Music's Tommy Mottola pays $47 million for ranch

Mmusic-industry veteran Tommy Mottola paid $47 million for a 900-acre-plus ranch near Aspen, Colo.

The all-cash deal by the former chairman and chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment closed yesterday and is thought to be the most ever paid for a single-family home in the state, local brokers say, besting the $46 million Hollywood mogul Peter Guber got for his 650-acre Mandalay Ranch in 2004.

Richard Jelinek, a retired medical-industry executive, sold the property, public records show. Mr. Jelinek owned the property for at least 10 years, local brokers say. The property spent about three months on the market with a $48.5 million asking price, according to the town's multiple listing service.

Known as Crystal Island Ranch, the property sits in the town of Redstone, about 33 miles northwest of downtown Aspen. A main house of about 12,000 square feet has four bedrooms and four bathrooms. The property includes a creek and private lake equipped for water sports, according to its listing. Josh Saslove, of Joshua & Co. real estate in Aspen, handled the transaction.

Mr. Mottola, who's in his late 50s, is the former husband of pop star Mariah Carey (the couple divorced in 1998). After leaving Sony in 2003, Mr. Mottola took the top post at Casablanca Records, where he has signed artists including Lindsay Lohan. He is also producing "StarTomorrow," an Internet-only reality show planned for NBC's site.

Mr. Mottola's purchase comes in the same week that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S., listed his Aspen-area mansion for $135 million. The price is thought to be the highest ever for a single-family home in the U.S., surpassing the $125 million asking price for an oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach, Fla. Built in 1990, the prince's 95-acre estate includes a main residence that measures 56,000 square feet with 15 bedrooms, 16 bathrooms, an indoor swimming pool, an elevator and dumbwaiters. Mr. Saslove has that listing as well.

Dr. Quinn, motivated seller

Actress Jane Seymour is seeking $14.9 million for a Malibu, Calif., villa she bought 2 1/2 years ago, renovated extensively, but never lived in.

She and her husband, actor and director James Keach, say they bought the 1953 house for $4.5 million two years ago from Mr. Keach's brother, the actor Stacy Keach, who had owned it for 25 years. Ms. Seymour and her husband gutted and began to renovate the house and listed it in February for $16 million, a broker with the listing agent says. After finishing the house in May, they cut the price last month.

The 9,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style villa sits atop a gated, six-acre knoll overlooking the Pacific Ocean that once served as a Coast Guard lookout station during World War II. The seven-bedroom, six-bathroom house features a screening room, gym and 3,000 square feet of wrap-around balconies, which were added during the $5 million renovation. The property also includes a three-car garage, pool with pool house, and a two-bedroom guest house, which Ms. Seymour said could be redeveloped separately and sold off. Irene Dazzan-Palmer of Coldwell Banker Previews has the listing.

The 55-year-old Ms. Seymour and her husband, 58, say they never intended to live in the house, preferring to remain in their home on Malibu Bluffs, 10 minutes away. In the renovation, everything "was picked out and thought out by us," she says. The couple has renovated several houses in California, without living in them, over the past several decades. Recently they renovated St. Catherine's Court, a manor house near Bath, England, dating from around 950 A.D.: "It was 1,000 years of deferred maintenance," she says. (They rent out that house most of the year.)

Known for playing a Wild West doctor in the 1990s drama series "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," Ms. Seymour had a new series this year, the WB comedy "Modern Men," but it was quickly canceled.