tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71793116151018902682024-03-12T20:06:40.659-07:00The Real EstalkerTextYour Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.comBlogger3354125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-25501161635475032352014-06-18T10:08:00.000-07:002014-06-18T10:15:26.225-07:00Here's The Deal...First off, Your Mama would like to thank the children for their patience. We know we've kept y'all waiting a long time but there were, as they say, a lot of ducks that had to get in a row.<br />
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We noted that most of y'all were mostly good in our near three week absence and didn't get too out of line in the comments section. Some of you even left thoughtful notes. We appreciate that. We do not, however appreciate those couple of nasty emails. (You know who you are.) Anyways...<br />
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Your Mama could not be more pleased to finally tell the children that we're packing our bags and taking our saucy property gossiping ways over to <i>Variety</i> magazine. That's right. <i>Variety</i> magazine. Bam! Deal with it. It's the end of one era and the doorway to a whole new future.<br />
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This site, our beloved digital home for seven plus years, will remain accessible but inactive for the next few days at which point it will automatically redirect all Your Mama's children to our new digital home with all the fine, Showbiz reporting folk at <i>Variety</i>.<br />
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Starting today, all new online Real Estalker content <a href="http://variety.com/v/dirt/" target="_blank">can be found here</a>, in the newly formed <i>Dirt</i> section of <i>Variety</i>'s online portal. We'll also be dishing celebrity real estate-related dirt in the publication's weekly print issue.<br />
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Now, buckle your safety belts, kids because Your Mama is about to make a rare and uncomfortable but necessary breach of the fourth wall...<br />
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I would like to offer a sincere if woefully inadequate thank you to all the Real Estalker readers, especially the old timers and the regulars—you know who you are—for your often enlightening commentary and insight, unrelenting encouragement and absolutely humbling dedication.<br />
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I must also thank the hundreds of deliciously chatty informants, especially the old timers and the regulars. (Y'all know who you are, too, but as always will remain anonymous.)<br />
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And, finally, to my unfailingly supportive family and ever-so-tolerant friends—you all certainly know who you are, I hope—and, of course, to the good Dr. Cooter: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.<br />
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Now then, all of y'all put on your digital traveling shoes and <a href="http://variety.com/v/dirt/" target="_blank">follow Your Mama over to <i>Variety</i></a>...<br />
<br />Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com103tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-90599975105500082782014-06-02T12:54:00.000-07:002014-06-17T07:28:07.179-07:00Listen up y'all!NOTE: Sorry, children, Your Mama needs one more day. Please be patient. (And don't make a mess is the comments sections or I'll just have to turn them off, okay?)<br />
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It may incite the vitriolic wrath of a few of the more sharp-tongued children but Your Mama has none-the-less decided to take a two week retreat in a remote, morgue-quiet high desert location where telephone and internet service is, at best, unreliable. That's right, butter beans, two weeks.<br />
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We do not plan to (dis or) discuss any celebrity-related real estate transactions until June 17, at which point we'll have some exciting news to unveil about the future of our little online endeavor.<br />
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Until then...<br />
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<br />Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com127tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-60096157801163430852014-05-30T12:35:00.002-07:002014-05-30T12:35:28.870-07:00Jakob Dylan Quietly Sells Malibu Mini-Compound<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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SELLER: Jakob and Paige Dylan<br />
LOCATION: Malibu, CA<br />PRICE: $7,375,000<br />
SIZE: 7,752 square foot, 7 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms<br />
<br />YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It took a bit of a group effort between Your Mama and The Bizzy Boys at <i><a href="http://www.celebrityaddressaerial.com/">Celebrity Address Aerial</a></i> to figure out that singer/songwriter Jakob Dylan quietly unloaded a freshly rehabbed compound-like mini-estate in the Point Dume area of Malibu for $7,375,000.<br />
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Mister Dylan, besides being honest to goodness rock 'n' roll royalty—his daddy is Bob Dylan, in case you didn't know, fronts the band The Wallflowers and, along with Dave Matthews, co-founded the fairly <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/dave-matthews-forms-supergroup-with-jakob-dylan-20131216">newly formed</a> supergroup <a href="https://twitter.com/TheNautsBand">The Nauts</a>.<br />
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As best as this property gossip can tell, Mister Dylan and his former actress/budding screenwriter wife, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0245891/">Paige Dylan</a>, purchased the hair-more-than-an-acre spread in February 2011 for $3,980,000. They hired accomplished Malibu architect <a href="http://www.buaia.com/">Doug Burdge</a> to give the 1950s-era semi-Spanish style residence a cosmetic overhaul that included the removal of a swimming pool and the installation of downright drool-worthy, wide plank white oak wood floors throughout.<br />
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Listing details show the main house plus the two guest houses have a combined square footage of 7,752. One of the guest houses, as per the listing, has 650 square feet and the other 722. If Your Mama uses our ever-reliable bejeweled abacus to add up those latter two figures and then subtract the sum from the total square footage we come up with a main house that measures in at 6,380 square feet. Listing details we perused explicitly suggest the buyer verify the abode's square footage by their own means as the L.A. County Tax Man shows the house has just 5,303 square feet. (Curiously, a digital listing we dug up from the time the Dylan's acquired the property peg the place at 5,611 square feet with six bedrooms and 7 bathrooms.) Whatever the size, online marketing materials show the property has seven bedrooms and five bathrooms but, honestly children, where not sure if that includes any bedrooms and/or bathrooms in the guest cottages.<br />
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A high wall and an even higher thicket of shrubbery obscure the peering eyes of passers by and a gated driveway pushes deep into long and narrow property where it circles up to pass under a humbly scaled porte-cochere and pools up in a motor court with front-facing attached garage.<br />
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Wrought iron and glass doors open into a ridiculously but pleasantly over-sized reception gallery with pitched beam ceiling, huge windows and what Your Mama imagines (and hopes) is an authentic <a href="http://meghancarter.com/667-beni-ourain-rugs-12-great-sources/">Beni Ourain</a> rug. The luscious wood floors and vaulted ceilings continue into the living room where a chunky, minimalist fireplace with over-sized firebox anchors one end of the room and a wall of built-in bookshelves the other. Four sets of single-pane French doors that open to a terraces hemmed in on three sides by the back of the house and a baby grand piano and an acoustic guitar or two easily converts this the sitting room in to an extremely intimate music venue.<br />
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It's possible and maybe even likely, much of the Dylan's personal day-core and artworks were stripped down for the marketing process but, even if not, we're in an honest swoon for the all but unadorned formal dining room that stops short of cold austerity with a glimmering crystal chandelier (that could probably be hung a mite lower), a rustic and beat up, 10- or 12-seat farmhouse table and eight elegant and refined button tufted chairs that evoke a soupçon of 1940s glamour. But anyways...<br />
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We don't care what any of the children say about the uninspired, plain-Jane exterior of this house—because it's pretty ho-hum—but we think the kitchen is kinda fantastic. Two boxcar-sized center islands have slab marble counter tops on walnut cabinetry. Each has a two-stool snack bar and neither, it should be noted, are located underneath a dreaded and—Yes!—occasionally malevolent pot rack, thank you very much. The appliances are top-quality stainless steel and include double wall ovens and full-height side-by-side refrigerator and freezer. One end of the room has a built-in breakfast banquette next to French doors that open to motor court at the front of the house and, at the opposite end of the long, sky-lit space, more French doors open to a roof-shaded dining terrace that overlooks the backyard.<br />
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The kitchen flows directly into a step down family room with corner fireplace and a sculptural staircase that ascends to a large loft space with kiva-style corner fireplace and glass doors that open to a wrought-iron railed balcony and staircase that leads down to the backyard recreation and entertainment areas.<br />
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The privately situated, second floor master suite has a high, vaulted ceiling and plenty of room for a sitting area. A quartet of single-pane French doors open to a slender, wrought iron railed balcony that affords an long and wide, over-the tree tops view of the ocean. There are two roomy closets, as per listing details, plus a big and glitzy bathroom with two marble-topped vanities surmounted by florid, Rococo-esque mirrors, a jetted garden tub, a glass-fronted shower stall, and—Praise be!—a separate, privacy promoting cubicle for the crapper.<br />
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The back of the house wraps around three sides of a spacious, plaza-like central courtyard terrace where previous to its most recent renovation there was a small swimming pool and spa surrounded by a whole lot of red brick terracing. (The Dylans apparently installed a spa somewhere—it's noted in listing details—but they did not put in another pool. No offence, but for nearly eight million clams we want a pool but, then again, if you have eight million for the house you probably can scrape up another quarter million for a badass swimming pool complex.)<br />
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The terrace steps down to a thin strip of lawn that, in turn, steps down to a lighted tennis court. The paltry bit of grass between the tennis court and the terrace might seem stingy except that there's a vast stretch of lawn between the street and the front of the house where there's a children's playground tucked up into the shade of a small stand of mature trees.<br />
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Your Mama's research on the internets suggest Mister and Missus Dylan have lived or at least maintained a residence in Malibu since 2008 when they paid $3.35 million for a 1.3 acre property (<a href="http://www.trulia.com/blog/celebrity_homes_and_real_estate/2011/05/jakob_dylan_is_ditching_his_malibu_ca_digs_for_4_million">with 2,365 square foot house</a>) that they sold in the last days of 2011 for $3,575,000. Our research also suggests but does not entirely prove the couple still own yet another house in Malibu, this one an almost 6,000 square foot, decidedly contemporary dwelling on a gated, ocean view plateau in the foothills above Point Dume that last traded hands in the early days of 2011 for $4,250,000.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos: <a href="http://www.chriscortazzo.com/">Coldwell Banker</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-54207157999315957782014-05-29T12:45:00.001-07:002014-05-29T12:52:16.885-07:00Louis C.K. Snags Gloomy Shelter Island Tudor<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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BUYER: Louis Szekely<br />
LOCATION: Shelter Island, NY<br />
PRICE: $2,440,000<br />
SIZE: 4,957 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms<br />
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YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Most New Yorkers at least the ones we know and whether they can afford one or not, have a picture of their ideal weekend getaway. For Bunny and Flower it's a rustically chic and arty-farty compound in upstate New York. For Jo-Jo R-Po it's a puny, un-winterized waterfront bungalow on the North Fork. And for Soozie-Q and Fred it's a rambling (and nearly ramshackle) shingled cottage on a large (if somewhat untended) lot in a quiet corner of the Hamptons.<br />
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For Emmy-winner Louis Szekely, an upwardly mobile stand-up comedian and sitcom star known professionally as Louis C.K., it's <i>Primrose Cottage</i>, a gloomy but stunningly intact, turn-of-the-century timbered Tudor on two water front acres on Shelter Island that he <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/05/28/louis-c-k-buys-babe-ruths-summer-hamptons-home/">reportedly snatched up</a> for $2.44 million.<br />
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So the scuttlebutt goes, Babe Ruth once summered in the three-story, 4,957 square foot house that listing details show has half a dozen bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, and six wood-burning fireplaces. (Big whoop!) The generously proportioned main rooms stop short of grand—it's a vacation house, after all—and, although they could use some spit and polish, retain an impressive array of original architectural details. The tightly spindled staircase alone is a revelation and the built-in inglenook benches next too some of the fireplaces couldn't be more charming even if they are a wee impractical for modern day life.<br />
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The pastel paint on the walls in some of the rooms <i>is</i> on decorative trend—not that Mister C.K. gives a shit about that—but it looks a bit wan and old fashioned in the somewhat dim listing photographs. And the kitchen, well, it looks reasonably sized but—lowerd have mercy, butter beans—it needs a complete overhaul starting with that mortifyingly massive (and massively mortifying) pot rack. All the children should know by now that Rule #8 in <i>Your Mama's Big Book of Decoratin' Dos and Don'ts</i> adamantly forbids the use of pot racks in residential kitchens. Not only are they voracious dust magnets they're also a capricious if inanimate menace that will drop a pot on a puppy's head without warning or snatch the weave right off the head of an unsuspecting weave wearer.<br />
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An asymmetrical front porch overlooks an otherwise landscape-less, hedge-ringed lawn and, off the rear of the residence, a spacious and inviting, brick-floored screen porch has a long view over the flat back lawn to the water's edge. There isn't a swimming pool or a tennis court—there's room for both should Mister C.K. want them—but there is, however, a private dock that extends out into a cut that provides direct and easy boat access to West Neck Harbor and Noyac Bay. The convenient boat parking facility was probably a selling point for Mister C.K. who owns an micro-yacht that was <a href="http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/louis-c-k-comedy-sex-and-the-blue-numbers">recently featured</a> on Jerry Seinfeld's pleasantly droll web series<i> Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee</i>.<br />
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<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/real-estate/coveted-apartments-apthorp-hit-market-friday-article-1.1408293">We read</a>, Mister C.K. once lived at the fabled and <a href="http://therealdeal.com/blog/2014/04/25/judge-tosses-suit-over-apthorp-condos-descending-staircase/">controversially condo-fied</a> <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/06/05/060605fa_fact_ephron?currentPage=all"><i>Apthorp</i> complex</a> on the Upper West Side but we also have a vague memory of being told by someone—we don't recall when or by whom—that he moved downtown, to the formerly boho now fully gentrified West Village. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?<br />
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In addition to his somewhat dark and relentlessly self-deprecating stand-up work the veteran comedian also writes, directs <i>and</i> edits a smartly calibrated and critically acclaimed, semi-eponymous sitcom (<i>Louie</i>) that closely adheres to the framework of his own life.<br />
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<a href="http://nypost.com/2014/05/28/louis-c-k-buys-babe-ruths-summer-hamptons-home/">In other Shelter Island celebrity real estate news</a>, maverick ceramicist and home goods guru Jonathan Adler and his creative iconoclast husband Simon Doonan—amongst a myriad of other endeavors he's a sassy columnist at <i>Slate</i> and the Creative Ambassador-at-Large of <a href="http://www.barneys.com/">Barney's</a>—have one of their kalaidoscopically colorful and <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/home/2008-01-10-athome-adler-doonan_N.htm#uslPageReturn">widely published</a> homes on Shelter Island up for lease for the month of July at <a href="http://www.hamptonsrealestate.com/hamptons-ny/expansion.php?innum=61210&fromsearchflg=1">$11,000 per month</a>. Incidentally, the A-list gays tried to sell the quirkilicious 1970s A-frame modern back in 2010 for <a href="http://www.corcoran.com/nyc/PressMention/Display/10616">$1.795 million</a> after they bought another, much more impressive waterfront spread where they custom built a super-modern bungalow featured in a 2012, <a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/celebrity-homes/2012/jonathan-adler-simon-doonan-shelter-island-home-article">Doonan-penned piece in <i>Architectural Digest</i></a>. (It was also fawned over in <i><a href="http://www.dwell.com/house-tours/article/jonathan-adler-and-simon-doonans-shelter-island-vacation-home">Dwell</a></i> and <i><a href="http://hamptons-magazine.com/personalities/articles/jonathan-adler-simon-doonan-shelter-island-home">Hamptons</a> </i>magazines.)<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos: <a href="http://www.danielgale.com/">Daniel Gale / Sotheby's International Realty</a> via <a href="http://curbed.com/archives/2014/05/29/louis-ck-grabs-babe-ruths-hamptons-getaway-for-244m.php">Curbed</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-86452806415728517702014-05-29T10:15:00.002-07:002014-05-29T10:15:26.089-07:00Jason Priestley Upsizes in The Valley<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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BUYER: Jason Priestley<br />
LOCATION: Studio City, CA<br />PRICE: $2,720,000<br />
SIZE: 5,075 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms<br /><br />YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A couple of weeks ago Your Mama and all the other celebrity real estate watchers learned from the long-legged blond at <i><a href="http://www.trulia.com/luxe/2014/05/06/jason-priestley-sells-home/">Trulia Luxe Listings</a></i> that race car driving actor/director <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000594/">Jason Priestley</a> and his make-up artist wife <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1725000/?ref_=nmbio_sp_1">Naomi Lowde-Priestley</a> sold their Toluca Lake home to a not-famous couple for $2 million. The sale represents a $140,000 loss that does not account for carrying costs, any maintenance and/or improvement expenses the couple may have incurred or the real estate fees.*<br />
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This week, oddly enough, Your Mama heard word from a couple of snitchy informants, including the inestimable real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak, that the Priestley couple, who have two young children, bought a substantially bigger new house about four miles directly west in a leafy pocket of Studio City, CA for $2,720,000.**<br />
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Listing details show the freshly constructed and well appointed, two-story wannabe-Cap Cod sits on less than a quarter acre right on the border between Studio City and Sherman Oaks and has a total of five bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in 5,075 square feet. A prominent, full-frontal two car garage has direct entry to the main house and a detached cabana adds additional living space . (By Your Mama's quick and rudimentary calculations the Priestley's new digs in Studio City is just over 1,800 square feet larger than their former home in Toluca Lake.)<br />
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We don't love the exact tone of ashy medium brown as appears in listing photographs but otherwise we live, children, for the seven inch wide floorboards that run throughout the main floor living areas. A medium-width but exceptionally long center hall entry extends clear through to the back of the house with wide openings into adjoining formal living and dining rooms, both with scads of custom mill work and the former with a marble-faced fireplace. Not that it matters more than a damn pickle what this moody property gossip thinks but we could happily have done without the showboat-y glass display cases built in to the columns that support the shallow archway between the living and dining room.<br />
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A luxuriously fitted butler's pantry with marble back splash and warming drawer links the dining room to the expensively outfitted family-sized kitchen. Along the long back wall of the kitchen dark counter tops (of unknown material) sit on snow white Shaker-style counter tops while the generously proportioned center island has steel grey Shaker-style cabinetry topped with an impressively thick single slab of marble. In addition to the four-stool center island snack counter there's a small informal dining area in front of a picture window with backyard view and all the appliances are top-grade, as should be expected in a house at this price point in this location. The kitchen opens to the family room where there's a deeply coffered ceiling, a bookcase flanked marble-faced fireplace, and a wall of wood-framed glass doors that fold open to a concrete-floored veranda that overlooks the backyard.<br />
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Also on the main floor is a powder pooper for guest, an en suite guest bedroom, and a home theater with a projection system, milk chocolate brown fabric wall panels set off by lipstick red columns, lily gilding nightclub lighting, and tiered seating for (about) 11 in puffy black leather recliners with built-in cup holders. (We know they are a pearl clutching sight for sore eyes, children, but Your Mama would bet our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, <i>and</i> our mean ol' pussycat Sugar those recliners are as comfortable as they are hidjeous.)<br />
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Upstairs, three guest/family bedrooms have private bathrooms and a second family room might easily be put to use as a children's play room, arts and crafts nook, yoga lounge or Pilates parlor. The spacious master suite has a (third) marble-faced fireplace, built-in bookshelves, something called "separate entry closets," and a wee private balcony with backyard overlook. Slathered in marble—floors, counters, shower—the master bathroom has two sinks on either side of a built-in hair and make-up vanity, a soaking tub for two set into a bay window, and a separate, glass-enclosed steam shower.<br />
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Back downstairs, the veranda off the family room and kitchen area—which Your Mama would like so much better if it were more comfortably half again as deep—gives way to newly sodded lawn. Off to the side, there's a built-in barbecue situation and, in the far western corner, what we imagine may (or may not) have once been a detached garage was converted to a pool side cabana with kitchenette and convenient half bathroom. A wide set of French doors and a long wall of folding glass doors expose the cabana to the terrace that runs along the smallish saltwater swimming pool with picayune suntanning shelf and inset spa.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*Mister and Missus Priestly paid $2,140,000 for their 3,266 square foot Toluca Lake home in May 2007. They <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2011/09/showbiz-speed-demon-jason-priestley.html">first listed the property in the fall 2011</a> for $2.1 million. It did not sell and was taken off the market and re-listed in February 2014 for $2,099,000, a figure that might as well be $2.1 million.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">**We were able to confirm the purchase with property records—it was purchased through the same trust as their former home in Toluca Lake—and as far as this property gossip can tell the Priestleys paid nearly a million dollars <i>more</i> than any other property sold in the immediate vicinity in more than a year. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos: <a href="http://www.dennischernov.com/">Keller Williams Realty</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-52656548423112278422014-05-28T13:50:00.000-07:002014-05-28T13:50:06.298-07:00Virginia Madsen On the Move<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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SELLER: Virginia Madsen<br />
LOCATION: Thousand Oaks, CA<br />PRICE: $1,088,000<br />SIZE: 3,691 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms<br /><br />YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We have a lovely fella we'll call Missy Hoo Hoo to thank for the kindly communique that informed Your Mama that Oscar-nominated actress <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000515/">Virginia Madsen</a> has her reasonably spacious if fairly ordinary tract house inside the guarded gates of the <i>Rancho Conejo</i> development in affluent Thousand Oaks, CA, on the market with a $1,088,000 asking price.*<br />
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Miz Madsen, in case some of the younger children don't know, has shaken her Showbiz money maker in Hollywood since the mid-1980s but didn't reach her to-date professional salad days until 2004 when she was nominated for an Academy Award for her quirky turn as a waitress in the low budget and much ballyhooed film <i>Sideways</i>. While the Oscar nod—she was also nominated for a Golden Globe—didn't catapult her to superstar leading lady status, she has worked steadily ever since. There have been numerous television programs (<i>Justice League, Monk, Scoundrels, Witches of East End</i>), a fair number of movies (<i>The Number 23, The Haunting in Connecticut</i>), and a bevy of television movies (<i>Anna Nicole, Hatfields & McCoys</i>). As per her resume on the <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000515/">Internet Movie Data Base</a>,</i> she has lead roles in at least four movies currently in one stage of production or another.<br />
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Property records show Miz Madsen acquired herThousand Oaks abode in November 2005 for $1,351,000. A couple of quick calculations on our bejeweled abacus shows that even if her young and scruffy-chinned real estate agent manages to coax a full price offer, his Tinseltown client still faces a hardly inconsequential $263,000 loss, not counting carrying costs, improvement expenses and real estate fees.<br />
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Current listing details show the two-story house was built in 2004 and backs up to a public park that Your Mama imagines could get loud with screaming children at least every now and then. There are four bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms and a garaging for three cars in two bays, both with direct access to the house. Your Mama isn't an educated expert so we really can't be sure what blend of architectural styles are present here but there's plenty of used red brick veneer applied to the exterior's lower level and there's a whole lotta quintessentially tan stucco on the upper level. Some of the vinyl-framed windows have (probably faux) shutters, the roof's edges are lined with brown clay tiles, and there's a minuscule, second floor veranda that overlooks the red brick driveway.<br />
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Inside, listing photos suggest Miz Madsen has an unrestrained passion that borders on an addiction to elaborate wall treatments. In the narrow entrance hall and unexpectedly voluminous, double-height formal dining room the walls are slathered in a questionable, duo tone crosshatched situation that looks a little like an over-scaled linen pattern. Beige, natural stone tiles the in front hall and dining room switch to mahogany-toned wood with a semi-gloss treatment in the "formal" living room where we can't not notice the at least as equally labor intensive—and probably more questionable—bronze toned paint treatment on the walls <i>and</i> the ceiling.**<br />
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Around the backside of the staircase in the formal dining room the an eat-in center island kitchen has faux-aged raised panel cabinetry, speckled tan granite counter tops, high quality appliances and—you got it, Tea Cups and Tiddlywinks—a hand-applied custom faux-paint treatment. The kitchen opens into a family room with television surmounted gas fireplace, plantation shuttered windows and doors to the backyard, and even more of the same buttery colored paint treatment as in the kitchen. Inexplicably and much to the chagrin of Feng Shui experts and aficionados around the world, the floor in the family room is partly done with a natural stone tile and partly with wood, or some of that new-fangled porcelain tile that looks like wood.<br />
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Honestly, children, Your Mama never thought we'd have to make a hard and fast rule about this but all but Rule No. 187 in <i>Your Mama's Big Book of Decoratin' Dos and Don'ts</i> now avers with laser sharp self-righteousness that, "A single room in a well-dressed residence shall not have more than one floor material installed at the same time. It's confusing and unnecessary and, functional as it may be in any given circumstance, it just looks like shit. It does and y'all know it does, too." Talk about needing a goddamn nerve pill. Pleeze.<br />
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Along with the discrete power room, one of the three guest/family bedrooms is tucked back into a private corner of the house were it has direct access to a private bathroom. Two more guest/family bedrooms on the second floor each also have an en suite pooper. Double doors*** lead into the master bedroom where—in our humble and meaningless opinion—the taupe-toned shag wall-to-wall carpeting clashes angrily with the haute-glammy silver-leaf treatment applied to the walls. French doors open to a private balcony with park and sunset views and there's a an L-shaped walk-in closet off the spacious if entirely beige bathroom that's outfitted with twin sinks, a jetted garden tub and separate shower stall. The upper floor is finished with a spacious secondary family room and a sink-equipped laundry room.<br />
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As in many upscale housing developments from coast to coast in the United States, Miz Madsen's Thousand Oaks' backyard is unquestionably compact. It's barely bigger than a decent sized courtyard, really. But it is carefully outfitted with a narrow strip of flag stone terracing, a plunge-sized salt water swimming pool and raised spa that comfortably seats eight, and a vine-draped and curtain-hung pergola that shades a seating area around a built-in fire pit. The property backs directly up to a publicly accessible park with tennis courts, soccer pitch, a couple of softball/baseball diamonds, and a children's playground.<br />
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We freely confess that we haven't a clue where Miz Madsen plans to decamp not that her Thousand Oaks home is about to be sold. It's possible, if somewhat unlikely seeming, she'll hole up in the three bedroom and three bathroom condo in the western end of West Hollywood that property records reveal she picked up in 2006 for $860,000 and appears to co-own with her mother. But we sorta doubt it.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*As of today, online listings indicate the property is deep in escrow with an unknown buyer at an unknown price.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">**Do not even ask, children, because we will not go there over all the chocolate brown contempo-style furnishings Miz Madsen done shoved up in her bronze-toned formal living room. Your Mama is plum out of nerve pills and we simply can not tolerate those wacky-footed abominations another second without needing at least two pills and a gin and tonic chaser, extra lime, please and thank you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">***Double door entries to master bedrooms in suburban tract homes are another of Your Mama's many pet peeves. Aren't double doored master bedrooms, after all, just a cliché of tract house design meant to invoke a false sense of grandeur? No? Yes? Are we just being snobby? Anyways...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos: <a href="http://www.californiamoves.com/">Coldwell Banker </a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-55932792536553916702014-05-28T09:36:00.001-07:002014-05-28T09:36:29.155-07:00Steve-O Snags Hillside Digs Above Beachwood Canyon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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BUYER: Steve-O<br />
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA<br />
PRICE: $1,162,000<br />
SIZE: 2,398 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms<br />
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YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Just because giddily vulgar <i>Jackass</i> stunt performer Steve-O will <a href="http://www.ugo.com/movies/craziest-funniest-jackass-movie-stunts?page=10">gleefully staple his scrotum to his leg</a>, voluntarily let an alligator bite his nipple and somehow hold a lit firework in his—ahem—ass crack does not mean, at the end of the day, he doesn't want to come home to a nice house with plenty of creature comforts. According to the ever-vigilant real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak, last month the pathologically masochistic Mister O— via a pretty much lewdly named trust—shelled out $1,162,000 for a fully renovated, canyon view contemporary residence perched on a steep hillside above Los Angeles's historic Beachwood Canyon.*<br />
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Since his death defying stint on <i>Jackass </i>in the early Aughts, Mister O has appeared in more <i>Jackass</i> movies than anyone should care to count and he's helmed a series of similar programs where he performed such lurid entertainments and utterly pointless feats of stupidity as covering himself in stinging jellyfish and getting slathered <a href="http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-22039-headout_stunts_for_sober_steve_o.html">in human excrement</a> while strapped into a porta-potty his buddies launched into the air. Charming, right?<br />
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More recently, the sober and more introspective former circus clown—a dedicated <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-o/animal-cruelty_b_2927374.html">vegan</a> who, as of mid-April 2014, said he was <a href="http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/cultist/2014/04/steve-o_standup_miami.php">living a celibate life</a>—popped up on <i>Dancing With the Stars</i> (2009) and developed a reasonably well-received stand-up comedy routine. And good for him. Not that it matters a single whit what this jaded property gossip thinks but Your Mama thinks a career move towards something less physically reckless is a good idea for the 40 year old Mister O. Let's be honest, butter beans, could there be anything more heart breaking than a heavily tatted 65 year old man who will snort wasabi for a paycheck and/or allow himself to be slathered in honey and locked up in the truck of a car with a dozen hungry rats? No, there really isn't, is there?<br />
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Anyhoodles, poodles, it's a complicated and serpentine drive up from Beachwood Canyon to Mister O's new digs that present little to the street other than a two car garage, a high fence with secured entry gate and a dramatic, overlapping roof line. A tiny and gated courtyard leads to the front door that opens directly into a 40-ish foot long open plan main living space with wide plank wood floors and a winsomely pitched post-and-beam ceiling.<br />
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Just inside the front door, where it practically does double-duty as the foyer, a compact but well equipped kitchen has walnut (or maybe teak) cabinetry, slab marble counter tops, high-quality stainless steel appliances. A two or three seat snack peninsula divides the kitchen from the dining area. At the far end of the room, a catty-corner fireplace surmounted, natch, by a flat-screen television anchors the living area that opens through sliding glass doors to the home's primary outdoor living space, a reasonably roomy, canyon view terrace that spans the width of the house.<br />
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Adjacent to the living room, where it also has direct glass slider access to the deep and wide canyon view terrace, an over-sized den could be pressed into use as a fourth bedroom as it has a sizable walk-in closet and easy, semi-private access to the windowless main floor bathroom.<br />
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A perforated banister hems in the narrow stairwell that leads down to the lower level bedrooms. There are two reasonably-sized guest/family bedrooms that share a two-sink hall bathroom plus a master bedroom with two closets and enough room for a generous sitting area. Glass sliders open to a private balcony cantilevered over the steep hillside and the attached bathroom with free-standing soaking tub and separate shower space.<br />
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Fun Celebrity Real Estate Fact: Mister O's new digs happen to be on the down slope side of the same secluded cul-de-sac above Beachwood Canyon where, as it turns out, ill-behaved tabloid staple Chris Brown owns an extravagantly lit, multi-level modern he currently has on the market for $1.79 million. We haven't personally polled them but Your Mama would bet both our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, that at least some of the neighbors aren't exactly <i>thrilled</i> to have another resident in their immediate midst who proudly earns his keep as—all T, no shade—a loud-mouthed jackass.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*The house was listed for $1,149,000 after being raised from its original $1,099,000 asking price. The $1.162 million sale price suggest Mister O faced some competition with the purchase of this property.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos: <a href="http://laluxegroup.com/">LA Luxe Group/Keller William Realty</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-32490501757008937602014-05-27T10:11:00.000-07:002014-05-27T10:11:06.775-07:00Stephen Gaghan Sells East Coast-y Abode in Brentwood<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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SELLERS: Stephen Gaghan and Minnie Mortimer<br />
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA<br />PRICE: $4,995,000<br />SIZE: 5,267 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms<br /><br />YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Oscar- and Emmy-winning screenwriter <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0300866/">Stephen Gaghan</a> and his well-born wife Minnie Mortimer listed their East Coast-y abode in L.A.'s quietly swank Brentwood area in late April (2014) with an asking price of $4,995,000 and within two weeks the property was put into escrow with an unknown buyer at an unknown price. (As of this morning the deal has yet to close.)<br />
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Early on Mister Gaghan worked in television (<i>American Gothic, The Practice</i>) and in 1997 he took home an Emmy in 1997 for his work on <i>NYPD Blue</i>. He shifted to the silver screen in 2000 with the war-drama <i>Rules of Engagement</i> and the star-studded <i>Traffic</i> (2000), the latter for which the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2001/feb/12/artsfeatures">clean and sober</a> Mister Gaghan won an Oscar and Golden Globe. (He was also nominated for an Academy Award in 2006 for penning the script of George Clooney's geopolitical thriller <i>Syriana</i>, which he also directed.) In more recent years Mister Gaghan has <a href="https://variety.com/2012/tv/news/gaghan-signs-production-deal-with-fox-21-1118056414/">shifted somewhat back towards television</a>, writing scripts for a couple of programs that were not picked up for series and here are scads of reports he's writing (or written) a script for Malcolm Gladwell's fascinating book <i>Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking</i> but, honestly, children, we don't know nuthin' about that.<br />
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In 2007, Mister Gaghan married New York City-bred Standard Oil heiress, fashion designer and casually chic sophisticate Minnie Mortimer. They met, so the story goes, at a pre-Oscars picnic at Diane von Furstenberg and Barry Dillers' secluded estate in Beverly Hills and their deluxe Fifth Avenue nuptials, attended by a who's who of New York society types, were swooned over in no less than <i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/fashion/weddings/27VOWS.html">The New York Times</a></i>.<br />
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Property records show Mister Gaghan and Miz Mortimer purchased their Brentwood spread in late 2008 for $4.4 million and digital marketing show the house was originally built in the 1940s on a gated and elevated 1.15 acre parcel with five bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in 5,267 square feet.<br />
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Stone columns flank a gated driveway that rises gently to a decent-sized (if decidedly declassé) black topped motor court that gives way to a wee patch of tree shaded grass embraced on three sides by the house's wood, stone and red brick accented front façade. (We'd prefer the blacktop be replaced with pea gravel or compacted decomposed granite but what do we know, right?)<br />
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Inside, the public entertaining spaces are spacious without being grand and include a formal living room with honey-toned wood floors, exposed wood beams on the ceiling, a flagstone-faced fireplace that nicely ties in the flag stone on the front façade, and a massive 18-pane picture window with lovely and long views.<br />
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The roomy formal dining room does double duty as a library with floor-to-ceiling book-filled library shelves installed on three walls. While the living room day-core appears to have been put in place by Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota, the dining room still presents (in listing photos) as an eclectic, seal gray room with a idiosyncratic mix of furnishings and a capiz shell chandelier Your Mama would swear was hand-made by our dear old friend <a href="http://www.bespokeglobal.com/designers/gwen-carlton">Gwen Carlton</a>.<br />
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The kitchen doesn't look particularly large in listing photos but it is expensively outfitted and well-equipped with a vaguely Craftsman style with unpainted Shaker-style cabinetry, marble counter tops and a full suite of top-grade appliances. There is, as per listing details, an "ample pantry and enormous Butlers/Laundry room" plus a convenient back staircase but and alas, as many of the eagle-eyed children probably noted, the kitchen designer failed to provide a built-in cubby for the microwave so there it sits, inelegantly at a cattywompus angle, on the counter top next to the sink.<br />
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Off the kitchen there's a spacious sun porch with wall-to-wall windows carpeting and wrap around floor-to-ceiling windows. At the other end of the main floor, behind the living room we find a paneled den quirkily painted a steely shade of blue. There's a tile-accented fireplace, built-in bookshelves, and direct access to the red brick veranda that runs the the full width of the back of the house.<br />
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A separate screening room provides a private entrance, paneled walls, a raised red brick fireplace, a vaulted exposed wood ceiling, wall-to-wall carpeting (in a questionable shade of midnight blue) and, natch, state-of-the-art projection equipment.<br />
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The expansive, upper floor master suite is complete with wood floors, a third fireplace, a private sitting room/office, and extensive (<a href="http://www.refinery29.com/mystyle-minnie-mortimer#slide">and meticulously organized</a>) walk-in closets. French doors in the bedroom and in at least one of the two master bathrooms lead out to a deep, semi-private red brick veranda with an exterior staircase for easy access to the backyard entertainment and recreation areas. There are two (or maybe three) additional guest/family bedrooms in the main house plus another with private bathroom located off the kitchen and, hence, best positioned for a live-in domestic or household office. A detached guest house with high ceilings offers additional living space for live-in staff and/or guests.<br />
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The main floor veranda has a sweeping mountain, city and even ocean view and gives way to a flat lawn girdled by a glass railing. A wide red-brick staircase descends to a lower plateau with more red brick terracing, a rectangular swimming pool, a slightly raised circular spa, and another flat patch of grass or two.<br />
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The Gaghan-Mortimer's Mandeville Canyon nabe is home to a long list of rich and famous people including, just a few doors down the street, conscientiously uncoupling Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin who bought their 8,000 square foot Windsor Smith-conceived manse in mid-2012 for $9,950,000.<br />
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Although we didn't find any incontrovertible evidence they own any other private residences, this property gossip did read the boho-glam couple, both surfing aficionados, once lived in Malibu and we'd be somewhat surprised if they didn't maintain some sort of pied-à-terre in Manhattan, the Hamptons and/or Palm Beach, the three pricey and posh locales where Miz Mortimer spent her well-heeled youth.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos: <a href="http://www.thepartnerstrust.com/home">Partners Trust</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-36134876629611753832014-05-23T17:10:00.000-07:002014-05-23T17:10:02.391-07:00Orange County Housewife Shannon Beader Needs a Buyer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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SELLERS: David and Shannon Beador<br />
LOCATION: Newport Coast, CA<br />
PRICE: $13,498,000<br />
SIZE: 13,306 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 8 full and 5 half bathrooms<br />
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YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A little birdie dropped a note in Your Mama's inbox to let Your Mama know that, like so many of the other "Housewives" across this great U-nited States—<i>Real Housewives of Orange County</i>'s (RHOOC) Shannon Beador has her nearly new Newport Coast mansion listed on the open market with an asking price of $13,498,000.<br />
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As it turns out, Missus Beador—who really is a housewife—and her hubby, David Beador, first listed their custom-designed villa in the exclusive, guard-gated <i>Crystal Cove</i> enclave* in April 2013 with an asking price of $15,998,000. About a month or so ago, the house was de-listed and quickly re-listed with its current and substantially lower asking price.<br />
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Missus Beador revealed on RHOOC that she came from a privileged background and, hence, she may or may not be an independently wealthy woman. We don't know. Whatever the sitch, let's just assume her handsome, sarcastic and silver-haired husband, David, brings home a boatload of bacon as the owner a construction company primarily engaged in building freeways.<br />
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Property records show the Beadors bought the then still bare .67 acre parcel in July 2006 for an unknown amount. Current listing details show they engaged the undoubtedly pricey services of neo-vernacularist SoCal mansion specialist <a href="http://www.richardkrantz.com/">Richard Krantz</a> to do the architecture and interior designer Robert Ricker to gussy up the day-core with "heirloom and art-quality finishes." The result is a stately, walled and gated four-plus floor faux-Tuscan French farmhouse—it's described in listing details as "reminiscent of European country manors and legacy East Coast mansions"—that was completed in 2012 and spans 13,306 square feet of eco-minded traditional eleganza.** There are at least four fireplaces, about a dozen copper-framed French doors and an elevator that services the basement, main and second levels.<br />
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There are six bedrooms and seven full and five half bathrooms in the main manse, including a private, main floor guest suite and a generously proportioned basement level staff room with private entrance, private pooper and walk-in closet. Three decent-sized and expensively decorated children's bedrooms on the upper floor each have a private bath and one of them has a private terrace. The roomy, upper floor master suite encompasses a separate bedroom and sitting room (with fireplace), two private terraces, a sprawling, compartmentalized bathroom and his and her walk-in closets, hers with glass-fronted wardrobes and an adjoining boudoir with spa tub. A stairway just outside the double doors of the master suite lead up to a small office/den/man cave.<br />
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While (mostly) stopping short of fussy, the interior spaces are unquestionably plush and largely traditional as evidenced in the fully paneled, double-height foyer and stair hall with its checkerboard black and white marble checkerboard floor, a wrought iron railed marble staircase and antique crystal chandelier that Missus Beador revealed on RHOOC cost $150,000. (Or maybe it was $250,000. We don't recall, do any of you? What ever the cost, listing explain the chandelier is excluded from the sale, so...)<br />
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Formal living and dining rooms flank the foyer, the former with a fireplace and a paneled, pass-through music alcove and the latter with a temperature-controlled walk-in wine cellar. Just off the formal dining room there's a fully and expensively equipped center island catering kitchen with super-size pass-through pantry. Right next door to the catering kitchen there's a larger and equally as expensively outfitted family kitchen with chandelier lit center island, top-grade appliances, marble counter tops and lightly faux-distressed, taupe-toned cabinetry. That's right, puppies, this family of five has two, high-cost chef-quality kitchens butted up next to each other. Your Mama is quite sure that people of a certain financial ilk—or those that aspire to a certain financial ilk—can plainly see and can effectively articulate the necessity of side-by-side gor-may kitchens but, to this shade-throwing property gossip, it seems a gross and unnecessary extravagance. Anyways...<br />
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The family kitchen opens to a window-wrapped breakfast area that, in turn, merges with a roomy family room with rustic brick walls, semi-glossy distressed wood floors, and a polished and coffered wood ceiling. Tucked behind the built-in entertainment center in the family room is an L-shaped arts and crafts room with 3/4 height bead board paneling, stone tile floors and lots of bead board-accented cabinetry and storage closets.<br />
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The fully finished basement level includes a 12-seat home theater with tiered seating, a fitness room, the aforementioned staff suite, an indoor basketball court (!) and, in addition to the three car attached garage on the main floor, a basement-level subterranean garage that accommodates eight more cars. Somewhere in the house—it's not shown on the floor plans included with digital marketing materials—there's a secret, children's tea party room. (How many of the children think the tea party room was designed, ultimately, as a panic room?)<br />
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The landscaped grounds include well-watered patches of lawn, formal gardens, an outdoor kitchen, and a pergola bracketed courtyard with swimming pool and spa. The poolside guest house offers a loggia for shaded lounging and a self-contained situation with living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom with convenient, secondary access from the pool terrace.<br />
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An ever so brief and not-thorough perusal of property records indicate Mister and Missus Beador also own some sort of timeshare situation at the Tuscan-style <a href="http://www.marriottvacationclub.com/vacation-resorts/marriott-newport-coast/overview.shtml">Marriott Newport Coast Villas</a> and she revealed on RHOOC that the couple had already purchased a residential parcel where they planned to build another house but, honestly, chickens, we don't nuthin' about that.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*<i>Crystal Cove</i> may ring a bell with some of the children as Missus Beador's RHOOC cast mate Heather Dubrow and her plastic surgeon husband are in the process of building a new house that Your Mama would bet cash money will top 15,000 square feet. (The Dubrows, some of y'all may recall, <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2013/07/update-dr-terry-and-heather-dubrow.html">sold their previous home</a> in the posh <i>Pelican Crest</i> development last year for $16.45 million and are currently living in a 5,000-ish square foot rental residence while they build their new digs.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">**Missus Beador is a dedicated and vocal proponent of organic and alternative living practices. So, big as this house may be and as counterintuitive as a 13,000 square foot mansion may or may not be to the principles sustainable living practices, Missus Beador insisted upon non-toxic construction and finishing materials (i.e. non-fiber glass insulation and no-MDF hardwood woodwork) and in installation of a whole house HEPA air filtration system.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos: <a href="http://www.sothebysrealty.com/">Sotheby's International Realty</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-22285826672900338622014-05-22T12:25:00.001-07:002014-05-22T12:25:31.732-07:00UPDATE: Jamie McCourt<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In 2004 wealthy Massachusettsians Frank and Jamie McCourt—much of their wealth was derived from well positioned parking lots in Boston—paid a heart pounding $430 million for controlling interest the Los Angeles Dodgers professional baseball franchise. They quickly and giddily carpetbagged their way to Los Angeles where they coughed up Grammy winner Baby Face Edmunds $21.25 million for a circa 1930s mansion on 2.61 gated acres in Holmby Hills. For better and/or worse, the estate sits directly across the street from the Playboy Mansion on Charing Cross Road.*<br />
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Court documents from their <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/17/sports/la-sp-1017-mccourt-divorce-settlement-20111017">acrimonious, public and crazy expensive 2011 divorce</a>—their legal bills alone reportedly topped $20 million—reveal the erstwhile couple spent another $14 million on a series of improvements and expansions, including having the kitchen in their Brookline, MA, de-installed, shipped to Los Angeles and, like Humpty Dumpty, put back together again in their new Holmby Hills mansion at a cost of $180,000. They later replaced an outdoor tennis court with a partially subterranean indoor swimming pool and spa complex complete with sauna, steam room, dressing room and massage room. Divorce documents also revealed expenses related to the maintenance of the estate ran up to $202,716 per month including nearly six grand a month in utility bills. Think about that for a minute.<br />
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<a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/17/sports/la-sp-1017-mccourt-divorce-settlement-20111017">So the reportage goes</a> the divorce decree granted ex-Missus McCourt a settlement of around $130 million and sole ownership of a considerable number of the couple's many private residences, including the Holmby Hills estate. (<a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2009/10/frank-and-jamie-mccourt-have-lot-of.html">They also maintained</a> multi-million dollar homes in Malibu, Massachusetts and Colorado plus property in Mexico and Montana.) In March 2012, so <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2012/03/your-mama-hears_28.html">Your Mama heard</a> from Heidi N. Holmbyhills, Miz McCourt quietly floated the pretty darn palatial property as a whisper listing with an optimistically plump $65 million price tag. Almost two years later the property popped up on the open market with a $55,000,000 asking price and just a few days ago the lady property gossip at <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-hotprop-jamie-mccourt-20140519-story.html">the <i>L.A. Times</i> announced</a> that Miz McCourt had done sold the pristine property to an unnamed buyer for $45 million.**<br />
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The 20,627 square foot Euro-style villa, according to the official listing details and other online resources, has five bedrooms, six bathrooms, a step-down living room, a library/study, billiard room, bar, commercial-grade kitchen, and a home theater. In addition to the main house the gated estate includes a guesthouse, staff apartment, outdoor swimming pool house and pool house as well as the aforementioned indoor swimming pool and spa complex.<br />
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Naturally, as soon as we read that Mis McCourt sold the Holmby Hills house Your Mama tapped and typed our fingers to bloody nubbins contacting a few of our better connected contacts. We quickly heard back from Peter Propertyseller and Our Fairy Godmother in Bel Air who both told us they're quite sure the previously unidentified buyer is low-profile British billionaire Ian Livingstone.<br />
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Mister Livingstone, a former optometrist who along with his younger brother earned their first (small) fortune through eyeglass stores, quietly parlayed the small fortune into a multi-tentacled, multibillion dollar real estate investment and development juggernaut that has, according to the fine folk at <i><a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/ian-richard-livingstone/">Forbes</a></i>, ballooned their combined net worth to $3.7 billion. The brothers have their fingers in real estate pies <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-brothers-behind-a-4-billion-secret-empire-7600590.html">all around the world</a> (South Africa, Russia, Panama) as well as a bevy of swanky hotels in the U.K., including the stately and elegantly English <a href="http://www.clivedenhouse.co.uk/">Cliveden House</a>.<br />
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Even though she shed the Holmby Hills house, Miz McCourt still has an impressive property portfolio that includes a John Lautner designed house on Carbon Beach in Malibu that she (and her ex-husband) bought in 2007 for $27.3 from Courtney Cox as well as the shackety-shack next door that she (and her ex-husband) picked up the following year for $19 million. Last fall the single, rich and fancy free Miz McCourt <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2013/11/08/former-dodgers-ceo-pays-11-25-million-for-napa-vineyard-estate/?mod=WSJBlog">shelled out $11.25 million</a> for a 21-plus acre vineyard estate in Napa, CA, with a two bedroom main house, a separate and architecturally significant two bedroom guest house and what the kids at <i>Curbed</i> called "<a href="http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2013/11/11/dodgers_excoowner_jamie_mccourt_buys_in_napa_for_1125m.php">a show-stopping lap pool.</a>"<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*They also bought the spacious but far less grand house next door for $6.5 million that was sold off in August 2011 for $6,525,065. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">**As of today property records do not reflect a transfer of ownership and, hence, we can not confirm or deny the actual sale price but we have no reason or insight to dispute the reported $45 million sale price.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">aerial photo: <a href="http://www.bing.com/maps/">Bing</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-67596771801572376872014-05-21T11:35:00.000-07:002014-05-21T11:35:32.132-07:00UPDATE: Fleur de Lys<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Buckle your real estate safety belts, butter beans, because Your Mama is about to reveal the name of the mystery buyer who shelled out $88.3 million <i>in cash</i> for Suzanne Saperstein's world renown Los Angeles estate known as <i>Fleur </i>de <i>Lys</i> (above). But first, let's have a (not so brief) recap.<br />
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In the late 1990s Swedish-born Miz Saperstein and her ex-husband David Saperstein, then based in Houston, TX, acquired 4.6 prime acres in L.A.'s super-swank Holmby Hills 'hood.* Inspired by the elegantly extravagant<i> <a href="http://www.vaux-le-vicomte.com/en/">Vaux-le-Vicomte</a></i> palace outside Paris, the famously spendthrift Sapersteins spared no expense to erect a monumentally decadent chateau of around 35,000 square feet that they slathered in gold leaf and filled to the gills with pedigreed antiques. The fully-landscaped estate also includes: a snaking 600 foot long driveway that ends in a motor court the size of a civic plaza; a separate sizable caretaker's house plus extensive staff quarters; a second motor court for staff and service vehicles; a swimming pool and spa complex; a lighted tennis court and extensive gardens that include a football field sized backyard lawn. A few short years after the estate was completed in 2002, Mister Saperstein left Missus Saperstein and took up with the family nanny, another blond but much younger Swede whom he later married.<br />
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Missus Saperstein, a voracious consumer of haute couture who in 2008 <a href="http://www.wmagazine.com/people/insiders/2008/12/suzanne_saperstein">described herself to <i>W Magazine</i></a> as "the most insecure person you could ever run into in your entire life," was granted ownership of <i>Fleur de Lys</i> and, post-divorce, often leased the palatial property out for parties and charity events. For at least half a dozen years—Your Mama first (<a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2007/07/fleur-de-lys-this.html">dissed and) discussed the property</a> back in 2007—Miz Saperstein had the fancy-pants pad on and off the open market with an astronomical asking price of $125 million.<br />
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This property gossip has many times heard from impeccable sources deep inside the Platinum Triangle real estate game that Miz Saperstein once turned down an offer of $100 million because the buyer refused to cough up a couple more million bucks to cover her multi-million dollar moving expenses. British Formula 1 racing heiress Petra Ecclestone was widely rumored to have had an $80 million offer rebuffed and later there were reports of rumors that Petra's equally profligate sister, <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2012/12/did-tamara-ecclestone-snatch-up-fleur.html">Tamara</a>, was interested in the property. (She wasn't.) Pop superstar <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2009/03/update-mariah-carey.html">Mariah Carey</a> was also widely rumored to have expressed some interest in the the property but that also turns out to have been little more than rumor.<br />
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Anyways, in February of this year (2014) Your Mama received some <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2014/02/your-mama-hears_19.html">juicy but unsubstantiated gossip</a> that an unnamed Chinese billionaire made an $85 million offer for the grandiose estate and in mid-March we received a decidedly cryptic communique from a different but also anonymous informant who claimed <i>Fleur de Lys</i> was in contract for around $85 million with a Russian billionaire who is not Roman Abramovich, Andrey Melnichenko or Dmitry Rybolovlev but is "well established in California." But, as y'all will soon see, that bit of delectable scuttlebutt turned out to be little more than heavy load of Platinum Triangle real estate hooey.<br />
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In late March an unidentified source told the lady property gossip at the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mo-fleur-de-lys-20140331-story.html#axzz2xa96TX00"><i>L.A. Times</i> revealed</a> that <i>Fleur de Lys</i> was indeed to be sold to a mysterious buyer identified only as a French billionaire.** The report went on to say that the otherwise unidentified Frenchman beat out two other billionaires, one from China and another from the U.K., with an all-cash offer of $102 million with a 10 day closing. The sky-high and record-breaking price, so the reportage went, included a cache of unspecified antique furnishings.***<br />
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Follow up reports revealed the new owner's tax bills were being mailed to an attorney's office at junk bond billionaire Michael Milken's Santa Monica-based Milken Institute leading many to speculate that the buyer might be Michael Milken. However, a representative for Mister Milken explicitly denied to the lady property gossip at the <i>L.A. Times</i> that neither Milken nor his institute bought the property, which was purchased via a limited liability company.<br />
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Almost immediately after <i>Fleur de Lys</i> changed hands, the property somewhat surprisingly popped up on the open market for lease at a stomach churning price of $400,000 per month and, even more inexplicably, when the property records were finally recorded and made available to the public in mid-April (2014) they show the mysterious buyer paid $88.3 million for the estate and <i>not</i> the originally reported $102 million.****<br />
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Naturally, as soon as we heard <i>Fleur de Lys</i> was to be sold we contacted some of our better connected contacts who operate in the upper end of the Platinum Triangle real estate market and—curiously enough—no one could—or would—name the mysterious buyer. Then, finally, we heard from real estate yenta extraordinaire Yolanda Yakketyyak who told us she's 100% certain and will "swear on everything, including her seven pair of vintage Gloria Vanderbilt jeans," that the mysterious buyer of <i>Fleur de Lys</i> is—as has been widely speculated but roundly denied by his own representatives—none other than Michael Milken. Apparently Mister Milken hosted what Yolanda called a "massive housewarming party" a few weeks ago in the gilt-trimmed downstairs ballroom the day before his institutes's capitalism promoting <a href="http://www.globalconference.org/">Global Conference</a> began.<br />
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There are, besides Yolanda's proven good word, a few other coincidental tidbits that point to Mister Milken. First off, the real estate agent who represented the buyer is married to one of Mister Milken's daughters and, several years ago, Mister Milken, via a limited liability company, paid close to $37 million for a 13,000 square foot ocean front house on Malibu's Carbon Beach that, like <i>Fleur de Lys</i>, and surprisingly came up for lease at <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2010/10/08/big-home-big-rent-maulibu-at-200000-a-month/">$200,000 per month</a> just days after it was purchased. (FYI, Yolanda is adamant that Mister Milken's beach house was never actually rented to anyone but we don't know if that's true or not.)<br />
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Now children, just to be clear, even though we have zero reason to doubt Yolanda, since Mister Milken's representatives have publicly denied in a major newspaper that neither he nor his institute bought the estate this is just some delicious high-end real estate rumor and gossip and you should make of it what you will.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*Technically, the estate is on (or near) the border between Beverly Hills and the Holmby Hills in a neighborhood called Beverly Crest.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">**Curiously, Your Mama knows a well connected individual who, in late April, told us that one of the agents involved in the deal was going around town telling people the buyer was Bernard Arnault, a French luxury good tycoon with a fortune in excess of $36 billion.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">***Several years ago Miz Saperstein sold off $8 million worth of antiques, including an 18th century German chandelier that went for $602,500, so we're not sure what antiques the buyer might have purchased.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">****The original price recorded with the Multiple Listing Service was $102 million but that has since been swapped out for the $88.3 million figure.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">aerial photo: <a href="http://pacificcoastnews.com/">Pacific Coast News</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-57459097473694342662014-05-20T12:11:00.000-07:002014-05-20T12:11:24.996-07:00Dolly's Selling in Solvang and in Idyllwild, Too!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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SELLER: Dolly Parton<br />
LOCATION: Solvang, CA<br />PRICE: $950,000<br />
SIZE: 6 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms (total)<br />
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YOUR MAMAS NOTES: <a href="http://www.trulia.com/luxe/2014/05/16/dolly-parton-selling-home/">Last week we learned</a> that seven-time Grammy-winning country music iconoclast Dolly Parton* listed her excessively <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2014/05/dolly-parton-lists-west-hollywood-crash.html">countrified bungalow-cottage</a> in the heart of West Hollywood, CA, with an asking price of almost $1.4 million.<br />
<br />Well, children, thanks to our dear and eerily vigilant informant Lucy Spillerguts, Your Mama has learned that the countrified cottage in West Hollywood isn't the only countrified cottage in California that the globally beloved and liberally nipped and tucked Blue Ridge Barbie doll owns <i>and</i> has for sale on the open market. As it turns out, Miz Parton also owns an itty-bitty compound in the high-lariously kooky and tourist-choked faux-Danish village of <a href="http://www.cityofsolvang.com/">Solvang, CA</a>, that's listed for $950,000. That's right, butter beans, Solvang. <br />
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A little more investigating turned up evidence that Miz Parton owns a rustic retreat in the boondocks woods of Idyllwild, CA, that—as it turns out—she also has up for sale on the open market with an asking price of $599,000. More on that property in a minute but first let's go over the place in Solvang.<br />
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There is evidence on the internets that Miz Parton has owned a place in somewhat unlikely Solvang—about two hours north and west of downtown Los Angeles—since the early 2000s but property records we peeped suggest she acquired her current hideaway in the pseudo-Danish community (via trust) in October 2007 for $1,085,000. That means, of course, even if Miz Parton's real estates manage to secure a full price sale she still faces a $135,000 hit to her bank account, not counting carrying costs, improvement expenses and real estate fees. While many might develop an angry and bleeding ulcer over losing $135,000, it's really pennies compared to the veteran country music tycoon's estimated <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/14/celebrity-net-worths-jaw-dropping_n_3273527.html">$450 million fortune</a>.<br />
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The picket-fenced micro-compound, just a couple short blocks from the center of Solvang's densely faux-timbered downtown, occupies a .27 acre corner parcel and includes three separate living spaces. The compact, clapboard-sided main house, according to listing details, has three bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms. The cottage is jam-packed with over-sized furnishings and decoratively done up with Old-Timey lace curtains, hokey stenciled borders around doors and windows, and a downright punishable amount of fake flower sprays and faux-greenery. In the living room there's a television surmounted gas fireplace set cattywompus to room and accented with blue and white Danish tiles.<br />
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In the adjoining (and nearly claustrophobic) eat-in kitchen there are ordinary oak cabinetry topped with ordinary laminate counters and what Your Mama thinks might be the least expensive appliances money can buy.<br />
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A gated gravel driveway separates the rear of the petite main house from a roomy bunkhouse with garaging for three cars plus a ground level studio apartment. Upstairs there's a three bedroom and two bathroom guest apartment with wood stove and an eat-in kitchen finished with the similar, humble finishes and appliances as in the main house.<br />
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Each of the three living spaces has a private patio or deck. The ground level studio has a slender strip of grassy yard the main house has a fenced and gated deck area where Dolly can lounge around on her porch swing without being seen by all the clog-acquiring and pickled gherkin noshing hoi polloi that visit Solvang in droves. We are not even going to discuss the mortifying miniature windmill in the front yard because it's really just too much for Your Mama's delicate constitution to bear.<br />
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Up in the semi-remote wilds of Idyllwild, CA, high in the rugged mountains between Hemet, Banning and Palm Springs, Miz Parton owns a rustic and also decoratively countrified retreat (above) that property records show was purchased in June 2000 for $235,000 and, as mentioned above, is currently on the open market with a $599,000 price tag.<br />
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The multi-level creek side cottage has three bedrooms and three bathrooms in 1,800 square feet with a a river rock fireplace and cathedral ceiling in the living room, a raised hearth fireplace in the dining area, and, as per listing details, a "taste bud tempting kitchen" with a secondary Sub-Zero fridge. There are also "Lots of nooks and crannies for extra storage," and a spacious deck that overlooks a meandering pathway and bridge that leads down to the crick and out in to the woods. Honestly children, we just can't see Miz Parton with her suped-up wigs and stripper heels<br />
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In addition to their trio of for sale California holdings, Miz Parton and Carl Dean, her very much out-of-the-limelight husband of 45 years a vast swathe of land near Pigeon Forge, TN and large spread with a much less humbly scaled 23-room mansion near Nashville. In January (2014), presumably for use by a family member or employee, Miz Parton paid $150,000 for a recently renovated, vinyl-sided bungalow-cottage of just 875 square feet in Nashville's leafy and modest Mincy/Flatrock area (above).<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*In addition to her seven Grammy's and 45 more Grammy nominations the lauded and applauded Dolly Parton can also brag about a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award along with three AMAs (plus a 18 more nominations), 7 ACMs (plus 39 more nominations), two CMTS (plus three more nominations), 9 CMAs (plus 40 more nominations), four People's Choice Awards (plus 7 more nominations) 5 Golden Globe nominations, two Tony nominations, one Emmy nomination, and two Academy Award nominations. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos (Solvang): <a href="http://www.villagesite.com/">Village Properties</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos (Idyllwild): <a href="http://www.lovethehill.com/">Idyllwild Realty</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photo (Nashville): <a href="http://www.pilkertonrealtors.com/">Pilkerton Realtors</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-81431183988479367982014-05-19T14:55:00.001-07:002014-05-19T14:55:35.797-07:00Dame Helen Mirren's Hollywood Pied-a-Terre Still for Lease<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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OWNERS: Dame Helen Mirren and Taylor Hackford<div>
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA<br />PRICE: $40,000/month</div>
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SIZE: 6,699 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms</div>
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YOUR MAMAS NOTES: One of the things that often flabbergasts celebrity real estate newbies is that scads of top-level stars who own multiple, multi-million dollar residences often lease them out, presumably to off-set the enormous costs of owning several high-maintenance homes or some other such unfathomable reason. Sacha Baron Cohen has his compound above Laurel Canyon quietly available for <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2014/05/sacha-baron-cohen-wants-to-let-his-house.html">$85,000 per month</a>; Dan Aykroyd recently put his picturesque spread in Pacific Palisades up for rent at <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2014/05/dan-aykroyd-wants-to-rent-pacific.html">$45,000 per month</a>; Steven Spielberg has his ocean front compound in Malibu up for grabs at a <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2014/04/steven-spielbergs-leases-malibu.html">$150,000 a month</a>.</div>
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Another of the A-grade celebs who regularly leases out her Los Angeles pied-a-terre is the utterly sublime and sexy Oscar-, Emmy-, BAFTA- and Golden Globe-winning—not to mention Tony nominated—British actress <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000545/?ref_=nmbio_sp_1">Dame Helen Mirren</a> (The Queen) and her equally accomplished Oscar-winning film director husband <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000431/">Taylor Hackford</a> (<i>Teenage Father, Ray, Proof of Life, An Officer and a Gentleman</i>).</div>
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Property records suggest the two-parcel property was purchased by Mister Hackford back in 1986, a few years after he divorced his second wife and a decade before he and Miz Mirron were married. The double-gated and privately situated, Runyon Canyon adjacent estate sprawls across more than 6.6 acres directly above an aggressively lackluster if centrally located cluster of apartment complexes at the eastern edge of Hollywood. The hillside estate was once the home of silent film star <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0267914/">Dustin Farnum</a>, one of Cecil B. DeMille's first and greatest discoveries and the <a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/01/16/168799912/quartet-dustin-hoffman-behind-the-camera">hastily chosen</a> namesake of two-time Oscar-winning actor <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000163/">Dustin Hoffman</a>.</div>
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A long gated driveway decadently zig-zags up the lushly planted hillside and sweeps around to the front of the house where there's a motor court able to accommodate parking for 10 or 12 cars. Listing details (and other online resources) indicate the main house, a Colonial-kissed Mediterranean villa originally built in 1911, spans a comfortably spacious 6,699 square feet with four bedrooms and seven bathrooms. A separate, house-sized guest cottage of 2,740 square feet has another four bedrooms and three bathrooms, as per the L.A. County Tax Man. (There are also at least two additional structures of unknown utility tucked discretely behind a high-hedge and a dense and mature copse.)</div>
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A double height, center hall entry with wood floors and impressive staircase connects to a lengthy and elegantly casual formal living room where there are a hefty handful of antique looking tables and sideboards and a pair of matching, roll-armed sofas that square face off against each other in front of a wood-burning fireplace surmounted by a swirly, gilt-trimmed mirror. Multiple sets of French doors open to stone terrace that runs the full width of the rear of the residence. Beyond the living room a less-formal library/den has another fireplace, at least one more set of French doors and built-in book shelves.</div>
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The roomy formal dining room has more French doors, more antique (looking) sideboards and a highly-polished, double-pedestal table surrounded by seven or eight rivet accented light caramel-colored leather wing back chairs that any fool can see were an effectively idiosyncratic choice by Miz Mirren and/or Mister Hackford and/or, possibly, their lady and/or nice-gay decorator.</div>
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The commodious if outdated eat-in center island kitchen has Mexican paver tiles on the floor, ordinary white cabinetry topped with thin slabs of specked gray granite, and a mixy-matchy suite of appliances that include a super-sized commercial grade range. (The children will note the original, wood-faced ice boxes in the back wall.) The mini-manse's service areas also include a secondary stair hall and a butler's pantry enviably larger than most suburban kitchens.</div>
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At least two of the upper level bedrooms open to a house-wide veranda with an over-the-tree-tops view across Los Angeles. Lower level rooms open to a deep terrace and wide, red brick stairway that leads down to a large, terrace-encircled rectangular swimming pool that still has, according to listing photos, a diving board. </div>
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Some of the Mirren-Hackfords nearest neighbors include German-born producer <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000386/">Roland Emmerich</a>, contemporary art world mover and shaker Margo Leavin, four-time Emmy-nominated producer-director Tony Krantz, boho-glam American oil heiress and yoga instructor Normandie Keith, and television writer/producer Anna Fricke and writer/producer Jeremy Carver who only a month or two ago <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2014/04/producer-richard-gladstein-sells.html">shelled out a bit more than $3.4 million</a> for an updated and upgraded turn of the (20th) century cottage.</div>
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This is hardly the first time Dame Mirren and Mister Hackford have put their Tinseltown pied-a-terre up for rent. It was <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2007/02/queen-leaves-her-castle.html">set out for let in 2007</a> at $40,000 per month and <a href="http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2011/08/09/helen-mirrens-hollywood-hills-house-for-lease/?ncid=AOLCOMMre00sharartl0001&a_dgi=aolshare_twitter">again in 2011</a> at $40,000 per month and <a href="https://homes.yahoo.com/news/helen-mirren-la-garden-estate-rent-003939972.html">yet again in 2013</a> for—You got it, brainiacs!—forty grand a month. Fun tidbit: A card carrying member of the (totally fictitious) Lavender Real Estate Club once told Your Mama that Tinseltown cashmere queens Max Mutchnick and his <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/fashion/weddings/02vows.html?_r=0">legal eagle husband</a> Erik Hyman lived here before they bought their English Manor in Bev Hills in 2007 for almost $17 million. </div>
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Until last August (2013), when property records show they sold it for $960,000 the Mirren-Hackfords owned a high-hedged and gated Craftsman style triplex property in a downtown adjacent neighborhood Santa Barbara, CA. In fall of 2006T, the couple have were reported by no less than <i><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/02/061002fa_fact1?currentPage=all">The New Yorker</a></i> (October 2 issue) to also keeps homes in London, Provence (France), and New York. Sorry, Charlies, but Your Mama doesn't have many specifics on these homes but their 19th century London townhouse, a "former customs house, near Tower Bridge, on the cobbled backstreets of East London," according to The New Yorker, stands four stories and backs up to communal gardens. However and for the record, Your Mama can't confirm or deny that the Mirren-Hackfords still own homes in London, Provence and/or New York.</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos: <a href="http://www.joycerey.com/">Coldwell Banker</a></span></div>
Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-33009365796236674452014-05-16T14:24:00.002-07:002014-05-20T12:11:11.545-07:00Dolly Parton Lists West Hollywood Crash Pad<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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SELLER: Dolly Parton<br />
LOCATION: West Hollywood, CA<br />
PRICE: $1,395,000<br />
SIZE: 1,091 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms<br />
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YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The long-legged blond at <a href="http://www.trulia.com/luxe/2014/05/16/dolly-parton-selling-home/">Trulia Luxe Living</a> revealed today that Dolly Parton listed her West Hollywood crash pad for $1,395,000. (The house is remarkably small but it sorta makes sense Miz Parton maintains a West Coast pied-a-terre in the heart of Boys Town, don't it?)<br />
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The compact and extensively fenced and gated bungalow in the Norma Triangle 'nabe, is said to be the childhood home of Natalie Wood and was quietly acquired by the prodigiously talented and high camp country queen April 2007 for $1.2 million.<br />
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Listing details indicate the bantam bungalow was originally built in 1923 and currently has two bedrooms and two bathrooms in 1,091 square feet. There's off-street parking for several cars—a real bonus in this tightly packed 'hood—several porches, a small tiled terrace with a garden shed and a detached one-car garage turned into one of the strangest little guest cottages this property gossip has ever laid our boozy eyes. (More on that in a brief moment.)<br />
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We love us some Dolly Parton, children. We really do and, once upon a time in the not too distant past, Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter paid big bucks for prime seats at Radio City Music Hall to watch the anatomically illogical superstar knock her Showbiz ball out of the damn park. But, seriously, how does this woman not knock all that tchotcke around with her giant personality and super-sized chest and/or snag her big ol' wigs on all that country crap that clings to ever surface available in the itty-bitty cottage?<br />
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And what about <i>that</i> room? You know which one we're talking about, the garage cum guesthouse one the buff-toned leather recliner and the toilet set out in the open right up next to the kitchenette. We don't mean to be crude, children, but a person could make microwave popcorn and take a dump at the same time. How–ahem—unusually convenient.<br />
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Miz Parton, according to The Bizzy Boys at <i><a href="http://www.celebrityaddressaerial.com/">Celebrity Address Aerial</a></i>, owns several other homes and homesteads including a small cottage near the zoo in Nashville and a large estate surrounded by housing developments near Brentwood, TN. They also keep a wee place in rugged Idyllwild, CA, and a vast tract of land outside Pigeon Forge, TN, not so far from where Miz Parton grew up in extremely humble circumstances.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos: <a href="http://www.coldwellbanker.com/">Coldwell Banker</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-60667837646867068072014-05-16T09:40:00.001-07:002014-05-16T09:40:44.624-07:00Sting and Trudy List London Townhouse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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SELLER: Sting and Trudy Styler<br />
LOCATION: London, U.K.<br />
SIZE: 7,000 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms<br />
PRICE: On Application<br />
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YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Deep in the night Your Mama received a covert communique from an eagle-eyed informant we'll call Ozzy Anglophile who let us know that 11-time Grammy winning veteran rock star Sting and his producer/actress/philanthropist wife Trudy Styler hoisted their super-luxe central London townhouse on the open market with an undisclosed asking price.<br />
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We're not exactly sure when the music world mandarins acquired the extra-wide, 17th century townhouse that backs up to the tree-lined Birdcage Walk along St. James Park but we do know they had the place worked over and expanded Lee F. Mindel at the high-toned New York City-based <a href="http://www.sheltonmindel.com/">Shelton Mindel & Associates</a> before they had the people in from <i>Architectural Digest</i> (A.D.) to <a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/celebrity-homes/2010/sting-trudie-styler-london-townhouse-article">fawn, photograph</a> and document the extensive and expensive renovation for their May 2010 issue.<br />
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Current digital marketing materials show the five-plus floor urban mansion spans 790.9 square meters—that's just over 8,500 square feet for all us non-metric Americans—and is currently configured with seven bedrooms and six bathrooms. (The A.D. article clocked it at 7,000 square feet but what's a 1,500 square foot discrepancy when big is big? Anyhoodles, poodles...)<br />
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In addition to a marble-floored and pine-paneled stair hall with an elegant, corkscrew spindled staircase that will surely stop visitor dead in their tracks with it's, listing details describe a handful of amply proportioned reception rooms, including a fully paneled living room that spans the full width of the house with wood floors, a wood-burning fireplace and a delicious quartet of over-sized, six-over-six sash windows that peer into the tree tops of the rear garden. The couple, as per the A.D. article, furnished the room with a pair of Yves Klein coffee tables—each nowadays go for <a href="http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/sculptures-statues-figures/yves-klein-table-bleue-5250941-details.aspx">well upwards of $20,000</a>, a Diego Giacometti side table—we can't even fathom the cost, a colorful clutch of Matisse prints and, over the fireplace, a cubist portrait by Pablo Picasso.<br />
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A sinuously graphic rug and a wood-burning fireplace anchor an upper floor music/media room that also stretches the full width of the house and—again as per the A.D. article—was outfitted with faux-pine paneling interspersed with sound baffling fabric panels. Four more, although slightly smaller, six-over-six sash windows overlook the tree tops towards Birdcage Walk and St. James Park.<br />
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Like is being done with vast engineering derring do and great expense in the finer neighborhood all over London, Mister and Missus Sting's extensive renovation included a generous expansion of the (somewhat subterranean) ground floor into previously unused space <i>under</i> the house's rear garden. The newly created area includes numerous storage and mechanical rooms, a home office accessible from a separate below grade street entrance. Smack in the center of the plan is a sleek, if windowless, all-white center island kitchen fitted and kitted with some of the best appliances and fixtures money can buy.<br />
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The kitchen links through to a capacious dining area that's flooded with natural light by a massive sky-light. Open to but two steps down from the dining room is a cozy and low-key, if still buttoned up, family room space. The architect's tucked A discrete half bathroom tucked up into one corner and installed a tightly spiraled staircase that leads up to we don't know where. Four, 15-pane glass doors that open to a lower level of the rear garden.<br />
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The couple's upper level bedroom—Let's keep the Tantric sex jokes to a bare minimum, shall we?—also has fabric paneled walls and an attached, wood floored and fully paneled bathroom that includes a soaking tub for two and a separate shower. (We'd have preferred the crapper be enclosed in a well ventilated cubicle of it's own but, alas, nobody asked Your Mama what we thought.)<br />
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There's direct access to the grand, tree-lined Birdcage Walk from the rear garden that includes a shaded dining terrace. Listing details also call out a roof terrace that Your Mama imagines provides a stellar view over St. James Park and, maybe, a glimpse of the roof tops of Buckingham Palace just half a mile up the road.<br />
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In addition to the London townhouse and an 800-acre country estate with a late 16th century Elizabethan manor house near Andover in Wiltshire—featured in <a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/celebrity-homes/2007/sting-trudie-styler-home-wiltshire-england-article">Architectural Digest</a> in 2007—Mister and Missus Sting keep a swanky place in New York City and an ocean front getaway in Malibu, CA.<br />
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In New York they sold an exceptionally roomy, low-floor duplex at <i>The Brentmore</i> building at 88 Central Park West in <a href="http://manhattanstyle.com/real-estate/sting-trudie-styler-sell-central-park-west-apartment/">July 2010 for $17,750,000</a> to San Francisco-based businessman Michael Naify. The duplex had previously been owned by Billy Joel and, as it turns out, the 6,000 square foot duplex back up for sale at $19.8 million, reduced from it's original $21.5 million asking price. The couple downsized (a bit) and decamped just a few blocks to the south where, in March 2008, they shelled out $26.983,625 million for a mid-floor duplex with just over 5,400 square feet at the lordly and surpremely pricey 15 Central Park West.<br />
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On the Left Coast, in Malibu they own a spacious, quasi-pueblo style residence with 5,549 square feet inside the guarded gates of <i>The Colony</i> enclave that they bought in 1997 for $5,375,000 from the late actor Larry Hagman. (They previously owned another ocean front abode in <i>The Colony</i> that they sold in April 1999 for $4.45 million to semi-retired sitcom actor Paul Reiser.)<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos: <a href="http://www.knightfrank.com/">Knight Frank</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-26718081480620047062014-05-15T14:42:00.000-07:002014-05-15T14:42:43.145-07:00Pick Up Stick: El Fureidis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>El Fureidis, </i>the architecturally multi-cultural villa in Montecito, CA, originally designed by architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue for New York banker James Waldron Gillespe that was featured in the magnificent and magnificently violent Al Pacino movie <i>Scarface,</i> was <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304885404579547683767522574">hoisted on the open market</a> last week with a <a href="http://www.villagesite.com/property/631-parra-grande-lane-montecito_14-1459">$35 million asking price</a>.<br />
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Our perusal of property records show the 10.39 acre estate is currently owned by a corporate entity directly connected to Russian-born and U.S. naturalized billionaire businessman Sergey Grishin who picked it up in October 2009 for just $6,230,000. The mansion has four bedrooms and four full and five half bathrooms in almost 10,000 square feet. Mister Grishin extensively restored and remodeled the mansion and in 2012 it popped up for rent at $30,000 per month.<br />
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The listing agent told to the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304885404579547683767522574"><i>Wall Street Journal</i></a> that Mister Grishin wants to sell the painstakingly maintained <i>El Fureidis</i> because the estate "isn't his primary residence he isn't using it as much as he would like."<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos: <a href="http://www.villagesite.com/">Village Properties</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-50286838300255655452014-05-15T14:20:00.002-07:002014-05-15T14:20:47.499-07:00Pick Up Sticks: January Jones<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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First came word from the long-legged blond at <i>Trulia Luxe Living</i> that <i>Mad Men</i> actress January Jones—single parent to a toddler, baby daddy unknown—<a href="http://www.trulia.com/luxe/2014/05/12/january-jones-selling-house/">listed her 2,200 square foot house</a> in L.A.'s Los Feliz 'hood $1.495 million. (She <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2009/09/january-jones-snags-fixer-in-los-feliz.html">purchased the property</a> in 2009 for $1.02 million.)<br />
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Then, lo and behold, the very same blond property gossip dug up the dirt on Miss Jones's new digs, a nearly 3,300 square foot mock-Med in a small, guard-gated tract high in the mountains above the San Fernando Valley's Woodland Hills community that she <a href="http://www.trulia.com/luxe/2014/05/14/january-jones-buys-new-house/">scooped up for $1.7 million</a>. It must have been a hot property because it looks to Your Mama like Miss Jones had to shell out more than 200 grand more than the $1.495 million listing price.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos (Los Feliz): <a href="http://www.nourmand.com/">Nourmand & Associates</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos (Topanga): <a href="http://www.snydersutton.com/">Snyder Sutton Real Estate</a></span><br />
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Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-30467368336713163562014-05-14T21:24:00.000-07:002014-05-15T06:28:52.732-07:00Poor, Poor Steven Cohen<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Freakishly rich and legally beleaguered hedge fund bazillionaire Steven A. Cohen*—<a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/steve-cohen/"><i>Forbes</i> estimates</a> his fortune at $11.1 billion and last year alone he reportedly hauled in more than 2.3 billion—listed a mansion-sized duplex in a glitzy Midtown Manhattan tower just over a year ago (April, 2013) with an astronomical $115 million asking price. In January (2014) the office price of the 9,000-ish square foot urban aerie with its 4 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms and 2 bedroom and 1 bathroom staff suite <a href="http://www.corcoran.com/nyc/Listings/Display/2569544">plummeted to $98 million</a>.<br />
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Without a serious offer to purchase the apartment in over a year despite an elephantine $17 million price cut, according to the the <a href="http://pagesix.com/2014/05/12/hedge-fund-big-furious-that-his-98m-penthouse-isnt-selling/?_ga=1.138551034.811154455.1357151174"><i>New York Post</i></a>, Mister Cohen fifty shades of furious. One of the <i>Post</i>'s two snitchy and unnamed sources claims Mister Cohen blames his high profile lady real estate broker for failing to unload his 51st and 52nd floor white elephant.<br />
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Naturally, Your Mama has no idea if there is any veracity to the scuttlebutt but iffin there is, gurl, pleeze! Stamp your feet and have yourself a gorgeous hissy fit. Please do, Mister Cohen. Even better, please do it in a place where the media can catch it on tape because—listen to Your Mama here Mister Cohen because there is some sage advice buried in this here bite—there ain't <i>nuthin'</i> the hoi polloi like better than watching a man with 11-and-some billion dollars whine publicly about how his top-shelf real estate agent can't manage to sell his 9,000 square foot pied-a-terre in Midtown Manhattan for $98 million.<br />
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Of course, as was <a href="http://curbed.com/archives/2014/05/14/blockbusters-64.php">gently posited</a> by the kids at <i>Curbed</i>, it could be that the sorts of people with the sort of finances and impetus to spend nearly nine figures on a super-sized duplex in New York City just don't see this particular one as a nearly nine figure duplex, despite it's admittedly rare for New York City capaciousness. (What this nosy property gossip is dying to know, though, is has Mister Cohen received any offers and, if so, their amount(s). Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?)<br />
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Meanwhile, as his sybaritic, art-filled triple-exposure Midtown duplex languishes without a buyer in sight, Mister Cohen has none-the-less hoovered up blue chip artworks and trophy real estate like, well, like it wouldn't matter an iota to his behemoth bank account if he simply gave the damn duplex to one of his hedge fund billionaire buddies. Last year alone Mister Cohen paid a bone-rattling $155 million to casino magnate Steve Wynn for Picasso's <i>La Rêve, </i>coughed up $23.4 million for a 10,000 square foot apartment in New York's ever more swank West Village, and he plunked down $62.5 million for a 6.5 acre ocean front estate in East Hampton, NY.<br />
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And let's not forget, butter beans, in December 2012 he shelled out $38.4 million for a nearly 10,000 square foot townhouse-type condo in the West Village and he still owns a second, land-locked spread in East Hampton as well as a downright baronial estate in Greenwich, CT, where there's a massive and muscular Richard Serra sculpture in the front yard.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*Mister Cohen was not personally charged but his firm, SAC Capital, was charged with insider trading and, after a lot of denials and belligerence and back and forth, eventually reached a settlement with the SEC in which SAC agreed to pay <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-08/government-to-steven-cohen-give-us-1-dot-8-billion">$1.8 billion in fines</a>. The agreement also stipulates Mister Cohen can never manage other people's money and, hence, he's in the process of returning monies from outside investors and converting SAC Capital to a family office. But, seriously, what does he need with other people's money when he's got more than $11 billion of his own to manage and milk for even more money</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos and floor plan: <a href="http://www.corcoran.com/">Corcoran</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-62421044895081181302014-05-14T12:25:00.001-07:002014-05-19T17:37:08.375-07:00Ted Danson Nabs Rustic Canyon Retreat<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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BUYERS: Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen<br />
LOCATION: Santa Monica, CA<br />
PRICE: $3,470,000<br />
SIZE: (aprox. 2,700 square feet), 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms plus a 2 bedroom and 2 bathroom guest house<br />
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YOUR MAMAS NOTES: There's no evidence we know of they sold or even plan to sell their current west coast outpost in on the border between Brentwood and Santa Monica but, as we first heard from real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak and later confirmed with property records, Hollywood A-listers Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen quietly dropped almost $3.5 million—$3,470,000 to be exact—for a two-story Craftsman cottage nestled into in a scenically sylvan and semi-rustic canyon between Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades.*<br />
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Mister Danson, who—so the tabloid gossip goes—sports what is surely one of the finest, more discreet and most expensive hair systems in all of Hollywood, rocketed to fame and fortune in the 1980s on the legendary and still-in-syndication sitcom <i>Cheers</i>. Since 1993, when <i>Cheers</i> went off the air, Mister Danson has been continuously and lucratively employed in a series of sitcoms (<i>Bored to Death, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Becker</i>) with brief forays into dramatic films (<i>Saving Private Ryan</i>) and dramatic television (<i>Damages</i>). Currently he shakes his veteran money maker on the boob-toob mystery-drama supernova <i>CSI: Crime Scene Investigation</i>. An actor with real if sometimes underutilized chops, Mister Danson can legitimately brag about his two Emmys—both for <i>Cheers—</i>and dozen more nominations, nine of them for <i>Cheers. </i>He also has three Golden Globes on his book shelf plus 8 more nominations and, although always been a bridesmaid and never the bride at the People Choice Awards, he can none-the-less claim an impressive seven nominations.<br />
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Miz Steenburgen, Mister Danson's third wife for nearly 20 years now, may have a lower public profile, perhaps, than her husband but she's no less buried in industry awards and recognitions. She won an Oscar <i>and</i> a Golden Globe in 1981 for her role in the critically well regarded if largely under the radar dramedy <i>Melvin and Howard</i>* and in 2012 she shared a Screen Actors Guild Award with the cast for the much-lauded feature film <i>The Help</i>. She's was nominated for two other Golden Globes (<i>Goin' South, Ragtime</i>), twice more for SAG awards (<i>About Sarah, Nixon</i>), and she landed an Emmy nomination in 1988 for her lead role in the mini-series <i>The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank</i>.<br />
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The deal for the Danson-Steenburgen's canyon residence appears to have gone down off-market because, not for some scouring, Your Mama did not turn up a recent, open-market listing for the property. A little hocus-pocus on the internets did turn up, however, a listing from 2011 when the house was listed for $3.15 million. (Use yer noggins now, children. That means the listing photos from 2011 may or my not accurately depict the house in its present condition.)<br />
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The quiet canyon—where one long-time resident with whom Your Mama is friendly swears on his law library there are more Priuses per capita than anywhere else in Los Angeles—is home to at least two <a href="http://la.curbed.com/archives/2012/11/touring_architect_ray_kappes_incredible_house_in_rustic_canyon_1.php">drop dead delicious</a> <a href="http://www.kappedu.com/RayKappe.html">Ray Kappe</a>-designed homes as well as a fair number residences owned by famous folk including Robert Downey, Jr. and Bradley Cooper.<br />
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Set behind gates and a high wall of shrubbery, the two-story shingled Craftsman was originally built in 1922 but has obviously been extensively updated and upgraded since then. As best as this experienced property gossip can parse from listing details and property records, the approximately 2,700 square foot main house has three bedrooms and two bathrooms. A two-story, detached guest house has two more flexi-use rooms, the upper with an itty-bitty veranda and both with en-suite poopers.<br />
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At the time the property was listed in 2011, the front door opened—and may still open for all we know—directly into a long living room with honey-toned wood floors, a (partly) vaulted and sky lit ceiling with exposed trusses, a fireplace, and a full wall of open bookshelves and closed storage around a 30-pane window. We almost didn't but eventually realized we would be remiss as a thoroughly snarky property gossip not to address that gawdawful, terrarium-like step-down seating bay that just off the living room like an all glass wart. If, as we all no it does, Rule #7 in <i>Your Mama's Big Book of Decoratin' Does and Don'ts</i> explicitly states that greenhouse windows over kitchen sinks are strictly verboten then y'all can imagine the linguistic vitriol we might have for an greenhouse window that is so big that several people can sit in in the damn thing at the same time? Pleeze. We are down with a cushioned nook in which to curl up and read or strum a gee-tar but there has to be a better solution than this glazed disaster. (Or is the horror just us?)<br />
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The wood floors switch—or, at least, switched in 2011—to well-worn Saltillo tiles with a semi-gloss finish in the adjoining combination kitchen and dining room. A full wall of bookshelves lend an intellectual cast to the dining area and a generous bank of ten-pane glass doors open to the red brick terraced backyard. Back in 2011 the modestly-sized and sky-kit u-shaped kitchen had ever-so-humble white raised panel cabinetry and boldly selected tomato red ceramic tile counter tops, a four-seat snack peninsula, and an honest-to-goodness commercial grade range. We are not going to go there about the greenhouse window over the sink but we will tell you in combination with the super-sized one in the living room it makes us need a nerve pill like a bird needs the sky to fly. Anyways...<br />
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Two family bedrooms on the main floor share a hall bathroom that, as far as we can surmise and not ideally, does double-duty as the guest bathroom. The master suite takes up the entire second floor and is complete with more honey-toned wood floors, a vaulted ceiling with rustic exposed wood ridge beam, a fireplace, cushioned bay window and a small private veranda. There's also roomy slate-floored bathroom with garden tub and a fitted walk-in closet probably larger than most $2,500 per month studio apartments in lower Manhattan.<br />
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There are several foliage and fenced ringed red brick patios sprinkled throughout the property as well as a multi-level red brick terrace in the backyard that gives shape to a petite swimming pool and attached spa. As the planted (and planter dotted) terraces step up the hillside they give way to a rugged and naturally maintained hillside.<br />
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In addition to their Craftsman cottage in Rustic Canyon, Mister Danson and Miz Steenburgen's property portfolio also includes a relatively modest (if plainly pricey) three bedroom and three bathroom residence on the border between <a href="http://www.casasugar.com/Ted-Danson-Mary-Steenburgen-Increase-Curb-Appeal-6934436">Santa Monica and Brentwood</a> that they picked up in October 2009 for $3.11 million. As a getaway they own a<a href="http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/9573559/list/Ted-Danson-and-Mary-Steenburgen-s-Guesthouse-Brims-With-Charm"> 9.49 acre spread in lovely-lovely Ojai, CA</a>, that they snatched up in June 2005 for $4.5 million—the property was owned briefly in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Ellen Degeneres—and a couple of years ago they bought a <a href="http://www.sheknows.com/home-and-gardening/articles/955887/mary-steenburgen-decor-and-entertaining-tips">wee brick cottage</a> in Nashville.<br />
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Although we know nothing of such a thing we'd be a bit surprised if they didn't maintain a modest pied-a-terre in New York City. On historic, gorgeous and semi-waspy Martha's Vineyard the Danson-Steenburgens own a pair of parcels that combined encompass six acres with two substantial residences and several additional outbuildings of unknown utility. The first part of the compound appears to have been purchased in 1994 for $940,000 and the larger second parcel in May 2002 for $3.85 million but it's probably best nobody repeats those figures like they're the truth.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*Not that any body does—our should—give a rat's crap but iffin this property gossip could had the cheddar to choose any street in Los Angeles on which to reside it would be the very one on which the Danson-Steenburgen's new digs happen to sit. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">(2011) listing photos: <a href="http://www.prefabforsale.com/">Deasy Penner</a></span></div>
Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-24986011140980227492014-05-13T13:11:00.001-07:002014-05-13T14:35:56.328-07:00Tennis Great Pete Sampras Buys Another in Bel Air<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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BUYERS: Pete Sampras and Bridgette Wilson-Sampras<br />
LOCATION: Los Angeles (Bel Air), CA<br />
PRICE: $3,501,000<br />
SIZE: 3,424 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms<br />
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YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Retired professional tennis player Pete Sampras—unquestionably one of the best players to ever manhandle <i>and</i> finesse a tennis racket—may be largely out of the hot glare of the tennis watching public but all the real estate obsessed children know the A-list athlete pops up on the regular in all the celebrity property gossip columns.<br />
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In early 2008, the 14-time Grand Slam winner and his actress wife, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0933098/">Bridgette Wilson-Sampras</a>, <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2008/01/pete-sampras-home-court-up-for-grabs_23.html">slapped a $25 million price tag</a> on a gloomy, English Manor in Beverly Hills that they sold about six months later for just under $17 million to (<i>Will & Grace</i> co-creator) Max Mutchnick and his well-connected entertainment attorney husband, Erik Hyman. The Showbizzy pair, parents to twin girls, worked the place over in a sumptuously comfortable yet family friendly haute-homo glamour that was professionally photographed a couple of years ago for the glossy pages <a href="http://www.elledecor.com/design-decorate/interiors/will-and-grace-max-mutchnick-home">of <i>Elle Decor</i></a>. But we digress...<br />
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The Sampras packed up their rackets and sneakers and decamped what Your Mama understands to be a very good part of Beverly Hills to what Your Mama understands to be a very good part of Thousand Oaks, CA, where they'd <a href="http://www.home-designing.com/2010/03/pete-sampras-house-in-lake-sherwood-usa">custom built a contemporary compound</a> on a private, 20-ish acre promontory behind the swanky gates of the Sherwood Country Club. It wasn't long—March, 2010, as best as we can tell—before the sports-minded spread was hoisted on the open market with a <a href="http://www.trulia.com/luxe/2011/09/07/tennis-pete-sampras-home/">$25 million asking price</a>. Mister Sampras doesn't appear to possess much of a green thumb for residential real estate and his spacious Thousand Oaks estate finally sold last October (2013) for <a href="http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/390-W-Stafford-Rd-Thousand-Oaks-CA-91361/87803298_zpid/">$13,560,000</a>, pretty damn close to half the original asking price.<br />
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In late 2009 or early 2010 Mister and Missus Sampras high-tailed it back over the Santa Monica Mountains to the Brentwood area where they <a href="http://hauteliving.com/2010/02/pete-sampras-buys-5-6-million-new-home-in-los-angeles/21946/">shelled out $5.6 million</a> for a six bedroom and six bathroom rustic-contemporary at the tail end of a leafy cul-de-sac.* A couple of short months ago just about every <a href="http://www.trulia.com/luxe/2014/03/12/pete-sampras-bridgette-wilson-buy-home/">property gossip</a> besides this one discussed how the increasingly peripatetic Mister and Missus Sampras <a href="http://www.trulia.com/luxe/2014/03/12/pete-sampras-bridgette-wilson-buy-home/">laid out $5,996,500</a> for a 5,100 square foot celeb-pedigreed residence on 2.08 acres in the mountains high above L.A.'s Bel Air. The gated estate—with circular motor court, swimming pool and tennis court— had previously been owned by Albert Brooks and, before him, deceased television mega-mogul Merv Griffin.<br />
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This morning, quite out of the blue, Your Mama received tongue wagging word from one of the Bizzy Boys at <i><a href="http://celebrityaddressaerial.com/">Celebrity Address Aerial</a></i> that Mister and Missus Sampras coughed up another $3,501,000 to acquire a 1.12 acre property that's adjacent (and below) the hill top house they just bought in Bel Air. There must have been some serious competition for the semi-secluded property because Your Mama's research shows it was last listed for $3,195,000, a whopping $306,000 less than the recorded sale price. So says Your Mama's bejeweled abacus, the Samprases paid a total of $9,497,500 for the neighboring properties that combined encompass 3.2 acres.<br />
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Listing details we coaxed out of the internets show the 3,424 square foot single-story residence, described in digital marketing materials as "an emotional ranch home," sits privately down a long, gated and tree-lined drive. An emotional ranch home? What in the devil's name does that mean? Will the damn thing will break into fits of tears or have a conniption when it feels under appreciated? No thank you. Just ask The Dr. Cooter. Your Mama can be a little—uh—moody so we'll take our house <i>sans</i> emotions of its own, thank you very much. Anyways...<br />
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Listings show the four bedroom and three bathroom house has roomy, interconnected main living spaces with dark chocolate brown hardwood floors, vaulted, beamed and/or exposed wood ceilings, several fireplaces and sky lights, and expensively fitted and kitted kitchen and bathrooms.<br />
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There's a "seamless indoor/outdoor flow" as per listing details between the house and the myriad of outdoor entertainment and recreation areas. A partially covered terrace wraps around (at least) three sides of the abode and includes a built-in outdoor kitchen and slightly elevated dining deck tucked up against the hillside. From the house the grounds meander and wander through a sylvan and mature landscape that includes at least two amorphous swathes of lawn; a children's playground; a built-in fire pit; a spa <i>and</i> sauna; and an oval-shaped swimming pool surrounded by a narrow strip of flag stone terracing.<br />
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While the two properties do butt up against each other and share a long, common border, the smaller house—the one featured here—sits well below the larger one and it seems to Your Mama that to get from one house to the other Mister and Missus Sampras will need to install a long, booty-busting stairway or—better yet—a short-haul funicular.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*Iffin we're honest, children, and we aways are, we confess that we have no idea—nada, zip, zilch—if Mister and Missus Sampras moved into the Brentwood abode full time or if they remained primarily in residence in Thousand Oaks and merely used the Brentwood property as an in-town crash pad. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos: <a href="http://www.thepartnerstrust.com/">Partners Trust</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-39662875877741644822014-05-13T10:09:00.001-07:002014-05-13T10:09:32.280-07:00Ashton and Mila Buy Crib to Bring Up Baby<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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BUYERS: Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis<br />
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA<br />PRICE: $10,215,000<br />SIZE: 7,351 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms<br /><br />YOUR MAMAS NOTES: First came word down the New York City celebrity property gossip grapevine that Emmy-nominated and three time Razzie winning actress and producer Demi Moore quietly wants a spine-stiffening $75 million for her triplex penthouse at the celebrity-approved <i>San Remo</i> building on the Upper West Side.<br />
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Next, coincidentally, came the dish this morning via the lady property gossip at the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-hotprop-ashton-kutcher-20140512-story.html"><i>L.A. Times </i>who revealed</a> that Miz Moore's much younger third ex-husband—that would be sitcom star, producer and Twittering tech investor Ashton Kutcher—has quietly floated his very contemporary, post-Demi bachelor pad above the Hollywood Reservoir as a whisper listing with a hush-hush asking price of around $12 million. Mister Kutcher—reportedly the <a href="http://variety.com/2013/tv/news/ashton-kutcher-two-and-a-half-men-salary-1200728111/">highest paid actor on television</a> who reportedly rakes in $275,000 per episode for his starring role on the silly but wildly successful sitcom <i>Two and a Half Men—</i>picked up the 9,385 square foot three story residence (above) just two years ago (March, 2012) for $8.455 million.<br />
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The decision to sell his super-modern mansion in the Hollywood Hills may or may not but probably does have something to do with the fact that Mister Kutcher and his current fiancée and former <i>That '70s Show</i> co-star Mila Kunis <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWYt6YS_yY0">have a bun in the oven</a>. The decision to sell so soon after buying the reservoir view residence also may or may not but probably does have something to with the procreating couple's recent and surreptitious acquisition of a new house in which to bring up baby.<br />
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Your Mama first heard of the couples stealthy purchase of a new home about a week ago from Platinum Triangle real estate insider Peter Propertyseller and then—coincidentally—we heard it again just last night from the ever-plucky real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak. According to both informants, the preggers pair quietly shelled out $10.215 million in an of-market deal for the Beverly Hills (Post Office) home of divorcing Showbiz movers and shakers Tom and Kathy Freston.*<br />
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Your Mama didn't turn up any readily available digital marketing materials for the fairly traditional two-story residence so we'll have to defer to the Los Angeles County Tax Man who shows the existing house, in a private enclave long favored by famous folk, sits on just over half and acre of gated and landscaped grounds and was constructed in 1999 with three bedrooms and four bathrooms in 7,351 square feet.<br />
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Very few details of the property are publicly available but Your Mama's investigative research shows there's a gated motor court and three car garage at the front and a series of verandas and terraces off the rear of the residence that step down to a flat and amorphous patch of grass and a dark-bottomed swimming pool and spa.<br />
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Other celebrity residents of the exclusive 'hood include Cameron Diaz—she bought Candice Bergen's compound in 2010 for just shy of $9.5 million; Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem—who paid $3.3 million for the former home of Sara Gilbert; music world big wig Guy Oseary; actor turned professional gambler Gabe Kaplan; Reggae royal Ziggy Marley; and Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban. Sidney Holland, a woman best known to gossip glossy readers, perhaps, as Sumner Redstone's much younger gal pal, recently paid Jessica Simpson <a href="http://www.latimes.com/classified/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-hotprop-jessica-simpson-20131014,0,298648.story">$6.4 million</a> for a house that was formerly owned by Paul Hogan, Ellen DeGeneres, Rick York and—funnily enough—Tom and Kathy Freston.<br />
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Smoky voiced Miz Kunis's property portfolio includes a 4,112 square foot house off Mulholland Drive in the Laurel Canyon area that she scooped up in September 2008 for $2,885,000 as well as a 2,250 square foot condo in a secured but perfectly ordinary West Hollywood complex that she acquired in the early days of 2002 for $540,000.<br />
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We don't know what real estate plans either of the Frestons have in store for themselves but we do know that in New York City, they still own a red brick townhouse in the Lenox Hill area of the Upper East Side that they picked up in 2000 for $6.5 million. The six-plus story townhouse was famously owned from 1974-1987 by pop art mandarin Andy Warhol. The Frestons gave the 6-plus floor townhouse a swanky and no doubt exceedingly expensive overhaul and heaved it on the market in the spring of 2008 with an in-hindsight rose-tinted <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2008/04/tom-frestons-new-york-city-ka-ching.html">asking price of $38.5 million</a>. (The price was eventually lowered to $35 million but, alas, there were no takers.)<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*The Frestons, who purchased the property in September 2001 for $4,350,000, officially split in 2012, first amicably and then, so the scuttlebutt goss, not so amicably. Though soon-to-be-ex Missus Freston—a former model, vegan and author—denies it there have been a number <a href="http://pagesix.com/2013/10/10/viacom-chiefs-ex-in-lesbian-affair/">tabloid-y reports</a> that scream and shout that she had a lesbian affair with an otherwise unidentified woman named Pam after she and Mister Freston parted ways. And so what if she did? Would that really be such a scandalous thing? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">aerial image (top): <a href="http://www.bing.com/maps/">Bing</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">aerial image (bottom): <a href="http://pacificcoastnews.com/">Pacific Coast News</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-65720908287665959772014-05-12T12:20:00.005-07:002014-05-12T14:58:15.472-07:00Andy Cohen Buys Upstairs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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BUYER: Andy Cohen<br />
LOCATION: New York City, NY<br />
PRICE: $2,571,081<br />
SIZE: 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms<br />
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YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to the eagle eyes of New York City-based informant Polly Wannacracker it's come to this celebrity property gossip's attention that former Bravo Television executive Andy Cohen—He-Rah of <i>The Real Housewives of...</i> franchise—shelled out $2,571,081 for a two bedroom and two bathroom co-operative in one of the more coveted pre-war buildings in New York City's ever-more gentrified West Village.*<br />
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The handsome and beefy bodied pop culture maven—his 2012 autobiography is entitled <i><a href="http://www.mosttalkative.com/">Most Talkative: Stories from the Front Lines of Pop Culture</a></i>—won't have to schlep his backgammon board and collection of coffee table books very far since 2003 he's owned and occupied a similarly (and possibly identically) laid out two-bedroom apartment a couple floors below his new that he bought in 2003 for an unknown amount. The tchotcke-filled apartment was photographed for a flattery bio-piece last spring (2013) in <i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/realestate/andy-cohen-at-home-heres-what-happens.html?_r=0">The New York Times</a></i>.<br />
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Believe it or not, children, the reality television super-guru comes from a (slightly) more serious television background. He started as an intern at CBS News where he went on to produce <i>The Early Show, 48 Hours </i>and <i>CBS This Morning</i>. In 2004 he received a distinguished Peabody Award for executive producing the documentary <i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDbFJg50Xe-5l1LXKK9rElof5D822JX0R">The N-Word</a></i> and in 2010 he received an Emmy as one of the executive producers of Bravo's <i>Top Chef</i> series. Last November (2013) Mister Cohen stepped down from his powerful (and no doubt lucrative) post as the EVP of Original Programming and Development at cable juggernaut Bravo but still serves as the executive producer of the the runaway successful <i>Real Housewives of...</i> franchise and for at least the next two years will also remain the liquor swilling host of Bravo's boozy night-time chat show <i>What What Happens: Live</i>. Mister Cohen <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/business/media/new-bravo-deal-means-more-of-andy-cohen.html">launched his own production company</a>, which he not surprisingly called Most Talkative, that has a deal to develop prime-time shows for his former employer. Anyhoodles, poodles...<br />
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Based on measurements shown on the floor plan including with digital marketing materials Your Mama guesstimates the angled, high-floor apartment spans somewhere close to 1,200 square feet with two en-suite bedrooms situated on opposite ends of the apartment for maximum privacy. Listing details show maintenance charges rack up to a hefty $2,525.70 per month.<br />
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The floor plan also shows a proper entrance hall, a nearly 25-foot long living room with fireplace and panoramic eastern views, and a picayune dining room that connects through to an essentially triangular (and windowed) kitchen. We counted new fewer than five walk-in closets where Mister Cohen can store all his body-conscious bespoke suits and semi-skimpy bathing suits.</div>
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Other residents/owners in Mister Cohen's distinguished building include Oscar-winner Sally Field, who picked up her high-floor apartment in <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2011/11/did-sally-field-do-it-in-west-village.html">October 2011 for $2,550,000</a>, and Marissa Sackler, the founder of the non-profit business incubator <a href="http://www.beespacenyc.org/">Beespace</a>, who paid $12.5 million for her terraced duplex penthouse in August 2011 and is one of the many daughters of the late Purdue Pharmaceuticals co-founder and art patron <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/business/01sackler.html">Mortimer Sackler</a>.<br />
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In addition to his urban aerie(s), the out and proud Mister Cohen owns a compact, <a href="http://hamptons-magazine.com/features/articles/good-time-andy?page=1">bay front cottage</a> in a sleepy and not so long ago unfashionable section of East Hampton, NY.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*The apartment was listed for $2,525,000 so, given that property records show he paid $2.57+ million, it appears Mister Cohen faced some stiff competition that drove up the sale price.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">floor plan: <a href="http://www.classicmarketing-llc.com/">Classic Marketing</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-34868558269258953962014-05-12T10:01:00.000-07:002014-05-12T14:44:46.853-07:00The Hiltons to Lease Hamptons Mansion....Again<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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OWNERS: Rick and Kathy Hilton<br />
LOCATION: Southampton, NY<br />
PRICE: $450,000 (MD-LD)<br />
SIZE: 10,000 square feet, 10 bedrooms, 10.5 bathrooms<br />
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YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Summer's a comin, children, and if you haven't already it's time to line up your Memorial Day to Labor Day rental in the Hamptons. Those with deep pockets might consider letting a cedar shingled mansion on a multi-acre estate in the Water Mill area of Southampton (NY) that's listed for the summer season at a bulgy rate of $425,000* and owned by Rick and Kathy Hilton.**<br />
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Mister Hilton, along with being an heir to the international Hilton Hotels & Resorts fortune, co-owns the powerhouse Platinum Triangle real estate brokerage <a href="http://hiltonhyland.com/">Hilton & Hyland</a> in Beverly Hills. He's also an occasional high-end property developer who is (partly) responsible for the relatively discreet (and somewhat discrete), guard-gated <i>Brentwood County Estates</i> enclave in Brentwood where professional pigskin passer Tom Brady and Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen custom built an—ahem—eco-minded mansion that they publicly listed earlier this year for $50 million and Your Mama hears are <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2014/04/your-mama-hears_30.html">rumored and reported</a> all set to sell for around $40 million to <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/the-juice/6084707/dr-dre-first-billionaire-in-hip-hop-tyrese-video-apple-beats">hip-hop mega-mogul Dr. Dre</a>.<br />
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Missus Hilton, among other semi-professional endeavors, owned a tchotchke shop on the Sunset Strip before she hawked home accessories on QVC and, later, high-end skin care products on HSN. In the mid-Aughts she hosted a blessedly short-lived reality program (<i>I Want To Be a Hilton</i>) and she currently designs—or "designs" depending on your point of view—a line of <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/09/image/la-ig-hilton-20121209">mid-priced party gowns and cocktail frocks</a> sold at hundreds of higher end department stores and boutiques around the world.<br />
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Property records show Mister and Missus Hilton acquired the 2.7 acre, fully-landscaped estate in the guard-gated <i>Fordune</i> enclave in 1999 for $2,385,000. The property was once part of a vast, 235 acre estate called—you got it—<i>Fordune</i> that once belonged to automotive scion Henry Ford II. After it was acquired in the mid-1970s by an Italian businessman for just $1.8 million the property was subdivided into about 40 estate-sized parcels with deeded ocean access.<br />
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This is not the first time Your Mama has (dissed and) discussed the Hilton family's gambrel roofed mansion in the Hamptons. In 2007 we piggybacked on an a fairly unflattering article in <i>Vanity Fair</i> that revealed they'd leased the property during the 2006 summer season for around $350,000 to some otherwise unidentified rich people who found the place to be a bit shabby. Indeed, one unnamed source cattily told <i>Vanity Fair</i> the house was "<a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2007/12/hiltons-filthy-hamptons-hideaway.html">moldy and filthy</a>." (And some of y'all think Your Mama can be nasty?) In 2009 the Hilton's Hamptons estate came back up for lease at <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2009/04/hiltons-summer-house-of-horrors.html">$400,000 for the summer season</a> and while we have no idea if the house was moldy and or filthy, listing photos showed the large home had sad and rather frumpy, chintz-centric day-core.<br />
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Current listing details, however, show the approximately 10,000 square foot residence*** has had an extensive make-over and decorative redo. While the new day-core isn't going to win any style awards or get the place photographed for one of the better shelter publications, it certainly doesn't look dowdy and stale like it did in the 2009 listing photographs.<br />
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There are, as per current listing details, a total of 10 bedroom, 10.5 bathrooms and three fireplaces including a two en suite guest/family bedrooms and a den/office on the upper floor along. There are two master suites, according to our research, one on the main floor and another on the upper floor that's complete with fireplace, partially vaulted ceiling with exposed rafters, and direct access to a private terrace. Like the kitchen the bedroom-sized master bathroom was done up in all-white and has a glass-enclosed shower stall and a separate, free-standing soaking tub. Previous rental listings for the property show there's a two bedroom and two bathroom guest wing accessible by separate staircase as well as a couple of bedrooms and at least one bathroom in the (finished) basement area that are probably best suited to live-in domestic staff and/or less-favored house guests and children.<br />
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Listing photographs show nearly white hardwood floors run throughout most (if not all) of the main floor living spaces that include a grand, center hall entrance with curved staircase and a roomy "formal" living room with fireplace. There's also a smaller study, a library with built-in book shelves, and a formal dining room large enough to host a pair of 8-seat tables. The center island eat in kitchen appears to have been fairly recently re-did in an all-white palette and is now fitted and kitted with simple white cabinetry, top-grade stainless steel appliances, snow white counter tops of unknown but presumably high quality material, and a chevron pattern marble tile back splash.<br />
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The gated, high-hedged and full-landscaped grounds include a semi-circular drive that arches up to a porte-cochère at the front of the house and bends around to a sizable motor court at the side of the house where there's garaging for three cars and a hedge-ringed half-court basketball court. At the opposite end of the house a massive covered porch has 270-degree views of the estate's gardens and along the rear of the residence red brick terraces give way to a football field sized back yard with lagoon style swimming pool. The children will note that the slightly elevated spa was placed on a small island in the pool and, unless one jumps the moat, is accessible via a storybook (and kind of campy) arched wooden bridge.<br />
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Just FYI: Your Mama's research shows the Hiltons' house in the Hamptons is hardly the most expensive summer rental available in the Southampton or even within the <i>Fordune</i> enclave. There are a handful of Southampton estates listed at upwards of $900,000 for the summer season and, just down the street from the Hiltons, a slightly smaller but similarly outfitted faux-quoined Euro-style villa is <a href="http://halstead.hreo.com/html2/hamptonsrealestate-homedetail.jsp?innum=77152">listed at $650,000</a> for the full Memorial Day to Labor Day summer season.<br />
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For a lot of years, the Los Angeles-based Hiltons kept a sizable (rental) suite at the vaunted <a href="http://waldorfastoria3.hilton.com/en/hotels/new-york/the-towers-of-the-waldorf-astoria-new-york-NYCWTWA/index.html"><i>Waldorf Astoria Towers</i></a> on Park Avenue in New York City where at least some of their four children spent some of their formative years. We don't know when they gave up their place at <i>The Waldorf</i> but we do know that late last year (2013) Mister and Missus Hilton <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2014/02/rick-and-kathy-hilton-buy-big-apple.html">shelled out $2,522,000</a> for a high floor one bedroom and two bathroom pied-à-terre at <i>The Pierre</i>, an equally vaunted and preposterously expensive five star hotel and residence tower that lords over the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 61st Street.<br />
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Back on the West Coast, the empty nesting parents of four own a one-ish acre-estate with a nearly 15,000+ square foot mansion in the heart of the super-prime lower East Gate area of Bel Air. Property records show the Hilton's Bel Air spread was acquired in July 2004 for $9,220,000 and that they purchased the property from Mary Carol Rudin, the widow of <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1999/dec/16/news/mn-44506">Milton "Mickey" Rudin</a>, a powerful Hollywood attorney who in his professional salad days represented a slew of A-listers including Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*Online listings show the Hilton's <i>Fordune</i> estate can also be monthly—$100,000 for June, $150,000 for July and $175,000 for August—and is also available for a full year at $475,000.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">**Rick and Kathy Hilton are, of course, the proud parents of tabloid staples Paris, Nicki and Barron as well as college-aged Conrad. Missus Hilton's younger sisters, former child actors Kim and Kyle Richards, have achieved honest-to-goodness reality television notoriety on <i>The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">***While digital marketing materials state that house is about 10,000 square feet, the Suffolk County Tax Man puts it at 6,994 square feet. (We suspect the 7,000 square foot figure does not take into account the finished basement space but we really can't say for sure.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">listing photos: <a href="http://hiltonhyland.com/">Hilton & Hyland</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-80170492096222736982014-05-09T13:36:00.003-07:002014-05-09T13:36:36.411-07:00We're Taking the Day Off...Listen, children, Your Mama's taking a mental health day to catch up, pay some bills, take care of some pressing issues and otherwise get our damn head together. Stay tuned. It won't be long...Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179311615101890268.post-22202412634100245472014-05-08T12:06:00.001-07:002014-05-08T12:06:32.639-07:00Demi Moore Asks $75 Million For Big Apple Triplex<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span id="goog_770530533"></span><a href="http://nypost.com/2014/05/07/demi-moore-to-sell-75m-san-remo-triplex/"><i>The New York Post</i><span id="goog_770530534"></span> reported today</a> that Demi Moore quietly wants an astonishing $75 million for her triplex digs at the twin-towered and celeb-approved <i>San Remo</i> building on Central Park West. That's right, puppies, $75 million. The sky-high price—which, according to the kids at <i>Curbed</i>, makes it a contender for the highest price co-operative sale ever—includes a ground floor two bedroom apartment for staff and/or guests.<br />
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Details about Miz Moore's triplex are—at best—slim, but last year tongues wagged when it became tabloid fodder that Miz Moore wanted her much younger third husband, actor/producer/tech investor Ashton Kutcher, to cough up an unknown but probably giant wad to cover unspecified renovation costs.<br />
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Over the years the <i>San Remo</i> has been home to scads and scores of rich and famous folk including (but hardly limited to) <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2014/02/duston-hoffman-quietly-unloads-san-remo.html">Dustin Hoffman</a>, Steven Martin, Steven Spielberg, <a href="http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2010/01/glenn-close-lists-upper-west-side-aerie.html">Glenn Close</a>, Donna Karan, Tiger Woods, Diane Keaton, Princess Yasmin Aga Kahn and her mother, Rita Hayworth. Steve Jobs owned and renovated but never moved into a duplex penthouse he sold to U2's uni-monikered frontman Bono who later <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/nyregion/16bono.html">did legal battle</a> with his 1980s rocker neighbor Billy Squier over fireplace smoke. Last December (2013) investor/philanthropist Robert Wilson jumped to his death from one of the three terraces of his 16th floor apartment that's <a href="https://streeteasy.com/building/the-san-remo/16c">currently listed</a> for $25 million.<br />
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Miz Moore's property portfolio currently includes a contemporary, canyon side house on a gated, celebrity-lined road in the Beverly Hills Post Office area that she bought in April 2003 for $3.15 million and had worked over by high-octane designer Brad Dunning and much-lauded architects Ron Radziner and Leo Marmol. She formerly shared property with Mister Kutcher and had it photographed for <i><a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/celebrity-homes/2007/demi-moore-ashton-kutcher-los-angeles-home-slideshow">Architectural Digest</a></i> (March, 2007). As far as we know, she also continues to own a slew of property in and around Hailey, ID.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">exterior photo: Christopher Bride for <a href="http://www.propertyshark.com/">Property Shark</a></span>Your Mamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14600002907755148264noreply@blogger.com28