Brad Pitt moving to Carmel after selling L.A. compound for $39 million, report says

Brad Pitt has just sold the Los Angeles estate he’s owned for almost three decades — a property he once referred to as the “childhood home” for his six children with Angelina Jolie — and is moving to Carmel.

TMZ reported the sale of Pitt’s Los Angeles compound for $39 million Tuesday. The TMZ report also said the actor plans to move to Northern California, where he purchased “Seaward,” a historic, castle-like seaside home in Carmel Highlands last summer.

A Page Six report in December said that the 59-year-old Pitt would keep acting but that he was looking to “step back” from some of his other Hollywood ventures to enjoy “a peaceful life.” But it remains to be seen whether he’ll make picturesque Carmel-by-the-Sea his new fulltime home, or if he’ll just visit from time to time.

Over the years, the picturesque community has been known as the preferred first or second home for celebrities looking to escape the pressures of Hollywood life. Clint Eastwood is Carmel’s most famous denizen, while Doris Day also made it her longtime home until she died in 2019.

When it was announced in January that Pitt was selling his 1.9-acre compound in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Los Feliz, a real estate source told People that the Oscar winner was looking for “something smaller” in the L.A. area.

Brad Pitt ‘quietly puts his Los Feliz compound on the market for $40 million’ https://t.co/iahWS9Ts8q

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) January 17, 2023

An architecture enthusiast, Pitt has bought and sold numerous properties over the years. But the Los Feliz compound was his home base and known to have special meaning for him. The actor began creating it in 1994, a couple years after he first shot to stardom with his charismatic performance as a hunky hitchhiker in “Thelma & Louise,” according to Architectural Digest. He paid $1.7 million for a Craftsman-style mansion that belonged to Cassandra Peterson, better known by her alter ego, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

Over the next decade, the actor picked up two contiguous properties to expand the compound and purchased two more after he divorced Jennifer Aniston and after he and Jolie became a couple in 2005, Architectural Digest said.

During the process of expanding the property, Pitt honed his love for design by being heavily involved in the building of new structures and the remodeling old ones, TMZ said. The compound currently boasts the 6,692-square-foot main house, as well as a swimming pool, private tennis pavilion and skate park.

When Pitt and Jolie were together, they were known for their globe-trotting lifestyle, traveling with their six children from country to country for movie locations and for her U.N. humanitarian work. Still, the Los Feliz estate remained the “childhood” home for Maddox, Pax,  Zahara, Shiloh and twins Knox and Vivienne, as Pitt told GQ.

Alll that changed in 2016 when Jolie stunned Hollywood by filing for divorce. Their breakup ignited a bitter and protracted divorce in which the exes went to court over child custody and the division of their assets. Pitt also reportedly became estranged from at least one of his children, 21-year-old Maddox, and may have a strained relationship with another son, Pax, 19.

Whatever relationship Pitt now has with his children, they are all getting older, so the downsizing idea makes sense. The possibility that Pitt could relocate to Carmel also has some merit, given the report that he was stepping back from Hollywood after selling a majority stake in his storied Hollywood production company, Plan B.

“Brad has decided that he wants to live a peaceful life going forward and is deciding what ‘semi-retirement’ looks like for him,” a source told Page Six in December, in light of the news that Pitt had sold 60% of Plan B, the company he co-founded with Aniston to a French media conglomerate.

The source added to Page Six: “One thing he’s decided is that he will likely continue acting,” but that he is staying away from other business ventures.

For Pitt, the “peaceful life” could include spending time with his reported new girlfriend, jewelry designer Ines de Ramon. Or, it could bring him to his Carmel property, which is perched on a steep oceanside bluff along scenic Highway 1. Perhaps, “Seaward” is just a real estate investment for the actor, but there’s also speculation that Pitt, with his passion for architecture, wants to turn the sandstone-and-granite house into another personal design project.

With its magnificent coastal scenery, Carmel has long attracted creatively minded people, starting in the late 19th century, when a vibrant and thriving artists community emerged, according to Carmel magazine. The famous people first flocking to Carmel were writers, including Robert Louis Stevenson and Robinson Jeffers, who built his own quirky stone Tor House at Carmel Point. The mostly itinerant Jack London also stopped in and Salinas native John Steinbeck immortalized Monterey County in his books.

Pitt’s Carmel property was originally built in 1918 as a summer retreat for the family of writer D.L. James. It was designed by Charles Sumner Greene, who along with his brother, Henry, was a proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement, Architectural Digest reported.

Meanwhile, film, TV and music stars began discovering Carmel in the second half of the 20th century. That includes Day, who fell in love with the area while making a movie in 1956. She purchased land in the Carmel Valley, overlooking the Quail Lodge and Golf Course, in the 1970s, and moved there full-time when she retired from her film career.

Legendary Hollywood star Doris Day’s long time home in Carmel Valley California looks exactly like you think it would. She moved in in 1981, and lived there until her death in 2019. It’s for sale for $7.4 million, with all proceeds going to the Doris Day Animal Foundation. pic.twitter.com/xmS50q0fSg

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) September 4, 2020

Eastwood, meanwhile, became active in the business and social communities and a regular at the Monterey Jazz Festival. He also famously served as Carmel’s mayor from 1986 to 1988.