Thursday, January 6, 2011

Palm Beach Says Bye-Bye To Peter and Marion Madoff

SELLER: Peter and Marion Madoff
LOCATION: Palm Beach, FL
PRICE: $6,500,000
SIZE: 5,473 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The family of imprisoned former financier Bernie Madoff has been much in the news the last few weeks. On December 11th, exactly two years to the day of Daddy Madoff's arrest, his eldest son Mark hung himself with a dog's leash in his downtown New York City loft while his youngest child slumbered unknowingly in a nearby room. Word now comes slip sliding down the real estate gossip grapevine that Marion Madoff, the wife of Bernie's baby brother Peter, has put the couple's posh Palm Beach, FL pad up for sale with an asking price of $6,500,000.

Big, bad Bernie Madoff is, of course, serving a 150-year sentence in the slammer for his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands and left many destitute. A June 2010 article in New York Magazine about Bernie Madoff's life in prison reported that–are you sitting down for this one, ducklings–the Ponzi putz "boasts of his fraud" and said his only crime was to take money from people who were already wealthy, greedy and wanted more." He even doles out financial advice to the other inmates who include a mob boss or two and at least one international spy. Gawd. You're a real big macho man about the prison yard now, aren't you Mister Madoff? Impoverished wife, dead son, family members under criminal investigation and you're clinging to your delusional B.M.O.C. self-image? It's just pathetic.

Anyhoodles poodles, Mister Peter Madoff worked for his big brother Bernie since 1965 and at the time the shit went down in late 2008 he was employed as a senior managing director on the legal side of Madoff Securities. Yes, bunnies, there was actually a large and profitable arm of Bernie Boy's enterprise that was on the up and up. Mister Peter Madoff remains the subject of a criminal investigation in regards to some $200 million of Bernie Boy's ill-gotten gains that relatives (allegedly) received and this intense scrutiny by the Feds may or may not have anything to do with the real estate matter at hand.

Property records reveal that Mister and Missus Peter Madoff purchased their Palm Beach mini-estate in May of 2001 for $3,752,000. Based on the property records available, it does not appear to Your Mama that any mortgage was secured by the property at the time of the purchase. On the 8th of November in 2006 Mister Peter Madoff quitclaimed the Palm Beach property over to his wife Marion. This means, technically, legally, only Missus Marion Madoff is selling the Palm Beach property, Mister Peter Madoff having abdicated any ownership in 2006. Interestingly, but probably not surprisingly, at least some of the title and property records for Peter and Marion Madoff's mansion in Palm Beach link back the old Madoff offices at 885 Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.

Listing information for the Peter Madoff's Palm Beach residence shows the single story mansard roofed manse comes in at 5,473 square feet while the Palm Beach Tax Man shows a considerably more sizable 7,373 square feet. Both listing and property records show 5 bedrooms and 4.5 poopers including a master suite that overlooks the gardens and contains dual terliting and bathing facilities.

A circular drive cuts twice through the row of tall trees trimmed topiary-style into fat lollipop-like cylinders and a second driveway stretches from the street back to a small motor court and three-car garage topped by additional living quarters of unspecified and unknown utility.

Interior spaces include an intimately-scaled paneled library with built-in bookshelves and a gleaming gold and honey-colored formal living room with dark wood accent pieces, simple but heavy moldings and a wood burning fireplace. The formal dining room is large enough to hold two six-top tables and a smaller adjacent room that overlooks the .48 acre grounds has yet another table for six. The crisp all-white kitchen looks recently redone with snow-white Shaker-style lower cabinets, glass-fronted uppers, very lightly-veined marble counter tops, de rigueur high-grade stainless steel appliances and a trio of wood and metal stools pulled up to an island breakfast counter.

A tented patio with natural fiber wall coverings and chunky dark wicker furniture spills out to a symmetrically stylish if rigidly landscaped side yard with more trees painstakingly trimmed topiary-style into lollipop shapes. The largest outdoor space is contained in a large courtyard bounded on two sides by the house and the other two sides by very high and meticulously squared hedges. A pergola that drips with what looks to Your Mama like gold-colored dahlias sits next to a long rectangular swimming pool sunk precisely on axis with the symmetrical facade of the house. A row of fountains that run up each side of the swimming pool look like there's a dozen minimum-wage men buried beneath the lawn who shoot out unending arches of urine into the air.

Lest anyone worry that ol' Petey Madoff and his Missus Marion might go homeless once they sell their winter hideaway in Palm Beach, y'all can relax. A peep and poke through public property records reveals that he and the Missus retain joint ownership of a significant spread in Old Westbury, NY, a hoity-toity community home to some of Long Island's most lavish estates and blue-blooded families not to mention mob daughter Victoria Gotti and her trio of hell-cat sons.
Property records show that in March of 1988 the Peter Madoffs forked over $2,000,000 for a 2.012 acre estate that backs up on two sides to the Glen Oaks Club. The Suffolk County Tax Man's records show a 14-room multi-winged mansion built in 1935 that measures 7,992 square feet with 5 bedrooms and 4.5 poopers. About 1.5 years later, in November of 1990, the Peter Madoff's laid out another $2,500,000 for an adjacent 2.014 acre parcel. As best as we can tell, no mortgage was taken on the property at the time it was purchased. Public tax records show the Mister and Missus Peter Madoff 2010 tax bill came to a combined $64,845 and two damn cents.

listing photos (top): Sotheby's International Realty
aerial photo (bottom): Bing

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like the library, but I am perplexed by the table that seems to be placed in front of the fireplace in the living room. I gather one doesn't need a fire in Florida, but still it seems odd to block a view of the fireplace. I also don't cotton to lunch counters in houses. Even in the kitchen one should be able to sit down at a table.

Anonymous said...

Oh, that Palm Beach landscaping!

What one can do in the sub-tropics, with an army of minimum wage gardeners.

lil' gay boy said...

Just like the photos I was given of brother Bernie's Manhattan lair, this home's decor is a textbook version of what is unbecomingly known as "Eighties Excess" ––– the Reagan years of Star Wars and Evil Empires, big shoulders and even bigger egos, culminating in what Anon 12:34 pointed out about the "Palm Beach landscaping"...oy.

One note Mama; iffin the Peter Madoff's are wintering in Old Westbury now, it's the Nassau County tax man they'll be dodging, not Suffolk.

And that photo of what appears to be an outtake from True Blood should be captioned:

Victoria Gotti & Sons, Vampires Inc.

It's a keeper...

Jimbo said...

It still messes with my mind that a guy would use a quitclaim of his interest in a property to his wife (or anyone else) to avoid legal attachments, etc.

Florida is one of those glorious states that have made [Illinois] Land Trusts legal; and if you really, really want to hide ownership, and protect your property from any and all attachments, then a Land Trust is the way to go.

Makes you wonder just how smart the local RE lawyers in Florida really are?

Anonymous said...

The outside of the house is beautiful!!!! Love the driveway.

Anonymous said...

With all of the legal issues still going on with this Madoff mess, I'm surprised some of the authorities somehow can't stop the sale of this house until everything is figured out--seems like it would be easier to take the house than try to find where they stashed another $6.5-million--if it comes to that.

Amanda B. Rekendwith said...

"A row of fountains that run up each side of the swimming pool look like there's a dozen minimum-wage men buried beneath the lawn who shoot out unending arches of urine into the air."

Always with the bon mots!
You make me laugh, Mama. Thanks.

steve Mawson said...

Maybe it's just me, but I can't help but note the seemingly and alarmingly high number of phallic shapes amidst the architectural and interior design, such as the long narrow windows between balanced bookcases or even narrower windows, or cylindrical hedges in a neat pair, or yet still the sprays of pubic hair in tall vases. Is it little Pete's subtle way of showing us the middle finger? And all those fountains in the pool just make me wanna pee. Which is what Pete-i-kins is doing on us with a meagre $64845 tax payment - such a grand contribution to the American economic black hole. Mama can you find out the name of his accountant, we need to talk.