Friday, 1 March 2013
LOCATION: Lost Angeles, CA
PRICE: $5,300,000
SIZE: 2,996 square feet, 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It has come to Your Mama's attention that attorney, legal analyst and celebrity gossip bigwig Harvey Levin—he's the co-founder, owner and managing editor at TMZ—has hoisted his long-time home in West Hollywood, CA on the market with a celebrity-style $5,300,000 asking price.
Property records indicate Mister Levin picked up the house way back in 1998 for $950,000 and almost immediately added his longtime man-friend, chiropractor Andy Maurer—or Mauer, depending on what documentation you look at online—to the deed and documentation.
Current listing details shows the three bedroom and three bathroom Spanish style mini-villa was originally built in 1937, measures in at a modest-by-rich-folks standard 2,996 square feet and sits well above the street on a .31 acre up sloping lot behind high hedges and electronic driveway gates. The house happens to be just a few doors down, ironically enough, from the gated and fortified mini-estate Halle Berry owns and—so the stories go—has available off market with a $15 million price tag.
Intricately patterned and vibrantly colored tile floors in the entrance hall stretch into a sun-splashed loggia with a perfect row of three arched French doors that open a flagstone terrace that surrounds the heated swimming pool and spa.
The sunken living room has wood floors and a hulking stone fireplace not to mention lots of masculine looking brown furniture and several of the many framed Italian movie posters or Euro-advertisements—or whatever they are—that are hung throughout the house.
We don't care so much for the red tile floors in the formal dining room but we do appreciate the generous scale of the room that has over-sized windows on three sides and opens onto a lushly planted terrace with a direct view up towards a rolling swathe of tree-ringed lawn. The red tile flooring continues into the fairly compact informal family quarters that include a smallish but well-equipped kitchen with granite counter tops and top-grade appliance. A short, two-seat breakfast counter peninsula separates the kitchen from a petite den/tee-vee viewing lounge that opens to the rear terraces and gardens and is currently furnished by Mister Levin and Maurer—or Mauer or whatever—with a sectional sofa upholstered in eggplant colored velvet.
There are two guest/family bedrooms and two guest/family bathrooms slathered in period-perfect vintage tiles. The second floor master suite has a small sitting area, two sets of French doors that open to Juliet balconies with verdant garden views, a custom-fitted walk-in closet and a spacious bathroom with exposed wood vaulted ceiling, his and his sinks, a soaking tub set into a bay window and a separate shower separated from the rest of the bathroom by a tiled pony way. Frankly, we prefer a bit more privacy in our showering space, but we're not living here so...
Other features include a built-in home office nook with custom-built desk and cabinetry, a separate laundry room so large and luxurious that it could make most hauefraus pee their mom jeans with envy, a basement level bonus room with extra storage and an attached two-car garage with direct entry. The house is pre-wired for sound with individual controls in each room and secured with a celeb-style state of the art system and intercom.
Your Mama's research shows Mister Levin and Mister Mauer (or Maurer or whatever) also own a nearly 1,800 square foot condo in a beachside building in Marina del Rey (CA) that they snatched up for $1,200,000 in 2003.
We have absolutely no inside intel into the matter but Your Mama would bet both our long bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, that Mister Levin and his long term male companion will trade up to an even more impressive estate with a larger house and more extensive grounds. We shall see...
listing photos: Keller Williams / Beverly Hills
