The desert residence belonged to the singer, who also served as mayor of the California city, for more than a decade.
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Sonny Bono’s former estate, a piece of local history in Palm Springs, California, has come up for sale.
The desert residence, on the market for $7.49 million, was home to the singer, songwriter, congressman and Palm Springs mayor from 1986 until his death in 1998, records show.
“Opportunities like this simply do not come around often,” said listing agent Louise Hampton with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California, who brought the home to the market last month.
“A hillside estate of this size, with this level of privacy and this historical connection stands among the most compelling offerings in today’s desert market.”
Bono was perhaps most famously the other half of singing duo Sonny & Cher, but also served as the mayor of Palm Springs from 1988 to 1992, and as the U.S. representative for California’s 44th district from 1995 until he died in a skiing accident in 1998 at the age of 62.
Located in the city’s Mesa neighbourhood on a hillside parcel, the colourful seven-bedroom property combines Mid-Century Modern design with Italian influences across its almost 9,000 square feet and multiple structures.
The house last changed hands in 2021 for $4.35 million. The sellers couldn’t be reached for comment.
There’s a great room, a formal dining area with a rock fireplace, a chef’s kitchen with two wine fridges.
The seven bedrooms include a primary suite with a walk-in closet and a “spa-style” bathroom with a soaking tub and steam shower, according to the listing. Several of the home’s guest suites include private patios or separate entrances.
Outside, there are lawns, olive trees, date palms and cacti alongside terraces, a new travertine pool deck, a pool, a tennis court and an oversize motor court with space for more than a dozen vehicles.
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Kit Braden, an executive at French beauty empire L’Occitane, has spent every winter for the past 13 years at the stone vacation home.
2 min
A historic Barbados estate with a 300-year-old villa and 11 acres overlooking the Caribbean Sea is now for sale with a guide price of $22.5 million.
The seller is Kit Braden, chairman of the U.K. branch of French beauty empire L’Occitane Group, whose family has spent every winter for the last 13 years at the island property, known as Fustic Estate.
“It’s very much a family house,” Braden said. “We love having a lot of people there. It’s a collection point to keep everyone together.”
The main villa dates to 1712, though it’s been reimagined and expanded substantially over the years.
It spans 13,000 square feet and features seven en suite bedrooms across three wings, as well as expansive verandas, stone courtyards and rows of louvered doors in gay Caribbean pastels.
In the 1970s, when the home was owned by Charles Graves—brother of British poet Robert Graves—it was reimagined by stage designer Oliver Messel, one of the foremost theater designers of the last century. Messel expanded the home, added a lagoon pool with a natural waterfall and other theatrical features, according to Braden.
“The whole place is a little bit magical,” he said.
The home sits about 350 feet above the water, and surrounded by lush gardens that slope towards the water.
“We look down through our garden—which is about 12 acres of tropical gardens and palm trees and wonderful old mahogany trees—onto the Caribbean,” Braden said.
He and his wife first saw the property on New Year’s Eve 2013, during a quick trip from where they were staying in Grenada.
The couple spent an hour walking the perimeter, some of it still untouched jungle, in the pouring rain.
“By the time we got back, I had fallen in love with it,” Braden said.
His wife, however, wasn’t so sure. But in Braden’s telling, a second visit in sunnier weather with two of their children brought her around.
“She had to be talked into that it was a jolly good idea; now she absolutely loves it,” he said.
When they bought the property, the edge that runs along the waterfront was a jungle, so they cleared the ridge and transformed it into gardens.
They also bought an additional sea-level parcel with two beach cottages, giving the property direct access to the water and the town below via a five-minute walk.
The property also has a 15-person staff, a reflecting pond, an outdoor pavilion suitable for yoga and a commercial grade kitchen that can serve more than 100 guests, according to a brochure from Knight Frank, which posted the listing in March. They did not provide further comment.
For Braden, the property is special because of its natural beauty, its proximity to the town of Saint Lucy and its history—which dates way way back to when the island of Barbados was first formed via tectonic activity.
“It was basically tectonic plates that collided about a million years ago so the seabed is the top of the hill,” Braden said. “We’re on coral rock.”
As a result, Fustic Estate includes an extensive network of caves that were likely used by the Arawaks, a Venezuelan fishing tribe that followed the fish to these islands about a thousand years ago.
“If the fish were good they’d camp here,” Braden said. “There’s evidence that they stayed there in those caves, they lived there in good winters.”
Now it’s someone else’s turn to live on the land shared by Arawaks, the plantation owners of 1712, Charles Graves and the Braden brood.
