A Pebble Beach home that was furnished down to its Lalique crystal ice bucket has sold for $18.1 million, Monterey County’s biggest sale of the year thus far.
It’s not just the ice bucket but the linens, the vacuum cleaner, and even the dishwasher soap that were awaiting the buyers when they arrived with just two cars and their suitcases, according to their agent, Simona Martin of Christie’s International Real Estate Sereno.
“They were able to live there for a week before having to go and get stuff,” she said.
The empty-nester couple had rented in Carmel to escape the summers at their primary residence in the Southwest, Martin said, but quickly decided they might be interested in a more permanent stay. After looking at some smaller homes, they saw the four-bed, 4.5-bath with more than 7,000 square feet and knew it was the one.
Now, the plan is to move in full time after they retire in a few years.
Listed in June at just under $19 million, the house at 1522 Riata Road was built in 1927 on two acres near the legendary golf courses. The sellers completely remodeled the property while keeping some original Spanish Colonial Revival features intact. They bought the property in 2022 for $6.2 million, according to county records, and spent three years on the renovation — not particularly long by Monterey County standards, Martin said.
Tim Allen of Coldwell Banker Realty represented the seller, Marianne Plancke, a residential developer based in Texas. She was working in partnership with local contractor Jeff LaTourette, Allen said, and has “a collection” of homes around Monterey.
Plancke knows exactly what buyers at this price point are looking for, he added: quiet luxury, as opposed to over-the-top opulence.
“None of the stuff used in here was inexpensive,” Allen said. “It was all the best, but with an eye. It doesn’t mean you have to put in gold-plated fixtures. You want beautiful, elegant, timeless.”
Martin agreed, saying her clients had not been looking to buy something furnished, but “once you walked in, you knew you had to have the whole package.”
This is hardly the only big-ticket sale in the county this year. An oceanfront home just outside the Pebble Beach gate sold for $17.5 million. A three-bedroom beachfront home in Carmel sold in June for $15 million — around $5,000 per square foot.
Allen said the market recently picked up after a spring dominated by buyer uncertainty caused by the Trump tariffs. A new high-water mark for the year can only propel luxury buyers to get off the sidelines, he added, even if it is a far cry from the county’s highest-ever sale.
That honor goes to a $45 million, 10,000-square-foot home on the 18th hole at Pebble Beach that Allen represented last fall. That sale topped the $40 million Brad Pitt paid in 2022 for a cliffside Carmel estate.
There are several homes on the market that may overtake this year’s record, including a 19-acre Big Sur property asking $21.5 million and a “street-to-sea” Pebble Beach home on two lots, with unobstructed views of the 18th-hole fairway, asking $57 million. Allen recently listed a $91 million oceanfront estate in Carmel Highlands that was assembled over more than two decades and was featured as the home of Sharon Stone’s character in the 1992 film “Basic Instinct.”
Martin said the market is “balanced” after years in which sellers had the upper hand, with an “insane” 2021 in which properties went up by 30% to % to 40% in a single year. She predicted that the Riata Road home sale will be surpassed before the year is out.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if something beats it by a lot by December,” Martin said.
