Thursday, May 23, 2013

Judge Judy Buys in Beverly Hills


BUYER: Judy and Jerry Sheindlin
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $10,700,000
SIZE: 4,680 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In case any of the children somehow didn't already know, daytime television judge Judy Sheindlin is rich. To be more exact, she's filthy stinking rich. In 2011 it was revealed the famously vituperative television bench warmer works only about 5 days per month and, for her scant effort, rakes in about $45 million per year.

A few quick tabulations on the well-worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that works out to a toe curling $123,287 and 67 damn cents per day...everyday. Although most online reports state she hoovers up a staggering $865,000 for each day she's on set, Your Mama calculates Judge Judy hauls in a much lower $750,000 for every day she spends in her faux-courtroom and barks her small claims court legalese to a pearl clutching parade of humanity who sue each other willy-nilly over things like bill money, fender benders and broken damn chop sticks. Let's be honest, though Either figure is plenty high enough to to make minimum wage workers and average multi-millionaires alike feel just a little bit suicidal, right? As our frequent informant Yolanda Yakketyyak more succinctly put it, "Judge Judge could buy and sell my life with the change she loses in the cushions of her private jet."

And, yes, butter beans, the fast-talking and exceedingly well compensated legal referee and her much less blustery second (and third) husband Jerry Sheindlin, who briefly presided over People's Court in the late 1990s and early 2000s, do indeed own a private jet. So the stories go, the East Coast-based judge climbs aboard her jet a couple times a month and wings her way to Los Angeles where her wildly popular courtroom reality t.v. freak show tapes at the Sunset Bronson Studios in the still somewhat gritty heart of Hollywood.

Your Mama doesn't know where Judge Judy shacked up the last number of years when she was in Tinseltown for her courtroom tapings. We like to imagine it was a hideously expensive multi-room suite at one of the pricier hotels around town. What we do know, however, thanks to a little birdie we'll call Kent Konfidential, is that Judge Judy can now hole up in her very own pied-a-terre at the new and swankily swish Montage Beverly Hills hotel and condo complex where property records confirm she's shelled $10,700,000 for a 4,680 square foot spread with five bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, four exposures, seven small balconies and four dedicated parking spots in the underground garage.

Avid celebrity real estate watchers may recall that there have been rampant and thus far unconfirmed rumors and reports—probably started by yours truly—that another high earning and large livin' Showbiz superstar, Oprah Winfrey, (allegedly) shelled out around $14,000,000 for one of the twenty spacious spreads at Montage Beverly Hills. Imagine those two running into each other in the elevator or in the dressing room of the hotel's spa.

While the actual layout may differ, the floor plan included with online marketing materials for the small number of lavish private apartments at Montage Beverly Hills shows Judge Judy's new upper floor West Coast bedsit is entered through a long, L-shaped foyer and gallery off of which open a puny coat closet, a powder pooper, a tiny library and a giant, temperature controlled walk-in wine cellar. If one walks long enough they'll finally arrive at a 42-plus foot long living room with fireplace that gives out to a narrow balcony with low-rise but still panoramic city, mountain and sky views.

The adjoining formal dining room also opens to a balcony—albeit an even more narrow one with a southerly vista—and connects through to a commodious kitchen well-equipped with a center work island/snack bar, a walk in pantry and all the usual bells and whistles to be expected in a five-star condo-hotel residence that costs nearly 11 million bucks.

One set of double doors in the living room opens to a bedroom/den with skinny south-side balcony and a second set of double doors lead to the bedroom wing where two bedrooms on opposite sides of a wide corridor share a sizable hall bathroom. There's also a convenient utility/laundry room off the bedroom corridor.

The master suite occupies a prime position at tail end of the hall and includes a pair of roomy walk-in closets and a spacious bedroom with direct access to private balcony with sweeping views over Beverly Hills and beyond. The attached master bathroom has a couple of sinks separated by a make-up vanity, separate tub and stall shower and his and her crapper cubbies, hers with a bidet and his without because, apparently, men don't care to wash their bums with a bidet.

A comfortably sized guest suite—or an unusually luxurious staff suite—is smartly and privately tucked into a quiet corner behind the kitchen and offers over-nighting occupants a minuscule balcony, a large walk in closet and a private bathroom that's bigger and better outfitted than most peoples' master bathrooms.

Montage Beverly Hills offers residents an army of discreet and pampering staff including attentive and well connected concierges, super deluxe amenities (i.e. spa and fitness facilities and a roof-top swimming pool), five-star hotel services (i.e. room service, laundry, and housekeeping), and exceedingly tight security circumstances. Although residents have a private, residents' only lobby and access to at-home dining services, they're certainly free to hang out in the hotel's lobby lounge and dine at the hotel's on-site restaurant Scarpetta.

It seems that Judges Judy and Jerry have been in the mood to shake up their real estate portfolio. Last week the legal eagles sold their deluxe (if decoratively quite staid) corner apartment on the 11th floor of the uncommonly posh and storied Sherry Netherland on Fifth Avenue in New York City to an unknown buyer for an as yet unrevealed amount. Your Mama (dissed and) discussed the two bedroom and 2.5 bathroom park view pied-a-terre that also includes a cell-sized staff room/office and bathroom on the 10th floor after it popped up on the open market in early 2013 with a $9,000,000 price tag.

In addition to a Gulf-front penthouse pad in Naples, FL, they picked up in 2005 for $6.9 million, the low-key but lavish living couple's residential property portfolio also includes—but may not be limited to their primary residence, a forbidding stone mansion on 12.54 manicured acres in hoity-toity Greenwich, CT. Property records show they bought the bucolic estate in September 2007 for $13,200,000 and various online reports reveal they proceeded to demolish the existing 11,623 square foot mansion and replace it with an approximately 20,000 square foot manor house.

Aerial imagery shows the gated estate has a substantial gate house—presumably for security, a carriage house, a massive motor court, vast lawns, extensive formal gardens, a swimming pool, and a poolside cabana with a deep, trellis-shaded patio. Your Mama didn't turn up too many details about the house itself but but one of the army of fellas and gals hired to do faux-paint finish work throughout the newly constructed house posted a few snaps of the place on his own blog that will give the children some idea of its scale and rather traditional interior appointments.

Just in case you're curious, the Sheindlins' 2012 property taxes in Greenwich, according to public records, ballooned to a mind-bending $230,660. Listing details indicate the fees for her new digs in Bev Hills chalk up to $5,366 per month but it's not clear to Your Mama if that includes the property taxes.

NOTE: Listing photos are representational and may or may not reflect that actual rooms in the mini-mansion-sized condo recently acquired by Miz Judge Judy.

listing photos and floor plan: Montage Residences

28 comments:

x o x o u i said...

"Vituperative?" Look at you being all fancy talking and whatnot! :-)

Anonymous said...

check the title mama. too many early morning g&t's?

Your Mama said...

have mercy. thank you kindly, dolly.

Anonymous said...

I must confess to knowing less than nothing, about the BH condo market. However, buying this apartment is akin to buying a fancy car: the day after closing, this puppy must be depreciating by the second. As nice as this developement might be, another fancier one is being built across the street/down the block/around the corner. This just seems like a, throwing good money after bad, investment.
I get that she has piles of money, she deserves them. However, this condo is a smack in the face to the type of common sense wisdom, from which she earns her handsome livelihood.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and I HATE that the windows in the kitchen and living room are cut off/recessed behind wall and moulding. That just hollers, something like poor design/planning/building.

Anonymous said...

You missed a few decimal points on the $123 million per day income figure.

Anonymous said...

Really! I think the previous poster is right...you meant $123,000+ per day, not $123,000,000/day...but who is counting with that kind of money, right?

Anonymous said...

WOWZIE!!!!!!!! With your math skills on this one, Mama, can I come and work for you!? Pay me $60,000 per year, which breaks out to $1 Gazillion per day...I could live with that math! HA!

Anonymous said...

The production company that makes Judge Judy is getting ripped off majorly. They have to pay Judy $45mil to be a b*tch for 60 days work every year, and I get that same kind of attitude from my wife 365 days a year for free!

Sandpiper said...

Here, here, little buddy. Sooo agree.

Corkscrew pronto. CAD layout programs have become very sophisticated, but not until now could I imagine, or do I really see KARATE CHOPPED pillows in bedrooms four and five. Smelling salts please. Too funny.

As for JJ and O running into each other in the locker room, they'd apologize to each other for no make up and messy hair, as all women do.

Anonymous said...

Disgusting that this awful hack, I don't even consider her a real judge makes so much money and can buy multiple 8 figure properties, but of course if you are a physician that takes care of people and saves lives and makes $200,000 or so a year, you are overpaid.

This country is a goddamn joke.

Anonymous said...

11:50, y u mad tho?

Anonymous said...

I have thought a bit why her loathsome show is so popular and thus so lucrative to her. My conclusion is that people like to see OTHER people verbally abused and beaten to humiliating pulp with no chance to strike back. Other opinions would be welcome.

Naughty Nancy said...

I think a more probable reason is the feeling of superiority people get about their own lives from seeing these losers paraded in front of their TV. I also think that's a big reason why "Real Housewives" and "Bad Girls Club" are/were so popular.

Of course, there's also the secondhand satisfaction they get out of seeing these people get told off. Let's face it, we've all seen idiots like them in real life but most folks don't have the guts to say anything to their faces.

Personally, I can't muster up an ounce of sympathy for anyone who signs up for her show - after so many years, they know exactly that they're facing almost certain humiliation. Yet people still do it in droves, all for some attention and a little money.

Though I'd never watch her show, I can't hate on her success. It's the American way!

Anonymous said...

Why would anyone pan Judy?? She says everything that we as a society (or their parents should have) want to tell those who appear before her. She corrects their grammer, demands that they sit up straight, remove hands from their pockets, demands to know how they support themselves (and often their 7 children... I only wish she had run for office in the last Presidential election!

Anonymous said...

I have to assume that the amount JJ earns is commensurate with the amount of revenue her show generates. In and of itself that seems reasonable. As the driving force behind the show she's absolutely entitled to a healthy bit of the profits. Without her there is no show.

But I also agree with 11:50. It's beyond shameful that doctors, teachers, police people, fire people, mental health workers and etc. earn so very little in comparison to those who succeed in the entertainment business.

Is it just me or does it always seem like its the same people who get all uptight about how much money a doctor earns or get their panties in a twist about how a veteran teacher gets a pension are the same people to turn around and applaud someone who makes $45 million a year lecturing morons on tv and call it the American Way?

If if were up to me the American Way would be to for teachers to earn $250,000 a year. After all, isn't what they're doing WAY more important to our future as a country and a functioning society than Judge Judy lecturing a bunch of uneducated morons on the tv?

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know the (approximate) nightly room rates at the Montage? I've never been inside the hotel but have been to Bouchon and Bar Bouchon plenty of times. Having those two places downstairs from my home would be heaven.

luke220 said...

I think that this was a great choice for the Judge. When the 11 kids and 50 grandchildren arrive, she can put them up at the hotel- and have all her meals delivered.

A much better choice than Candy's place down the road.

Anonymous said...

Possibly the most overpaid person in the USA.

Anonymous said...

People aren't paid based on societal VALUE.

They're paid the price their employer values them at. Simple as that.

If the doctor bills $2.5MM in hospital fees it makes sense that the hospital pays 'only' $250,000 per year in salary.

She's making $45MM yearly because she's making her employer much more. Probably something in the range of $400MM-$500MM per year in advertising fees.

I promise you they aren't overpaying her. They're paying her what she's worth to THEM. You know...the people who actually have to pay her. She's free to watch if you so choose.

Carry on.

Anonymous said...

1:55 I could not have said it better if I tried. The "USA" comment from 12:38 says everything there is to say. Obviously from some other region. USA USA USA...we are still free here. Thank you!

Anonymous said...

That is why this country is failing and getting it's a$$ kicked by other countries. What incentive is there to be educated when garbage like the Kardashians, Teen Mom, Jersey Shore etc etc make more in one season than someone with a high level graduate degrees make their whole careers.

Praising clowns like Judge Judy for making $45 million a year in counterintuitive to the progress of this country.

Anonymous said...

Lots of jealousy up in hurr.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...




Dear God aka Satan,

Please bring on the apocalypse soon for no other reason other than there will be no more entertainment industry, or money, or celebrities, or Hollywood, or real estate blogs, or CIA-backed Judge Judy shows, or reality television shows at all, or people whose meaningless shallow lives have nothing else better to do except look at these evil grotesque scumbag rich people who contribute absolutely nothing to this world except their bad taste, conspicuous consumption, make ugly children all day long, and whose farts pollute the atmosphere and cause climate change?

Thank you.

Anwar Fazil said...
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