When wildfires tore through the Los Angeles area earlier this year, they razed thousands of properties. Among those losses was a newly built property known as “The Dragon.”
The roughly 11,000-square-foot home was the brainchild of designer and developer Jae Omar, who described the house as “a very special property.” But what started as a “tragic” loss ended up giving Omar the inspiration for a project already in the works.
“I go about things a little bit differently,” Omar said. “I write a narrative or a story, and that story becomes the foundation for the design plan. Those are the building blocks of how everything gets executed.”
With that approach in mind, Omar took his experience losing “The Dragon” and created something new: “Villa Speranza,” a five-bedroom, six-bathroom residence in Brentwood.
“After the events in January, I made some changes, made some updates,” Omar said. “I started softening things a great, great deal.”
Now, the property is on the market for $10.5 million, and Omar said he hopes it inspires the community as it works toward recovery. That starts with the home’s name — ”speranza" means "hope" in Italian — and permeates through every detail, from the doorways to the walls to the landscaping, he said.
“I wanted to do something different. I wanted it to feel different,” Omar said. "I wanted it to be softer. I wanted to convey warmth and empathy and to feel very, very custom and very personal.”
Creating a space of comfort after tragedy
Listing agent F. Ron Smith said that feeling of warmth is tangible when walking through the home.
“It has a very warm feeling as you walk through, not just because of the use of earth tones, but because of the way the house plays with the landscaping outside, and they’ve ensured that warm feeling with the lighting,” he said in an interview. “It’s really not easy to achieve that and they’ve nailed it.”
That’s especially unique these days because many developers are working on modern farmhouse-style homes these days, according to both Omar and Smith.
“It takes a serious departure from the traditional farmhouse architecture that has been so pervasive over the last four years,” Smith said. “This is a little more old school … I use the word 'romantic.'”
“I wanted it to have its own personality,” Omar added, “and it very, very much does.”
All told, Smith said the home could be a good fit for buyers displaced by the Palisades fire looking to re-create some sense of their lifestyle before January. Brentwood, he said, is walkable and offers residents access to a tight-knit community similar to the Pacific Palisades.
Smith holds the listing with David Berg. Both agents are with Smith & Berg Property Group at Compass.
Finding healing through artwork
Selling a project like Villa Speranza can sometimes be emotionally challenging, according to Omar, who said the project has been part of his healing process since the fires.
“It was cathartic,” he said. “There was, I guess, a bit of my own recovery within the walls of Villa Speranza.”
Part of that was also incorporating a piece of history into the project by curating the collection of vases displayed throughout the home.
Ultimately, though, Omar will have to give up some of his control of the property now that it’s on the market, which is a “really difficult position,” he said.
“More often than not, [the buyers] do not have the same vision that I have,” Omar said. “It’s like children. You have a child and pour everything you have into the child. You teach them lessons and impart as much moral fortitude as you can, and you send them out into the world, and they fall into the wrong hands.”
But even so, Omar acknowledged that he’s excited to share his work, especially as a beacon of hope for his community.
“It’s a piece of art,” he said. “At the end of the day, it is a business. We’re in the business of selling properties.”