Friday, September 5, 2008

Friday Morning Mish Mash

It's been some time since we've spent the morning mish mashing, but Your Mama has been sitting on a few items not worth expounding and pontificating on in our usual long winded manner.

1.
It appears that real estate developer and fabulously rich financier Leonard Ross has yanked his Beverly Hills mansion off the market. The children will recall that in August of 2007 Mister Ross listed his N. Beverly Drive compound amid a pile of publicity for a blistering (and record breaking) $165,000,000.

Although the high wattage listing agent from Westside Estate Agency reveals he toured 7 or 8 potential buyers around the 6.25 acre property, is anyone really surprised that none of the mega-money looky-loos whipped out their check books? Well, all due respect all around, but Your Mama sure ain't.

At the risk of sounding utterly without class–which we pretty much are–it is Your Mama's humble and utterly meaningless opinion that until some of those high profile property crazy Russian billionaires roll up into the Platinum Triangle with big and burning desires to make real estate gossip headlines, most of these upper eight and low nine figure trophy estates in Los Angeles will continue to languish on the market.

Bev Hills is bee-yoo-tee-full children, but it just ain't the Côte d'Azur where international jet setting moguls and magnates don't seem to mind dropping many tens of millions of dollars (or even a reported $730,000,000) on high maintenance mansions they'll barely use.

2.
In other Tom Brady real estate news...

Listen children, we know he's good lookin' and dates a smokin' hot mannequin from Brazil, but we just have a tough time getting excited about him and his real estate ways anymore. Not sure why that is, but it is. Anyhoo...

3.
The real estate news in Nashville this morning is that screamingly successful country music super star Kix Brooks (the mustachioed man with the big black cowboy hat of the gee-tar twanging duo Brooks and Dunn) and his wifey Barbara have spent $5,450,000 country music dollars on a new Nashville nest.

The Brooks' newly constructed contemporary crib with it's towering three story facade, complicated massing and barrel roof occupies a large sloped lot at the tail end of gated Bancroft Place, a street which many of the wide eyed children will recognize as the same as that where Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman lived after they were mare-reed. (Mister and Missus Urban have since sold the house on Bancroft Place.)

Five and a half million clams in New York or Los Angeles barely buys a starter mansion these days, but in Nashville it buys (approx.) 13,000 square feet of dee-luxiosity with 4 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms, a 3-story wood and steel staircase, 28-foot ceilings, a kick ass commercial grade kitchen, a wine cellar, and an infinity edged cee-ment pond with a 45-foot wide waterfall. The developers used reclaimed wood milled from a century-old tobacco warehouse for beams, floors and roof decking which Your Mama imagines warms the lofty interior spaces and gives the brand spanking new house a little patina from the get go.

4.
Property maven Nic Cage has put his 9 bedroom and 9 bathroom Bel Air mansion on the market.

Again.

This time, the 11,817 square foot Copa de Ora Road residence with it's Olympic length swimming pool and private thee-ay-ter carries an asking price of $29,999,000. Although that is without question a magnificent amount of moolah, it is considerably less than the $35,000,000 Mister Cage was asking for the place when it was last listed on the open market back in September of 2007.

The brick built behemoth was formerly owned by Rat Packer Dean Martin and dee-voonly camp crooner Tom Jones before Mister Cage scooped up the property in 1998 for an undisclosed amount of money.

5.
We hear through the Holmby Hills gossip grapevine that Jennufleck–or whatever dumb-ass amalgamated monikor all the gossip glossies call Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner–have bailed out of buying the humongous house on S. Mapleton Drive that they were rumored and reported to be buying.

The preggers pair have earned a bit of a reputation among real estate gossips and high end brokers for entering and later canceling escrows. Your Mama hears, but again we can not confirm, that the rumored to be real estate fickle couple backed out of buying at least five high priced properties including a not yet completed manse on Brentwood's N. Carmelina Avenue.

Interestingly and ironically, Your Mama has also heard that moving vans have been spotted outside the couple's current crib on N. Tigertail Road in Brentwood. So who knows what's what in their real estate world? Not Your Mama. What we do know is that the listing for the John Bersci re-designed S. Mapleton Drive mansion remains active on the MLS with an asking price of $27,500,000.

Rumor and gossip children, just rumor and gossip.

6.
Thanks to an early morning communique from Louis Lewy (and an earlier report by The Real Deal), Your Mama has learned that vegan electronica musician Moby has finally unloaded his quirky quadraplex penthouse at the fabled El Dorado building on New York City's Central Park West.

The diminutive downtown denizen purchased the four floor and four terrace tower residence a few years ago for a reported $4,500,000. After a few tweaks to the oddly many staired 2 bedroom and 2 bathroom unit and a wee bit of time living on the baby stroller saturated Upper West Side, Mister Moby decided he preferred life below 14th Street and re-listed the penthouse with a $7,500,000 asking price.

After a reported co-op board rejection and an offer of a $75,000 finders fee records show Mister Moby finally sold the uptown aerie for $6,700,000, far less than the original asking price, but far more than many thought he'd get.

Although we can not confirm the buyer's identity, Your Mama thinks the big money buyer is a non-celebrity design oriented gal about town who uses only first and middle initials on deeds and real estate documents and appears to have once purchased an apartment at the legendary Ansonia building from late night talk show titan Conan O'Brien. Sorry we can't be more specific children, but that's about all a quick search of the interweb turned up.

14 comments:

StPaulSnowman said...

Newsy, interesting and slick.......Mama must be waxing now she lives in LA

Anonymous said...

Nic Cage paid $6,469,000 for the Copa de Oro house in March 1998

Anonymous said...

1. Ross needs to subdivide the compound back to being the multiple houses he accumulated. He would get bragging rights to having one of the highest priced "home sales" but he would be able to unload the houses.

2. Who?

3. Looks like a nice enough house. Would like to see interior pics.

4. Obviously he's not in a hurry and if true that he only paid 6 & change, he stands to make a bundle no matter when he sells. Of course the village idiot will be here soon claiming the house is only worth what Cage paid in 1998.

5. I think Affleck is a not-so-silent investor on some of these properties that they keep being rumored to buy. The footage/stills of them at the various houses are nothing more than him checking on the construction progress.

Anonymous said...

Make that Ross WOULDNT get bragging rights. It's early on the left coast.

Alessandra said...

I actually like the Kix Brook house more than I thought I would. It's too bad that it couldn't be sited differently on the property. The approach makes it look like a smaller lot than it should be (can't find the lot size but I'd like to believe he is on at least an acre, even though the report doesn't give me hope). And I would personally want more than four bedrooms over 13,000 sq. ft. (or a guest house), but hopefully all the bedrooms are large. I really hate the trend of having massive master suites and then tiny, almost vestigial, additional bedrooms. Yeah, you want the kids to move out of the house eventually, but giving them a 10x13' room when you've got a 6000+ sq. ft. house just seems...mean.

I give Tom Brady (or his advisers) a lot of credit for real estate savvy. But real estate savvy is sometimes rather dull.

Are we worried about Ben and Jen being homeless? No? Okay, then. Call me when they actually complete an escrow and move into the home.

Anonymous said...

Ah, looky-here. I love myself some morning mish mash.

Anonymous said...

If you would bother to post the actual property addresses in your stories, I would, on occasion, pop in to post what the Seller actually paid for the place. But I am not going to fart around on the internets for 15 minutes looking for the property addresses. That is your job.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, the Moby sale actually was in the Real Deal back on August 28. Louis Lewy's a little behind the times! http://ny.therealdeal.com/articles/moby-sells-el-dorado-penthouse-for-67m

Anonymous said...

Cage will be lucky to get $20mil in this market. Great location in Bel-Air, you can walk to UCLA.

Anybody know how much he made when he sold his Newport Beach Bayshores home. Heard it was a record price for the neighborhood.

Anonymous said...

Yawn.

Not you Mama.

The last two posters.

Anonymous said...

Posted Sep 5th 2008 2:53PM by TMZ Staff

Dane Cook bought a Hollywood Hills mansion -- $7,078,412 to be specific.

preppy little dress AKA "PLD" said...

nice, great post! thanks for sharing - wish i had their problem! ha! ha!

preppy little dress AKA "PLD" said...

nice, great post! thanks for sharing - wish i had their problem! ha! ha!

Anonymous said...

There are now pictures on the listing for Nic Cage's Bel Air house, take a look! http://guests.themls.com/profile_page.cfm?mls=08-309625&tab=search It's gorgeous