A classic mid-century home by master architect Richard Neutra in Los Angeles’s Brentwood neighborhood has come back to market for $5.295 million.
Known as the Sale House, after the original owners, the 1,600-square-foot home is the last house on Tigertail Road, backing up against the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. The home’s glass walls and open lines are designed to invite in that uninterrupted view.
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The three-bedroom home was built in 1960 on commission from Robert and Elsa Sale, an engineer and artist, who would go on to live there for over 50 years. Its low-profile design and flat facade, coupled with clerestory windows, wood built-ins and glass sliding doors, exemplify the mid-century aesthetic.
Neutra also designed an entry gallery with tall ceilings and soffit lighting for the Sales’ art collection and the back patio was positioned so as not to block the ocean view, according to the co-listing by Compass agent Frank Langen and Dalton Gomez of Christies International Real Estate.
In 2018, it was resold for the first time to restaurateur Daniel Humm, the chef and owner of the celebrated Eleven Madison Park in New York. Two years later, during the first year of the Covid pandemic, it was purchased by the seller, Peter Galliaert, a Belgian former real estate agent with a love of architecture, for $3.4 million.
“I decided before opening the door that I would run for it,” Galliaert said during a video tour of the home. He could not immediately be reached for further comment.
The approach to the home is through a narrow gate beside the driveway, opening to a front gravel courtyard and the uninterrupted facade, except for a row of clerestory windows. Upon walking inside, the view immediately opens up through the glass walls to the mountains beyond.
Galliaert restored some of the home’s elements, including mosaics by Elsa Sale, and upgraded some appliances and systems, according to Langen. His main focus was the landscaping, which appears effortlessly one with the surrounding environment, the agent said.
“The reason it’s special is that it’s not abrupt; it blends with nature,” Langen said. “It’s in sync with the architecture. It doesn’t have an ego, it just blends.”
Langen recently sold another Neutra house, the only home he completed as part of the Case Study program. Located in Pacific Palisades, the 1948 home came to market in September and sold shortly afterwards for $5.275 million, part of a two-home deal.
The Sale House first listed in June with another brokerage asking just under $8 million and was relisted with Langen and Lopez over the weekend. It can be difficult to price architecturally significant homes, Langen said, since the utility has to be weighed together with the artistic value.