Friday, September 16, 2011

Halle Berry Lists Canadian Hoose


SELLER: Halle Berry
LOCATION: Saint-Hippolyte, Quebec, Canada
PRICE: $1,898,000 (Canadia)
SIZE: 2,500 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Buckle up butter beans because, after a wee hiatus, the often unlucky in love man magnet and showbiz superstar Halle Berry just jumped back on the celebrity real estate merry-go-round.

We last discussed Miz Berry and her real estate doings back in November 2009 when we dissed and discussed a wonderfully secluded 1.33 acre spread in Benedict Canyon area of Beverly Hills that Miz Berry had on the market with a $5,000,000 price tag. Miz Berry bought the bougainvillea-draped 2 bedroom and 2 crapper crib that marries Old World rusticity with fancy modern conveniences in October 2011 for $2,275,000. After about three-quarters of a year, Miz Berry withdrew the house from the open market and it remains, as per property records, part of her property portfolio.

Said house, tucked deep into the hills of Beverly, is not, mind y'all, where Miz Berry currently lives. As far as we know–which is about as much as a tit mouse–The Oscar-winning actress remains in residence just above the Sunset Strip in the gut remodeled Mediterranean mansion she bought in July 2005 for $5,995,000 from child sitcom star turned race car driver Frankie Muniz.

About a year before we yammered on about her spare dwelling tucked discreetly into the hills of Beverly, Your Mama briefly chit-chatted with the children about a rustic-modern barn-style hoose in the sylvan boonies north of Montreal–that's in Canada, kids–that Miz Berry and her man-beau/baby daddy Gabriel Aubry we're rumored and reported to have purchased. We're not quite sure what they paid for the somewhat isolated property located about an hour north of Montreal in teeny-tiny Saint-Hippolyte but we know it was last listed with an asking price of 1,850,000 Canadian dollars.

With every respect for Canucks of all stripes and types, Bumfuck, Canada might seem to some like a strange place for a pampered Tinseltowner like Halle Berry to buy a private hideaway but Mister Aubry, a helluva looker who struts his man stuff as a male model, is Canadian. Tuh-duh!

The impossibly attractive couple, who together made one baby with an unusual name Your Mama isn't entirely sure how to pronounce, kicked each other to the curb last fall. Miz Berry says it's amicable. No longer in need of a remotely located Canadian love nest she/they recently flipped the heavily forested lake front property back on the market with an asking price of 1,898,000 Canadian dollars. According to Your Mama's trusty currency conversion contraption that amount translates at today's rates to $1,918,490 in U-nited States dollars.

Current listing information states the property encompasses 63 acres while reports and marketing materials from the time of the Miz Berry and Mister Aubry purchased the property show the spread spans 68 acres. We don't know why the discrepancy, so don't bother asking. Anyhoo, the clean-lined barn-like residence measures around 2,500 square foot over three floors and contains 3 bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms.

The unassuming clean-lined barn-like exterior allows the structure to sit in compete harmony with the untamed wilderness that surrounds it and hides unexpectedly dramatic, voluminous, and contemporary interior spaces. Listing information shows the house measures about 2,500 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms.

The cozy but amply-sized main living area has radiant heated concrete floors, soaring vaulted ceilings over the living area, a monolithic cinder block fireplace, and wide wood-framed sliding glass doors that open the room the pristine woods that surround the house. There's an oddly old-timey wood stove in the dining area where the pine-paneled ceiling has been lowered to a more intimate dinner party friendly height.

The adjacent kitchen has an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling wood-framed glass panels that muddy the visual distinction between indoors and out. This is probably a disorienting but thrilling experience in the dead of winter when it's 900 below zero outside and warm and cozy inside thanks to the radiant heated floors. The kitchen gives way to a lake view screened porch where Your Mama imagines is the perfect place to laze away a few weeks in the late-late summer when the days are still warm but the evenings gather a sharp coolness about them.

Upstairs there are 2 family bedrooms, an office area with cantilevered built-in desk/work surface, and a not entirely private lofted master bedroom that's open to and overlooks the living room. The master bedroom has direct access to the only upstairs bathroom that's shared by the other two bedrooms. More on the in a second. A swinging section of the glass-panel railing in the allows access to a spine tingling catwalk that rings the upper section of the living room and allows someone far more brave than Your Mama to shimmy around at great peril and slide open the massive windows to allow a cool breeze to sweep through the house.

The second floor bathroom, as mentioned above the only full bath in the house, has dark slate tile with light colored grouting on the floor, pine-paneled ceiling, large vanity with–we think–just one sink, a claw-footed tub with tree-top views, and a tile shower area separated from the rest of the room by a single hanging panel of frosted glass. A second hanging panel of frosted glass at the opposite end of the room provides barely even an illusion of privacy for the toilet. Now listen, chickens, we don't mind that this remote getaway has only one full bathroom for all occupants to share. It's a quite remote, low-key and, despite it's airiness, very intimate vacation house, certainly not the sort of place you bring a casual acquaintance or co-worker for a long weekend. This is the sort of place you only bring close friends and family. In other words, just the people who you don't mind sharing a terlit with. None the less, had we been designing this bathroom we would have provided for a far more secluded and fully enclosed cubicle for the toilet. A little privacy goes a long way in a house with just one full bathroom and sleeping quarters for 3 to 6 six people.

Back on the ground floor, according to listing information, there's a direct access single car garage with additional storage space, a laundry room, and a powder pooper.

Several decks and tree-shaded patios extend stretch the living space to the outdoors where pathways meander through the all but untamed landscaping that surrounds the house. The land falls gently away from the back of the house down to the edge of the lake where listing photos show a pair of Adirondack chairs set down perfectly into the natural landscape. With scenery this spectacular this there's really little need for a manicured lawn or rows of precisely pruned hedges.

While Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter sometimes entertain the far-fetched notion of leaving the rat race behind for someplace far, far away like Canada or some other foreign land that isn't so completely foreign we'd have to eat things we've never heard of before, we don't, in truth, feel that we could bear the bitter depths of winter in the far northern reaches of the northern hemisphere. However, iffin we could we'd happily move right into this house. But for the (probably fixable) bathroom issue and that migraine-making wood stove (also fixable), Halle's house in the Canadian woods is just about perfect for escaping the bright lights of the big city.

In addition to the house she no longer wants in Saint-Hippolyte, her primary residence above the Sunset Strip and the other house in Beverly Hills, Miz Berry also owns a 5,000-plus square foot ocean front home just below Dick Clark's bluff-top compound in the guard-gated Malibu Cove Colony. Property records show the newly single mommy of one paid $8,500,000 for the curvaceous glass and white stucco crib back in October 2004.

Listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

I live close to this town and think the asking price should be about $1,200,000. The maison lacks charm with all that wood paneling on every ceiling and bare windows. I would keep the woodstove and add a few ceiling fans for heat circulation. Boring and cold.

Anonymous said...

Lovely property but definitely not for her as it is miles away from paparazzi and she might get cold wearing those god-awful denim cut offs. Throw those in the bin, girlfriend.

Anonymous said...

@ anon 7:33- China bought Canada last week, didn't you hear? It was a buy one, the US, get the neighbor to the north and PIIGS for free.

Mama - Does Ms. Berry have a Soho loft, or was her looking all for the paps/payment from developers?

Lady J

midTN said...

***


BRRRRRRRRRRRR.....

...the sterile house and the Canadian attitude.

They tend to be a very unhappy lot.

***

Anonymous said...

A bit too "orangey" for my taste, assuming it looks as orange in fact as it does in pictures.

Anonymous said...

7:33, the Canadian housing market is so overpriced and so over leveraged it is not funny.
My best friend and I predicted the housing crash in the US years before it happened and I am predicting the Canadian one.

I think they say 70 something percent of Canadian's income goes towards their housing costs.
I just had a radiologist from Vancouver move in next to me and he said he moved from there because there are no jobs for him and the housing prices are insane.

The Canadian housing market crash is gong to make the US one look like a blip on the radar. And at the end of the day, we have warm states with nice warm beaches and lakes, Canada is still a cold snowy craphole. I know where I would rather live.

How long do you think your housing market can survive when people are spending 7 to 10 times their income on a house?

Anonymous said...

Just a note to let Mama's American readers know that not all of Mama`s Canadian readers are as touchy as Anonymous 9/16 7:33 PM. We have some beautiful real estate and some bumfuck real estate, as does the U.S. and every other country in the world. There are some magnificent cottages in the Eastern Townships of Quebec and north of Toronto. Miss Berry is obviously unloading all her Canadian ASSets. I`m sure it`s nothing personal (the house anyway).

Sandpiper said...

Mama, I did recall this property from you post of some time ago. My first reaction was to be dog-sitting and spilling Merlot on the furniture. Right.

Tickled to see that you're still plugging away here!

Hugs!

P.S. Did you hear, or did I miss that you heard, Mr. Reynolds surrendered his hot mess in Fla. Wondering if it turned over Bernie-style, complete with furnishings and decor? Or, are there a line of dumpsters out front? (Meow, but couldn't resist commenting on it.)

angie said...

Perhaps it's just the angle of the photography, but the ceiling pitch is a bit too steep/sharp for my taste. Reminds me of an A frame vacation home I owned for all of a month before kicking myself and re-listing it because it made me feel claustrophobic.

Canada is beautiful. Some of the nicest people I know live in Toronto.

Anonymous said...

I would love to own this property. Canada is a beautiful place and they take better care of their citizens than USA does .

Anonymous said...

The photography is rather ghastly, made worse by poor Photoshop tweaks. Given the wide-open master bedroom, it appears to be strictly a weekend/summer place for an affluent Montreal-based childless couple who never has overnight guests. Its located near trendy Saint-Sauveur, and not too far from major winter ski areas. Its an enormous space to have to heat in the winter, and the road in would probably have to be plowed frequently. I have to wonder how bad the flies are during the short prime-time summer months.

Anonymous said...

Anon 3:36 PM, yes it's beautiful but every country has its problems. move there if you think we suck so bad.

Steve M said...

Boo hoo. NOT HAPPY. These new photo viewers don't enable us to ZOOM any more to see the bigger image that Mama so kindly loaded ! Not good. Why do these goddam stupid companies have to keep "tweaking" their web sites and insodoing make things worse ?

Anonymous said...

When you click on the pictures to expand them you get an obnoxious automobile ad that covers up part of the picture and that you cannot click away. I find this quite often and it is outrageous. Ads that blot out text or pictures you want to see. Mama, can you do something about this?

angie said...

Steve M, give IrfanView a try.

It's a free image viewer for Microsoft Windows that can view, edit, and convert image files among other things. It is noted for its small size, speed, ease of use, and ability to handle a wide variety of graphic file formats.

After initially becoming familiar with it, spending a little time to set the Preferences up just the way you want the program to work will be well worth it.

I abandoned my paid ACDSee program in favor of InfanView after ACDSee became too bloated and resource intensive, and just love it. Hope this helps.

http://www.irfanview.com/

angie said...

Steve M.. my suggestion for picture viewing would require you to first right click and save the image to your desktop, and then clicking on the saved image to launch the viewer so it can be resized. I think the photo viewer that comes with Windows 7 (and Vista too) will accomplish the same thing if you're not interested in a program per se.

If what you want is the ability to magnify images within your browser, I recommend installing/using the FireFox browser, and then downloading the Image Zoom 0.4.6 Add-on plugin to it.

lil' gay boy said...

Or, if you look closely, you'll see a URL at the bottom of the screen when you click on a picture; if you click on this URL link, it will open the image in a new window like it used to.

Thanks for nuthin', Blogger (but then I guess you get what you pay for...)

Kelsey said...

Love love love the wood ceilings. That would be great acoustics.

Anonymous said...

I love living in Canada and I was born in the us and spend tons of time there. Yes we do have old winters but I love the. I bundle up with blankets in front of a warm fire with my irish coffee and watch the snow fall. I love me a white Xmas and would hate it any other way and at least we don't have major earthquakes (at least in my part of Canada). And at least I don't have to pay for a broken arm in the hospital with the rest of my appendages. So to the person who said we Canadians are an unhappy lot, I laughed out loud to that! Hilarious!