Serial renovators Portia di Rossi and Ellen DeGeneres have become something of a profitable Montecito lifestyle consultancy firm in the past few years.
As flippers, the couple has handed off their overhauled residences in the area to Sean Rad—the Tinder founder took an $11 million shine to historical property Rancho San Leandro—and singer Ariana Grande, who passed the couple $6.8 million for a deconstructed-reconstructed English Tudor that found its way to a particularly verdant glade in Santa Barbara County.
In January of 2019, the pair picked up a heavily stylized estate in the city for $27 million. They took ownership of the 8,300 sq. ft. Balinese-inflected contemporary, gave it a revision, and had it back on the market again by the autumn of the following year with a $40 million ask. A month later it sold for $33 million. According to Dirt, the estate’s most recent buyer is Eric Lefkofsky, who is CEO and founder of Tempus, and co-founder and Chairman of Groupon.
The estate is notable for its grounds: eight acres of grounds landscaped in a tropical style that compliments the Pacific Islands-inspired architecture, with a pond, a pavilion. The five-bedroom home’s Pacific and Asian design amalgam was toned down considerably by the DeGeneres/Di Rossi treatment, but the spirit of the design sensibility remains intact. A one-bedroom guest house and a cabana studio are additional features of the property.
Lefkofsky’s net worth is around $4 billion, according to Forbes.