Homes in Hollywood Hills West sold in August for a median of $869 a square foot (Redfin, August). The Stahl House is asking about $9,090.
Same neighborhood. Roughly ten times the price per foot, and nearly a year on the market without a buyer.
Why price per square foot stops working
Price per square foot is the number agents reach for first because it’s easy. For most homes in Studio City or the Valley, it’s a decent way to compare one house to the next.
It doesn’t work here. The house is 2,200 square feet with two bedrooms, and guests walk through the first bedroom to reach the second because there are no interior hallways. On the floor plan alone, it’s a small, unusual house. Nobody is paying $9,000 a foot for the layout.
What a buyer pays for is what no comp can measure. This is Case Study House No. 22, built in 1960, steel and glass on three sides, cantilevered over the city. Julius Shulman’s 1960 night photograph of it is often named the most famous picture of Los Angeles.
The LA Times found a 4,041-square-foot house down the road listed at $2.975 million, about $736 a foot. The Stahl buyer isn’t paying for square footage. They’re paying for the name, and that’s hard to put a number on.
What the listing record shows
The house listed on Nov 21, 2025 at $25 million, the first time it had ever been for sale. The price was cut by $5 million to $20 million in April, and there’s still no deal. As of today that’s about 350 days on the market. The median for Hollywood Hills West homes in August was 78 days.
The cut matters less than it looks. At $25 million, the ask worked out to about $11,360 a foot. At $20 million over 2,200 square feet, it’s about $9,090. Both sit far outside the neighborhood’s $869 median, and a 20% cut doesn’t change what kind of buyer the house needs.
Famous houses rarely sell at the first number
The Bailey House, another Pierre Koenig Case Study house, listed at $4.5 million and sold for $3.26 million in 2019. Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs asked $25 million in 2020 and sold for $13.06 million, the highest price ever paid in Palm Springs and still barely over half the ask.
When a house has this few possible buyers, the buyer sets the price, and it often lands well below the first number.
The real work
I don’t know why this house hasn’t sold, and I haven’t seen the showings, so I’m not second-guessing the listing. One agent told the Times there’s still plenty of interest, including talk of offers below the ask. If that’s right, the gap is price, not demand. Three questions come before any number:
- Who is the buyer? The Times describes a small pool: collectors who see the house as closer to a sculpture than a place to live. The Bailey House buyer was a film producer, and the previous owners were art dealers who used it as a gallery.
- Who is the seller, and what do they need? The Stahl family has held the house since it was built, and it has been unoccupied since 2007. A seller with that history may not be in a hurry, and may care who gets it.
- What does the buyer have to accept? Fine print costs money. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Freeman House asked $4.25 million with a conservancy approving any facade change and public access four times a year. It sold for $1.825 million.
What this means for an ordinary house
Most houses aren’t landmarks, but the same logic holds.
Sellers: pricing starts with the buyer, not the comps. Before you pick a number, work out who is most likely to pay for what makes your house different: the school boundary, the pool, the street, the lot. Then price and market to that person. A price cut on its own isn’t a plan – it’s just the FIRST part of a very in-depth strategy.
Buyers: when a house sits, the asking price isn’t the only thing you can work with. Find out what the seller needs, whether that’s timing or a buyer who’ll look after the place. Sometimes that matters as much as the number.
Every house needs exactly one buyer. The Stahl House just makes that obvious: at $20 million the pool of possible buyers is small enough to count, and finding the right one is the whole job.
PS. If you’re curious who your one buyer would be, send me a DM.
Photo: Stahl House (Case Study House No. 22), Hollywood Hills. Kjmagnuson, CC BY 2.0, cropped.
