Portia de Rossi's House

Ellen DeGeneres is the comedian who hosted her daytime talk show from 2003 to 2022. Portia de Rossi, her wife since 2008, is the actor known for Ally McBeal and Arrested Development.

Film and TV producer Leonard Hill and his then-wife, producer Ann Daniel, held this oceanfront place first. AOL reported in 2017 that they sold it in late 2005 to Los Angeles developer Robert Maguire III.

Maguire gave the house up to foreclosure in summer 2016 over an unpaid Bank of America loan, according to AOL. A 2016 California appeals ruling upheld a judicial sale of his Carpinteria property.

DeGeneres and de Rossi closed in October 2017 at $18.6M, after 14 days on the market. Cottages & Gardens called it the county’s highest on-market sale of that year.

They had owned it about 2 months when the Thomas Fire closed in. On December 10, 2017, DeGeneres tweeted that the house was “under threat of being burned” and that the pets had been evacuated.

They sold in 2019 to It Cosmetics founders Jamie Kern Lima and Paulo Lima. Ocean Home, citing Mansion Global, says a recent Montecito purchase was why: they did not want too many homes in one area.

Finance Monthly dates the house to 1979 and credits DeGeneres with its modern touches. It says Kern Lima returned it to market near $42M in April 2024 and had come down to $35M by October 2025.