The iconic Playboy Mansion is officially being put up for sale for one of the highest asking prices for a private residence in the United States, but as a condition of the sale, Hugh Hefner can continue living there..
Playboy Enterprises announced the West Los Angeles estate, the backdrop of many film shoots and celebrity parties, was listed on Monday for $200million.
Hefner, the magazine’s founder who is now 89, can continue living there as he has since the company bought the mansion 45 years ago for $1.1million, company spokesman John Vlautin said.
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Playboy Enterprises announced the West Los Angeles estate, the backdrop of many film shoots and celebrity parties, was listed on Monday for $200million
As a condition of the sale, 89-year-old magazine founder Hugh Hefner can continue living there as he has since the company bought the mansion 45 years ago for $1.1million, company spokesman John Vlautin said
Prospective buyers will be allowed to tour the estate – but Hefner’s master bedroom will be off-limits
Playboy Mansion is famous for its legendary pool parties, where the dress code is lingerie and silk robes
One such bash is the annual Midsummer Night’s Dream Party (pictured in 2003), always held on the first Saturday in August
Hefner’s bedroom is also off-limits to prospective buyers looking to tour the property, according to TMZ.
Representatives did not specifically say why the company had decided to sell the property, which was built in 1927.
The principal agents for the listing are Drew Fenton and Gary Gold of Hilton Hyland and The Agency’s Mauricio Umansky, the husband of actress Kyle Richards of reality television show The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
The Gothic Tudor-style mansion, which has an area of nearly 20,000 square feet and boasts 29 rooms, sits amid five acres in Holmby Hills west of the city.
In addition to amenities such as a tennis court and a free-form swimming pool, the estate is home to the infamous Playboy grotto, which over the years served as the setting for some of Hefner’s most lavish, hedonistic parties.
The mansion, in which Hefner still lives, also has a zoo license, the company said in a statement announcing the sale.
‘The Playboy Mansion has been a creative center for Hef as his residence and workplace for the past 40 years, as it will continue to be if the property is sold,’ the statement added.
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In addition to it’s own parties, the Playboy Mansion is frequently rented out for movie screenings, corporate parties and charity events. Pictured is the cocktail hour during an advanced screening of The Entourage Movie in May 2015
The house has also been featured in a number of music videos, television shows and movies
A holiday meal in the mansion’s dining room posted by Crystal Hefner, Hugh’s third and current wife
Hugh and Crystal Hefner attend the Playboy Mansion’s annual Halloween party in October 2015
The Hef with one of his most favorite Playmates, Pamela Anderson, who took the cover spot for Playboy Magazine’s last nude issue
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The backyard is also the backdrop for the mansion’s annual Midsummer Night’s Dream Party, which is always held on the first Saturday of August, as well as blowouts on Halloween, New Year’s Eve and for Hef’s birthday.
In addition to it’s own parties, the Playboy Mansion is frequently rented out for movie screenings, corporate parties and charity events.
The house has also been featured in a number of music videos, television shows and movies, including Anna Faris’ The House Bunny.
In addition to 22 bedrooms, a wine cellar, movie theater and several tennis courts, the Playboy Mansion, which Hefner purchased from chessmaster and engineer Louis D. Statham, comes with a whole lot of history.
It is rumored that John Lennon once put out a cigarette on one of Hefner’s original Matisse paintings, where it still stands today, according to Thrillist.
There is also believed to be an off-limits bedroom dubbed the ‘Elvis’ room, where the legendary singer once reportedly slept with eight Playmates at one time.
But recently the headlines dedicated to the Playboy Mansion are a far cry from its most glamorous days as the place to play in the last decades of the twentieth century.
Playmate Carla Howe, 25, said the estate feels like ‘it’s stuck in the eighties’.
The British model said Hefner refuses to change anything about the mansion, leaving it looking worn-out and ‘cold and unused’, she told The Sun.
She said that the iconic Beverly Hills home is no longer a ‘place of excess with orgies and topless girls’, and instead, ‘Hef is so frail he goes everywhere with a group of nurses’.
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The front lawn of the legendary mansion during the 2013 Playboy Playmate of the Year reception
The Playboy Mansion is one of the only properties in the country with its own zoo licenses and is known for the Hef’s peacocks roaming the grounds
The Playboy mansion features 22 bedrooms, a wine cellar, movie theater and several tennis courts
A model at the Mansion’s legendary Midsummer Night’s Dream (left) and a guest goes all out for one of the Halloween parties (right)
Hefner’s movie theater, where he is known to hold weekly screenings of films from his large collection
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Former playmate Izabella St James painted an even bleaker portrait of life as a Playmate in her 2010 autobiography Bunny Tales.
St James described mismatched bedrooms filled with random pieces of furniture that made it took like ‘someone had gone to a charity shop and bought the basics for each room’.
‘Although we all did our best to decorate our rooms and make them homely, the mattresses on our beds were disgusting – old, worn and stained. The sheets were past their best, too,’ she wrote.
St James also said there was a ‘strict’ 9pm curfew for the Bunnies, unless you were out with the Hef himself, and that the girls had to watch him pick up dog poo every Friday before receiving their allowance.
The Playboy Mansion also found itself at the center of the Bill Cosby scandal, as a model accused the comic of drugging and sexually assaulting her at the estate when she was just 18.
Chloe Goins alleged that she met Cosby at the Playboy Mansion in the summer of 2008, he gave her a drink and that she awoke to find him biting her toes with his pants around his ankles.
Last week, it was revealed Cosby would not face charges for the alleged assault due to lack of evidence, but Goins says she plans to take her case to civil court.
Former Playboy bunny P.J. Masten also accused Cosby of raping her in the 1970s and claimed there were 12 former bunnies who had also been ‘drugged and raped’ by the comedian, who had been friends with Hefner for years.
As the legacy of the Playboy Mansion faces, it’s magazine is undergoing a revamp.
Playboy Magazine will reveal its complete redesign in March, after announcing in October it would completely stop featuring pictures of naked women after more than 60 years in publication.
The move followed a decision in August 2014 to ban full nudity on its website.
Playboy CEO Scott Flanders says the sale would help the company ‘reinvest in the transformation of our business.’
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The Playboy Mansion’s most notorious days may be behind it, but these throwback pictures will live on forever
Recently the Playboy Mansion has found itself surrounded by controversy, specifically a woman’s claim that she was drugged and sexually assaulted there by Bill Cosby in 2008
A view of the notorious grotto in the Mansion’s swimming pool, which houses a caved whirpool hot tub
Real estate sources value the house’s acreage at $60m, in line with a similar property recently sold in the area, but it was believed that the mansion’s history would up the eventual selling price