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Looks as though Lorelai won’t have to hole up at Luke’s Diner after all. Earlier this month, veteran actress Lauren Graham sold her Los Angeles home of 17 years, a stylishly historic estate in Los Feliz’s Laughlin Park gated community, to her next-door neighbors. That off-market deal was inked for exactly $6 million, almost double the $3.2 million Graham paid her longtime friend Portia de Rossi for the house way back in 2005.
That sale made Graham technically homeless for a few weeks, but the “Gilmore Girls” and “Parenthood” star has rectified that situation by purchasing another Laughlin Park home — this one literally right around the corner from her old place. Graham paid $2.7 million for her new digs, which were owned by “Pretty Little Liars” actress Ashley Benson from 2017-2020.
Because the deal went down off-market, there aren’t any photos floating around of Graham’s former house, the one she just sold for $6 million. But that Spanish Colonial Revival-style estate is historic, originally built in 1922, and was once owned by silent-film actor Raymond Griffith. In 2002, Portia de Rossi bought the estate and fixed it up before selling to Graham; today, the half-acre property includes heavily wooded grounds with several huge trees, grassy lawns and a lap-lane swimming pool. The roughly 3,000-square-foot home includes four bedrooms and five baths, per tax records.
The spendy buyers of that property are local L.A. businessman and classic car enthusiast Barry Sohnen and his wife Michele, who have long owned the even larger estate next door. Unlike many Laughlin Park residents, the Sohnens aren’t exactly celebrities, but they are clearly quite wealthy — in addition to their newly expanded Los Feliz compound, records show they also own a $10 million vacation home in Laguna Beach.
Graham’s new Laughlin Park home (pictured below) is a significant downsize from her old place, with three bedrooms and 3.5 baths in 2,000 square feet. But like her old home, it’s also a historic Spanish-style structure, built in 1925, and was recently given an expensive renovation by Benson. Behind a gated and camera-watched courtyard entry lies a foyer and living room with a black marble fireplace, newly redone hardwood floors and an all-new kitchen with premium appliances and quartz countertops.
The multi-level house also features several sets of French doors that open to a terrace with unobstructed views of Griffith Park Observatory. Other amenities include a guest suite, a private owner’s retreat with a marble bathroom, walk-in closet and its own kitchenette, and a third bedroom that could also be used as an office or gym. Perhaps the home’s only significant shortcoming is its postage-stamp lot, which spans less than 3,500 square feet and is thus too small to accommodate a swimming pool or grassy lawn.
Still, the outdoors area includes a back patio with a built-in stone bench and fire-pit privately shielded by dense privet hedges, and there’s also an attached two-car garage.
Since the 1920s, Laughlin Park has been a haven for celebrities; perhaps the enclave’s most iconic resident was American cinema pioneer Cecil B. DeMille. Current homeowners include Angelina Jolie, Natalie Portman, Will.i.am, Kristen Stewart, Ellen Pompeo and Ashley Benson, who still lives in the community — in a house just around the corner from her former place, the one just sold to Graham.
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