Cleaved to a steep hillside in the coveted Crest Streets neighborhood, a low-key area with winding streets and no through traffic, Garbo’s former home has just been put back on the market with Markus Canter of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties for $10 million. The current asking price is a substantial reduction from the $12 million asked when the property first popped up for sale with another agent affiliated with another brokerage in early 2022.
Though there are hints and whispers of the home’s original Jazz Age moderne stylings, such as the camber of the front façade that echoes the sweeping curve of the street, the home bears few of its original details since an extensive transformation in the early 2000s by HGTV-featured interior designer Nicole Sassaman. The home last changed hands in 2006, for almost $7.
There are five bedrooms and five bathrooms, plus a powder room, dispersed among the almost 4,700-square-foot home’s three stories. Configured to take advantage of the canyon-framed view of the downtown skyline, there are two fireplaces, one of them in one of the main-floor guest bedrooms, and a trio of balconies, one off the primary bedroom and another outside an ensuite office/bedroom tucked down a private staircase beneath the street-level two-car garage.
A petite, infinity-edge swimming pool and a large spa hug the back of the house with endless views over the city. In fact, it’s possible to open one of the sliding glass doors in the living room and step directly into the pool. Below the pool are a pair of grassy terraces, and below that, out of sight and shielded by great plumes of verdant foliage and retractable awnings, is an intimate alfresco lounge.
Fiercely private, Garbo retired in 1941, at 36 years old and at the peak of her fame, and after be-bopping about for a dozen years, she finally settled in New York City, where she bought a three-bedroom co-operative apartment at the Campanile building in the swanky Beekman Place neighborhood, where she lived until her death in 1990 at 84 years old. Still owned by her family, the elegant fifth-floor apartment was listed last year at $7.