Anže Kopitar spent two decades building one of the most respected careers in NHL history. He brought the Los Angeles Kings their first two Stanley Cup championships, served as team captain for nearly a decade, and recently retired as the franchise’s all-time leading scorer. Off the ice, he put the same level of deliberate effort into building something altogether different: a coastal compound in Manhattan Beach, California, that set a record listing price for the city when it hit the market at $37 million.
This article covers everything you need to know about the property — how it was assembled, what it includes, why it stands out, and what it tells us about where celebrity real estate in Southern California actually sits right now.
Who Is Anže Kopitar?
Born in Jesenice, Slovenia, Kopitar played junior hockey for his hometown team HK Acroni Jesenice before moving to Sweden at age 16 to compete at a higher level. He was drafted 11th overall by the Los Angeles Kings in 2005 and joined the team in 2006, finishing fourth in Calder Memorial Trophy voting for top rookie that year.
He went on to help the Kings win Stanley Cup championships in 2012 and 2014, won the Selke Trophy (awarded to the league’s top defensive forward) in 2015–16 and 2017–18, and served as team captain from 2016 onward.
He retired as the Kings’ all-time scoring leader with 1,316 points — 452 goals and 864 assists — across 1,521 career games. He played every NHL season with the same team, something increasingly rare in professional sports.
That career background matters here because the Manhattan Beach compound was not a passive investment or an impulsive celebrity purchase. It was a long-term project — bought, rebuilt, and lived in before being listed.
The Property: Location and Why It Matters
The home sits at 117 34th Street in the Manhattan Beach sand section — on a double lot, with the western lot consisting of a separate structure, pool, and deck. The lack of a home to the west creates exceptional ocean views with a degree of view protection that is rarely available in this market.
The street itself is a walk street — pedestrian-only — which means no car traffic directly in front of the home. That’s not a minor detail in Manhattan Beach. Walk street lots are a specific and limited category in the city, and their proximity to the beach is measured in steps, not blocks. The property sits half a block from the beach.
Manhattan Beach, for context, is one of the most expensive coastal markets in Los Angeles County. It combines actual beach access with top-rated schools, a tight residential feel, and proximity to the broader LA job market. For an athlete based at Crypto.com Arena, it places home and work within a practical commute while still offering the kind of private, walkable beach community that is hard to find in Southern California at any price.
How the Compound Was Built
Kopitar and his wife, Ines, bought two neighboring homes in November 2014 for a combined figure before completely rebuilding every inch of the premises in 2018. The result is a unified compound on a double lot — not a renovation, but a ground-up replacement.
This distinction matters for several reasons. Because both adjacent lots were acquired and then rebuilt together as a single project, the resulting compound has a coherent architectural identity that typical adjacent-home combinations do not. The floor plans connect logically, the outdoor spaces were designed as a whole, and the infrastructure — solar, smart-home systems, pool technology — was installed from scratch rather than retrofitted.
The asking price of $37 million represents $27 million more than the combined purchase price of the original two homes, and would set a record for the coastal city if sold near that figure.
Size, Layout, and Bedrooms
The main home features five bedrooms and eight bathrooms with high-end finishes and home automation throughout, along with multiple decks, ocean views throughout, a four-stop elevator, and more. The guest house offers another two bedrooms and two bathrooms along with an ocean-view rooftop deck.
In total, the compound spans 7,605 square feet across seven bedrooms and ten bathrooms, all on a double walk-street lot half a block from the beach, custom built in 2018.
The four-stop elevator is worth noting practically. A multi-level home with ocean views means vertical movement across floors — an elevator makes the home genuinely functional for families and guests rather than just architecturally impressive.
Interior: Key Rooms and Finishes
The interior includes dedicated rooms for movie watching, exercise, and office work, alongside a gourmet kitchen with top-of-the-line appliances and climate-controlled wine storage.
The main living room features a fireplace with built-in storage and doors that open directly onto a fireside balcony. That balcony is fitted with a pair of suspended swing sofas — a specific design choice that speaks to the Southern California outdoor-indoor lifestyle rather than a generic luxury add-on.
The kitchen is outfitted with a La Cornue range, wine cooler, two refrigerators, and an eat-in island. An adjacent dining area opens to a partially enclosed balcony with a built-in barbecue station.
La Cornue is a French manufacturer whose ranges are typically found in restaurants with Michelin recognition. Finding one in a residential kitchen signals a level of appliance investment that goes beyond the standard luxury home checklist.
The primary suite includes a walk-in closet, an ocean-view balcony, and a bathroom with dual vanities, a soaking tub, and a separate shower.
The Feature That Sets This Property Apart: The Disappearing Pool
Every luxury home in Manhattan Beach has a pool. Very few have one that can vanish on command.
The western lot of the property hosts a pool and deck powered by AKVO Spiralift technology. The floors of the pool and spa lift and lower at the touch of a button, either creating a courtyard terrace for entertaining or adjusting the pool and spa depth without displacing any water.
This is the single most architecturally distinctive feature of the compound, and it solves a real problem that beachfront lots face: square footage is limited, and dedicating a large footprint permanently to a pool creates a tradeoff against usable outdoor living space. The Spiralift system eliminates that tradeoff. When the pool is lowered, the surface becomes a flat courtyard. When it’s raised, it returns to a functional swimming pool and spa. The surrounding lot is essentially dual-purpose.
For a home listed near $40 million, the presence of genuine technological novelty — not just premium materials — is a meaningful differentiator in a market where “luxury” often means expensive versions of standard features.
Outdoor Living and Entertainment
The outdoor amenities include a Lynx outdoor kitchen with a pizza oven and two barbecues, along with the swimming pool and spa that can convert into an al fresco entertaining courtyard at the press of a button.
Lynx is a professional-grade outdoor kitchen brand built specifically for permanent outdoor installation, not portable grilling. Having a pizza oven alongside two dedicated barbecues means the outdoor kitchen handles large-format entertaining without compromise.
Tall hedges provide privacy from street-level visibility while ocean views remain visible from multiple vantage points throughout the property, including two upstairs patios on the main house designed for barbecues and relaxing by the outdoor fireplace.
The privacy element here is worth examining. Walk streets in Manhattan Beach have foot traffic — residents, joggers, beachgoers. Without proper screening, a home on a pedestrian street has effectively no separation from the public. The hedge perimeter addresses this while maintaining the open, view-facing orientation on the ocean side.
Smart Home Technology and Sustainability
Solar panels, Tesla Powerwalls, and Lutron automatic shades contribute to the overall efficiency of the home. Parking is available for five vehicles.
The Tesla Powerwall integration means the solar system is paired with battery storage — the home can operate independently of the grid when needed and stores excess solar generation rather than sending it back to the utility. In a California coastal climate with consistent sun exposure, this is a practical choice, not a symbolic one.
Lutron is the standard for high-end automated window treatments in the residential market. The combination of automated shading and solar generation is a coherent approach: reduce heat gain during peak sun hours, capture the energy that does arrive, and store it.
The home automation extends beyond energy management. The home includes full automation throughout, integrated into the building from the ground-up construction in 2018 rather than added afterward.
The Guest House
The two-bedroom, two-bathroom guest house has its own living area, kitchen, and rooftop deck. It functions as a fully self-contained residence — not simply an additional bedroom wing — which changes the property’s utility significantly.
For a family with frequent visitors, a dedicated guest structure means guests have genuine independence. There is no shared living space management. For a family considering eventual resale, a legally separate structure also adds a different layer of value that attached guest rooms cannot provide.
The guest house rooftop deck adds another outdoor vantage point above the primary property level, giving it Pacific views not blocked by the main house structure.
The $37 Million Listing in Context
When the property was listed at $37 million in October 2023, it immediately became the highest-priced listing in Manhattan Beach history. That is a notable benchmark in a market where multi-million dollar sales are common.
A few factors explain the pricing:
Land scarcity. Double lots on walk streets in the sand section of Manhattan Beach are a genuinely limited category. There is no mechanism to create more of them. The western lot — which hosts the guest house, pool deck, and provides the ocean view corridor — is what separates this compound from comparably sized single-lot homes.
Ground-up construction quality. The 2018 rebuild means all systems, infrastructure, and finishes are current. Buyers at this price point do not want to immediately renovate or update — they want a property that performs without near-term capital expenditure.
Unique features. The AKVO Spiralift pool system, the La Cornue kitchen, the integrated solar and storage system, and the walk-street-to-beach proximity are each individually uncommon. Their combination at a single property is rare in any market.
The comparable gap. There is no obvious direct comparable for this property in Manhattan Beach’s transaction history. When appraisers and buyers work with limited comparables, the pricing conversation becomes harder to anchor — which creates both risk and opportunity for the seller.
Conclusion
The Anže Kopitar house in Manhattan Beach is a well-documented case of an athlete using both the capital and the planning horizon that professional sports success provides to build something that is not just expensive but genuinely unusual.
The property started as two adjacent homes, was replaced with a single coherent compound, and includes at least one feature — the disappearing pool — that most comparable properties in the city cannot offer. The $37 million asking price is ambitious by any standard, but it is grounded in a specific set of physical attributes: location, lot size, construction quality, and technology integration.
Now that Kopitar has retired, the property takes on a different character in the public narrative. What was a star athlete’s active home base has become part of what comes next — a 20-year career in Los Angeles, and whatever follows it.