Sunday, November 6, 2011

Weekend Nugget Number Two: Jennifer Aniston



UPDATE: Since this was discussed below Miz Aniston has come out publicly and admitted she did look at the apartment in question but goes on to say she did not proceed towards a purchase. Make of that what you will.

Rumor has it sitcom star and romcom queen Jennifer Aniston caught a costly case of the Celebrity Real Estate Fickle.

Since she landed a co-starring role (and earned many tens of millions of dollars from) Friends Miz Aniston has lived primarily in Los Angeles. In April of this year (2011), with an itch to spend more time in The Big Apple where her actor man-beau Justin Theroux (American Psycho, Six Feet Under, John Adams mini-series) resides, Miz Aniston coughed up $2,069,084 for a 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom apartment directly below a compact 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom penthouse with wrap around terraces that she bought at the same time from hairstyling honcho Sally Hershberger for $4,950,000. The plan, presumably, was to combine the two small apartments located in a top-notch Bing & Bing building in the West Village into a still not particularly large duplex penthouse with 270 degree views from downtown to Midtown Manhattan.

Alas, Miz Aniston has reportedly changed her real estate mind and signed contracts to acquire a pricey pad in a particularly posh building that overlooks private, pristine and historicGramercy Park. The high-style, full-service building was developed by boutique hotelier and property developer Ian Schrager, designed by soo-blime minimalist architect John Pawson and has only 23 apartments (some have been combined). Residents have access to the copious amenities of the adjacent Gramercy Park Hotel–once funky now terribly chic and owned by Mister Shrager, natch–including room service, housekeeping, valet parking with car wash services, event planning and butler services, personal shopping and delivery services, and membership to the hotel spa and David Barton gym. We assume the apartment comes with a key to gated Gramercy Park across the street.

Listing information shows the apartment Miz Aniston is (allegedly) on the cusp of acquiring, listed at a superstar-sized $8,700,000, measures 2,873 square feet with 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms and pocketbook punishing monthly maintenance and common charges of $11,258.

Gorgeous wood floors run throughout the apartment that has generous 11'8" ceilings and over-sized windows with park and courtyard views. The contemporary crib features a long entrance gallery with nearby powder pooper, and a large living/dining room with fireplace and floor-to-ceiling windows, a sleek center island eat-in kitchen. The park view master suite has a walk-in closet/dressing room larger than some New York City studio apartments and an attached bathroom with two sinks, a tub for two and separate shower cubicle. Each of the two guest rooms–both set up as a nursery by the seller–has large windows and en suite terliting and bathing facility. We imagine (and hope) Miz Aniston will bring in her team of smart architects and nice, gay decorators to remove the twee and toile-ish day-core of the seller and replace it with something more appropriate for a gal whose tastes run more towards modern than Connecticut country house in the city.

Other residents–or at least owners–of apartments in the swank building include blue chip gallerist Alexander Acquavella and German-born but Paris-based haute fashion über-icon Karl Lagerfeld who has his little (or never) used unit in the building currently on the market with an asking price of $5,200,000.

We can't fathom why Miz Aniston would switch real estate gears and head for Gramercy Park so quickly after spending more than seven million clams on two downtown apartments but, if we've said it once we've said to 56,417 times, such are the often fickle and inexplicable real estate ways of the rich and/or famous.

Back on the left coast Your Mama hears through the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine Miz Aniston has gone on the hunt for a new Tinseltown residence to lay her perfectly-maintained tresses after she was kissed by the real estate leprechaun in June (2011) when she sold her just renovated Beverly Hills, CA mansion to a mutual fund mogul from Orange County for a gasp-worthy $35,000,000 after just two months on the open market with an even more gaspy price tag of $42,000,000.

More than one of Your Mama's many Platinum Triangle informants have snitched to us that Miz Aniston has peeped and poked around a number of deluxe homes in the ten million dollar range including a one-acre ridge-top spread in Beverly Hills owned by the scion of a prominent Los Angeles family as well as a sleek and sexy Hal Leavitt-designed house in the Trousdale Estates area of Bev Hills owned by AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips, decorated by Kelly Wearstler and recently acquired for well over $10,000,000 by music industry super-tycoon Simon Cowell.

Until she picks and purchases a fancy-pants new pad in Los Angeles, Miz Aniston and Mister Theroux have leased a temporary love nest in the form a modestly sized but still quite pricey gated residence near the tippy-top of the star-studded Bird Streets neighborhood above the Sunset Strip. We don't know what the couple coughs up each month for the 2 bedroom and 2 bathroom ranch-style residence but we do know it was last available with a $20,000 per month price tag.

Once again, we're not sure why Miz Aniston would opt to cough up twenty grand a month to rent a house when she has long owned another residence in the Bird Street neighborhood that is, buy our rudimentary calculations, just over half a mile from her and Mister Theroux's rental. But again, who are we to make sense of the wacky ways of celebrities and other high profile peeps with pockets deep enough to indulge their every real estate whim and desire?

listing photos and floor plan: Prudential Douglas Elliman

35 comments:

Little Miss Smoke and Mirrors said...

Monthly maintenance of more than $11,000?!? Quick, someone grab the defibrillator!

Anonymous said...

Hmm, would it be too bitchy to comment that maybe she was swayed by the photo of the baby crib?

Anonymous said...

oh mama
you could write a book on the real estate adventures of the FRIENDS cast alone! I love it. thanks

Anonymous said...

I love the Aniston gossip always.

I absolutely adore this building in NYC and Grammercy. This does seem pricey compared with Karl Lagerfeld's unit 3 floors down but I am sure Ms. Jenn got her deal!

OH la la... can't wait for a East Coast and West Coast Feature in AD on Jenn's new Adventures in Real Estate!

Desert Donna said...

We wont know if her real estate fickle was "costly" until she sells her New York apartments, no?? Shes done pretty well so far is all I am saying..

Anonymous said...

The apartment floor plan is awkward, and the view is OVER the park, not into it, and not particularly spectacular. Anistan usually has better taste than this.

If she bought this apartment, the BF picked it out.

Anonymous said...

Well she did buy her other NY apartments before she and Theroux started dating. Could it be that the new place is one that they both chose, offers more privacy, and most importantly for the gossips...more space for the family they seem to want?
Similarly in LA, I think she uses her place on Blue Jay Way as an office for her production company, and she and Theroux probably wanted to jointly pick a place while they search for permanent digs.

Anonymous said...

The Grammercy Park building was featured on the "Selling New York" show.

Anonymous said...

I bet she has a bun in the oven.

Anonymous said...

I think she is trying to drown her sadness from not having stable relationships and children by buying and selling real estate all the time.
What a shame.

Anonymous said...

OCCUPY JENNIFER ANISTON

Anonymous said...

Good for Ms. Aniston that she has the money to live where she wants and buy what she considers the perfect place/s to live. I suspect she is a lot happier and content with her life than most people would like to believe. I love this new place in NYC, and she'll probably have no trouble unloading the old place making a nice little profit, too.

Anonymous said...

All you want to know:

http://streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/605889-condop-50-gramercy-park-north-gramercy-park-new-york

Anonymous said...

My Gawd, who put that pink paint and flowered poofy curtains and Aunt Sophie's department store French provincial arm-wah in a John Pawson apartment? And do that in a not identifiably ironic way?

Talk about clueless . . . .

Anonymous said...

Simon Cowell bought a new house? Which will be his main residence? Where is it?!

Anonymous said...

She is to beauty what a Yugo is to transportation.

Anonymous said...

hello jenny analston i love u jenny annyston u r so bland. Blond. and u r my friends like on tv friends ha ha im made a funny u buy so many houses u mmakr many decors and balinese pretensions with Hal levitt modernism jenny anuston i love your chic bland
hairstyle oh jenny if only i could escape the quiet desperation of my desperately sad life just to bee u for one day i would make so many bomb movies but have billions 2 buy houses instead of sex...who cares i have sooooo much to replace my inner nothing i am famous so kiss my feet...yes.
jeeny anuston you r like goddesses
of the greek debt.

Anonymous said...

jenny ammostun life is just a boowl of cherries until you wind up with brad and then it was the pitts.

Anonymous said...

It seems obvious that this is a purchase now that she's loved up with Theroux. The previous NY purchases are smaller and were bought before she and Theroux became a couple. They seem to be joint home shopping on both coasts, and I expect she will put her other NY places on the market once this place has had an overhaul and is ready for them to live in.

Most curious to see what they settle on in LA since she just indicated that this will remain their home base while promoting her breast cancer project. The $10 million range seems fitting given her desire to downsize and live bicoastally.

Anonymous said...

3:36 I enjoyed that. Well done.

European governments are intent upon creating a tax on buying and selling securities both to raise money and to slow down or stop the dangerous rapid computer trading that can bring down markets. I would suggest a stiff tax on buying and selling real estate too to slow down people like Anniston and to take away a nice chunk of their excess money for better purposes. I don't know what Sotheby's charges to auction art, but I suspect both buyer and seller pay about 15%. I'd apply that number to real estate transactions, the premium going to the local government.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 7:06 Why would we do what European countries are doing? It obviously is not working there. As far as a "stiff tax", people in Ms. Annistons bracket are already giving up a majority of their income in taxes, to carry the 50% of the country that pays nothing in taxes.

Calgary Realtors said...

I agree with Desert Donna - while I don't have a record of all her real estate transactions, it does seem like she's done pretty well.

Anonymous said...

8:07 FYI The transaction tax has yet to be enacted in Europe. Since the top tax bracket is, what?, 39% what makes you think Anniston is giving up a "majority of [her] income" in taxes? And that 39% applies only beyond a certain amount. It has been amply demonstrated that people who pay "nothing" in taxes (aside from some corporations and clever super rich) don't have enough income to tax and in addition pay a larger % of their meager income in other taxes than the better off pay in income taxes. I think you are sadly misinformed on economic and tax matters. A bit too much Fox News, perhaps?

Anonymous said...

The Urban-Brookings center, again using statistics from the Congressional Budget Office, found the same trend. In a table charting tax rates between 1979 and 2007, the CBO reported that the average effective income tax rate (that is, the percentage paid after deductions and credits) for the richest 1 percent of earners began at 21.8 percent in 1979, rose to as high as 24.2 percent in 1996 and 2000 and had dropped to 19 percent by 2007.

Anniston is certainly in the top 1% of earners in the USA. It is doubtful that she pays more than 20% at most and if she has a clever tax attorney I would bet almost anything that she pays much less than 20%. That is why she has so much money to lavish on multiple houses.

Anonymous said...

"The transaction tax has yet to be enacted in Europe."

It's not Europe, it's the E.U - there's a difference. Also, Britain has said it will veto any transaction tax so it's never gonna happen.

Anonymous said...

Europe or E.U. geez peez, whatever. Why so niggly?
We will see what happens with the transaction tax. It hasn't been decided yet, so I would not be so sure about what will happen. It has actually been proposed for the US too, but of course the GOP plutocrats don't support it.

Anonymous said...

Less than 20%?? Your mad. I earn a fraction of what Jen does, and I pay more than that. And this does not factor in captial gains and state tax. Go to something other than the CBO Obama "everything gonna be allright" web site to get your facts dear.. I say spend it Jen, you earned it!!

Anonymous said...

The only logical reason why Jennifer would switch to a new apartment in NYC is that she now doesn't want to go through the lengthy renovation process it would take to combine the other two apartments. It looks like all she would have to do with this new apartment is redecorate and maybe some minor renovations. She wouldn't have to gut the whole apartment.

Anonymous said...

Back in one of Mama's posts on the earlier NYC purchases, I commented that I very much doubted she would ever actually combine those two units (way too complicated and time consuming), and it looks like I was right.

Knowing someone on the Board of an adjacent building to that one, I know that the neighbors will be thrilled to hear she's moving out because the paps have been a real pain in the ass. Can imagine that in her building, they will be jumping up and down at the news.

I think she seriously overpaid for the Sally Hershberger part of that equation (and in fact the other part as well), and that she'll have a tough time finding another Jennifer Aniston to cough up what she paid -- not that it probably makes a lick of difference to her.

And in consistent form, she seems to be paying a good deal up over top dollar for another just so-so space over in Grammercy. This new building gets so much hype because of the Pawson and Schrager connections and its placement overlooking the park, but it's just not that great. I don't know who her broker is but she seems to be getting bad guidance from whoever she's listening to, and she doesn't seem to understand the market herself.

Anonymous said...

Less than 20%?? Your mad. I earn a fraction of what Jen does, and I pay more than that. And this does not factor in captial gains and state tax.

You prove the point. I guess you never read about Warren Buffett (taxable income about 40 million; gross income about 60 million) who says he pays less (as a %) of his income than do secretaries in his office. The reason the super rich pay so little is often precisely because capital gains tax and the tax on dividends is so low. You are very naive if you think rich people on the whole pay a higher % of income than the middle class. Many do not. Read up on the income tax question before you embarrass yourself further. You need to reread the info in the post at 9:55 am.

Anonymous said...

Anniston according to celebrity net worth has a net worth of over 150 million. Her earnings for 2007-8 totaled 27 million; next year, 25 million; 2009-10 were 27 million and 2020-11 were 28 million.

Anonymous said...

(Ha, to agree with Anon 9:40- someone tell Michael K, it was definitely the nurseries that sealed the deal.)

Enjoy beautiful 23rd Street, Jen! I'm taking this rumor with a chunk o salt, sounds like Schrager PR or something. And while I happen to like the Gramercy area a lot, I'm a Normal, and not a Sleb. I imagine even a key to the park would become boring after a while, Jen. But hey, you can have a butler on call, I guess? There's not a lot else to do around there, though Rolf's German-American restaurant serves delicious Manhattans. I've seen this Schrager project- residence for years now, and it remains charm-free to me. Smarmily chic, like living at Soho House or something.

Yes she overpaid for the Hershberger aerie, yes it would be a pain to combine with the other unit down in GV. Still has ten times as much character as this place would. I myself would dig the outdoor space, at least. But, what do I know. I doubt this Gramercy move by Aniston is true, it seems like a planted rumor by the Schrager people. Anyway. I'm still rocking my "Rachel" hairdo, no matter what anyone says.

Jeannified said...

Just read that she said at a red carpet event this past weekend that she is NOT buying this place. Now let's see if she really ends up doing just that.

Anonymous said...

Apparently her rep confirmed that she isn't the buyer on this place, but is in the process of combining the two West Village places currently. When she and Theroux were recently in NY they reportedly stayed at the Four Seasons because of the renovations. If true, sounds like she is staying put in the West Village, at least for the time being.

Anonymous said...

I actually went to high school with the girl that owns this apartment. It was decorated by Charlotte Moss to the person commenting on the decor. She is a lovely girl with a VERY rich dad.