Tuesday, March 25, 2014

In Other Multi-Billionaire Related Real Estate News...

....Octogenarian casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson—a college drop out with a fortune recently estimated to be right about $40 billion—quietly snatched up a pair of non-contiguous properties inside the guarded gates of the coveted Colony enclave in Malibu, CA. The seller of both properties, as per property records—and Yolanda Yakketyyak—was octogenarian soap story creator Lee Phillip Bell. More on Miz Bell in a minute.

In early December, 2013, a corporate entity that Yolanda Yakketyyak swore on baby bunnies is controlled by the monumentally rich Mister Adelson and links back to the same Massachusetts address as his other known homes in California and Nevada, paid exactly $12,000,000 for a two-story contemporary beach front cottage with, as per the Los Angeles County Tax Man, three bedrooms and two bathrooms in 2,700-ish square feet.

In a separate, concurrent transaction a second, somewhat similarly named corporate entity—it, too, links back to the aforementioned Massachusetts address—paid Miz Bell an additional $1,350,000 for a tennis court on a quarter-plus acre land-side parcel located across the street and a few doors down from the $12 million house. No babies, that's not the lunchtime booze typing. The slightly more than quarter acre parcel does not have a house or even a pavilion that we can tell, just a chain link fence ringed tennis court.

A few quick tabulations on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows Mister Adeleson coughed up a combined $13,350,000 for his two new and non-contiguous properties in the Colony, a whole lotta dough for anyone in the far less financially endowed 99%. At $9 an hour it would take a California minimum wage worker 150,000 working hours to earn $13,350,000.  That's 3,750 40-hour work weeks or, drilling down a bit deeper, more than 72 years of non-stop 40 hour work weeks. Seventy two years! However, hunny boo boos, for a man who the folks at Forbes estimated hauled in an average $32 million a day for the last year or more, thirteen million and change is an unnoticeable pittance. Mister Adelson could drop $13.35 million dollars of the parking lot at the Piggly Wiggly and not ever even know he lost it. Think about that for a minute, butter beans, because no matter what side of the political fence y'all sit those are some stupefying calculations. Anyways...

As it turns out, this isn't the first or only house Mister Adelson and his (medical) doctor second wife, Miriam, own in the Colony. According to our research on the internets the Adelsons have, since at least the early 1990s, owned an oceanfront house in the Colony that the Los Angeles County Tax Man puts at just over 5,000 square feet with three bedrooms and five bathrooms.*

Iffin we're being honest—and we always are—we're not very clear on the entirety of Mister and Missus Adelson's private residential property portfolio but it appears—on the surface, anyway—they actually live quite modestly for people with the pecuniary ability to live higher on the hog than the Queen of England.

Probably the Adelsons maintain luxurious homes in Macao and/or Singapore where Mister Adelson has substantial and extraordinarily lucrative gambling concerns. However, besides their holdings in Malibu the only other home Your Mama is aware of the couple owning is a chunky, curvilinear contemporary in the swanky, guard-gated Tournament Hills development in the Summerlin area of Las Vegas where, in September 2012, the politically active and ultra-conservative big spenders hosted a high-dollar fundraiser for then presidential candidate Mitt Romney that was attended by Anne Romney.**

Property records indicate the couple picked up the house in May 2005 for $5.5 million and, while the figures may (or may not be) be wildly inaccurate, the Clark County Tax Man shows the house sits on a fully landscaped .83 acre parcel that backs up to a ever-green golf course and has five bedrooms, seven full and three half bathrooms, and five fireplaces in 13,990 square feet.

Now, before we get going, let's get back to Miz Bell, now in her mid-80s. In the early 1970s she her deceased husband, William J. Bell, created The Young and the Restless—now in its 41st season with nearly 11,000 episodes, and in the mid 9180s they created The Bold and the Beautiful—now in its 27th season with almost 7,000 episodes in the can. Miz Bell still owns a nearly three acre estate with a nearly 10,000 square foot main house in Beverly Hills where she lived with her late husband and—don'tcha know?—the two properties she just sold to the Adelson's are hardly the only properties she owns in Malibu or even in the Colony. No, siree, Bob!

It's widely rumored that a massive, modern mansion going up on almost six super-prime bluff top acres in the Paradise Cove area of the Bu is being built by Miz Bell—or perhaps one of her children—
and she still owns a quaint, late 1920s ocean front cottage next door to the one she sold to Mister Adelson. As it turns out, the 4 bedroom and three bathroom house in the Colony—one of only seven or eight houses in the community with a private swimming pool—was listed on the open market from last May (2013) with an asking price of $18.9 million. Although the property was taken off the market in early February (2014) property records do not, as of this morning, reflect a transfer of ownership.

*All or none of the figures related to Mister and Missus Adelesons' long-time hideaway in The Colony may or may not be accurate. Just for shits and giggles: In 2009 Mister Adelson filed a $1.6 million lawsuit against a house-building contractor who, he alleged, did such a shoddy job in the mid-1990—that's right, in the mid-1990s—that the exterior surfaces failed and caused excessive damage including mold infestation and contamination. We have no idea what the result of the lawsuit was.

**For any of the children who cares about such things, in 2012 Mister Adelson himself publicly declared he's spend up to $100 million to thwart a second term for President Obama and, in fact, there are scads of rumors and reports that he actually shelled out somewhere in the neighborhood of an absolutely bonkers $150 million during the 2012 election cycle.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

That modern mansion belongs to William J. Bell Jr. and Maria Arena Bell, and has been designed by Tadao Ando, with Kulapat Yantrasast doing the supervisory work, as he always does.

If you go to californiacoastline.org, you can see the almost finished house:

http://www.californiacoastline.org/cgi-bin/image.cgi?image=201309547&mode=sequential&flags=0&year=current

The Bells own some of the most spectacular estates in Los Angeles.

Bradley Bell owns the Kern estate.

William J. Bell Jr. and Maria Arena Bell own the Sol Wurtzel estate.

Anonymous said...

I thought she lived in the Dolly Green house on Bellagio and her son lived across from Fleur de Lys in rod Stewarts old house?

Anonymous said...

Damn, guess I lingered here too long and @3:54 beat me to it..

I knew those places belonged to at least some of the Bells

Petra's said...

Don't know why he needs so many properties in Malibu - doesn't look like he does much tanning.

Sandpiper said...

Petra's -- Eww. Thanks for the imagery :0

lil' gay boy said...

My fine feathered friend:

For the visually impaired...

Sandpiper said...


Eww. LGB/LB, that stung like a song one can't get out of their brain all day.

I've just added him to my list of who I'd never want to be with in the dark.

P.S. Not even if it was capped off with a tip to Tiffany & Co.

Sandpiper said...

Oops--typo:

.. capped off with a trip to Tiffany...

See?! I'm so off kilter that I can't even type.

Anonymous said...

It's Darth Vader without the mask!

Anonymous said...

Oh LGB, I love you so much but I do wish you hadn't made me look at that photo.
That ugly at this hour of the day I don't need.
Please don't do that again.

The Aussie