Natalie Portman Quietly Sells 10-Acre Montecito Estate

Seller Natalie Portman

BuyerDavid Kalt

Location Montecito, Calif.

Price- $8 million

Year- 2008

Architect- Barton Myers

Specs- 3,991 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms

While the transaction actually went down last year, word has just now slowly begun trickling down the real estate grapevine that Natalie Portman is done with Montecito. Or at least done with this particular Montecito home, which records confirm has been sold, despite it never appearing on the market. Siteline Santa Barbara first reported the transfer.

Perhaps the house was privately shopped around to a select group of qualified buyers, or maybe an unsolicited buyer came through with an offer Portman just couldn’t refuse. Either way, the “Thor” and “Black Swan” actress and her husband Benjamin Millepied appear to have made money on the deal. The couple acquired the Barton Myers-designed architectural in 2017 for $6.5 million, and the recent sale netted them exactly $8 million. The all-cash buyer was Chicago-based tech entrepreneur David Kalt, the cofounder of online stock-trading company OptionsXpress, which went public in 2005 and was subsequently acquired by Charles Schwab for north of $1 billion.

Built in 2008 as an homage to midcentury modernism, the ex-Portman pad is a blocky structure hewn from steel and concrete, with walls of glass flaunting views of the Pacific Ocean. The single-story house spans just under 4,000 square feet, and includes four bedrooms and five bathrooms. But its defining feature is arguably the central “great room,” a giant space with shared living and dining areas that features three side-by-side garage doors that roll up to the ceiling, creating a seamless indoor-outdoor flow.

As interesting as the house itself may be, it’s the estate grounds that really impress. The house is set far from the public road, at the very end of a quarter-mile-long, blacktopped driveway shared with three other properties. The hillside lot spans more than 10 acres, with epic views that directly overlook Montecito’s eastern end, plus the $33 million Bali-style compound that Ellen DeGeneres sold to Groupon’s founder in 2020.

Portman and Millepied’s main residence continues to be a 1930s-era house in the gated and historic Laughlin Park enclave of Los Angeles’ Los Feliz neighborhood.

Ref: Natalie Portman Quietly Sells 10-Acre Montecito Estate (dirt)