Hugh Hefner Selling Playboy Mansion, Says He’ll Leave When He Dies

Hugh Hefner seems to finally be selling the Playboy Mansion, but there is a slight catch. Though Playboy Enterprise has stated that Hugh is putting the legendary mansion up for sale at $200 million, he has declared that he will not be moving out to accommodate the new owner. Quite the contrary, Hefner, 89, will continue to live in the West Los Angeles estate literally until the day that he dies, reports CNN Money.

Playboy CEO Scott Flanders says the sale of the Playboy Mansion is going to help the company “reinvest in the transformation of our business” while allowing Hefner the luxury of keeping it as his residence.

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

Hugh Hefner, it seems, has crafted a pretty sweet deal both for himself as well as the Playboy company. The Playboy Mansion itself is one pretty amazing piece of real estate, with decades of memories brought on by countless celebrity parties. The 29 room, 20,000 square foot mansion is one of the few residents in the Los Angeles area that has a zoo license, not to mention the other countless and unique amenities. Hugh Hefner first purchased the estate 45 years ago for a little over $1 million.

Playboy magazine has not been doing as well as it once was. As more and more sexy, risque magazines have been published, along with online pornography, Playboy has seen some pretty stiff competition and profits have slowly started to decline. The money for the sale of the mansion will be used to reinvent the company and try and bring revenue back in. In October of 2015, Playboy magazine announced that they will no longer be publishing pictures of completely nude women in its U.S. print edition. Prior to that, there was talk of banning the full nudity displayed on its website, in August 2014.

The Playboy mansion, in addition to being the ultimate celebrity-party destination, is used to host a number of corporate activities and events. It is also used for photography for the magazine, television production, charity events and sales events as well as advertising. Even in 2010, Hugh Hefner was still trying to keep renovations up at the mansion, according to what he says in the Izabella St. James memoir Bunny Tales.

“Everything in the Mansion felt old and stale, and Archie the house dog would regularly relieve himself on the hallway curtains, adding a powerful whiff of urine to the general scent of decay.”

What else does the Playboy Mansion have?

It comes with a fantastic wine cellar, which happens to have a Prohibition-era secret door, screening room, game room and three zoo buildings. There is a game room in the front entrance, with a pool table dead center in the middle. Arcade games, a jukebox, pinball machines and a television are also in the room.

The original Playboy Mansion isn’t in Los Angeles, it was actually in Chicago. Built with classical French brick and limestone, it was a 70-room residence at 1340 North State Parkway, initially built for Dr. George Swift Isham in 1899. In Chicago’s Gold Coast, Hugh Hefner acquired the estate 60 years later in 1959. In the mansion’s basement, which was Hugh’s original “grotto,” there was a swimming pool and a glass wall.

[Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Playboy]