Imagine leasing your house to a music legend and coming back to find he’s painted the entire thing purple. The walls. The trim. Even a massive purple rug you can’t miss from the driveway.
That’s not a hypothetical. That’s exactly what happened to NBA star Carlos Boozer.
His Bel Air mansion at 1235 Sierra Alta Way was already a stunning piece of real estate. Ten bedrooms. A ballroom. Sweeping views of the city and the ocean. But none of those features are why people still talk about this house today. They talk about what Prince did to it. The purple paint. The indoor disco. The hair salon. And, of course, the lawsuit that followed.
But to understand why this particular house keeps making headlines decade after decade, you have to go back further than Carlos Boozer — back to 1953, when a contractor with a flair for the dramatic and a deep paranoia about nuclear war built one of the strangest mansions in Los Angeles.
A Mansion Built for the Apocalypse
In 1953, contractor Hal B. Hayes set out to build himself the ultimate bachelor pad on Sierra Alta Way. The budget was $600,000 — roughly $6 million adjusted for today. But Hayes wasn’t just building a home. He was building a fortress.
Convinced that a nuclear attack could happen at any moment, Hayes designed the six-story mansion with survival in mind. The swimming pool — a sprawling lagoon-style creation — existed partly outdoors and partly indoors, winding from a tropical lanai straight through the living room. At one end, Hayes had an underwater tunnel built that led to a sealed underground cave. His theory was that the pool water would help decontaminate him from residual radiation if a bomb ever hit. Hidden faucets throughout the house were rigged to dispense Scotch, bourbon, and Champagne directly — no bottles required.
Beyond the doomsday prep, the place was wildly extravagant. An artificial beach. An orchid grotto. Voice-activated lighting. A mirrored master suite. This wasn’t just a house — it was a statement piece, built by a man who wanted to live like a king and survive like a spy.
By the early 1960s, Hayes had fled to Mexico, and the property changed hands several times over the following decades. At some point along the way, rumors swirled that Elizabeth Taylor had lived there too — adding yet another layer of Hollywood mystique to an already eccentric address.
By the time Carlos Boozer found the mansion, it had been expanded and modernized into a proper luxury estate. But its strange, dramatic DNA was very much intact.
How Carlos Boozer Ended Up in Bel Air
2004 was a big year for Carlos Boozer. He’d just signed with the Utah Jazz and had the kind of contract that opens doors in LA’s most exclusive neighborhoods. So he did what a lot of newly minted NBA stars do — he bought a mansion.
The property sat on Sierra Alta Way, tucked into the hills with those postcard-worthy views Bel Air is known for. By then, the original 1953 English Tudor had been expanded into a sprawling luxury estate. Ten bedrooms. A grand ballroom. A fully equipped weight room (because, you know, NBA player). And beautiful furnishings throughout — many of them personally picked out by his wife at the time.
He paid around $8.4 million. Not pocket change, but for a Bel Air estate with that much square footage and history? Reasonable.
What Boozer didn’t know yet was that his house was about to become one of the strangest chapters in LA celebrity real estate history.
Prince Moves In: $95,000 a Month for a Purple Kingdom
Shortly after purchasing the mansion, Boozer’s agent brought him a rental opportunity. A tenant willing to pay $95,000 a month. For a property Boozer wasn’t living in full-time — he spent most of the regular season in Utah — that kind of passive income was hard to turn down.
The tenant? Prince.
The seven-time Grammy winner and international superstar took the keys and immediately began transforming the place into something that reflected his own world. What followed was less of a redecoration and more of an artistic occupation.
The Makeover
It started at the front gate. The golden lion statues that once greeted visitors were gone — replaced with Prince’s iconic symbol. A clear message to anyone who approached: this was his house now.
Inside, the changes ran deep. Lush purple carpet stretched through hallways and rooms. Black-and-purple stripes appeared on the walls. A massive purple rug anchored the main living space. The Italian rugs that Boozer’s wife had carefully chosen? Removed entirely — swapped out for deep purple and black alternatives that turned the elegant interior into something from another universe.
And then there were the photos. Prince hung framed images of himself throughout the house. Not subtle accents — prominent portraits on nearly every wall. Walking through those rooms must have felt less like visiting a home and more like stepping into someone’s private gallery.
From Weight Room to Disco
This is the detail that stays with you. Carlos Boozer had a dedicated weight room — completely logical for an NBA power forward who needed to stay in game shape. Prince looked at that room and saw something else entirely.
He ripped out the gym equipment and built a full-on disco. Mirrors, lights, and a proper booth for a DJ to spin records. The room designed for bench presses and squats suddenly became the spot for late-night dance parties.
A guest bedroom got a different treatment altogether. Prince converted it into a fully plumbed hair salon, complete with beauty salon chairs and piping he’d had installed specifically for the purpose. Because apparently, when you’re Prince, you don’t go to the salon — the salon comes to you.
The Lawsuit, the Phone Call from Asia, and the $500,000 Check
Boozer discovered all of this when he stopped by to check on the property. What he walked into was not what he remembered.
“I get there, and everything is purple,” Boozer recalled in a later interview. “My wife at the time had decorated the house beautifully, Italian rugs and all this fancy stuff that I have no idea what it is. And then I come in, and he basically turned all the rugs purple and black.”
Boozer was furious. He’d invested $8.4 million in this house, and his tenant had turned it into a purple funhouse without permission. He threatened to sue.
Then Prince went quiet. Calls went unanswered. For a stretch, Boozer couldn’t reach him at all. It looked like this was heading straight to court.
Then, out of nowhere, Prince called from Asia. He acknowledged the situation, promised to restore everything to its original condition, and wired Boozer an extra $500,000 — not as a legal settlement, but as a goodwill gesture on top of the rent he’d already paid. A smooth move from someone who clearly knew how to handle a situation with style.
True to his word, when the lease ended, Prince’s crew showed up and put everything back. The purple paint came down. The disco was dismantled. The hair salon was removed. Boozer’s original furniture was returned to its precise original positions. The mansion looked like Prince had never set foot inside.
Almost.
The $29.995 Million Price Tag
After the dust settled and the house was fully restored, Boozer eventually sold the mansion for $12.4 million — a solid profit over what he’d originally paid, and one that had a lot to do with the story the house now carried.
The property has since been expanded yet again. It now spans over 18,000 square feet with a tennis court, an indoor sports court, a ballroom, a wine room, and a four-car garage. At one point, it hit the market listed at $29.995 million.
That lagoon-style pool — the one Hal B. Hayes originally built with an underwater tunnel and Cold War survival instincts — still winds through the property. It remains one of the most unusual features in any Bel Air listing.
The Legacy of the Purple Mansion
Prince passed away in 2016, but the stories from his time on Sierra Alta Way live on. The mansion itself has faded back into relative normalcy — its purple chapter physically erased, but permanently etched into LA real estate lore.
Any future owner of 1235 Sierra Alta Way inherits more than just bedrooms and a ballroom. They get a dinner party story nobody can top. “Did you know Prince once painted this whole house purple?” is a significantly better conversation starter than “Check out these crown moldings.”
For Carlos Boozer, the whole experience turned out better than anyone could have predicted. He bought a house for $8.4 million, collected $95,000 a month in rent, received a $500,000 goodwill bonus, and sold the property for $12.4 million. Not a bad return for a power forward who simply needed somewhere to park his off-season real estate.
Would You Live in a Former Purple Palace?
Here’s my question to you.
If you had the money and the mansion hit the market tomorrow — restored to its original glory but forever carrying that purple history — would you buy it?
Knowing that Prince once danced where your living room now sits. Knowing the weight room used to be a disco. Knowing that somewhere beneath the fresh paint, traces of purple might still linger.
I think I would. But I’d also keep one accent wall purple. Just because.
For more wild celebrity real estate stories, check out our deep dives on other iconic LA homes that made headlines for all the wrong (and right) reasons.
