Saturday, June 5, 2010

Mish Mash Monday

Let's begin the week with a few mish mash items cluttering up our desk top and taking up too much space in Your Mama's pea brain, shall we?

It's baaaa-uuuck. Oh, low-urhd, heaven help us all, it's bubbled back up to torture all us real estate watchers. That's right chickens, televisions freakiest and funniest house flipper Jeff Lewis is back at the real estate rodeo and has once again listed his white elephant in Los Angeles, CA with an asking price of $2,495,000.

Eagle eyed children and those who haven't completely wrecked their minds on the booze and dope may recall that the prickly and persnickety Miss Lewis last had his meticulously maintained residence in the Los Feliz area on the market in September of 2009 with an asking price of $2,295,000. It doesn't take any flip, flip, flipping of the well worn beads of our bejeweled abacus to see that's two hundred thousand clams less than its current price tag. Someone must be of the mindset that the market is on an upswing...

Let's quickly recap, shall we? Property records reveal that the large lipped and fastidious Mister Lewis snapped up the 3,024 square foot fixer upper in March of 2007 for $1,710,000. The hillside house, a 1960s post and beam number located at the tail end of a gated and quiet cul-de-sac in the star studded Oaks neighborhood, was given a full face lift and a new set of choppers. The arduous renovation was featured on Mister Lewis' boo-toob reality program Flipping Out. In April of 2008, the newly rehabbed 4 bedroom and 4 pooper property was flipped back on the market with a bloated and entirely unrealistic price tag of $3,195,000. By August of 2008, the asking price had been sliced and diced down to $2,595,000. By this point, at least one deal had failed to come to fruition. From August of 2008 to April of 2009 the pristine property was listed and delisted at least three times and from May to September of 2009 there were no fewer than 4 price chops before it was removed from the market.

Mister Lewis is, apparently, ready to pack his bags and load his sassy house woman Zoila up into his Mercedes SUV and head off to greener, or at least newer, real estate pastures. Your Mama expects that the all the dormant house flippers in Los Angeles will be eagerly and anxiously awaiting Mister Lewis' success or failure with regards to unloading his house.

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West coast based Funnyman Will Ferrell finally closed on his Manhattan loft-condo, paying $4,200,000 for a 2,699 square foot crib with 2-3 bedrooms and 2 poopers on West 13th Street in the far West Village. The property was never on the open market according to the folks at Curbed, but public records show the seller, hedge hog Joseph Lanasa the third, paid $4,400,000 for the condo in 2006.

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In other New York City celebrity real estate news, former first lady and (alleged) closet cigarette smoker Laura Bush and her Yale educated daughter Barbara were spotting house hunting in the West Village where the younger Miss Bush currently occupies a rental apartment. According to the Curbed kids, Miss and Missus Bush were eyeballed at 2 Jane Street where the only apartment currently on the open market is a 6th floor walk-up with 700 square feet, 1 bedroom, 1 pooper, a sprawling 1,500 square foot roof terrace, and an asking price of $975,000.

While it's not strange that young Miss Bush might be ready to settle down into a pre-marriage nest, Your Mama does find it odd and even a wee bit suspicious that a pampered princess like Miss Bush–or rather Mommy and Daddy Bush–would consider coughing up nearly a million dollars for digs that require schlepping 6 flights of stairs every damn day but, than again, what do we know about anything?

According to two of Your Mama's informants, Miss Bush currently resides in a 1 bedroom apartment at the back of a very lovely townhouse just off lower Fifth Avenue in a building recently sold by Luke Janklow, the tall and sexy literary agent who brokered a million dollar book deal for Anderson Cooper and who also recently sold the West Village townhouse he owed and occupied with his former wife Julie.

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We will probably be smote down dead by the angry hands of the celebrity real estate gods for discussing this matter and believe Your Mama when we tell the children that we are deeply troubled that we can't keep ourselves away from this bit of "celebrity" real estate bizness, but here we go anyway. Brace yourselves buckaroos because Your Mama is all kinds of bent out of shape about this and we're feeling particularly sharp tongued.

Reality tee-vee "star" and plastic surgery addict Heidi Montag wants the world to know that she and her huzband–the ludicrously and stoopidly volatile buffoon Spencer Pratt–are getting a dee-vorce and that she's done moved herself and her many plastic body parts out of their unkempt crib in Pacific Palisades and into a fancy, new house in Malee-boo.

According to all the too many reports on the matter, Miss Montag and her quadruple double D's have leased a 5 bedroom and 6 pooper contemporary on the land side of the Pacific Coast Highway near Point Dume. Listing information for Heidi's new house shows the recently renovated residence sits on 1.17 landscaped acres, measures 6,636 square feet and, among other luxuries, includes a master suite with vaulted ceilings, double-sided fireplace, dangerous looking sunken soaking tub, a television in the shower–which is stoopid–two walk-in closets, a wet bar and a wall of windows that open to the back yard where a long lap pool runs alongside the hous and overlooks the lovely and lush grounds..

Property records show Heidi's new (rented) house was purchased by it's current, non-celebrity owner(s) in May of 2009 for $4,750,000. The house was flipped back on the market less than six months later and, as best as Your Mama can surmise, was last offered for sale at $5,500,000 and for lease with an asking price of $19,000 per month. It bedevils, betwixts and baffles Your Mama that a seemingly talent-free gal like Miss Montag can parlay her faux fame into a fortune that allows her the financial wherewithal to alter her body and face beyond recognition and to have enough cheddar left over to live up in a multi-million dollar dwelling in Malee-boo. Life ain't fair is it poodles? Listen, Your Mama don't begrudge a person their fame or wealth. We just prefer they to actually do something besides pout, whine and have plastic surgery to get it. But we digress to the point of needing a damn nerve pill.

According to some reports, Miss Montag and her behemoth bazooms plan to live and film a reality program in the house with a couple of other vacuous windbags who, like their friend Heidi, probably don't have much more to offer than large breasts and an embarrassing ambition to be famous. Word to the wise dollies, fame is fleeting and Your Mama recommends you squirrel a few pennies away each month because 5 years from now it's quite possible you'll be living up in some tawdry apartment complex in Pacoima–or maybe Van Nuys, if you're lucky–desperately trying to sell semi-nude photos of yourself over the interweb. Uucchh. Gawd. Pleeze. As far as Your Mama is concerned–and we're utterly ashamed to be concerned at all–the Montag/Pratt dee-vorce drama is just an ugly and (barely disguised) ploy to procure free publicity to promote her new reality tee-vee program, because, you know, that's how Heidi and Spencer roll. Anything for fame. Eh-nee-thing. Your Mama may have stooped so damn low as to write about the real estate "news" of these two, but we can assure the children, there isn't a torture invented that could get us to sit through even 2 minutes of whatever insipid reality program that will come slithering out of this house in Malee-boo.

10 comments:

Village said...

Apologies to Miss Lewis, but that house looks like a cheap motel with rooms that open to the outside, complete with the god awful little pool and a white concrete wall.

Location location location can only do so much. This was probably a tear down in the first place. Isn't the house oriented in the wrong direction, with it's narrow end pointed toward the ocean?

Madam Pince said...

Miss Lewis's house is not so bad when considered alongside that monstrosity being rented by Heidi Montag. The bathroom situation alone has me screaming "What the f**k?!?" while trying not to spill any of my bourbon & ginger ale.

Fritz San Luis said...

Tell it, sister!

lil' gay boy said...

To paraphrase Cab Calloway, "Heidi who?"

Anonymous said...

Village, Don't speak.

Jeff Lewis's flip house is actually quite lovely, but a bit of an odd design.

The house was built to take advantage of the view... which is what lead to the living spaces being located upstairs and the pool being place in the front yard instead of slammed into the hillside behind the house in a dark, dreary manner too many homes have.

Clearly this odd layout design was done for a reason, but it's whats lead to it being a tough house. If only the road was on the other side of the slope, it would just be another mullet house with the bedrooms in the lower level... but the reversal of layout has made it a wee bit of a white elephant in this market where everyone is being sooo ridiculously picky.

That said, if I were looking in Los Angeles, wanted a decent size home witha great view in a nice neighborhood... this is it. I could overlook the floorplan design quirks bc I'd understand I'm getting the best view in the living areas and pool by reorientating the house this way. Plus, you know you're gettin a quality redo with Lewis... he maybe crazy as shit,but his attention to detail is head over heals over most of the other flippers, including even higher priced flippers like Bersci.

Anonymous said...

@village i think you think the blue in the background past the trees is ocean, but that's just cloud. the house is oriented southwest towards city views, with the ocean far in the distance (only visible on the clearest of days, if at all). check the lsiting for better pictures:
http://guests.themls.com/profile_page.cfm?mls=10-454567&tab=search

@anon 2:32 it's head over heels, and bercsi (not bersci).

Anonymous said...

Jeff did make a lil change to the property between listings... creating the "second" master suite on the lower level that was originally set up as a family / media room way back when the house first hit the market... and he uses as his office. Off the family room there was a half bathroom... now its been renovated into a full bath changing the house from 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms and 4 bedroom and 4 full baths.

Village said...

Well, never mind then. I did think that was the ocean.

And with the living areas upstairs, isn't that called a Vail House? The Tackiest Resort in The World has houses with most of the living areas upstairs to take advantage of the views. And isn't it the same in the Alps? Although I haven't rented EVERY house there, that was my experience.

If they don't want the house to look like a cheap motel, they need to take a better picture. I swear, when I saw it I thought, my is Your Mama covering motels?

StPaulSnowman said...

I miss the funny that was Mr. Puffy Lips. My painter just showed me the tintable caulk product so now I know Mr. Lewis' beauty secret.

Dawsonahqk said...

Tell it, sister!