Hamptons estate comes with $59 million tag

The Hamptons estate of the late Howard Gittis, the right-hand man of take-over artist Ronald Perelman, just hit the market with a $59 million price tag.

In 1994, Gittis paid $8 million for a Southampton, N.Y., home on about 13 acres and $1 million for another home on two acres. He used that home as a staff house and renovated it recently. Called Westerly, the brick Georgian Revival mansion was designed in 1929 for a wealthy industrialist.

The renovated 15,000-square-foot home has seven main bedrooms, a staff apartment and a living room fashioned out of a former ballroom. The property includes a pool and a tennis court, and can be subdivided, according to co-listing agent Ray Smith of Prudential Douglas Elliman, who shares the listing with Prudential's Paul Brennan. Gittis, who died in September at age 73, served for more than two decades as vice chairman and chief administrative officer of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Perelman's holding company.

Farther east, in Wainscott, county records and broker listings show a 5,000-square-foot house on 4.4 acres sold for $31.5 million in late September, less than a month after it went on the market. The seller was Philip G. Samponaro, a former executive at a Litchfield, Conn., bank.

Forbes ranch sold

A hedge-fund manager has paid $175 million for the Forbes family's Colorado ranch, in what's believed to be the largest home purchase in the U.S.

The buyer is Louis Bacon, head of Moore Capital Management, who plans to use the home as a seasonal retreat, a spokesman said. In remote Fort Garland in south central Colorado, the property, of more than 250 square miles, is the state's largest privately deeded ranch. Known as Forbes Trinchera Ranch, it includes three 14,000-foot-high mountains and one of the state's largest elk herds. The sale was reported in the Aspen Daily News.

By donating development rights over the past 10 years, Bacon, 51, has protected more than 1,100 acres on the east end of New York's Long Island.

Malcolm Forbes, publisher and editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, bought the property in 1969 and used it to entertain guests. He died in 1990. More recently, the family ran the ranch as a hunting lodge and executive retreat. A conservation easement on the property protects almost half the acreage from development.

The price tag works out to roughly $1,000 per acre, a valuation more typical of the Aspen or Telluride areas, local brokers say. Bacon couldn't be reached for comment. Bill Hegberg, of Wildcat Land Co., and Skip Shelton, of Ranch & River Acquisitions, represented Mr. Bacon. Mark Overstreet, of Chaffin Light Real Estate, represented the Forbeses. News of the deal comes just a week after Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan took his Aspen mansion priced at $135 million off the market; he listed it last year.

Oscar winner seeks Malibu sale

"Jurassic Park" special-effects artist Stan Winston is putting his Malibu, Calif., beach house on the market, less than a year after he finished renovating.

The four-time Academy Award-winner is asking $11.95 million for his approximately 3,000-square-foot modernist house, which sits on nearly a sixth of an acre with 35 feet fronting La Costa Beach. Nearby, actor David Spade is asking $16 million for his oceanfront home with roughly 60 feet of beach on a quarter-acre lot. Both homes are close to Carbon Beach, the "Billionaire's Beach," where Larry Ellison and David Geffen own homes.

Winston, 61, and his wife, Karen, paid $6.2 million for the property in 2005 and rebuilt the 1957 house with an all-teak-wood open-plan living area and a media room, says the listing agent, Stephen Shapiro of Westside Estate Agency. There are three bedrooms and four bathrooms.

Winston, who's frequently collaborated with director James Cameron, won effects Oscars for "Aliens" and "Jurassic Park" and two more for makeup and effects for "Terminator 2: Judgment Day."

Mining magnate sets $65 million sale

Three years after listing his Marin County home for $65 million, mining magnate Robert Friedland has a signed sales contract for the full asking price.

The 1895 mansion, on a crest with sweeping views of San Francisco Bay, sits on an acre on Belvedere Island, about a half-hour drive north of downtown San Francisco. Called Locksley Hall, the 12,000-square-foot mansion has a wraparound veranda, and there's a pool and a caretaker's studio. The sale accord includes the home's furniture, confirms listing broker Olivia Hsu Decker, co-owner of Decker Bullock Sotheby's International Realty.

A real-estate investor controls the legal entity buying the property, Decker says, but she declined to elaborate. A closing is set for January, but the agreement is still subject to contingencies, she adds.

Friedland, 57 years old, founded Vancouver-based Ivanhoe Mines, which has spent more than $400 million to develop a southern Mongolian discovery that could become one of the world's largest copper and gold mines. The house is in the name of a company owned by his wife, Darlene. The Friedlands spent nine years and more than $32 million renovating the house, which was bought for $5.5 million in 1995.

The record for a Northern California home is believed to be a $52.5 million sale in Woodside in 2000. In San Francisco so far this quarter, 30 homes costing over $3 million have sold, double the number in the year-earlier period, according to data compiled by Avram Goldman, head of Pacific Union GMAC Real Estate. The broader Bay Area market, though, has been weak.

Blink-182's Tom DeLonge lists home

Blink-182's Tom DeLonge is asking $6.25 million for his San Diego County home, a modest 14 percent markup on what he paid two years ago, excluding renovations.

The 32-year-old band frontman and his wife, Jennifer, an interior designer, paid $5.5 million for the U-shaped home in 2005, says their listing agent, Laura Barry of Barry Estates. (Many consider the fourth quarter of 2004 the peak of the U.S. housing market.)

In Rancho Santa Fe, 25 miles north of San Diego, the 6,500-square-foot, single-level home has five bedrooms and six baths. The DeLonges replaced the kitchen and bathrooms, adding a craft room and pool, among other things, Barry says. DeLonge couldn't be reached for comment.

As co-founder of punk-pop band Blink-182, DeLonge is known for hits like "What's My Age Again." Two years ago, the group went on hiatus, and DeLonge started a new band, Angels & Airwaves, which released a second album this fall called "I-Empire."

Farm Miro painted for sale in Spain:

A farm in Spain's Catalonia, owned by the family of surrealist Joan Miro and the subject of one of his key paintings, is for sale for 5 million euros ($7.4 million).

The artist's parents purchased the farm around 1910; now about 25 acres, it's in the village of Montroig about 70 miles southwest of Barcelona. As a young man, after working as a clerk, Miro had a mental and physical breakdown and convalesced at the farm. In 1921, he painted "La Masia" ("The Farm"), a picture once owned by Ernest and Mary Hemingway, who donated it to the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

The 100-year-old Spanish colonial house measures about 10,500 square feet and has a three-story tower, six bedrooms (each with a terrace) and an adjoining chapel. No one has lived in the main villa, about three miles from the Tarragona coast, for about 35 years. The sale includes some furniture, Miro's roughly 1,000-square-foot art studio and some drawings he made on the wall.

Employees live on the property and maintain it as a working farm, says the listing agent, Artur Stabinski of Fincas Exclusivas, an affiliate of Christie's Great Estates. Miro died in 1983 at age 90. The painter's two grandsons, who listed the farm, inherited the property two years ago, Stabinski says.