(Photo by Marcelo Lagos)
By Katherine Clark | Wall Street Journal
“Welcome to my living room,” said actress Sarah Paulson as she led a tour for a magazine’s video crew producing a piece on her designer Malibu, Calif., home.
Dressed in an off-the-shoulder wool sweater, she detailed the home’s luxe finishes; the sea foam green marble countertops in the kitchen, the custom boho textiles, the imported European light fixtures, pink bathroom tiles that shimmer like sequins, and a double fridge and freezer designed to hold enough booze for entertaining.
They are design touches suitable for any of L.A.’s most glamorous homes. But they were in Ms. Paulson’s approximately 500-square-foot property in a trailer park.
Enter Paradise Cove Mobile Home Park, widely considered the most expensive trailer park in America. Home to 256 trailers and manufactured homes, it dates to the 1950s, when the then-owners allowed commercial fishermen to park campers there. Starting in the early 2000s, big names such as Stevie Nicks, Minnie Driver and Matthew McConaughey began buying up trailers, slowly turning the park into some of the hottest real estate in California.
The draw is clear. The cove, as it is known by locals, sits on a bluff with panoramic views over the Pacific Ocean, with direct access to a secluded cove that is popular with local surfers. These are the same views that billionaires pay hundreds of millions to secure. Nearby, Edward H. Hamm Jr., a movie producer and heir to the Hamm’s Beer fortune, paid $91 million for a mansion; media mogul Byron Allen paid $100 million; venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and his wife, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, paid $177 million. Barbra Streisand’s enormous estate is perched on the edge of the same stretch of bluff as the park.
