“It’s the third owner that can mess a house up,” Michael LaFetra says of his home in Malibu, Calif. “I don’t mean it in a disparaging way; it’s just the way it works.”
Michael LaFetra is talking about his John Lautner-designed Malibu home, known as the Stevens Residence. LaFetra, who is known for buying modernist homes and restoring them, convinced the third owner of the home to sell it to him before irreversibly altering many original features of the home.
LaFetra, whose fiancée is pregnant, has put this particular home up for sale at $22 million because baby proofing it, as he told Zillow.com, would require changing the integrity of the home. The home is listed as a California State Historical Landmark.
“I’m constantly scouring the Internet, [talking to] various people, trying to find architecturally significant homes, with a nod toward modern,” LaFetra said. “Homes that are in danger that I can potentially save.”