Playboy Mansion on sale for $200m (Hefner included)

It has long been a byword for glitz, glamour and hedonistic excess.

Now, the Playboy Mansion’s era as a venue for no-holds-barred celebrations for the rich, beautiful and famous is due to end, amid reports that it has been put up for sale.

Hugh Hefner, the founder and publisher of Playboy magazine, has put the Holmby Hills property on the market for $200 million (Dh734 million), according to TMZ, a Los Angeles show business website.

The news is likely to trigger interest from a host of potential buyers thanks to the 2.4-hectare property’s notoriety and its prime location, close to Beverly Hills, where properties have been known to change hands for much higher prices.

However, the Playboy mansion is said to be in a dilapidated state, with mismatching rooms and old-fashioned decor, which has led some observers to conclude that the house, built in 1927, is in a “pull-down” state, with its main value lying in the land it occupies.

The property’s final price may be further depressed by a condition of sale — that Hefner, now 89, be allowed to stay there until he dies.

The magazine magnate’s bedroom, long a subject of speculation, will be off-limits to visiting would-be buyers asking for a tour of the property.

A comparable-sized nearby property recently sold for $60 million.

The Playboy Mansion’s historic reputation could lift its eventual sale value to around $80 million-$90 million, property analysts have forecast. Hefner’s parties were once the stuff of legend.

John Lennon reputedly stubbed a cigarette out on one of the owner’s original Matisse paintings at one soirée in the Seventies.

Aspiring models who lived there claimed the place was less than clean, and dogs were not house-trained. Recent gatherings have drawn more lurid headlines. Chloe Goins, a Los Angeles model, alleged that she was drugged and sexually assaulted by the entertainer Bill Cosby at the Midsummer Night’s Dream party — an annual event at the mansion — in 2008. Prosecutors last week declined to take the case further for lack of evidence and because the statute of limitations on the allegations had passed.