Cooper Mount: Malibu kid makes mega-million deals

Cooper Mount grew up in what some refer to as Old Malibu. Now, he’s helping to broker a wave of megadeals reshaping the city one multi-million-dollar beach house at a time. 

The Carolwood Estates agent’s name has appeared in reports about some of this year’s buzzier deals, including Malibu’s priciest on-market trade in the $61 million sale of The Edge spec mansion. There was also the $22.5 million sale of a 4,500-square-foot Malibu beach house, bought by power agent and Westside Estate Agency co-founder Kurt Rappaport, along with a West Hollywood home purchased by Norman Lear’s widow, Lyn Lear, off market for $24 million.

“It has been an interesting year,” Mount reflected from Carolwood’s penthouse headquarters on Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills.

Certainly, the Measure ULA property tax tamped down inventory in some markets, while interest rate relief didn’t come until more recently. Still, Mount’s found opportunity in his hometown, where the ULA transfer tax does not apply and proximity to water woos many buyers. Deals in the city have accounted for about 70 percent of his business this year.

“We doubled down and worked harder this year. Last year, we had a challenging year,” Mount said. “I had some big sales last year, but it was tough. More deals were falling apart for me than were coming together. This year we were able to flip that.”

Representing the buyer in the purchase of the over 10,500-square-foot Edge mansion was part of that reversal.

Developer Scott Gillen of Unvarnished built five estates on expansive plots of land sitting on Malibu’s bluffs. The properties have ocean views but sit secluded high above the beach in a guard-gated community Gillen dubbed The Case.

The Edge was the first of those homes to close and Mount represented the buyer in the deal. It took about a year to get the transaction done.

“There were a lot of moving parts,” Mount said, including the home’s actual construction completion.

Elsewhere in Malibu, Mount represented the seller in the nearly $24 million sale of 31412 Broad Beach Road and the buyer in the $16.5 million purchase of 23768 Malibu Road.

Home-town advantage

It helps to have grown up in the neighborhood. For Mount, that means the Malibu Colony enclave.

“Malibu’s a tight-knit, little community,” he said.

The city’s transition over the decades can be viewed through the lens of its residential real estate, according to Mount.

“It used to be that the majority of people who lived there were entertainment people and old families,” he said. “Now, a lot of prices for great, beachfront houses in Malibu have gotten so high that you see less of that and more of the titans of industry in the really high-end properties here.”

That’s a trend underscored in some of this year’s largest off-market deals in the city.

Oakley and Red Digital Cinema founder Jim Jannard set a new state record when he sold his Malibu estate for a reported $210 million to a mystery buyer in the summer. Not long afterl, Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, snapped up her fourth Malibu property, paying $94 million for a Paradise Cove ranch house.  

Selling luxury homes wasn’t automatic for Mount. He got his degree in advertising and marketing from Loyola University in New Orleans and then worked with national brands on behalf of his clients while at talent agency WME.  

About a decade ago a friend in real estate needed an assistant and offered him a job at Coldwell Banker Malibu Colony.

“No one in my family’s in real estate; I didn’t really know real estate was a business. But I like houses and I enjoy transaction-based businesses,” Mount said.

He later moved on to The Agency before joining Carolwood in 2022.

Currently, Mount’s business consists of him and his assistant. He’s not interested in scaling to a multi-person team.

“I like the way we operate,” he said. “We’re super sleek and we’re able to be very hands-on. I’m showing every single house I’m representing. I focus on details anyway, so I don’t need too many cooks getting involved.”

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