Well, that was fast. Less than two months after she first floated the place on the open market with a $25 million asking price, Reese Witherspoon has sold her Los Angeles estate, albeit for a discounted $21.5 million. But that’s still way more than the Oscar-winning actress and producer originally paid about two years ago, when she bought the gracious Brentwood mansion for just under $16 million. The Wall Street Journal first reported the pricey deal.
Records now reveal the buyer is Sabrina Merage Naim, an heiress to the fortune of tasty microwave snack Hot Pockets, which were invented and popularized by Naim’s father David Merage and uncle Paul Merage in the 1980s. In 2002, the brothers sold Hot Pockets’ parent company Chef America to Nestlé for $2.6 billion; at one point, Forbes listed the Merage clan as America’s 139th richest family. Naim is married to real estate developer Shawn Naim; the couple have owned a $6.3 million Santa Monica home since 2016.
It remains unclear if Witherspoon and her family ever actually occupied the Brentwood property — if they did, it wasn’t for very long. The house sat vacant for months before renovations began, and the “Legally Blonde” star did a substantial amount of work to the home. A quick comparison of photos from the time Witherspoon bought the place to the current listing reveals she gave the English Country-style mansion a facelift, with creamy new paint and brighter trim both inside and out. Inside, there are new marble floors in the foyer, new white oak hardwood on the stairs and in the living room, new wrought iron railings and a library that’s been swaddled in a sultry shade of blue. Perhaps most obviously, the chef’s kitchen has been completely redone with new stone counters and designer appliances.
The house sits on 3.1 verdant acres deep in Mandeville Canyon, though it lies down a private lane off the main neighborhood drag. Even from that whisper-quiet lane, the house is totally…