Sold for $86 Million: An LA Compound With Rod Stewart’s Former Mansion

A Los Angeles compound that includes the musician Rod Stewart’s former home has sold to two separate buyers for a total of $86 million.

The sellers are Bradley Bell, executive producer and head writer of the long-running daytime soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful,” and his wife, former diplomat Colleen Bell. They bought the house from Stewart for $6.25 million in 1992.

The roughly 6-acre compound is being divided into two sections and sold separately.

The bigger of the two parcels—a roughly 4-acre lot that includes the main house—was sold to David Zander , a television, commercial and film producer for about $57 million.

The remaining parcel, with a circa-1911 cabin on it, has been sold to Nick Kaiser, co-founder of the private-equity firm Marlin Equity Partners for about $29 million.

Zander has a penchant for storied real estate: He previously bought, renovated and sold Lasata, the circa-1917 Hamptons estate where Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis spent childhood summers.

Neither Zander or Kaiser responded to a request for comment.

Designed in 1925 by Montecito architect George Washington Smith, one of the masters of the Spanish Colonial Revival style in Southern California, the property’s main 17,000-square-foot, six-bedroom Spanish Colonial-style home was built for Henry Kern, a retired distillery entrepreneur, and his wife, Elsa Mary Kern.

The Kerns were tough clients for Smith, forcing him to redesign the property several times and to include greater levels of ornamentation than was his usual style, according to “The Legendary Estates of Beverly Hills,” a book by the late real-estate agent Jeff Hyland.

When the Bells bought the main house, they were newly married and in their 20s; Bradley had been making a name for himself in Hollywood producing “The Bold and the Beautiful.”

“I don’t know that we could really even afford it,” said Colleen.

The property required a lot of work, but the house reminded them of Bradley’s childhood vacation home on Wisconsin’s Lake Geneva, where the pair met as teenagers when Colleen’s parents rented the house next door.

They spent two years renovating and restoring the house. Stewart, who bought the house in the 1970s, had added art nouveau-style features, including a disco room.

The Bells removed those elements and restored as many original details as possible, uncovering the coffered ceilings and removing marble floors to reveal the original tiles.

“Of course, it took longer than we anticipated and cost more than we thought it would,” said Colleen, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Hungary under President Obama and is now director of the California Film Commission.

“We just hoped that the [television] work would continue and we’d be able to pay our bills, which it did, and the show stayed on the air.” The drama, which started in 1987, has been running for 38 seasons.

In 2004, the Bells bought the longtime home of the actor Gregory Peck for $19.5 million, razing the Peck home and merging the properties into one roughly 6-acre compound.

The couple had a longstanding friendship with Peck and his wife Veronique Peck; they all frequently had dinner together.

“When Brad and I moved in, they had left a beautiful little Poinsettia plant with a handwritten note that said, ‘Dear Colleen and Brad, welcome to the ‘hood,’” Colleen said.

After Peck died in 2003, Veronique approached the Bells and asked if they’d like to purchase the property.

The Bells weren’t planning to sell, but were approached several times by Zander’s agent. “We said, ‘OK, we’ll just show them around,’” Colleen said.

“Then, one thing led to another, and we started to think about it.” The Bells raised their four children in the house, so selling the property is “poignant,” she said.

Zander wasn’t interested in the entire property, however, so the Bells’ agent, Ben Bacal of Revel Real Estate, brought in Kaiser to take the rest.

The sale has taken more than a year to complete because of the complexities of subdividing the property, Bacal said.

Bacal represented the Bells and Kaiser. Drew Fenton of Carolwood Estates represented Zander.

For decades, Australia has leaned into its reputation as the lucky country. But luck, as it turns out, is not an economic strategy.

What once looked like resilience now appears increasingly fragile. Beneath the surface of rising property values and steady headline growth, the Australian economy is showing signs of strain that can no longer be ignored.

Recent data paints a sobering picture. Australia has recorded one of the largest declines in real household disposable income per capita among advanced economies.

Wages have failed to keep pace with inflation, meaning many Australians are working harder for less. On a per capita basis, income growth has stalled and, at times, reversed.

And yet, on paper, things still look relatively solid. GDP is growing. Unemployment remains low. But that growth is increasingly being driven by population expansion rather than productivity.

More people are contributing to output, but not necessarily improving living standards.

That distinction matters.

For years, Australia’s economic success rested on a powerful combination: a once-in-a-generation mining boom, a credit-fuelled housing market, strong migration and a property sector that rarely faltered. Between 1991 and 2020, the country avoided recession entirely, building enormous wealth in the process.

But much of that wealth is tied to property. Around two-thirds of household wealth sits in real estate, inflated by leverage and sustained by demand. It has worked, until now.

The problem is the supply side of the economy has not kept up.

Housing supply is falling behind population growth. Rental vacancies are near record lows.

Construction firms are collapsing at an elevated rate. At the same time, massive infrastructure pipelines are competing with residential projects for labour and materials, pushing costs higher and delaying delivery.

The result is a system under pressure from all angles.

Despite near full employment, productivity growth has stagnated for years. In simple terms, Australians are putting in more hours without generating more output per hour. The economy is running faster, butgoing nowhere.

Meanwhile, government spending continues to expand. Public debt is approaching $1 trillion, with spending now accounting for a record share of GDP.

The gap between spending and revenue has been filled by borrowing for decades, adding further pressure to an already stretched system.

This is where the uncomfortable question emerges.

Has Australia become too reliant on a model driven by rising property values, expanding credit and population growth?

As asset prices rise, households feel wealthier and borrow more. Banks lend more. Governments collect more revenue. Migration fuels demand. The cycle reinforces itself.

But when productivity stalls and debt outpaces real income, the system begins to depend on constant expansion just to stay stable.

It is not a collapse scenario. But it is not particularly stable either.

Nowhere is this more evident than in housing.

The National Housing Accord targets 1.2 million new homes over five years, yet current completion rates are well below that pace. With approvals falling and construction costs rising, the gap between supply and demand is widening, not narrowing.

Housing is also one of the largest contributors to inflation, with costs rising sharply across rents, construction and utilities. Yet the private sector, from small investors to major developers, is struggling to make projects stack up in the current environment.

This brings the policy debate into sharper focus.

Tax settings such as negative gearing and capital gains concessions have undoubtedly boosted demand over the past two decades. But they have also supported supply. Removing them may ease prices briefly, but risks deepening the supply shortage over time.

That is the paradox.

Policies designed to make housing more affordable can, in practice, make the shortage worse if they discourage development. The optics may appeal, but the economics are far less forgiving.

It is also worth remembering that most property investors are not institutional players. The majority own just one investment property. They are, in many cases, ordinary Australians using real estate as their primary wealth-building tool.

Undermining that system without replacing it with a viable alternative risks unintended consequences, from reduced supply to higher rents and increased inflation.

So where does that leave Australia?

At a crossroads.

The country can continue to rely on population growth and rising asset prices to drive economic activity. Or it can shift towards a model built on productivity, innovation and sustainable growth.

The latter is harder. It requires structural reform, long-term thinking and political discipline.

But it is also the only path that leads to genuine, lasting prosperity.

The question is no longer whether Australia has been lucky.

It is whether it can evolve before that luck runs out.

Paul Miron is the Co-Founder & Fund Manager of Msquared Capital.

Sold for $86 Million: An LA Compound With Rod Stewart’s Former Mansion

A television producer sold the property to two separate buyers; one paid $57 million for the main house, and the other bought a smaller parcel for $29 million.

As housing drives wealth and policy debate, the real risk is an economy hooked on growth without productivity to sustain it.