English pop megastar Louis Tomlinson is not only trying to keep songs from his unreleased debut solo album from being leaked online — fans shut down a Twitter account last week that attempted to leak a single — he’s getting serious about selling a sprawling compound tucked into the rugged mountains between Calabasas and Malibu, Calif., hacking an eye-catching $1 million dollars off the original price in one single swipe of the price chop machete. First listed more than a year ago with a great deal of publicity and a too confident asking price of nearly $14 million, the resort-style estate is now available for sale at just under $13 million as well as for rent at $40,000 per month.
Tomlinson, who returned last year as a judge to the original, U.K. version of “The X Factor,” the televised talent show from which he and his former One Direction band mates rocketed to international über-celebritydom in 2010, purchased the property in the fall of 2015 for exactly $10 million. Alas, the 27-year-old former boy bander soon caught a classic case of the Celebrity Real Estate Fickle and, after he shelled out $7.3 million in the fall of 2016 for a glammed up Spanish meets Georgian villa in a famously celeb-filled neighborhood of the Hollywood Hills, he put his semi-remote Calabasas compound up for sale in early 2018 and a couple of months later the property popped up for rent at $60,000 per month.
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Sequestered near the end of a slender, tree-covered private lane, the gated driveway curves through a thicket of trees and over a stone pillared wooden bridge to a circular drive surrounded by rolling lawns in front of a sprawling, 9,659-square-foot Santa Barbara Spanish-style main residence. Marketing materials indicate there are a total of five bedrooms and eight bathrooms between the main house and the almost 4.75-acre compound’s handful of outbuildings that include a guardhouse, a detached garage, two guesthouses, a fitness pavilion and a Japanese-inspired tea house/meditation pavilion perched atop a serene knoll next to a koi pond.
Grandiosely proportioned interiors feature glossy polished walnut floorboards, flamboyantly high ceilings with alder wood ceiling beams and a whole-house audio system. A barrel-vaulted foyer passes between two stout columns before it steps down to a capacious formal living room that features a massive arched window and a humongous, tile-accented carved limestone fireplace. There is also a not particularly spacious formal dining room with fireplace, a dark-paneled, double-height library ringed by a second floor gallery and a high-end kitchen that features every culinary bell and whistle money can buy plus a unique fish tank built in to the custom cabinetry. A semi-circular separate breakfast room is lined with a trio of arched windows and a grandiose, double-height family room is overlooked by a wrought iron-railed catwalk while a state-of-the-art screening room offers a wide-screen projection system and a basement entertainment space contains a games room and a wine cellar.
Extensively landscaped and fastidiously maintained park-like grounds feature a rock-lined brook that weaves and waterfalls a serpentine path down landscaped hillsides and across rolling lawns shaded by mature trees. Al fresco lounging and dining terraces outside the main house includes a built-in barbecue area and, on a flat, sunny plateau above the house, extensive flagstone-cut limestone terracing surrounds a mosaic-tiled swimming pool and spa next to a fitness pavilion and guesthouse.
Newly signed with Arista and recently spotted in the U.K. where he’s rumored to be making a video for his upcoming album, the two-time Teen Choice Award winner also keeps a six-bedroom home in a semi-rural pocket about a dozen miles north of Central London in the Borough of Barnet he reportedly acquired in 2012 for about £2.25 million.
Listing photos: The Agency