Thursday, November 8, 2012

Cee Lo Green Downsizes Sunset Strip Rental

Since at least March 2011 rapper, songwriter, music producer and televised singing contest judge Cee Lo Green* (The Voice) leased a 4,200-ish square foot residence just above the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, CA owned—as it turns out—by actor, race car driver and indie pop rock band drummer Frankie Muniz (Malcolm in the Middle, the Agent Cody Banks franchise).

Howevuh hunnies, according to our always so freakishly well-informed friend and aide-de-camp Lucy Spillerguts Mister Green recently decamped Mister Muniz's updated 1941 traditional for a smaller, more contemporary crib in the so-called Bird Streets 'hood** high above the Sunset Strip.

Listing information Your Mama teased out of the interweb shows the house in question, tucked privately into the top of a quiet cul-de-sac, was last listed as a fully-furnished lease in early September (2012) at $18,000 per month. Of course, we don't know what the agreed upon rental price actually is and/or if the house was let completely, partially or un- furnished.

Property records show the current owner—well-known L.A.-based interior designer Darryl Wilson—paid $1,500,000 for the Bird Street nest in April 2007. The seller? None other than chisel-chinned hairdresser to the stars, beauty industry entrepreneur and occasional reality t.v. star Jonathan Antin (Blow Out, Shear Genius).

Marketing materials and online listings from when Mister Antin first heaved the house onto the market in March 2007 with an asking price of $1,699,000 show the single story mid-century residence measured 1,423 square feet with 2 bedrooms and 2.75 bathrooms.

As interior designers are inclined to do, Mister Wilson gave the post and beam contemporary a full face lift, nearly doubled its size and returned it to the open market in February 2011—according to documentation thoughtfully provided by Our Fairy Godmother Above the Sunset Strip—with a puffy price tag of $3,200,000. The sleekly angled dwelling now has 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms in about 2,700 square feet.

The open plan main living space has stunning, matte-finish hardwood floors and a new-fangled retro-style wood paneled wall that gives a strong over-note of Scandinavian dry sauna that's effectively downplayed by the myriad of artworks hung salon style. The slightly pitched and heavily beamed ceiling is counter-balanced by long banks of floor-to-ceiling windows and glass sliders in the living, dining and cooking areas that toy with the eyeball's perception between indoors and outdoors.

A slight, angled kink to shape the living/dining space injects a Cubist's kind of movement to the room that opens on one end to a compact and more intensely and awkwardly angled but expensively finished and equipped sky-lit kitchen. At the other end, through a door set into the paneled wall, there's direct access to the window-wrapped master bedroom with city views. The attached master bathroom isn't particularly large but it does have a daring, kneecap to ceiling window behind the shower and tub that injects a toe-curling sexual tension into a room typically used for far more mundane—and even ugly—but necessary purposes such as flossing, dipilitating and evacuating.

The glassy rear façade spills out to a compact but well organized, stone-paved courtyard-like terrace with plunge-sized swimming pool, elevated spa, bathroom-less but boob-toob equipped poolside cabana and a spectacular, over-the-shrubbery view beyond the towers of Century City towards LAX and the Pacific Ocean.

Mister Antin and his former wife Sescie moved from his former Bird Streets bachelor pad to a much more child-friendly, 2,800-plus square foot ranch style residence in the upscale enclave of Toluca Lake that they bought in April 2007 for $1,980,000. We're not exactly sure when the couple went their separate ways but we do know that they unsuccessfully attempted to sell their Toluca Lake ranch house in November 2009 when it was listed for $1,999,000. In 2011 they tangled with Mister Foreclosure and in January 2012 the property was taken off their hands by a mysterious corporate entity.

Mister Muniz is well known among celebrity property watchers and real estate gossips as a relatively frequent shuffler of the cards in his property portfolio. He once owned a house just above the Sunset Strip he sold to Halle Berry in 2005 for $5,995,000 and in 2004 he spent $4,650,000 on a low-slung modern on Blue Jay Way that he sold the following year for $3,900,000.

In the early days of 2006 Mister Muniz dropped $3,499,000 for the Sunset Strip house that, until recently, was rented by Cee Lo Green but is now back up for sale at $3,195,000 and is also listed to lease at $14,000 per month. As best as we can tell Mister Muniz also owns a faux-Tuscan mini-mansion in Scottsdale, AZ he bought in May 2008 for $2,782,000—and made available for lease in November 2011 for $7,250 per month—as well as a much more contemporary four bedroom and four bathroom crib in Phoenix, AZ that he picked up in August 2010 for $2,650,000.
 
listing photos: John Aaroe Group / Darryl Wilson Design

*A Texas woman that Mister Green has dated on and off since early in 2012 claims the entertainer drugged and sexually assaulted her after they had dinner in July in downtown L.A. Unnamed sources tole the celebrity gossips at TMZ "both took Ecstasy and stayed up all night," and that "the woman fabricated the story because she's involved with someone back in Texas who got wind she was in L.A. with Cee Lo and she was just covering her butt." Make of that what y'all will.

**The Bird Streets are so-called because, obviously, all the streets are named after—you got it—birds.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mama we need some stimulation. C list celebs and rentals are not going to do the trick.

Anonymous said...

Why would Cee Lo rent with all his money?

Anonymous said...

Sweet little pad.

Cee Lo seems like a bit of a douche.

Anonymous said...

He should have stuck with Frankie's place on Wetherly. At least the stairs up to the front door could have provided SOME exercise.

Anonymous said...

He's renting because he knows the Obamonster is going to quickly decimate the economy over the next four years! Smart thinking, C!

Anonymous said...

7:41 not the economy for ordinary people; may cut down the obscene incomes of the top one half of one percent. 'Bout time.
PS: These Bird Street houses that sit on streets without gates or walls...are they not exposed to burglary, etc., a bit too easily? I don't live there but I am curious to know.

Anonymous said...

I notice how everytime you post something about a black celebrity, your comments section becomes as classy as the Drudge website. Haters gonna hate.

Anonymous said...

8:14 - Who do you think pays the salaries of the "ordinary people?" You all think taxing the rich out the ying yang is a "free lunch" but what it ends up in is "trickle down poverty." Look at what is going on in California. The rich moving out, businesses moving or closing and no new ones opening up. Even the dang PORN industry is going to be moving out now that LA county has passed their dumb assed condom law. And the pols do is just keep upping the taxes on the fewer and fewer folks left with the money which just drives more and more of them away. Good luck with that on the national level - Eurozone style bankruptcy here we come.

Now, as for the real estate matters here at hand, Cee Lo might well be maintaining his residency in a low tax locale and renting in LA because he's a smart business guy. I wouldn't blame him, that's for sure. Frankie seems to like losing money on his real estate transactions - WTF is up with that? He doesn't seem to have had much work lately so you'd think he'd be a little more judicious with his dinero. At least he hasn't been in the news lately for domestic violence so he seems to have his temper under control. I sure loved me some Malcolm in the Middle so I hope all is well with the young fellow.

Anonymous said...

I don't think he could fit in that spa, he is just soooo fat!

Anonymous said...

I know this isn't a political discussion but I don't give a crap about Cee Lo Green so...

Dear 11/9, 4:38am,

Firstly: The rich people are moving out of California? They are? Where's the evidence of that? I wonder who's buying all those multimillion dollar homes all up and down the coast. Middle class people? Poor people? I know there are serious economic issues to be grappled with but a suggestion like you make, that rich people are leaving CA in droves is asinine. I'm sure some rich people have left CA. But I'm also sure some rich people have moved to CA.

Secondly: You say pols keep upping the taxes on the rich? I don't mean this as an insult but you must not be rich because if you were you'd know the tax rates today are historically low, particularly for upper end earners. You might not want to believe that, but they are.

Income taxes for the wealthy haven't trended up they've trended down. In 1980 if you earned more than $215k, your nominal tax rate was 70%.In 2011 if you earned $215k it was 33%.

Sure, taxes have been raised here and there (in all income brackets, not just for the rich) but hello?
The facts is the facts whether you like them or not.

Don't believe me? See here:

http://tiny.cc/f3jinw

(if that doesn't work you can use the long version)

http://taxfoundation.org/article/us-federal-individual-income-tax-rates-history-1913-2011-nominal-and-inflation-adjusted-brackets

Allan said...

Whatever anyone says I still liked the post :)

.A-

vehicle transport companies

Anonymous said...

8:14 I agree completely. And 4:38 perhaps should wake up to the fact that the electorate has spoken. The people he or she adore have lost, in spite of spending over 400 million to buy the Presidency. Karl Rove has crashed to earth in a humiliating pile of obesity.

Anonymous said...

The place resembles a David Hockney painting. The house and pool, etc., typical of his California work.

StevenF said...

I love this blog, and have posted a few times anonymously, but after reading the amount of misinformation being spread in these comments, am "coming out of the conservative closet".

Federal Tax revenues generated during the bush administration tax cuts were at historical highs ($2.6T in 2007). In fact, tax revenues in this country last year were almost 7% higher than the year before and were almost as high as those during the record setting bush year. This despite all those millionaires not "paying their fair share", which is crap. The "rich" of America pay 45% of the taxes in this country, which is more than the rich pay in Australia, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, United Kingdom, and Canada.

So, let's call what this movement to raise taxes on rich people is...envy. There's no mathematical reason to go after the rich. Even Obama said you shouldn't raise taxes during a recession back in 2010. JFK said it back in the 60s. Seriously, if you taxed everyone making over $250K a year 100%, you'd only fund the government for something like 90 days, at it's current spending rate.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not on here to prevent the rich from paying more as everyone with envy on here wants them to do. At this point, I'm all for letting Obama get his way with taxes. Maybe then he'll man-up and stop blaming everyone else.

BTW, this house is kind of cool...not my thing, but tasteful and not an ungainly behemoth.

Anonymous said...

Hi Steven F.,

I'm not disagreeing with you but where did your stats come from?

Who are the "rich" of America who pay 45% of the taxes? What percentage of the overall income earned by all American's do the "rich" earn?

According to Forbes back in March, the top 5% of earners in the U.S. control 72% of the wealth in the entire country.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneywisewomen/2012/03/21/average-america-vs-the-one-percent/

Wealth and income are not exactly the same thing but it's just mathematical common sense that if you earn $717k per year (the average for the top 1% of earners in the US) then you're going to pay a higher percentage of the overall taxes even if everyone is paying a flat tax percentage. Of course the rich pay more in taxes...they make more so they pay more.

StevenF said...

Hi, it's a known fact....but you can find it in multiple locations. My knowledge of how this compares to what the rich in other countries pay is from a book by Stephen Moore called Who’s the Fairest of Them All?: The Truth about Opportunity, Taxes, and Wealth in America. "...the United States is actually more dependent on rich people to pay taxes than even many of the more socialized economies of Europe. According to the Tax Foundation, the United States gets 45 percent of its total taxes from the top 10 percent of tax filers, whereas the international average in industrialized nations is 32 percent. America’s rich carry a larger share of the tax burden than do the rich in Belgium (25 percent), Germany (31 percent), France (28 percent), and even Sweden (27 percent)."

Interestingly, if you move beyond the top 10% to the top 20% the CBO says that the top 20% earn 50% of the money, but pay 70% of the taxes. Top 20% cutoff is about $92K/year.




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