Billionaire Peter Sperling’s Historic Montecito Estate Relists at a Reduced $60 Million

Three years after it first hit the market with an ambitious $74 million price tag, a century-old Southern California residence in the affluent seaside enclave of Montecito, long owned by for-profit education heir Peter Sperling, has popped up for sale again, this time with a substantially reduced $60 million asking price. The listing is held by Timothy DiPrizito of Christie’s International Real Estate | AKG and Joyce Rey of Coldwell Banker Realty.

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Records show Sperling—former chairman of Apollo Education Group as well as the only child of the late University of Phoenix founder John Sperling—acquired the Mediterranean Revival estate with his wife Stephanie over two decades ago, back in 2002. The preservation-minded couple subsequently undertook an extensive and costly restoration and expansion of the premises, which included lifting the home off its foundation to bolster the structure, replacing all the utility systems, and adding a new basement level with a tunnel entrance for staff.

Originally commissioned as a vacation home for Illinois writer Hobart Chatfield-Taylor and his wife Rose Farwell, daughter of U.S. Sen. Charles B. Farwell, and completed in the early 1900s by noted Santa Barbara architect Francis T. Underhill, the property is known as Far Afield and rests on almost 11 gated acres overlooking picturesque ocean and mountain vistas. A total of seven bedrooms and 14 baths are filtered across 20,000 square feet of living space adorned throughout with 17th- and 18th-century reclaimed materials from Europe, including parquet floors fashioned out of hand-cut French oak culled from ancient chateaus and a curated collection of antique Dutch, Italian, and Spanish tiles.

In addition to a striking blush-hued main villa featuring “an anthology of spaces celebrating art, conversation, contemplation, a life well traveled, and a mind well-read”—a game room, a library, an office, and a fireside kitchen outfitted with a snazzy aquamarine range, just for starters—other highlights can be found outdoors, where the Lockwood de Forest-landscaped grounds host a wealth of cultivated and native gardens, citrus groves, hiking paths, statuary, a pool and cabana, a spa, a chicken coop, and a peacock aviary. There’s also a guesthouse, a staff cottage, and not just one but three garages.

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According to a 2021 report by The Wall Street Journal when the estate made its debut at $74 million, the extravagant home was Stephanie Sperling’s “all-consuming passion” during its lengthy 15-year renovation project that culminated in 2017. “Though it is hard to let Far Afield go,” she said at the time, “I am now devoted to the realization of my next creative vision so the time has come to move on.”

Peter Sperling, who served as chairman of Phoenix University’s publicly traded parent company Apollo Education Group until it went private in a $1.1 billion deal in 2017, previously sold two other Santa Barbara-area homes with his wife for a combined $35 million, including an English country manor known as Owenshire that was once owned by Rob Lowe and traded hands in spring 2021 for $19.1 million. They also offloaded a historic Holmby Hills estate in Los Angeles that was formerly occupied by legendary horror actor Vincent Price for $16.5 million in summer 2020.

Click here for more photos of the Far Afield estate.

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