Rocker Sells Malibu Digs

SAMMY HAGAR, lead vocalist of the rock band Van Halen, has sold his Malibu home of eight years for close to its last asking price of about $1.7 million.

The singer and guitarist, who has been with Van Halen since 1985, listed the six-bedroom, 5,000-square-foot house at $2.25 million in May, 1993, after he and the band left on a world tour to celebrate its 15th anniversary.

At the time, Hagar said that he had put the house on the market because he had only been there twice in nine months, partly because he also has homes in Mill Valley, Carmel and Mexico. The Malibu home was also being sold as part of his divorce settlement.

Hagar, 46, now lives mainly in Mill Valley but is leasing another home in Malibu while spending the summer with the band, recording a new album at Eddie Van Halen’s Hollywood Hills studio, Hagar’s publicist said. A collection of Hagar’s greatest solo hits combined with two new songs was released earlier this year.

The home that Hagar sold is a contemporary Cape Cod on a bluff behind gates overlooking Broad Beach.

It was sold to Yuri Spiro, owner of Westwood-based West World Productions, a computer publishing company. Spiro purchased the home as a weekend retreat. His main residence is in Beverly Hills, and he also has a home at Lake Arrowhead.

Rick Principe of Westcord/Westoaks Commercial Group in Westlake Village represented Spiro, and Lynette Bishop of Douglas Properties in Malibu represented Hagar.

Late actor/poet MACDONALD CAREY’S Benedict Canyon home of 23 years has been sold for $370,000, $1,000 more than its asking price, sources say.

The Emmy-winning Carey, who had a distinguished career on Broadway and appeared in 60 films as well as on early radio and TV, was best known in recent years as Dr. Tom Horton on the daytime soap opera “Days of Our Lives,” a role he played for nearly 30 years.

Carey, who also wrote several books of poetry and an autobiography (in 1991), died at 81 in March at the home that was just sold. Built in 1950, the three-bedroom, 1,500-square-foot house has what have been termed “gorgeous gardens, with a beautiful collection of roses.”

The home, which is said to have been purchased by a lawyer from Ireland and his wife, had been listed by Kyle Grasso and Joe Babajian, both of Fred Sands Estates, Beverly Hills.

WYLAND, the painter who prefers using only his surname and is known for his “Whaling Walls” (murals of life-size whales and other marine animals), has purchased a waterfront mixed-use complex in Laguna Beach, where he plans to maintain a studio and residential loft for himself. His main home is in Hawaii.

The 37-year-old artist purchased the property for about the asking price of $1 million. The building there is where he painted his first Whaling Wall in 1981, when he was a struggling artist living full time in Laguna Beach. Since that first 140-x-26-foot mural of a gray whale and calf, Wyland has painted 53 Whaling Walls in a number of cities around the world.

He gave his Laguna house to his mother three years ago but has kept a factory, gift shop and gallery in the area, and now he is planning to spend $500,000 more on the complex he just purchased, to create his loft and a museum, a source said.

A Bel-Air mansion that gangster LUCKY LUCIANO is said to have leased during the late 1930s and that actors Eddie Murphy and Richard Harris rented in more recent years has been sold in foreclosure for close to $4 million.

It is one of the highest foreclosure sales in Southern California and is believed to be the biggest to date in Bel-Air. Built in 1936, the nine-bedroom, 10,000-square-foot estate, on two acres with a tennis court, was for sale in 1991 at $8.9 million.

The buyer is Joseph Arsenault, described as a 28-year-old investor who just moved to Los Angeles from New York. Arsenault already put the home back on the market at $4.9 million.

He also leased out the home for two months, at $65,000 a month, to an Iraqi businessman who rents a house on the Westside for himself and his entourage every summer.

Kurt Rappaport of Nourmand & Associates, Beverly Hills, represented Arsenault in the purchase and lease and has the $4.9-million listing. Kathy Villa of Asher Dann & Associates, Beverly Hills, represented the seller, First Los Angeles Bank.

Realtor STAN HERMAN has listed 99 acres off of Coldwater Canyon that he has owned for 14 years at $16.75 million. “I want to move to Montecito and have a little office to complement my larger office in Beverly Hills,” he said, referring to his realty company, Stan Herman/Stephen Shapiro & Associates. The site, along a mountain ridge, is approved for 13 lots.