Brentwood address poses challenge

By VARIETY STAFF

Foreclosure Sale: Charming 7-bedroom, 8-1/2-bathroom Country English estate in exclusive Brentwood Park. Enjoy the updated kitchen with gourmet restaurant appliances, state-of-the-art media quarters, billiard room and rock-inlaid swimming pool with waterfall slide.

Throw in a couple of spacious guest rooms with baths, a cabana and tennis court, and this mansion, perfect for the family man who loves to entertain, is a steal at the asking price of $4 million. And, oh yeah, the former owner still lives there. His name is O.J. Simpson.

Last March, Hawthorne Savings foreclosed on 360 North Rockingham Ave., the most popular celebrity address among L.A. tour guides and star map-makers, when Simpson failed to pay $86,000 in back mortgage payments. Now, after purchasing the property at auction from itself for $2.6 million in July, the bank is anxious to sell and has enlisted Fred Sands Estates as brokers.

Sands has assigned a team of top agents to handle the 6,400-square-foot home: Joe Babajian from Beverly Hills, Edie Kirshner from Brentwood and Jodi Fine from Pacific Palisades. Their goal is simple: sell O.J.'s Rockingham Estate without turning the property into a funhouse curio for looky-loos.

Not surprisingly, the agents' primary objective is to separate the property's identity from that of its previous owner. "It's not a stigmatized house, if you really think about it," says Babajian. "As Fred Sands said, 'there's been no crime committed in the house.' " Still, there are unforgettable images associated with Rockingham, and some of them aren't pretty. The photos of bloody socks at the foot of the bed in the "spacious" master bedroom with his and hers baths, the trail of speckled blood from the "beautiful" motor court to the custom eight-foot front door and the "lovely" guest room where a familiar bleached blond, out-of-work actor heard mysterious thumps on that tragic night.

Though Kirshner admits separating the house from O.J. is not currently possible, she believes it will be, as soon as there's a new identity for the home. The first step in that direction is possibly changing the address. "The house is located on the corner, and 360 N. Rockingham can be dissolved completely and an Ashford Street address put on. It's an easy thing to do, because there's two entrances from the gate up front," explains Kirshner.

Babajian feels that with a new address and new owners, attention on the house will dissipate quickly. "There are houses all over town that used to be some of the biggest stars' homes," he says. "Once they move out of them, the tour buses don't drive by anymore saying that used to be so-and-so's house. Once he's gone, the stigma goes with him."

Currently, however, privacy is a major problem. A makeshift extension wall made of bamboo has been added to the gates surrounding the property, preventing those on the outside from looking in. Two bank-hired armed professional security guards prowl the grounds 24 hours a day to protect Hawthorne Savings' $2.6 million investment.

And with public curiosity as outrageous as it is for this listing, the agents have devised an intricate screening process to best insure that buyers are genuine and have set rules for conduct while viewing.

First, the buyer must prove he's qualified. "Some combination of a bank letter and a cash deposit totaling $4 million in liquid assets is required just to see the house," Kirshner explains, "The whole process should take no more than five minutes and a phone call."

The house is shown Monday through Thursday from 11 to 4. There's a maximum limit of seven people, and 48 hours' notice must be given to O.J. Simpson before viewing. And no kids. "Some buyers have tried to bring their children, and when we said 'no,' they refused to come," says Babajian. "That just tells me they weren't serious about buying."

What type of person will finally buy the Rockingham, or rather, the Ashford estate? "Some people do have a problem with the house, and there's probably an equal number of people who are turned on by it," says Babajian. "And there's people that are not affected either way who are looking to buy on an exclusive street like Rockingham. There's very little inventory right now in Brentwood Park that fits this mold, and the next house that comes on the market that does will probably be 20% to 30% higher than this one, because the area is appreciating very quickly."