Ellen Ruby Blog's: Kim Novak Lived Here: 5 Cool Things About a Carmel Home Listed for $12.5M

Wednesday 30 June 2021

Kim Novak Lived Here: 5 Cool Things About a Carmel Home Listed for $12.5M

Carmel Home of Kim Novak — Jonathan Spencer Properties

A dramatic cliffside property in Carmel, CA, which the movie star Kim Novak called home from the early 1960s through 1973, has come on the market. It can be yours for $12.5 million.

Here are a few interesting points about the property’s history and features.

1. Pricey property

Novak’s former home isn’t the highest-priced property in Carmel, but it’s up there. In fact, there is only one home more expensive, a much larger home asking $15.5 million.

If you’re looking for a deal, this coveted town along the California coastline is not the spot.

With just 177 homes on the market, the town has a whopping median list price of $2.1 million, and homes are only on the market for an average of 37 days before they’re snapped up. The property where Novak once lived last sold in 2011 for $5 million.

Of course, higher-priced homes often take longer to sell. For a local example, a contemporary, waterfront home with sweeping, curved walls of glass known as the Butterfly House has finally found a buyer.

The brand-new build came on the market in 2017 for just under $12 million. After multiple price cuts, the home is now in pending sale status and was last listed for $9.7 million.

2. Celebrity appeal

The area, which sits between Los Angeles and San Francisco on the Pacific Coast, has long attracted celebrities, thanks to its proximity to golf, beaches, and its exclusive, secluded, waterfront homes. The big names have included Clint Eastwood, who served as mayor of the seaside community, and Doris Day, who made her home a haven for animals.

Novak shot to fame quickly, starring in movies such as “The Man With the Golden Arm” and “Pal Joey.” Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller, “Vertigo,” in which she starred with Jimmy Stewart, is widely considered one of the greatest movies of all time.

In 1962, while filming scenes in Carmel for “The Notorious Landlady” (with Jack Lemmon and Fred Astaire), a house with a “For Sale” sign caught Novak’s eye.

“‘It was beautiful, everything I loved: high ceilings, stained glass, a bathtub that looked out on the ocean,’” she told Carmel Magazine. She called the listing agent and bought it without going inside. “Gull House became my hideaway while still living in L.A.,” she added.

When a mudslide destroyed her Bel-Air home, Novak landed in this property to escape the movie industry and to focus on painting and creating art.

Set at the end of a gated, private road, this seaside getaway offers a heavenly respite from Hollywood. The main home still retains many of the details that were in place when Novak inhabited the space: slate flooring, vaulted ceilings, and redwood beams—not to mention those huge windows, which offer unparalleled, unobstructed ocean views.

Novak resided in the ocean retreat with a menagerie of animals until 1973, eventually relocating to a farm in Oregon where she could also raise horses with her veterinarian husband, Robert Malloy, who died in 2020.

3. Novak’s living legacy

The actress’s touches still remain, including the stained-glass light fixtures, which she commissioned for the main home, according to the listing agent, Jonathan Spencer with Compass.

Light fixture left behind by Novak
Jonathan Spencer Properties

Currently, the configuration encompasses a one-bedroom, 1.5-bathroom main house, as well as a one-bedroom, one-bathroom guesthouse with an attached, one-car garage that Novak built in 1967.

Kim Novak’s one-time home in Carmel
Jonathan Spencer Properties

Open-plan main house
Jonathan Spencer Properties

Modern kitchen
Jonathan Spencer Properties

Main house with turret
Jonathan Spencer Properties

Ocean vistas fill the windows of almost every room.

“You’ve got the waves crashing. You can’t get much closer. It’s literally built into the granite shelf. it’s a phenomenal piece of property,” Spencer says.

4. Option to expand

While $12.5 million is a lot to spend on a 2,000-square-foot property, a buyer may desire to spend even more. There are pre-approved plans drawn up for future expansion.

“Planning approval has been received to construct a new 4,300-square-foot, three-bedroom, three-bathroom main house,” the listing states.

The guesthouse that Novak built would be replaced with a larger, modern home, and the current main house could then be transformed into a guesthouse, gym, and art studio.

If a buyer decides to live in it as is, the current owner, who bought the coastal escape in 2011 for $5 million, has already improved on the space, updating the electrical system, the roof, and putting in a new kitchen, while keeping many of its circa 1957 elements very much intact.