Friday, April 5, 2013

Week End Wrap Up: Mish Mosh

Former Saturday Night Live cast member turned sitcom star Chris Parnell (30 Rock, Suburgatory) dropped $1.7 million on a charming 1920s Spanish casa with a crisp and modern-minded make-over in L.A.'s boho-hipster Silver Lake area. (Trulia Luxe Living)

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Royal real estate watchers may or may not be intrigued with the now published plans for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's Norfolk country house on the 20,000 acre Sandringham estate of his granny....that would be Elizabeth II, the reigning octogenarian constitutional monarch of the (British) Commonwealth. (Daily Mail)

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Reality show producer, writer and host Rob Drydek (MTV's Ultimate Parkour Challenge, Fantasy Factory, Ridiculousness, Wild Grinders) sold his vertically oriented mid-century modern house house in the Hollywood Knolls area of Tinseltown at a $225,000 loss, not counting carrying costs, improvements and real estate fees. (TMZ)

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Sitcom star Kevin James (The King of Queens) put his 11,291 square foot quasi-Tuscan macmansion in proto-suburban Encino, CA on the open market with a $5,495,000 price tag and—presumably—decamped to a massive Mediterranean Revival style pile in Delray Beach, FL that he and the missus bought last year for $18,500,000. In case any of ya'll don't get how Mister James can afford an eighteen million dollar house keep in mind he was recently estimated to have raked in $46 million from March 2012 to March 2013. It's good to be Kevin James, people.  (Trulia Luxe Living)

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Did you hear that mainstream British musician Chris Martin was thisclose to buying a 6,000 square foot four million dollar house in Los Angeles's Brentwood 'hood to house the other members of his band Coldplay? That is until, allegedly, his American wife Gynnie Paltrow put the axe down on that deal because she "had issues with the inspection report." Dontcha think there's probably more to this story that we just don't know about? (TMZ)

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We really do hate to do it but we can't help it so we're just gonna go right there...

Bubble gum pop music superstar Justin Bieber—a teen aged boy-man from Canada who seems to want to be some sort of Showbiz gangsta bad ass (or whatever)—owns a 9,200+ square foot hacienda style mini-compound in a guarded and double gated enclave in the exceedingly suburban community of Calabasas, about 30 miles north west of downtown Los Angeles.

So the scuttlebutt goes, young Mister Bieber has three hard partyin' bros (or whatever) who allegedly live rent free in his giant suburban mini-compound and it seems that Mister Bieber and his friends are causing quite a ruckus in their upscale neighborhood of lavishly appointed and mostly mock-Med or faux-Tuscan macmansions. At least one report says Mister Bieber's friends host numerous and sometimes loud and large weed- and sizzurp-fueled parties even when their music industry cash machine b.f.f. is out of town. A week or two ago the increasingly volatile Mister Bieber allegedly spit on a neighbor who had the audacity to get all up in baby-faced entertainer's perfectly aligned grill about racing his brand new Ferrari up and down the streets of his usually whisper quiet gated community.*

Your Mama sincerely hopes but does not hold our damn breath that this whole spitting debacle is nothing more than an ugly figment of the tabloid press's wild imagination but, whatever the truth of the matter, how much do the children wanna bet Your Mama this still-pubescent whippersnapper soon picks and and moves his fleet of Lambos and Ferraris to a more secluded and intensely fortified compound-like spread where pesky, uptight neighbors concerned about the frivolities of neighborhood safety can't walk right up on his property and whine like a bitch about stuff he don't want to hear about? (TMZ)

*Naturally, Bieber's people say the international entertainment industry phenom did not spit at the neighbor.

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And finally, butter beans, buckle your class warfare safety belts because this one is a charming little ditty about a legally beleaguered but still knee bucklingly spendy ways of a multi-billionaire.

Just because powerful hedge fund veteran Steven Cohen's SAC Capital Advisers is under investigation for insider trading and other financially nefarious things and even though he recently agreed to hand over a heart stopping $616 million to make the legal imbroglio go away doesn't mean he isn't also on a savagely expensive personal shopping spree.

Last year the legally beleaguered but still astronomically rich art and real estate baller spent just over $38 million to acquire a newly erected eight-story townhouse in New York City's ever more gentrified far West Village.

A couple weeks ago came word Mister Cohen paid legally blind casino magnate Steve Wynn an astonishing $155,000,000 for Picasso's Le Rêve, a dreamy and colorful portrait painting of the artist's mistress Marie-Thérese Walter. Art-minded children may recall that it was this very painting that Mister Wynn famously put his elbow through a few years back while showing it off to some of his friends. The six inch tear was repaired and reported to be all but invisible to the naked eye.

Now comes word down the real estate gossip grapevine that Mister Cohen had coughed up another $60,000,000 for a 6.5 acre ocean front estate in hoity-toity and decidedly nouveau East Hampton, NY that includes a 10,000 square foot main house, expansive lawns and formal gardens, a tennis court and kidney bean shaped swimming pool nestled into the dunes on the ocean side of the house. That's right kittens, sixty million bucks for a house likely to get used—at best—no more than a couple handfuls of summertime weekends each year. Such are the wacky real estate ways and excessive financial capabilities of the world's super rich, right?

Mister Cohen's new hideaway in the Hamptons is, quite literally, just a few doors down from another luxury beach house on 2.1 fully-landscaped but land-locked acres that Mister Cohen bought in May 2007 for just over eighteen million clams.

Mister Cohen also owns a may-jer 14-acre estate in Greenwich, CT with a 35,000+ square foot mega-mansion and in New York City, in addition to the West Village townhouse, the notoriously lavish liver owns a 10,000 duplex penthouse atop the swanky One Beacon Court building in Midtown East that he snagged in 2005 for about $24 million and is reported to be shopping around off-market with an electrifying $115,000,000 price tag. (New York Times, Bloomberg, Homes of the Rich)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's a quite detailed aerial shot of Bieber's lair here (along with the usual pics of him running around in his underwear, Zzzzz).

I once saw Le Rêve up quite close years ago (pre-elbowing) and its "interesting".

Anonymous said...

Who would want to see that Squirel in his underwear??? I am afraid the future is not going to be pretty for Bieber, if someone doesnt intervene soon. Maybe Mel Gibson?

Anonymous said...

In the For What It's Worth Department: Kevin James' real last name is KNIPFING.

Sandpiper said...

Chris Parnell is a cutie and sooo funny. Love that suspicion thing he does with his eyes. Glad he's doing well. Will he be buying a velvet smoking jacket and mirshan pipe?

On Chris Martin's spanking from Gwyneth, if true -- and I'm a highly dysfunctional relationship expert -- doesn't sound like a first-time snafu. Oh no.

Kate & William. Sincerely hope the sheep pasture is downwind from the house. Upwind isn't pretty.

Hope Granny unbolts antiques storage for a truck load of house warming gifts.

This Steven Cohen piece has short-circuited my brain. Sipping a pitcher of G & Ts but it's still not sinking in. Only in America.

turesta, said...
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