buffeted by Pacific winds and with exterior walls up to two feet thick.
He also remodeled the kitchen — alas, in 1981 style — and installed a spectacular terrace that overlooks the ocean and sports a 180-degree view of the coastline, revealing the ocean-side elevations of the homes of some of his well-known neighbors — including the Bechtels and the Crockers.
Why is the family selling?
“They’ve had their chapter with the property,” is all Canning would say. Besides, he added, they have many other properties in other parts of the United States and abroad.
This is the sixth time the castle has been on the market. It was built in the late ’20s by Helene Irwin Crocker, who was married to Templeton Crocker, a California railroad baron.
The first owners Besides having a rich husband, Helene Crocker was the daughter of a Hawaii sugar baron. After Templeton Crocker died, she remarried but kept the castle. It was first sold in 1947.
The architect of the castle was George Washington Smith of Santa Barbara. The bold, asymmetrical house is built almost entirely out of thick Italian marble. Several steps lead up to the front door, and a small, exquisite garden grows to one side amid 32 marble columns, each marble completely different, giving a cloister-like atmosphere.
The main house consists of seven bedroom suites and a series of rooms for servants. There is also a guest house on the property and several more servant rooms in a building also used as a four-car garage.
The house was built with marble from the Mount Vesuvius region of Italy and took almost five years to complete. Thirty craftsman were brought in from all over the world to finish the multiple mosaics, marble work, carpentry, stonework, wrought iron and bronze hardware that is used throughout the property.
The hallway floor is made of marble mosaics, black on white, with the 12 signs of the zodiac inscribed in a circle. Each door is studded, carved and uniquely designed.
The living room — up several steps — has a 180-degree view of the coastline.
Upstairs, through a series of arched and winding stairways and corridors, is the master bathroom suite and beyond that the other bedroom suites.
Perhaps the most interesting room is an original bathroom that is part of the master bedroom suite, which has a gold mosaic floor patterned with black dolphins, a solid black marble tub with gold inlay, and a solid marble pedestal sink. All the hardware is made of gold, Canning said.
The bathroom walls are lined with abalone shells; the closets are lined with cedar.
10,000 square feet The dining room is of classical dimensions with a 16th-century carved Italian stone fireplace, transported lock, stock and barrel from an Italian church. Altogether the main house has 10,000 square feet of living space.
Prospective buyers must consider both the bad news and the good news.
Bad news first: annual property taxes will be $250,000.
And the good news is that homeowner dues in Pebble Beach shouldn’t cost the lucky buyer more than $200 a year, Canning said.
