Most people spend their twenties living with roommates. Some manage to raise enough money to buy a starter house. Petra Ecclestone is not like most people. In 2011, at age 22, this London heiress to a Formula 1 fortune bought one of America’s largest houses – the Spelling Mansion in Los Angeles – for $ 85 million, more than anyone had ever seen before. paid for a house in California.
She spent the next decade learning to live in it, with a resident staff of more than 30, including maids, gardeners, security guards and drivers.
Now she and her fiancé, Sam Palmer, are creating a company inspired by their experience at the Spelling mansion. (They sold the house in 2019 for $ 120 million). They will help other wealthy people buy, sell, staff, and decorate their homes.
It will be an all-in-one service for a very specialized clientele: ultra-wealthy home buyers.
Palmer already runs Staffing Properties, a business that assigns employees to the homes of the wealthy. She obtained her real estate license last month and will join the luxury real estate firm Hilton & Hyland. Ecclestone said she plans to be in charge of interior design and personal branding.
They would cater to the growing number of wealthy people from around the world who have moved to Los Angeles in recent years because of the weather, lifestyle, and presumably proximity to other wealthy people around the world, such as in the case of the couple.
They can guarantee what they are capable of offering to the market. In the end, they know better than anyone what to be a billionaire homeowner requires some experience.
A common challenge: navigating labor laws that vary from country to country, and sometimes state to state. Another challenge: maintenance and remuneration. (“I come from the real world,” Palmer claimed. “So I know the real world prices. It’s crazy when you get into this world.”)
A renovation of 5,295.50 square meters
Ecclestone, now 32, is tall and blonde with the air of a highly privileged woman who is not easily impressed. A mother of four young children, she is soft-spoken and a bit reserved, but she can be so outspoken and funny that it makes you feel at ease. Sitting outside one warm afternoon, as two staff members silently served us coffee and fresh fruit, with her oldest daughter snuggled on her lap, she explained that she bought the mansion in 2011 without ever having seen her.
But it wasn’t entirely her idea, it was her ex-husband’s. “He was an egomaniacal narcissist,” was the explanation he gave.
Before moving into the Spelling Mansion, she hired designer Gavin Brodin to oversee a top-down renovation. Originally built in the 1980s for television producer Aaron Spelling, The home had 27 bathrooms, a gift-wrapping room (which Ecclestone converted into an office for his assistant), a barber shop (which she kept as is), and a 696.77-square-meter master suite (the size of a mansion plus standard).
Brodin described Ecclestone as a delightfully decisive person. Since the plans had been laid out, “there was no change,” he said. A team of 500 workers was hired to complete the project in 12 weeks, rather than the typical schedule of nine months or more.
When she settled in the mansion, Ecclestone was married to James Stunt; her divorce ended in 2018. It would be a few years before she met Palmer, 38, who is also English.
Palmer, a friend of her brother-in-law, was living in Australia and working as a legal recruiter when he happened to be in town visiting a meeting in 2017. The two hit it off. Palmer said their first date was at Tao, a Los Angeles restaurant. Their second date was a trip to Dubai.
Palmer, who has a handsome salesman charm and is the more gregarious of the two, confessed that he was not one to be impressed by one person’s home … but Ecclestone’s was “spectacular.” Also, it was immaculate. “There was never a leaf on the ground,” he said. He soon learned that keeping it that way was a complex and expensive operation.
After moving to Los Angeles to live with Ecclestone and their three children, she became interested in running the mansion. (The couple had a fourth daughter from both of them in 2020).
Palmer said people were overcharging Ecclestone left and right. It is almost as if they came to a 5,295.50 square meter house and thought that money was not an obstacle. Doing the complicated calculations to figure out which staff was needed and to make sure the house ran smoothly became “his day job.”
Beyond a singles’ apartment
The peak of the Los Angeles real estate market has seen something of a construction boom in recent years, as Developers in Bel-Air, Brentwood and Beverly Hills have torn down old houses to build mansions so luxurious they almost make you laugh, some with IMAX theaters and private nightclubs, often for unknown buyers.
Palmer said that most of the newly built homes, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, that the couple see in Los Angeles these days are basically high-end bachelor apartments.
“There is black marble everywhere,” he commented. “I think, ‘Do I want a house with a helipad that I can’t use?’ (He was referring to Billionaire, a Bel-Air house speculatively built by bag designer and promoter Bruce Makowsky that came with a restored and disabled helicopter on the roof and that it was traded for 250 million dollars in 2017; was sold in 2019 for 94 million).
“We’re going to see houses, and I think there are a lot of things that people have overlooked,” Ecclestone said. Palmer interjected: “It’s our passion.”
Ecclestone and Palmer have moved to a smaller place because, in fact, there was no other possibility.
The couple paid $ 22.7 million for a 1,672.25-square-foot modern farmhouse across the street from LeBron James’ residence and closer to the school that Ecclestone’s eldest daughter was attending at the time. “People write about it like we live in a tent in Brentwood,” Palmer said. (Ecclestone also owns an 18th-century Georgian mansion in London that the couple says is trading off the market for about $ 200 million.)
A relatively small team, made up of a dozen people, manages and runs the house from the staff rooms, which was previously a 10-car garage. That area includes several glass-walled offices, a break room, and a professional laundry room that is also equipped for dry cleaning.
Palmer, whose corporate offices are also in this space, said that You often test prospective domestic helpers in your own home to see if they are a good fit before assigning them to a client’s home.
A pending challenge: find the employees. As in many sectors recovering from the economic effects of the pandemic, the labor market for domestic workers is tight. Some wealthy families who laid off employees during the pandemic have struggled to rehire them.
Although the couple said they finally feel at home in their new home, Ecclestone said their new adventure will help satisfy their craving for house-seeing. “I get bored all the time,” he declared. “I like the change.”
Palmer, for his part, added: “I am very attached to this house and I love it. But I would quite agree [en vender] if we can earn some money from it. What’s wrong with changing houses all the time? It is exciting”. (E)
- Candace Jackson
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
