The stately house that stood in for the Banks family mansion on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is back on the market, this time carrying a price tag nearly 25 percent lower than when it first appeared for sale. The Brentwood Park estate at 251 N. Bristol Avenue is now asking $22.95 million, down from its original $30 million ask, and the listing itself raises the possibility that a buyer could replace the house with a larger compound.
The relisting was first reported by Realtor.com, with the New York Post detailing the home's initial January debut at $30 million through agents Sasha Rahban and Josh Altman of Douglas Elliman. That first run on the market, per Realtor.com, attracted plenty of lookers but no committed buyers before the listing was pulled and relaunched under new representation. Though the show placed the address in Bel-Air, the real property sits several miles south in Brentwood Park, an exclusive West Los Angeles enclave, according to JamesEdition.
The estate has stayed in the same family for decades. Farhad “Frank” Rahban, who owns extensive real estate holdings around Los Angeles, has held the property for nearly 50 years and raised his children Nicholas and Sasha Rahban there, per the Post's reporting. Sasha Rahban was reportedly just 9 years old when Will Smith filmed the sitcom's iconic opening sequence at her childhood home. The show ran from 1990 to 1996 across 148 episodes and launched Smith into international stardom, with his theme-song lyrics about looking at his kingdom and finally sitting on his throne as the prince of Bel-Air becoming a piece of pop-culture shorthand still tied to the address.
A Fading Interior Meets a Hot Land Market
Built in 1937, the two-story residence follows a traditional Georgian Colonial Revival design with a curved bridal staircase, according to Prevu Real Estate. The Post reports the nearly 6,500-square-foot home is not in move-in condition and would need its interior gutted and rebuilt just to remain standing, a reality that has shifted the sales pitch toward the land itself. Christophe Choo, the listing agent with Coldwell Banker Realty, has told the Post the property ranks among the finest locations in Los Angeles, and the listing itself floats building a larger, world-class multi-structure private estate compound in its place.
That land-first framing lines up with the numbers. The lot is a rare 0.88-acre, 38,510-square-foot flat corner parcel, according to Coldwell Banker Realty, the kind of large, level holding that is tightly held across Brentwood Park. The listing's vision of building a larger compound stands in contrast to Marilyn Monroe's Brentwood home, which the Los Angeles City Council voted to protect from demolition in a June 2024 landmark decision covered by Hoodline.
Neighbors, a Nearby Chase, and a Hollywood Production Draw
The home still shows the fingerprints of its 1930s design inside: moldings, beamed ceilings, arched doorways, fireplaces, and that curved bridal staircase, alongside a primary suite with sitting areas, two bathrooms and sprawling closet space, per the Post. Outdoors, the grounds include stone terracing, a garden gazebo, a stone arbor, a pool house pavilion, a pool and secure entry gates. Beyond its sitcom fame, the estate has kept working as a Hollywood location, according to realestate.com.au, most recently serving as a primary exterior for the Hulu/FX series The Shards, a summer series set in 1981 that follows a serial killer hunting rich prep-school students.
The neighborhood carries its own layered history. O.J. Simpson once lived two blocks from the Rahban home and began his infamous Ford Bronco chase down a Los Angeles freeway from the area before police arrested him, the Post reports. Today's neighbors lean more toward current celebrity wealth: LeBron James owns a $23 million mansion nearby, Arnold Schwarzenegger has lived in a multi-acre Brentwood compound for decades, Harrison Ford owns a private $12.6 million estate, and Gwyneth Paltrow keeps a compound in the area as well.
Interest in the relisted mansion has already surfaced. Choo told the Post that a Beverly Hills couple flew home early from a European vacation specifically to view the property, underscoring the pull of the Brentwood Park lot even as the aging house itself becomes almost secondary to the sale.
Why the Price Keeps Falling Across Brentwood Park
The relisting arrives amid a broader slowdown tied to Los Angeles's Measure ULA, the city's so-called mansion tax. A sale at the current $22.95 million asking price would trigger a 5.5 percent transfer tax surcharge, according to the Los Angeles Office of Finance, adding more than $1.26 million in costs for the seller at closing on top of standard transfer fees. Research from the Cato Institute found that Measure ULA reduced transaction rates for eligible high-value Los Angeles properties by roughly 38 percent compared with surrounding Los Angeles County markets, a dynamic that has pushed sellers of luxury homes to cut prices or slow-walk sales to soften the tax hit.
The Fresh Prince estate's own $6.55 million price cut puts the spotlight on Brentwood Park's luxury market, with an iconic, pop-culture-famous address now back on the market at a lower price.
Back in September 2020, the home briefly opened its doors to the public in a very different way, when Will Smith teamed with Airbnb to host five one-night stays at $30 a night, celebrating the sitcom's 30th anniversary and letting fans sleep in a wing decked out with DJ Jazzy Jeff turntables and Bel-Air Athletics gear, according to CBS News. Whether the next chapter for 251 N. Bristol Avenue involves a careful renovation or a full teardown for a new compound remains up to whichever buyer ultimately signs on.
