Ellen DeGeneres just sold her Italian-style Santa Barbara mansion to a Netflix executive for $34 million

Christopher Polk/Getty Images

• Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi have finally sold their Santa Barbara mansion for $34 million — $11 million below the original asking price in March 2017.
• The buyer has been revealed as Netflix executive Ted Sarandos.
• The 16.88-acre estate, known as "The Villa," is modern yet classical.

---

Ellen DeGeneres is parting ways with one of her homes: a $34 million Santa Barbara area mansion.

According to the home's listing brokerage Sotheby's International Realty, DeGeneres and wife Portia de Rossi simply didn't have the time to use the mansion. The couple has bought and flipped several high-priced homes in Southern California, but this one is in Montecito, a neighboring town of Santa Barbara.

The couple originally listed the property in March 2017 for $45 million.

"Between 'The Ellen Show,' Ellen's new home collection and a new business that Portia is starting, they can't make it to Santa Barbara as often as they would like," a spokesperson at Sotheby's told Business Insider last spring.

The buyers have been revealed as Netflix exec Ted Sarandos and his wife Nicole Avant, former US Ambassador to the Bahamas, according to the real estate blog Yolanda's Little Black Book citing property records from June 2018.

The house, which is featured in DeGeneres' 2015 book "Home" and is known as "The Villa," was designed in the 1930s by architect Wallace Frost.

Frost originally built this two-story home for himself. After spending time in Italy, he wanted to recreate the classical style of a 17th-century Italian villa.

Since purchasing the property in 2012, DeGeneres and de Rossi have bought two adjacent properties to make this a 16.88-acre estate. According to Sotheby's listing agent Suzanne Perkins, they have completely modernized the house, adding a sunken tennis court, pool, and indoor-outdoor entertaining pavilion. 

DeGeneres and de Rossi bought the estate for $26.5 million in 2012. It was designed by architect Wallace Frost in the 1930s, and its classical style is still intact.

Jim Bartsch

According to the listing, Santa Barbara is sometimes referred to as "the American Riviera" because of its similarity to Europe's well-known region.

Jim Bartsch

"The Villa similarly brings touches of the Old World to the New World," reads the press release announcing the original listing.

Jim Bartsch

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

See Also:

• The 20 best college towns in America
• 7 things I wish I'd known before adopting a dog
• 5 mistakes we made when we bought our first house

SEE ALSO: No one wants to buy this $129 million mansion with 12 bedrooms and its own bowling alley