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Break Out the Bubbly: Bob Hope’s Palm Springs House Has a Buyer

Bob and Dolores Hope’s stunning home in Palm Springs, CA, has finally found a buyer.

The iconic structure was sold for a fraction of its original $50 million asking price. And the best part? After 60 showings, the person who purchased the house was one of the first to see the property when it quietly came to market three years ago.

“That person stuck with us through the years and ultimately was the buyer,” says Stewart Smith, who co-listed the property with Patrick Jordan of Patrick Stewart Properties.

The final sale price was $13 million, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Compared with modernist mansions in Los Angeles, which can sell for $100 million or more, the price may seem like a pittance. However, it’s one of the biggest sales ever in the Coachella Valley community.

The house, which has been likened to a spaceship or UFO, was designed by famed architect John Lautner. Built in the late 1970s, it is a massive structure made of concrete, steel, and glass. The 23,000-square-foot structure has six bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, and two pools. As Jordan told Mansion Global, “People don’t understand the scale of the property until they walk in it.”

The home, which has a giant boulder jutting into the entryway, came to market in 2013 for $50 million. It was relisted a year later for $34 million, and then drifted down to $25 million by December 2014.

When we spoke with Smith and Jordan in early 2015, they had hoped to have an offer before desert temperatures reached triple digits and visitors fled for cooler climes. Summer came and went without a buyer. A year-and-a-half later, they’ve reached the finish line with the sale of this gem.

Smith says the new owner plans to “take back” the home to “what John Lautner originally envisioned.” The Hopes, apparently, tinkered with the design in the 1990s and enclosed some of the patios to make the home “more climate-friendly,” he says.

Hope, whose career spanned vaudeville, radio, TV, USO tours, and hosting the Academy Awards, died in 2003. He was 100. Dolores, his wife of 69 years, died in 2011. She was 102.

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