Josh Duhamel Is Done With Hollywood Living and His 3 Million Dollar LA Home Proves It
The house Josh Duhamel bought after his marriage ended is now going on the market. And the life he is moving toward has been 20 years in the making.
Josh officially listed his four-bedroom, four-bathroom Encino ranch-style home for $3 million. The listing came just weeks after he and wife Audra Mari welcomed their second child. The timing is not a coincidence.
This is not a routine celebrity listing. It is the end of a chapter, and the beginning of one that started long before most people noticed.
The Encino Home He Is Walking Away From
Josh picked up this Encino property in late 2017 for around $2.65 million, right around the time his split from Fergie became public. It was a fresh start in the San Fernando Valley that later became the family’s West Coast base.
The home got a full Jeff Lewis remodel and even spent time on the rental market at $15,000 per month before this listing. It sits on 3,300 square feet with mountain views, and Thomas Atamian of Coldwell Banker Realty currently holds the listing.
For full property details and photos, Robb Report has the complete breakdown here.
The Cabin He Has Been Building for Two Decades
Most coverage of this story calls it his “doomsday cabin” and moves on. That framing misses the point entirely.
Josh started with raw land in northern Minnesota, near his father’s property on the lake. No electricity. No running water. He was washing dishes in the lake. That was over 15 years ago.
Piece by piece, he moved dirt, dug wells, built a kitchen sink, added a bathroom. “I started moving dirt and I started shaping it,” he said. “It’s turned into like a whole passion of mine.” The property now spans 50 acres, lakeside, roughly an hour and a half from Fargo.
This is not a retreat. It is a life he built with his own hands.
Why LA No Longer Fits
Josh has been saying this out loud for a while. People just were not fully listening.
In a March 2026 interview with Extra TV, he confirmed the family already spends “a majority of time” at the Minnesota property. He also shared that his heart rate drops about 25 percent the moment he arrives there.
“I make movies and TV shows, and I love it, I truly do love it, but I had this calling to go and really do things with my hands again,” he told PEOPLE. With a newborn daughter and a toddler son now at home, that calling is no longer something he can keep putting off.
He is not the only one reaching this point. Dennis Quaid had a similar moment when he listed his $5.2M Brentwood home after publicly calling California “going downhill” and made the permanent move to Nashville.
If you follow stories like this as they happen, there is a WhatsApp channel that tracks celebrity real estate and luxury market moves in real time. Worth keeping in your feed.
Why This Matters
Josh is not alone in this move. He is part of a shift the numbers are now confirming.
Between July 2024 and July 2025, 53,421 residents left Los Angeles County alone, making it the largest population decline of any county in the United States, according to U.S. Census data. LA County has dropped from 10 million residents in 2020 to roughly 9.7 million today.
That trend is showing up directly in the real estate market. LA luxury homes are now averaging around 56 days on market in 2026, and overpriced listings regularly sit for 90 days or more.
It is the same pressure you see playing out with Kylie Jenner’s Holmby Hills fortress, which has been sitting unsold even after a $9.5 million price cut.
Josh priced his Encino home close to what he paid for it. That is not a loss. That is someone who reads the market clearly and is not trying to fight it.
And the celebrity LA exit is not new either. Just this week, LeBron James confirmed he is leaving the Lakers, while his $37 million California compound sits nearly complete in Beverly Hills, showing just how different each person’s exit from LA actually looks.
Key Takeaways
- Josh Duhamel listed his 4-bed, 4-bath Encino home for $2.99 million in mid-2026
- He originally bought it in 2017 for approximately $2.65 million after his split from Fergie
- The Minnesota property spans 50 acres and took over 15 years to build from raw land
- The family already lives primarily in Minnesota, making this listing a formalization of what was already happening
- Josh and wife Audra Mari welcomed their second child in May 2026, which accelerated the permanent move
- Thomas Atamian of Coldwell Banker Realty holds the listing
Would you trade a gated LA home for 50 acres in the woods? Or is this the kind of life swap that only works if you have been quietly planning it for 20 years? Drop your honest take in the comments.
Wrapping Up
Josh Duhamel did not wake up one day and decide to leave LA. He spent two decades quietly building an exit that actually meant something to him.
The Encino house going on the market is just the last step in a plan he started the moment he bought a half-parcel of raw land near his father’s place in Minnesota.
If you follow celebrity real estate and the real stories behind the listings, Build Like New covers exactly this kind of thing regularly.
For more as these stories break, follow Build Like New on X (Twitter) and join the conversation on the Facebook community. That is where the discussion happens in real time.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. All details are based on publicly available reports at the time of publication.
