The estate where Phil Spector shot and killed his girlfriend is now on the market for $5.5 million.
The famed music producer, who is currently serving a 19-year prison sentence for murder, was found guilty of fatally shooting girlfriend Lana Clarkson at his California estate in 2003. Hilton & Hyland agent Ladd Jackson is now tasked with selling the Pyrenees Castle estate.
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“Many homes in Los Angeles have a history, so this is just another home with a past,” Jackson told Inman. “The property being unique and large makes it attractive on its own.”
It is, indeed, a beautiful estate — the 1700 Grand View drive property was built in the 1920s and is modeled after the traditional chateaus of French royalty. The estate sits atop a hill on 2.5 acres of land and has nine bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, marble fireplaces, turrets and wooden interiors. It has also gone through multiple renovations since the 1920s.
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That said, the high listing price may make the house a tough sell – properties with a vivid criminal history often sit on the market for years without a buyer before someone decides to either tear it down or give it a major renovation.
Randall Bell, a real estate appraisal expert who is often tasked with putting a value on properties that have been the scene of a crime, has been involved in pricing the property — and, as a result, declined to comment on the property due to a legal conflict.
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The home is being sold as part of a divorce settlement between Spector and his wife, whom he married three years after Clarkson was killed, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Spector, the Bronx-born producer behind hits for artists like the Crystals and the Ronettes, has received numerous awards and inductions into musical halls of fame in the 1970s. But time did no favors to the producer and after a long period of absence from music during the 1980s and 1990s, Spector was found guilty of murdering Clarkson after police found her dead of a gunshot wound to the mouth at the same estate in 2003.
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Jackson, meanwhile, advises agents tasked with selling similarly notorious homes to focus on the positive aspects of the property itself rather than its past.
“Play to the strengths of the house, spin it positively like you should with all homes,” he said.
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