Monday, December 9, 2013

Michael Strahan To Acquire Large L.A. Mansion

BUYERS: Michael Strahan and Nicole Mitchell Murphy
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $16,000,000*
SIZE: 15,600 square feet, 9 bedrooms, 11 full and 3 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In case any of y'all celebrity real estate-o-philes haven't heard, retired professional pigskinner turned turned wildly popular morning chat show host Michael Strahan—he took over for Regis Philbin in the fall of 2012—and his long-time fiancée Nicole Mitchell Murphy—she's a former model, reality television denizen, and the ex-wife of Eddie Murphy—have been on a serious real estate whirligig the last few years.

In April 2011, after a four year long slog, Miz Mitchell Murphy finally unloaded a 9,200 square foot Spanish-y mansion in the guard-gated Oaks community in Calabasas, CA for $5,515,000, a pocketbook plundering two million dollar loss against the $7.5 million she paid for the place in 2006.*

In November 2009, not long after he and Miz Mitchell Murphy were engaged, property records show the gap-toothed former defensive end shelled out $5 million for a 10,000-ish square foot faux-Tuscan macmansion in L.A.'s tony Brentwood area that he/they sold in March 2012 for $6,150,000.

A few months later the couple coughed up $7.9 million for a 1926 Mediterranean tear down in the super-prime lower Bel Air area. It's not clear if Mister Strahan and/or Miz Mitchell Murphy ever moved in—we think not—but what is clear is that they flipped the property less than a year later for $11 million in an off-market deal to mid-priced handbag mogul and bone fide real estate baller Bruce Makowsky for $11 million. (Mister Makowsky, according to the sorts of sources who know these sorts of things, razed the residence.)

Since Mister Strahan tapes Live! With Kelly and Michael in New York City it's no surprise he and his betrothed have peeped some spacious and immoderately expensive apartments for them and however many of their combined nine children—she has five children with her ex-husband and he has four, two from each of his previous two wives—live with them. So the gossip goes, the couple recently looked at but passed on a 5,500 square foot, multi-winged duplex penthouse on the Upper West Side that was previously toured by actor Bradley Cooper and is currently listed at $20,000,000, reduced from $24.9 million and down considerably from its original asking price of $29 million.

Back on the west coast, as per celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ, the couple lease an opulent, Neo-classical/semi-Italian villa in Beverly Hill's guard-gated and (in)famously ostentatious Beverly Park enclave. The house is owned, as it turns out, by none other than the aforementioned purse pasha Bruce Makowsky who owns at least two other mansions in Beverly Park. However, hunties, the unmarried couple will soon decamp Beverly Park and head back to Brentwood where they are—according to our impossibly well-connected informant Peter Propertyseller—in contract to acquire a big and brand new residential behemoth listed with a fat $17 million price tag.**

Listing details show the freshly finished, 15,600 square foot center hall neo-Colonial style mansion, tightly wedged onto a walled, double-gated, and high-hedged shy acre that backs up to a thickly treed ravine, was designed by Harvard educated, CalArts-trained, and Santa Monica-based residential architect Winston Brock Chappell. There are, as per digital marketing materials, 9 bedroom suites and a total of 11 full and three half bathrooms on three luxuriously-appointed and elevator-serviced floors.

Guests are surely meant to be impressed into silence and awe by the cavernous foyer and voluminous adjoining formal living room that both have 20-foot boxed wood ceilings, black glass chandeliers, and French white oak floors stained a deep and dark chocolate. Main floor spaces also include a roomy but hardly huge formal dining room (below, top), a compact den with built-in entertainment center (above, lower right), and a fully-paneled library with flat-screen surmounted fireplace and French doors. The bodily evacuation and maquillage reapplication needs of guests are accommodated in a pair of convenient, party-friendly powder rooms. Somewhere there are, as per listing details, two guest/family bedrooms with private bathrooms on the main floor.

Less formal, main floor family quarters orbit around an open-concept great room comprised of an informal dining area that overlooks and opens to the back yard, a fireplace anchored family room, and an all-white center island kitchen fitted and kitted with snow white cabinetry, slab marble counter tops, and top-quality appliances.

The fully-finished basement offers two more bedrooms (suitable for less-favored family members, guests or live-in domestic staff) plus a windowless lounge area. Other basement-level creature comforts include: a windowless game room with billiard and poker tables; an also windowless 20-seat screening room with tiered seating and a 15-foot screen; a fitness room with attached bathroom, dry sauna, and steam room; and a 1000-bottle temperature-controlled wine cellar and tasting room equipped—like the paneled library upstairs—with a costly air filtration system for efficient removal of cigar (and other) smoke. Other notable features in the basement designed to impress and entice the rich and/or famous are a cedar-lined storage room for furs, gowns, and tuxedos as well as a separate walk-in safe for cash, jewels, and other valuable.

The upper level master suite occupies a wing of its own with separate sitting room, a vaulted ceiling and fireplace in the bedroom, a private terrace, and dual walk-in closets and bathrooms, at least one of which as a free-standing soaking tub and direct access tot he pergola-shaded private terrace that overlooks the backyard and thickly treed canyon behind. Four more guest/family bedrooms on the upper level each have private bathrooms and walk-in closets and there are, as per digital marketing materials, two additional guest/family bedrooms on the main floor.

The usable, flat area of the back yard isn't particularly large for a home of this magnitude and expense but it is jam packed with mansion-type amenities: deep, stone-tiled verandas; a long and narrow patch of grass that wraps around the side of the house; a 59-foot long swimming pool and inset spa; and an open-air pavilion replete with pool bath, fireplace, wet bar, integrated ceiling heaters, and an outdoor kitchen/barbecue set up.

*F.Y.I., the non-celeb buyer caught a classic and an almost immediate case of The Real Estate Fickle and sold the six bedroom residence a year later for $6.5 million to douchey, Lambo-driving rapscallion, Justin Bieber.

**Peter Propertyseller told Your Mama that he heard through the Platinum Triangle property gossip grapevine the deal was going down for $16 million but the transaction has yet to be completed and/or recorded so the sale price—and the actual transaction itself—are still just some good ol' fashioned celebrity real estate rumor and gossip, at least until you read about it in one of the more respectable property gossip columns.

listing photos: The Agency

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Meh. Shouldve stayed in Beverly park, probably could have got Barry Bond's house for just a couple million more.

Anonymous said...

I think they're leasing the house above Paul reiser. Not Beverly parks biggest or best

Anonymous said...

The Kinderlach are no doubt exhausted from hearing the Rabbi sermonize ad nauseam concerning proportional inproprieties; therefore, kindly permit her to simply observe that the dining room chandelier has the appearance of a mutant spider preparing to ensnare the luncheon guests.

Rabbi Hedda LaCasa

Anonymous said...

I had to laugh the other morning when I heard Strahan asking some "engaged" guest on his show when he/she was going to bite the bullet and get married. The guest turned it back on the questioner, long "engaged," who laughed heartily but didn't respond with any substantive information.

I would bet that's probably because his lady friend, Nicole Murphy, can't remarry without losing a whole bundle of monthly cash deposits from her ex. And I would bet that Strahan, already paying alimony and child support to two ex-wives, has no intention of marrying this gal without an airtight pre-nup. If he does, he's a complete idiot. I've seen her several times when she's appeared on the show, and have to say I am very suspicious. She has a weird affect, very flat and, I would say, very calculating. Danger with a capital D. And if she hadn't birthed those kids with Eddie (or whomever), I would suspect she was of the persuasion Eddie has been rumored to be intrigued with. . .

Kelly, meanwhile, embarrassingly fawns over Michael while periodically proclaiming that Nicole is the most beautiful woman in the world. Kelly has definitively jumped the shark and entered the bubble. Her detachment from the real world seems to be in direct inverse correlation to her increasingly desperate and daily claims of just being a regular old wife and mother. I find myself, more and more, cringing and having to turn the channel. But as you say, this shtick is all wildly popular. . .

Unknown said...

I have been trying to find a commercial real estate. Do you know who I will be able to ask? Thank you.

doug-g said...

They got the number of kids that a cat has lives.
All by different husbands and by different wives.
This got me thinking - or maybe it's a hunch.
This damned mess is the modern day Brady Bunch.

So they buy this estate, or is it a lease?
Seems the estate they's needing is the one they called Caprice.
But Chevy just don't make them things at this sorry date.
With nine kids they could sure use that Caprice Kingswood Estate.

I ain't judgin' this here family and I sure ain't no liar.
It's just how sad to haul these young'ins with no County Squire.
My guess is they got an Escalade for the primary ride.
But it ain't the same when your wagon's got no paneling on the side!

Carter T said...

That's a pretty awesome home. I hope to some day be able to afford something even half as nice as that, regardless of neighbourhood.

Anonymous said...

Who designed 43 Beverly park?

Anonymous said...

why would they move to Beverly Puke in the first place, that's Eddie's home turf. Guess it gives him an opportunity to see what those massive support checks are going towards up close hmmm?

Anonymous said...

Eddie must have one hell of a monthly support payment to her and the kids.

Sandpiper said...

Mama, where have you been hiding these architects? They're fabulous. This is craftsmanship. It feels timeless. Such lovely harmony of scale and proportion.

From my far less grand ivory tower, must confess the foyer intimidates me a little (may be the lens) and the rear facade could have more character, but that's just me.

Once the nice gay decorators have their way with a comfy budget, hope AD does a feature showcasing the interiors at full potential.

lil' gay boy said...

Once again, a multi-million dollar attempt that falls flat; too ordinary to be characterized as truly ghastly, this "Colonial" (neo or otherwise) just makes my eyes (and teeth, and hair, and nails) itch.

Another incoherent rear facade; why, oh why do these "architects" never pay the same amount of attention to the private, rear face of a residence as they do to the forward facing public one? Do they not realize that their clients are the ones who must cast their eyes upon it from their back yard, day after day after day?

From the pool it looks like a less favored property of Colonial Inns, Inc., recently bypassed by a new exit on I-84...

doug, lovin, the verse!

Rebbe, what first came to mind (vis a vis the chandelier) was one of those vending machine games in the foyer at PathMark; the ones with the crane that grabs some dusty old stuffed toy -- but your spider characterization was spot on, and much more suitably creepy.

Anonymous said...

Is this not an Ethan Allen Store??

Anonymous said...

Beautiful house! Same arch who did spec house Conan O'Brien bough. Liked Conan's better.

Anonymous said...

Hey I posted a comment earlier? Where'd it go?

Anonymous said...

This home is not worth $16 million or $17 million. Its in Brentwood and not a real exclusive area like Bel Air. Also the quality of this house looks like cheap spec home quality. If this were at the level of quality of a Finton Construction home and or on a good amount of acreage then that would justify this price in Brentwood. But for the size of this lot and the cheap quality it shouldn't cost more than $5 million to $8 million max. They could have bought a tear down and built a spec home of better quality themselves for less money.

Sandpiper said...

Hi 8:36. Finton builds for Landry. What on earth were you thinking?? :]

Anonymous said...

Sandpiper, what the heck are you talking about?

Sandpiper said...

If you like Finton's work, that's perfectly fine -- really. These are just opinions. Good clean fun!

http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2013/11/monday-mash-up.html

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mark-wahlbergs-home-hot-hollywood-649929

Duchessa dei Monti Sibillini said...

Sandpiper, you bring so much joy here. Keep your free spirit coming. 6:03 is an itchy barnacle. Rise above and be well.

Anonymous said...

Brentwood is overrated. Next to a freeway, constant traffic congestion, and higher air pollution. You will stuck in gridlock hell and banished to just one part of the city. Most the city is growing East of the 405 and little development or reason to stay in Brentwood, you will constantly be traveling to WEHO, Beverly Hills,Santa Monica, Downtown, and Hollywood for events, doctors visits, shopping, and restaurants. Biggest mistake I made buying Brentwood.