Sometime late last year, San Francisco residents Stacey Frost and her partner Damien Newman inked a deal to lease a Los Angeles mansion loftily described in listing materials as “by far one of the most important properties on the Westside,” and as “Brentwood’s finest Traditional estate.” Intangibles aside, the spec-built place is certainly one of the Westside’s largest homes, with nearly 20,000 square feet of living space under a slate roof, 8 bedrooms and 12.5 bathrooms, plus every conceivable amenity.
It’s not clear how much Frost and Newman were paying for their stay, but the property was last offered at a mouth-drying rental rate of $135,000 per month. Still, the couple obviously enjoyed the house — records reveal Frost has now used a corporate entity to pay $25.1 million for the 1.9-acre property, a discount off the original $35 million list price but still one of 2020’s biggest Westside transactions.
Stacey Frost was long married to Andrew Frost, one of the nation’s lowest-profile billionaires and a co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, the privately-held, Pennsylvania-based options-trading giant that has more than 1,900 employees worldwide and is believed to carry a whopping $80 billion worth of stocks and derivatives.
Described by the Wall Street Journal as “secretive,” Susquehanna steadfastly shuns any sort of publicity, rendering the company largely unknown to the public, although that may soon change. Two months ago, it was revealed that Frost and his firm are the largest outside investors in ByteDance, controlling 15% of the Chinese conglomerate that owns TikTok. That jackpot stake, acquired way back in 2012 for millions, may now be worth as much as $15 billion, a massive potential windfall for Susquehanna’s principals — who categorically invest only their own money.
The Frosts divorced in 2010, but Stacey has become a regular fixture on the San Francisco social circuit. The rural Pennsylvania native also founded Urban Re:Vision, a sustainability-focused endeavor focusing on urban communities.
Set privately on a flag lot and invisible from the street behind tall gates, the Brentwood mansion dwarfs neighboring homes, its vast motorcourt guaranteed to impress guests as they maneuver around a central water feature and gaze up at the entryway’s towering columns, which span the full height of the structure. Inside, the airplane hangar-sized foyer offers a double staircase overlooking polished marble floors, and spacious formal living and dining rooms, both of them with coffered ceilings and the latter sporting a shimmery crystal chandelier that likely cost more than a new G-Wagen.
There’s also a kitchen equipped with top-class stainless appliances, custom cabinetry, and a bus-sized center island with a breakfast bar and topped by a waterfall marble slab, plus a separate “catering kitchen” directly off the dining room. Other main floor attractions include a breakfast room, fireplace-equipped family room with direct access to a covered patio, and a clubby, wood-paneled billiards room with a grigio marble fireplace.
Like the mansion’s exterior, the public rooms are almost uniformly white, a trend that continues upstairs to the family bedrooms. The house-sized master suite has its own foyer, while the master bedroom includes a dramatically vaulted ceiling, fireplace, and direct access to a private outdoor terrace. There’s also a separate master sitting room with a wet bar/mini-fridge area, dual marble baths, and dual showroom closets.
An elevator accesses the subterranean lower level, which includes a 1,000-bottle wine cellar, wet bar, lounge area, and a soundproof movie theater. A separate staff wing includes two bedrooms and the mansion’s third kitchen. Somewhere there’s also a gym, and in addition to the three-car “everyday” garage, there’s also an underground “auto museum” with mirrored walls and space for no fewer than 12 exotic automobiles.
From its location in the Brentwood hills, the palatial estate has views of surrounding treetops. There are also vast outdoor patios with space for alfresco dining, and a soccer field-sized patch of grassy, flat lawn. Cantilevered over the steep slope below, the 69-foot infinity pool has an inset spa and Baja shelf for watery sunbathing.
Frost, now in her 50s, is no stranger to high-end real estate. Way back in 2012, about 18 months after her divorce, she paid $12.5 million for a stately mansion in San Francisco’s Presidio Heights neighborhood. And she once owned a four-story blufftop mansion in San Francisco’s exclusive Sea Cliff neighborhood that has previously been described as “one of the finest homes in San Francisco.” That house, acquired from her ex-husband in their divorce, sits just down the street from Twitter mogul Jack Dorsey’s $32 million Bay Area compound. In 2016, Frost sold the Sea Cliff property for $17.8 million to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.