After more than a year on the market at declining prices, busy-as-a-beaver, four-time Emmy nominated Hollywood multihyphenate Kenya Barris has sold an ultra-modern mansion in Encino, one of his four luxury homes that are sprinkled across some of the better neighborhoods in LA’s San Fernando Valley.
The $8.2 million sale price is a big number by almost any standard but it’s a small fortune below the $10.5 million the father of six originally asked and a steep discount off the final ask of not quite $9.2 million. Still, it’s a profitable amount over the $7.55 million the “Black-ish,” “Grown-ish,” and “Mixed-ish” creator shelled out for the property about 2.5 years ago. Pam Lumpkin of Compass held the listing; the buyer was represented by Barrington Malcolm and Gregory Shenon of the Chernov Team at The Agency.
Avid TV watchers may recognize the house as having been featured in Barris’s acerbic, semi-autobiographical and short-lived sitcom “#BlackAF”. The show was not actually filmed in the house, however, but rather in a faithful re-creation, down to the sofa in the living room and the artwork on the walls, built at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood.
Described in marketing material as a “modern entertainer’s estate” that’s located “on one of the best blocks in Encino,” the roughly 9,600-square-foot wood and glass abode is secured behind gates and obscured from the street by mature foliage. On a half-acre parcel, the seven-bedroom and nine-bath home features an open layout with soaring ceilings and a mix of large-scale concrete-colored tile and wide-plank wood floors. Numerous walls of floor-to-ceiling glass throughout the house vanish into the walls for a seamless back and forth between indoor and outdoor living and entertaining spaces.
The art-filled home comprises ample living and dining rooms divided by a dual-sided fireplace, an exceptionally long kitchen with a gigantic walk-in pantry, a family room with wet bar (there’s a second family room on the second floor), and a plush screening room with tiered seating and a glassed-in wine cellar. Bedrooms are all en suite, with the primary offering a pair of custom-fitted walk-in closets, a spacious lounge, a wraparound terrace, and a bathroom worthy of a five-star spa.
Arranged around a central courtyard with a zero-edge swimming pool and party-sized spa, outdoor spaces include both shaded and sun-splashed terraces on both floors, a built-in grill next to a dining loggia, pancake-flat sweeps of evergreen faux grass, and a vibrantly painted sports court.
Barris, writer, producer and/or director of several high-profile upcoming projects, including the ensemble comedy streamer “You People” and the remake of the 1992 film “White Men Can’t Jump,” has been on a buying and selling spree over the last couple of years. He sold an unassuming California ranch house in Valley Village last year for $1.3 million, a chunk over the $840,000 paid about 17 years ago; he’s hung on to an Encino estate since 2017, when it was acquired for about $3 million; a Studio City home, purchased in 2020 for $4.6 million, is currently on the market at almost $6.4 million after it was first listed at nearly $7.5 million; and last year he splashed out $7.25 million for a lakefront home in celeb-packed Toluca Lake.
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