Leona Lewis and record producer/reality singing competition tycoon Simon Cowell may have parted ways professionally when the sultry songstress left his Syco Record label five years ago, but it seems Lewis’s former mentor still has her back. The British-born pop chanteuse, discovered in 2006 on the U.K’s “X-Factor,” which Cowell created and served as a head judge, recently sold her home in L.A.’s celeb-favored community in a secret off-market deal for $3.9 million to a corporate entity linked to Cowell, who has now flipped the property back on the market for a tad under $3.7 million.
Clearly, and curiously, Cowell was prepared to step in and take a considerable financial hit for the “Bleeding Love” singer. Whatever the reasons for his willingness to lose several hundred thousand dollars on the deal, it also seems a smidge odd that Lewis would unload the roughly 5,900-square-foot estate not even a year after she first purchased it for $3.66 million. Listings held by Mark John Williams of Marquis Realty Inc. indicate there are five bedrooms and seven full and two half bathrooms between the approximately 4,900-square-foot single-story main house and detached guesthouse.
There’s a whiff of Scandinavian influence inside the sprawling ranch home, which is partly clad in the same red brick as paves the eye-catching herringbone-pattern driveway. The carpeted living room is airy and minimalist with an oversized linear fireplace as its focal point. Sunlight streams in through large picture windows and numerous skylights in the vaulted ceiling that is lined with golden-hued wood planks. Polished travertine flooring leads into the kitchen, which mixes wood cabinets with decorative pops of sky-blue paint, the latter of which also colors the thick beam that runs along the peak of the cathedral ceiling. The dash-of-blue motif crops up throughout the dwelling, most notably in the laundry room and powder room. One of the main house’s bedrooms has been converted to an oak-paneled family room with a full bar and built-in media equipment, while the light-filled master suite offers a fireplace, a private garden, a Zen-inspired bathroom and a huge, lavishly fitted walk-in closet.
At the rear of the house, the travertine floor tiles in the kitchen extend out to a huge loggia with a built-in grill. Beyond the loggia, there’s a freeform swimming pool and a tree-shaded fire pit with built-in bench seating. A separate, 1,000 square foot deluxe guest house, perhaps previously utilized as a crash pad for the singer’s Brit relatives, offers a poolside lounge with kitchenette, a pool bath with exterior entry and a deluxe bedroom and second bathroom that features a shower completely encased in frameless glass that gives it the feel of a outdoor shower. For horse enthusiasts, the property sports a third structure, a barn with a connecting sandy paddock. For those who do not own any long-legged steeds, the barn is easily converted to a gym, home office or recording studio.
In selling the estate, Lewis bid adieu to a long list of famous neighbors, including John Stamos, Melissa Etheridge, Drake, Jessica Simpson and various members of the Jenner-Kardashian family.
Interestingly enough, the house is a bit of a throwback to the equestrian-oriented estate in Glendale, Calif., that Lewis, an animal rights activist and ardent vegan, sold last year for $2.25 million. That property, purchased by Lewis in 2013 for for $1.25 million, also incorporates a guest house, swimming pool, and equestrian facilities, plus an apartment for a horse trainer.
As for Cowell, he’s cut about as many properties from his ever-morphing real estate portfolio as he’s axed wannabe stars from his talent shows. Though he still owns a $15.5 million midcentury home in the trendy Trousdale Estates area of Beverly Hills, he sold his main house in the Flats neighborhood of Beverly Hills last month in an off-market deal valued at $25 million. His new West Coast home base now appears to be the $24 million Malibu estate he picked up in 2017 with partner Lauren Silverman. (It was here that a freak bike accident a few weeks ago resulted in a broken back.) He also maintains multimillion dollar homes on New York City’s Upper East Side, London’s hoity-toity Holland Park neighborhood and, so the celebrity real estate scuttlebutt goes, a £15 million home — around $20 million for us stateside folk — in the natty London suburb of Wimbledon.