Renting a Celebrity Home in the Palm Springs Area is easy!
The Coachella Valley's reputation as a retreat for Hollywood's elite dates to the days of sunbathing in the 1930s at the El Mirador hotel in Palm Springs.
The desert is dotted with homes where celebrities once lived and played. Today, some property owners are cashing in on that star-studded cachet.
For a price, a tourist can relax poolside like Frank Sinatra once did, lounge in the same space where Elvis and Priscilla Presley honeymooned and puzzle over the hotplate Howard Hughes installed in his bathroom.
“I think her name does create attention,” Rich Valentine says of the Lucille Ball Bungalow at the Ocotillo Lodge in Palm Springs.
He and his wife, Mary, rent the small, tidy apartment for $2,000 a month. It's decked out with portraits and memorabilia of the comedienne and is footsteps from a pool that is so perfectly Palm Springs. And it's already booked for the first three months of next year.
“They get a great return on their investments,” Jesse Garza of Homes Run Inc. said of those who own famous homes and rent them to vacationers.
His rental company's portfolio features many properties designed by mid-century modern architects or owned previously by celebrities.
Take the Frank Sinatra Twin Palms Estate, for example. Garza, portfolio and marketing director, said it is a popular rental for fans of modernism and the crooner alike.
“It captures two different demographics important to Palm Springs,” he said.
Frank Sinatra's Twin Palm Estate
1145 E. Via Colusa You can swing in "rat pack" style for $2,600 per nite!
History: Ol' Blue Eyes in 1947 hired mid-century modern architecture legend E. Stewart Williams to design and build this 4,500-square-foot Palm Springs home for him, wife Nancy and their children.
It has four bedrooms and seven bathrooms. The shower off Frank Junior's room has a head situated fairly low — but appropriate for a child's height.
Sinatra later lived in the home with his second wife, Ava Gardner. The two were said to have had many fights there.
The property is named after two skinny palm trees that loom over the pool, which is shaped like a baby grand piano.
Original to the home: Capitol Records installed a recording unit for Sinatra use while staying in the Palm Springs home. It no longer works but makes for a fun conversation piece in the lush living room.
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