What to do with a multi-million dollar mega-mansion? Ask F1 heiress Petra Ecclestone

New York

MOST people spend their 20s living with roommates. A few cobble together enough to buy a starter home.

Petra Ecclestone, however, is not like most people. In 2011, at 22, this London-born Formula 1 racing heiress bought one of the largest houses in the United States - Spelling Manor in Los Angeles - for US$85 million, more than almost anyone had ever paid for a house in California then.

She spent the next decade learning how to live in it, with a staff of more than 30 people, including housekeepers, landscapers, security personnel and drivers.

Now, she and her fiance, Sam Palmer, are at work on a venture inspired by their experience in Spelling Manor (they sold the home in 2019 for US$120 million).

They are going to help other rich people buy, sell, staff and decorate their homes. It will be one-stop service for a very niche clientele: ultra-wealthy homebuyers.

Palmer already runs Staffing Properties, a business that places employees in the homes of the rich. He got his real estate license last month and is joining the luxury real estate firm Hilton & Hyland. Ecclestone said she plans to handle interior design and branding.

The couple would cater to the growing number of global rich people who have flocked to Los Angeles in recent years for the weather, the lifestyle and, presumably, the proximity to other global rich people - much as they did.

They can personally attest to the market for what they can offer. After all, they know better than anyone that being ultrawealthy homeowners requires some expertise.

A common challenge is navigating labour laws that vary from country to country, and sometimes state to state. Another challenge: upkeep and pay.

Ecclestone, now 32, is willowy and blonde and has the not-easily-impressed nature of a woman of great privilege. A mother of 4 young children, she's soft-spoken and a bit guarded but can be disarmingly blunt and funny.

Sitting outside on a warm afternoon as 2 staff members quietly served coffee and fresh fruit, her eldest daughter curled up in her lap, she explained that she bought the Manor in 2011 sight unseen.

But it wasn't entirely her idea - it was her former husband's. "He was a bit of an egotistical maniac," she said, by way of explanation.

Before moving into Spelling Manor, she hired designer Gavin Brodin to oversee a top-to-bottom renovation.

Originally built in the 1980s for TV producer Aaron Spelling, the house had 27 bathrooms, a gift-wrapping room, a barbershop and a 7,500 square foot (sq ft) primary suite (which is the size of a more standard mansion).

Brodin described Ecclestone as delightfully decisive. Once the plans were set, "there were zero changes", he said. A team of 500 workers was brought on to complete the project in 12 weeks instead of a typical timetable of 9 months or more.

When she moved into the Manor, Ecclestone was married to James Stunt; their divorce was finalised in 2018. It would be several years before she met Palmer, who is 38 and also English.

Palmer, a friend of her brother-in-law, was living in Australia and working in legal recruitment when he happened to be in town and came by for a gathering in 2017. The two hit it off. Palmer said their first date was at Tao, a restaurant in Los Angeles. Their second date was a trip to Dubai.

Palmer, who has a handsome salesman's charm and is the more gregarious of the two, said he was not the type to be wowed by a person's house - but Ecclestone's was "spectacular". It was also immaculate.

"There was never a leaf on the ground," he said. He soon learned that keeping it that way was a complex, expensive operation.

After Palmer moved to Los Angeles to live with Ecclestone and her 3 children, he became deeply interested in how the Manor was run. (The couple had a fourth child together in 2020.)

Palmer said people were overcharging Ecclestone left and right. It's almost as if they would pull up to a 57,000 sq ft house and think that money was no object. Figuring out the complicated math of staffing the home and making sure it ran smoothly became his "life's work".

The very top end of the real estate market in Los Angeles has had something of a building boom in the past few years, with developers in Bel-Air, Brentwood and Beverly Hills tearing down older homes to construct almost comically lavish mansions, some with Imax home movie theaters and private nightclubs, often for unknown buyers.

Palmer said that most of the newly built, 9-figure homes the couple see in Los Angeles these days are basically high-end bachelor pads.

"There's black marble everywhere," he said. "I think, 'Do I want a house with a helicopter pad I can't use?'"

"We go look at houses, and I think there is so much people have missed," Ecclestone said.

Ecclestone and Palmer have themselves downsized because, in their minds, there was no other direction to go.

The couple paid US$22.7 million for an 18,000 sq ft modern farmhouse across the street from professional basketball star LeBron James and closer to Ecclestone's eldest daughter's school at the time.

"People write about it as though we are living in a tent in Brentwood," Palmer said. (Ecclestone also owns an 18th-century Georgian mansion in London the couple said is being shopped around off-market for about US$200 million.)

A relative skeleton crew of around a dozen people manages and runs the house from staff quarters that were converted from a 10-car garage. The area includes several glass-walled offices, a break room and a professional-grade laundry operation that can also handle drycleaning.

Palmer, whose company offices are also in this space, said he often tries out potential household employees at his own home to see if they are a good fit before placing them in a client's home.

One remaining challenge: finding the staff. As with many industries recovering from the economic effects of the pandemic, the labour market for a household staff is tight. Some wealthy families who laid off employees during the pandemic have had a hard time hiring them back.

Though the couple said they finally feel settled in their new home, Ecclestone said their new venture will help scratch her house-hunting itch.

"I'm constantly bored," she said. "I like change." Palmer said: "I'm very attached to this house and I love it. But I'm quite on board if we can have a profit out of it. Why not just keep moving? It's exciting." NYTIMES