Playboy mansion on sale for $200m

The iconic Los Angeles mansion of Hugh Hefner, the founder of the Playboy empire, is being put up for sale for $200 million, Playboy Enterprises said, one of the highest asking prices for a private residence in the United States.

The Gothic Tudor-style mansion, which has an area of nearly 20,000 square feet (1,858 square meters) and boasts 29 rooms, sits amid five acres in Holmby Hills west of the city.

In addition to amenities such as a tennis court and a free-form swimming pool, the estate is home to the infamous Playboy grotto, which over the years served as the setting for some of Hefner’s most lavish, hedonistic parties.

The mansion, in which Hefner still lives, also has a zoo licence, the company said in a statement announcing the sale.

“The Playboy Mansion has been a creative centre for Hef as his residence and workplace for the past 40 years, as it will continue to be if the property is sold,” the statement added.

Representatives did not specifically say why the company had decided to sell the property, which was built in 1927 and purchased by the company in 1971 for a reported $1.1 million, a figure property agents said was by far the largest real estate transaction in Los Angeles history at that time.

Playboy CEO Scott Flanders says the sale would help the company “reinvest in the transformation of our business”.

The sale comes as Playboy magazine, which has been has seen its circulation plunge as it competed with more sexually explicit magazines, seeks to reinvent itself

In October, it announced that it will stop running photos of completely naked women in its U.S. edition.

The move followed a decision in August 2014 to ban full nudity on its website.