Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Heath Ledger's Old L.A. Hideaway Back on Market



SELLER: Adrian Bellani
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,995,000
SIZE: 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Buckle your safety belts, butter beans, because today Your Mama plans to take a rather circuitous route to get the the meat of the celebrity real estate matter at hand, a well-known Los Angeles, CA residence known as The Tree House, once owned by Ellen Degeneres, later owned by Heath Ledger, and recently listed with $2,995,000 price tag.

Anyone and everyone who pays any attention at all to the celebrity real estate scene knows well that stand-up comedienne turned 16-time Daytime Emmy-winning chat show queen bee Ellen Degeneres suffers from a wicked case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle. Just as soon as ol' Ellen gets her under panties in the cupboards, it seems, she gets ants in her pants and starts thinking about a new house to call home. Your Mama isn't sure why America's most beloved Sapphic sister rarely remains rooted in a single residence for more than a few years. It may (or may not) have something to do with the fact that she has an impressive track record for pulling in substantial profits on the sale of her homes or it may (or may not) have something to do with something else. What do we know?

Anyhoo, the most recent example of Miz Degeneres' property capriciousness is her current multi-crib compound in Beverly Hills (CA) that she cobbled together in 2007 and 2008 at a cost of well over $40,000,000 and until recently had on the open market with a pocketbook punishing asking price of $60,000,000. The listing disappeared from the internet a couple weeks ago and since all kinds of scuttlebutt has made its way down the Platinum Triangle gossip grapevine to Your Mama. One person told us (but we can't confirm) that he heard Miz Degeneres may have a well-heeled party on the line. We also heard (but can not confirm) from the always catty Kitty Hazclaws that "she just got sick of all the Eurotrash traipsing through the house" and took it off the market. What all that means is we don't really have an iota about what's going on in Miz Degeneres' over-active real estate brain. About all we know for sure is that the property was on the market earlier this year and now it's not.

Something else we do know is that many of Ellen Degeneres' domiciles wind up in the hands of other high profile media and entertainment industry denizens. In November 2007, Miz Degeneres sold a magnificent estate with an historic George Washington Smith-designed mansion in Montecito, CA for $20,000,000 to billionaire Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google. She'd only bought the property 13 months earlier for $15,750,000.

Several years before, in 2003, she pocketed $4,500,000 when she sold a contemporized traditional mansion in a star-studded enclave in the Bev Hills Post Office area to celebrity manager Rick Yorn. The house had previously been owned by sitcom actress Jami Gertz and later by entertainment industry honcho Tom Freston. Mister Yorn in turn sold the house in 2005 for $5,275,000 to bubblegum pop singer turned apparel tycoon Jessica Simpson who, as far as Your Mama knows, still owns the posh property.

In the mid-Naughts the trailblazing showbiz lesbian pieced together a 4-property compound nestled into a forested hollow in the Hollywood Hills above Laurel Canyon. One of the properties was then and is now known as The Tree House due to its sylvan perch in the thick tree tops that surround the house. Miz Degeneres purchased the largest portion of the compound from another A-list homosexual Tinseltowner, Will & Grace co-creator Max Mutchnick who–as it turns out–later sold her the largest portion of the sprawling Bev Hills compound where she currently resides with her long-locked lady-wife actress Portia de Rossi (Better Off Ted, Nip/Tuck, Arrested Development).

Miz Degeneres' Laurel Canyon compound wrapped around a property owned by music and entertainment industry bigwig Guy Oseary who sold in 2006 and, in a celebrity real estate coinky-dink, moved to a much larger celebrity-style spread in the same secluded, famous folk-filled enclave where–as mentioned above–Miz Degeneres once owned the abode now owned by Jessica Simpson. But we digress from our digression....

In March of 2006 Miz Degeneres sold two of the four parcels that made up the bulk of her Laurel Canyon compound–the portion(s) she'd bought from Mister Mutchnick–to comedian Will Ferrell, a shamelessly funny man who parlayed his fame and popularity on Saturday Night Live into low-brow comedy movie super stardom. Another of the compound's homes, a boxy and glassy contemporary, wound up in the hands of daytime soap story stud Adrian Bellani (Guiding Light, Passions, RPM Miami) who in September 2007 paid, as per property records, $1,995,000 for the 2,267 square foot hillside house. Mister Bellani flipped the house back on the market in May 2009 but, alas, there were no takers. The 2 bedroom and 3 bathroom pad was de-listed in early February 2010 and our research show it remains in his property portfolio.

That, at long last, brings us back to the real estate matter at hand, The Tree House property that just popped up on the market with an asking price of $2,995,000.

In August 2005, about two years before Mister Bellani acquired the above-mentioned contemporary, Miz Degeneres sold The Tree House for $2,100,000 to a man who quickly flipped the property in June 2006 for $2,300,000 to Heath Ledger. Mister Ledger, as all the children surely know, went to meet the Great Director in the Sky in January 2008 when he accidentally overdosed on a lethal cornucopia of prescription pills. Within six months the executors of Mister Ledger's estate sold The Tree House for $2,500,000 to a Miami-based corporate concern.

A few minutes poking around on the interweb turns up evidence that directly connects the Miami-based corporate concern to a man named Gerardo Celasco, which happens to be the very same name that Adrian Bellani was born with. Gerardo Celasco also happens to be the very same name that appears on the deeds and documents for the boxy and glassy contemporary house next door that Mister Bellani bought in September 2007.

Now, children, let's be sensible: We're not able to say with 100% certainty that the Gerardo Celasco who bought The Tree House in July 2008 is the same Gerardo Celasco/Adrian Bellani who owns the boxy and glassy contemporary next door. Indeed, stranger things have happened but what are the odds that one Gerardo Celasco bought a house immediately next door to a different Gerardo Celasco?

Current listing information does not indicate the square footage of The Tree House but the Los Angeles County Tax Man's website indicates it's 1,861 square feet. Listing information does show the walled and gated 1951 modern has 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms plus an office.

A gated brick stair case climbs down the hillside from the street to the front door but owners and their more favored guests are more likely to enter through the electronically gated driveway that gently slopes down from street level to the two-car garage and back entrance to the house.

Intimately scaled living and dining rooms both have pitched wood ceilings, polished concrete floors, and wide banks glass panels that slide and swing open to the approximately 2,500 square foot deck that cantilevers over the hillside and juts into the leafy tree tops of a mature sycamore grove.

The dining area of the deck, just off the dining room and the sleek galley-style kitchen, is open to the sky while the largest lounge area is shaded by a vast trellis structure that creates a confusing but pleasant striped pattern of shadows on the deck. Tucked back in to a cozy corner a seating area offers a built-in bench sofa and drop down projection screen for outdoor movie and reality tee-vee watching.

It's unclear to Your Mama if Mister Bellani occupies this residence, the one next door, or neither one. Given that we know about as much about Mister Bellani as a turnip knows about molecular metaphysics, it's entirely possible that Mister Bellani uses both of the properties as high-style and high-priced rental properties.

Certainly there are a lot of anti-Californians who will carp about the ridiculousness of the near three million dollar asking price for such a small house with no pool and no big city view. Your Mama also knows there are scads of scornful Real Estate Chicken Littles righteously convinced it's pie in the sky to even imagine this house could be sold for half a million more than was paid for it three years ago, before the economy totally soured and tanked the real estate market.

Howeveh, children, at the risk of engaging in the dangerous art of real estate soothsaying Your Mama would not be least bit surprised if this house sold quickly and if not close to asking price then certainly more than the $2,500,000 Mister Bellani's corporate concern (allegedly) paid for the place. It's just too good and too unique not to appeal to a deep pocketed buyer willing to pay big bucks to own a modestly-scaled residence that churns with a classic SoCal kind of modern architectural chutzpah. We shall see, puppies, we shall see.

listing photos: Rodeo Realty

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Mama! Kitty stole that from my comments Mama! It was posted 9/12 4:40 PM on the Ecclestone blog. Give credit where it due and back off Pussy!

Anonymous said...

I'm with you Mama, this place will fly off the shelves. I'll put my Price Is Right guess at around $2.750.000.

I wonder if there's room for a pool?

Lady J

Shopgirl said...

Ledger and Williams were never married. Can't wait to find out if Ellen's compound sells.

lil' gay boy said...

Lady J, the aerial view shows a site that seems too steep for a conventional pool, but with a little reinforcement to the enormous deck one could probably cheat with an Endless Pool.

Despite being hard up against the street, the driveway is contrived with the drop in level in such a way that maximizes the tight site for privacy. The spectacular treetop deck (with its confusing trellis) makes the most of outdoor privacy; with properly canted beams, the overhead trellis could make overlapping shadows of the hot, high summer sun but still allow for the lower winter sun to shine through.

All-in-all a stunning MCM that I would not be surprised if it actually garnered more than $3M in a very short time (let us not forget all those morbid crazies who believe a home once owned by a prematurely deceased actor increases its value...)

Anonymous said...

The patio is dreamy..and adult tree house. The seller may want to reconsider the low price.

Anonymous said...

I can absolutely confirm this is Adrian's house as he has spoken about it at cocktail parties here in El Lay. Adrian is SO HOT Licks to you from the Gays!

Anonymous said...

Back in the 90's I had a contact number for Dan Aykroyd @ 'The Treehouse'. But, knowing Danny's eccentricities, he might have actually lived in a damn tree.

Anonymous said...

When I read this post I was waiting for...."You know if Your Mama, the Doctor Cooter, the long bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, and the mean ol' pussy Sugar, were in the mood for a $2,995,000 Tree House, and we are certainly not, we could see ourselves in this house." From what you have always said it is the right size, etc.
I always try to get Your Mama's take on things, and I've read this blog since it's inception, I thought for sure you would have mentioned that. Whether wrong or right, I love this blog!

Unknown said...

I heard from a very reliable source that actress Lindsay Lohan wants to purchase this property and eventually live in it.
Lohan and Ledger were said to be very very close just before his death.

Lindsay currently rents a beach house in Venice Beach and has said to own a property somewhere in LA which she leases out.. Can you confirm this Your Mama for me and us?

hippie canyon said...

This house was up for sale not long ago, with nobody interested. I think the price was about $3.3 at that time. I like it, even if its a bit too Marin County for my taste. There's room to expand upwards, and for a small fortune caissons could be hoisted in to allow for a pool. I'm sure if Lohan buys it, she'll do something tacky (like many others) and have the pool put in front(!). Imagine, Lohan buying a nearly all-wood home... leaving candles burning, ciggies in bed... not a pretty ending at all.

Anonymous said...

Does Ms Lohan really have the dough to buy this place?? Even if she does, she should worry about bigger things..like that lately she looks more aged than her Ma.

Anonymous said...

I may have to disagree with you on this one, Mama. I know the house very well. It's small, no room for a pool, and DARK. I'll be surprised if he gets what he paid for it.

Mama'sBoy said...

"catty Kitty Hazclaws that "she just got sick of all the Eurotrash traipsing through the house" and took it off the market."
I am peeing my pants!
Still getting down for you, Mama--every day!
Love
Mama'sBoy

Anonymous said...

1) Lohan: She owns nothing, she rents her current house and public records shows she skipped on her two prior rentals owing money (El Contento and Alta Loma). She's also not worked, so her fiscal condition is worse, not better. She may WANT this house, but - short of someone buying it for her - not going to happen.

2) Price. $1.9-$2.1MM tops. This house HAS been tested higher than $2.5MM in better times and did NOT sell. The market spoke. Heath actually paid the proper market price. And the market is LOWER now.

Missing the "money" factors (views, pool) for the Hills. Address in impeccable, but the house next door sets the comps.