L.A.s famous Hobbit Houses have a new owner. He | Real Estate news

In the architectural age of minimalism and millennial grey, a wild and whimsical antidote made of outdated clinker bricks and jumbled shingles sits on a quiet avenue at the sting of L.A. and Culver City.

Formally, the spellbinding property is called the Lawrence and Martha Joseph Residence and Apartments, named after the Disney artist and his spouse who obsessively spent three a long time building it. But locals call them the Hobbit Houses — becoming, since they give the impression of being straight out of a J.R.R. Tolkien novel.

The complicated appears comically out of place amid Culver City’s industrial hall along Venice Boulevard. It’s surrounded by fashionable condo buildings, boxy and inoffensive, constructed to mix in with today’s style.

Amid that city blur, the Hobbit Houses beg for your consideration.

An electric lamppost glints, mimicking fire. The tree in the entrance yard options a face, with eyes and a nostril. The properties are stuffed with quirky leaded glass home windows, uneven angles and heaps of wooden shingles, resembling a thatched straw roof.

This yr, the property hit the market for the first time. Offers poured in, and it bought to maybe the most becoming potential purchaser exterior Bilbo Baggins himself: real estate agent Michael Libow.

At $1.88 million, Libow didn’t have the best bid. His main qualification was that he owns and lives in one of the best examples of Storyboook type in the area: the Witch’s House, a medieval-looking masterpiece that is more befitting a “Hansel and Gretel” adaptation than the streets of Beverly Hills.

The broker, seeing his connection to the type, promoted Libow to the vendor, an out-of-state bank trust. The Hobbit Houses have been his.

Michael Libow friends through a heavy picket door of a Hobbit home that he bought in early 2025.

“It’s like a companion piece to my own home,” Libow said. “It’s a little oasis in a city that’s been overdeveloped.”

Now that he owns both, Libow has declared himself, tongue-in-cheek, the “King of Storybook,” and said he intends to defend the property and be a spokesperson for the type.

“This is my legacy: bringing a little bit of joy to as many people as I can,” he said. “It’s about preservation, but it’s also about bringing a sense of awe and wonder to the world.”

The Hobbit Houses are one of Southern California’s best examples of Storybook structure, a fantasy type that fittingly emerged in L.A. in the Nineteen Twenties around the start of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Inspired by cinema setpieces and centuries-old European cottages, architects designed playful properties with turrets and gables on the skin and nooks and crannies on the inside. When accomplished properly, the completed product appears lifted from a fairy story.

A cat digs around on the roof of a Hobbit home in Culver City.

Disney artist Lawrence Joseph constructed the Hobbit Houses from 1946 to 1970. Over the years, the property developed a lore all its own. He rented out spare models to Hollywood tenants such as actor Nick Nolte and dancer Gwen Verdon, and the place also housed one of the boys who kidnapped Frank Sinatra’s son (authorities discovered most of the ransom money Sinatra paid, $240,000, in one of the models).

Lawrence died in 1991, and his spouse, Martha, received to work defending the property. She obtained landmark standing in 1996 and donated an easement to the Los Angeles Conservancy, making certain that it may’t be transformed or torn down.

The property, which incorporates 9 models across 4 buildings, needed some work when he purchased it, so Libow and his property supervisor, Ben Stine, have spent the last few months enjoying a developer’s model of “Minesweeper,” making an attempt to make small enhancements for the tenants — electric work, a tankless water heater — without disrupting something protected by the L.A. Conservancy easement.

The Hobbit Houses got here with a 15-page report detailing all the issues protected on the property: not just the buildings themselves, but also the facade, panorama options and the interiors, including the customized furnishings that Lawrence carved himself. Even the wallpaper can’t be touched.

“Protections within a structure are very unusual. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Libow said.

Detail of the flooring inside a Hobbit home in Culver City.

That means for renters, a lot of the furnishings is included with the rent. The latest vacant unit — a two-bed, one-bath with a den — consists of bar stools and a rocking chair that Lawrence carved.

The home is wrapped in clinker brick, a time period for when clay bricks are set too close to the flames when being fired in a kiln, giving them distorted shapes and colours. Such bricks have been sometimes trashed in older architectural eras, but these days, they’re prized for the distinctive look they create to buildings, and completely natural for Middle Earth structure in Culver City.

Inside, Lawrence’s crusing background shines through with nautical-themed interiors. A ship’s wheel serves as the chandelier, hanging above vertical-grain boat-plank flooring that lead to a galley-style kitchen with a curvy bar.

“The idea behind Storybook is to have something fanciful and whimsical, which involves movement rather than rectilinear rooms,” Libow said. “There’s barely a right angle on the entire property. Everything’s amorphous in shape.”

Detail inside a Hobbit home in Culver City.

There are no knobs to be discovered; doorways open with hidden latches and levers. A built-in fold-down desk pops out in the lounge. In the master suite, a “cat door” slides open to present simple access for felines that cling around the property.

The 9 models vary from 200 sq. toes to 1,200 sq. toes. The vacant unit, which spans around 1,000 sq. toes, hit the market a few months in the past for $4,500 per month.

It’s a high price for the neighborhood — most two-bedroom flats close by fall in the $3,000 vary — but renters still swarmed.

“These aren’t your typical tenants that need four walls and a sink. We get a lot of people in the creative industry,” Libow said. “You’re renting a lifestyle here.”

Libow said like his own home, which serves as a common stop for Hollywood tour buses, the Hobbit Houses are a common resting level for people strolling through the neighborhood.

“Construction workers will walk by on their lunch to look at the turtles in the pond. It’s a break from reality, even if just for a minute,” he said.

Michael Libow exterior one of his Hobbit homes in Culver City.

Libow and his property supervisor spend a lot of time on the grounds, wanting for tasks or small enhancements they’re allowed to make under the conservancy. But for Libow, who purchased it as a collector’s merchandise as a lot as an investment, it’s a labor of love.

“It’s not the most functional style of architecture, but it is the coolest,” he said. “It’s weird, but I’m weird myself. I connect with weird.”