SELL BUY PROPERTY

SELLER: David and Martha Hamamoto
BUYER: Frank McCourt
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $50,000,000
SIZE: around 5,000 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: After a very difficult couple of days with the inner workings our our internet service—those people at Time Warner make Your Mama want to hurt somebody with our delicate and pudgy bare hands—and yesterday's slow slog through the Los Angeles residence recently acquired by Faye Resnick and her fiancée, we thought everyone might enjoy some good ol' fashioned New York City floor plan porn in the form of a 5,000 (or so) full floor Fifth Avenue aerie recently purchased for its full $50,000,000 asking price.

The seller is listed in property records and previously reported as David and Martha Hamamoto. (He's a bigwig banker with NorthStar Realty Finance Corporation.) The listed buyer as a fella named Frank McCourt who may or may not be the same Frank McCourt who purchased the L.A. Dodgers in 2004 for $430 million, ran them into bankruptcy, reluctantly sold them earlier this year for $2 billion and recently endured a very bitter, very public and ongoing separation and divorce his long-time wife Jamie.

The Thad Hayes-designed interiors—once photographed for Architectural Digest, according to listing information—are somewhat spare and certainly elegantly sedate but absolutely exquisite and— clearly—hideously expensive. The floor plan shows a fairly traditional but modernized layout with a private elevator vestibule, spacious gallery entrance, a 27-foot long park view formal living room with fireplace, and a centrally situated park view library with four pocket doors on three walls. Another pocket door in the a formal dining room—where there are some rather blue chip abstract expressionist paintings on the walls—connects through a open-plan butler's pantry to the center island kitchen with it's custom milled Shaker style cabinetry and top grade appliances.

The master suite, entered via a privacy enhancing vestibule just off the entrance gallery has a large park-view corner bedroom with fireplace, a windowed walk-in closet plus a bedroom-sized dressing room with south facing windows and a large windowed bathroom with double sinks, separate cubby for the crapper and party-sized shower.

A wide corridor shoots east off the entrance gallery and connects to an (almost) 18-foot square family room with three eastern windows and a built in wet bar. Each of the three family bedrooms open off the family room and have private windowed bathrooms.

The purchase included a separate ground floor guest/staff apartment with private exterior entrance on Fifth Avenue, living and dining areas, a compact but fully equipped open-concept kitchen and, finally, two petite bedrooms and two three-quarter bathrooms.

The downright aristocratic, 14-story limestone-clad Italian Renaissance palazzo style apartment house positively drips with a quintessentially New York City sort of moneyed elegance and offers residents full-time doorman services and basement storage cubicles but does not have an on-site garage, sundeck or health club. That lacking in extra amenities, of course, does not keep the monthly common charges low in this top flight building. For example, online documentation shows the monthlies for Mister McCourt's new digs run a gut wrenching $249,648 per year ($20,834 per month).

Some of the other ridiculously wealthy residents of the buildings include octogenarian journalist/talk show co-host Barbara Walters and banker Jay Mantz and wife Jennifer who coughed up $26,474,500 for their high floor spread in early 2008. Mister and Missus Mantz had briefly owned on a full-floor spread on a lower floor that they picked up in May 2008 for $16,840,200 and quickly flipped in January 2008 for $20,000,000 to financier turned powerhouse contemporary art dealer Robert Mnuchin and wife Adriana. Wall Street fat cat turned former New Jersey governor John Corzine's psychotherapist wife Sharon Elghanayan has owned small unit on a lower floor since late 2006 for which she shelled out $7.5 million and the once vilified but back in the saddle banker Jeffrey Verschleiser and wife Amy own a low floor unit that they snagged in March 2005 for $10,000,000.

exterior photo: Scott Bintner for Property Shark
listing photos and floor plan: Brown Harris Stevens (via StreetEasy)

BUYER: Faye Resnick and Everett Jack Jr.
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,605,000
SIZE: 2,567 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We know some of the more high fallutin' children are gonna fuss and holler about how Your Mama ought to discuss some of the more high brow real estate activities of late such as how Tinseltown executive Michael Eisner just dropped $8,200,000 to snatch up the Tudor style mini-mansion on a shy acre immediately next door to his already super-luxe two-plus acre two-parcel estate in L.A.'s uppity East Gate area of Bel Air.

Howevuh, hunties, Your Mama just can't resist us an honest to goodness  D-list celebrity, especially a sassy-pants one like Faye Resnick who pops up good and regular on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (RHOBH) as an unapologetic defender of others' honors and a self-assured shit stirrer in a sequined blouse.

Miz Resnick, who happens to be besty-b.f.f. with RHOBH cast member Kyle Richards, has been on the sidelines of Showbiz since at least the mid-1990s when she testified at the murder trial of O.J. Simpson, posed in her birthday suit for Playboy and wrote a two controversial tell-all memoir about the brutal murder of her friend Nicole Brown Simpson. Today she toils as an interior decorator with a short list of celebrity clients who include hotel heiresses Paris and Nicky Hilton, former boy-banker Nick Lachey and actor Kevin Connolly.

Thanks to our ever-intrepid informant Yolanda Yaketyyak we learned on Christmas Day that Miz Resnick and her man-friend fiancée Everett Jack Jr. coughed up $1,605,000 for a two-parcel micro-estate in the Hollywood Hills that's set high above the street up a long, upsloping gated driveway where it's encircled by a thick stand of mature trees that ensures celebrity style privacy.

Listing information shows the two-story house was originally built in 1948 and measures a fairly modest 2,567 square feet with three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. The renovated but entirely uninspired interior spaces include hardwood floors and a fireplace in the open plan living/dining area on the upper level, swanky commercial style stainless steel appliances in the center island kitchen, limestone tiles in the master bathroom, a lower level family room flanked by en suite guest bedrooms that open through French doors to a deep veranda that over looks the swimming pool that's shaped like an obese kidney bean. Somewhere on the property there's a trellis shaded outdoor barbecue kitchen and across the small motorcourt from the main house up behind the detached two car garage there's a couple of secluded areas perfect for quiet contemplation, meditation and/or weed smoking.

But it's really no matter what the house looks like now because surely Miz Reznick will surely wave her decorative wand over the place and dress it all up in her signature style of Tinseltown decadence that Your Mama might describe as a brooding, nighclubby sort of girlish-glam that often but not always employs a downright fearless and almost fetishistic use of chatoyant and reflective materials. If ever there was was a lady-decorator who might try to dress up an architecturally ho-hum home with a louche set of deep purple taffeta lined black patent leather drapes it would be our gal Faye Resnick.

It is Miz Resnick, of course, who is responsible for the design of Paris Hilton's in-house nightclub lounge in her current home and the person who conceived or at least facilitated the installation of a—ahem—stripper pole in Miss Hilton's former home on North Kings Road, just above the Sunset Strip. We sorta doubt that's what she has planned for her and her fiancée's new digs in the Hollywood Hills but we'd be shocked dead if there wasn't at least one or two mirrored dressers up in there somewhere when it's all said and done.

Anyhoo, Miz Resnick's most recent residential real estate acquisition puts her in the the same neck of the Hollywood Hills as über artist David Hockney, Oscar nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal, Oscar winning movie star Forest Whitaker, t.v. actor Brian Austin Green and his hotsy totsy action flick actress wife Megan Fox, former sitcom star Justine Bateman and, not too far away, sharp tongued comedienne—and Cher confidant—Kathy Griffin.

P.S. In case any of y'all might be wondering, yes, it was Platinum Triangle super-broker Maurcio Umansky, the hunky hubby of long-time family friend Kyle Richards of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, who represented Miz Resnick and her Mister Jack Jr. in the purchase of the property.

listing photos: RE/MAX Olson & Associates

BUYER: Lisa Lampanelli
LOCATION: Fairfield, CT
PRICE: $2,399,000
SIZE: 3,897 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We are still inundated—swamped really—with merry-making holiday house guests but Your Mama is gonna try to hole up in a quiet corner of the garage and try to top out a quick little celebrity real estate ditty this morning...

Thanks to The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial Your Mama learned this week that not only has voraciously foul mouthed insult comic Lisa Lampanelli recently dropped about 70 or 80 pounds—making her one of those skinny bitches she's been known to mercilessly mock in her stand up shows—but she also recently dropped $2,212,500 on a tall and slender seaside house in the upscale community of Fairfield, CT.

Listing information Your Mama dug up shows the svelte three-story residence was originally built in 2002, measures in at 3,897 square feet and includes 3-4 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms* connected by a tightly curled, all wood open riser central spiral staircase that looks to Your Mama like it could be a perplexing and potentially painful torture for anyone liquored up and/or excessively wide of hip.

The main floor, according to various resources we dug up on the interweb, consists of a single car attached garage, a squeezy entrance hall, a powder pooper, a room Miz Lampanelli's husband Jimmy uses as a—ahem—man cave, and an open-plan ocean-side kitchen/dining/family room area with glimmering water and beach views out a whole lotta floor-to-ceiling windows and French doors.

The ocean side master suite on the second floor has a private sitting room, a small balcony with views up and down the coastline, and a good-sized bathroom with separate jetted tub and shower slathered in some of the more eyeball-punishing peachy beige tile and woefully outdated glass brick we've ever had the misfortune to lay our lazy left eye.

There are two more guest bedrooms on the second floor that share a bathroom and, on the top floor, nestled into the sloping roof line is a den where the somewhat infamous and screechingly funny Queen of Mean can quietly pen her famously polarizing jokes that viciously slice and dice every segment of humanity.

A house wide, bi-level deck ringed with whispering sea grasses allows for seaside sitting without the bother of sand getting wedged between the toes or in one's more intimate cracks and crevices.

Listing photos—natch—show the house decorated—if you can call it that—by the sellers. However, as it turns out, Miz Lampanelli had the folks from Connecticut magazine over for an interview and photo shoot for their November 2012 issue and she gleefully revealed that after a hysterically disastrous experience with a lady decorator some years ago she simply opened up a Pottery Barn catalog and ordered an entire spread for her new haven by the shore.

Miz Lampanelli also maintains a rental apartment near Lincoln Center in New York City—in a building where three bedrooms go for about 14 grand a month—and back in 2007 she spent $1,250,000 on a 2,539 square foot condo-type bungalow on the property of the famous Canyon Ranch health resort and spa in Tucson, AZ where a week of vegetables, long walks in the desert and massages will set a person back a minimum of seven thousand clams for a week's stay.

*For the record, the Fairfield County Tax Man shows the house has 2,922 square feet on two floors with 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. 

listing photos: William Raveis (via Zillow and Neighbor City)

Listen children, Your Mama has a houseful of family—we got Mama and Sister Cooter, Your Mama's Momma, Sister Woman and her brood, Auntie and Cuzzin Will and more—so we're beyond swamped not to mentioned exhausted and sotted with gin.

However, rather than leave y'all high and dry here are a few linds some stories for the celebrity gossip blogosphere:

The seemingly sleepless kids at Curbed have a worthwhile run down of some of the best celebrity owned homes that appeared this year in the glossy pages of shelter magazines.

The folks at Forbes put together a rather exhaustive reports and slide show of The Biggest Billionaire Home Sales of 2012. Compelling and shocking all at the same time

New York City-based restarauteur Jerry Della Femina sold his ocean front house in East Hampton, NY and hissed and pissed to the peeps at the New York Post it's Obama's socialist tax policies that are the reason he took $25 million for the house instead of holding out for the $40 million he originally wanted. The new owner is said to be Discovery Networks CEO David Zaslav.

...from two trusted and well connected sources deep inside the Platinum Triangle real estate game that there's a big deal—and we mean BIG—about to go down in Malibu.

According to both Cinnamon Stick and Little Boy Blue, bespectacled billionaire money manager Howard Marks and his very social and philanthropic wife Nancy are thisclose to inking a record-breaking deal to sell their monumental ocean front compound for somewhere in the neighborhood of $75,000,000.*

The bulk of the triple-gated and heavily fortified 10-ish acre estate was formerly owned by Verna Harrah, the wildly wealthy widow of casino kingpin Bill Harrah, who sold it in late 1999 for $27,000,000 to Herbalife founder Mark Hughes who died in the house just about six months later. In June 2001 the executors of Mister Hughes's estate sold the palatial pad to Mister and Missus Marks for $31,000,000.

The following year, in October 2002, according to property records, Mister and Missus Marks shelled out another $4,600,000 for a neighboring property that now includes a separate gated residence for guests or staff and a full-sized tennis court with viewing pavilion. It was on this approximately 2.5 acre property, incidentally, that way back in July 2000 Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston held their wedding reception in a giant, bluff-side tent.

Anyhoo, Mister and Missus Marks spent years and God only knows how many millions on a soup-to-nuts renovation of the entire estate but, at the time of their purchase, the imposing Italianate villa measured in at 19,340 square feet with a total of 8 bedrooms and 13 bathrooms including a vast master suite with sitting room, private office, exercise room, and three room-sized walk-in closets.

The estate now includes a long, baronial tree-lined driveway, a charity circuit-sized motor court, a second rear motor court with garage access, a spacious bluff side swimming pool and several outbuildings of undetermined—or at least unknown—utility.

Some of the Marks' nearest neighbors in the Bu include mustachioed actor Sam Elliot and television super-producer Marcy Carsey. Just down the beach a bit is the house Ellen Degeneres bought from Brad Pitt in December 2011 for $12,000,000 and flipped six or so months lather for $13,000,000.

Folks who follow the upper end real estate market are well acquainted with the over-flowing property portfolio of Mister and Missus Marks. In Los Angeles, in addition to their Malibu manse, they own a 1.9 acre estate in a leafy and low-key but very posh street in the Brentwood area that they picked up in July 1996 for $7,963,570 from real estate tycoon Robert F. Maguire III.

In May 2007 they coughed up $18,875,000 for a full-floor spread atop the Ritz-Carlton hotel on Central Park South in New York City that they had worked over by architect Oscar Shamamian and Oval Office decorator Michael Smith. In July (2012) the two bedroom and four bathroom aerie popped up on the open market with a $50,000,000 price tag.

Their decision to sell at the Ritz-Carlton surely had something to do with their record breaking and publicity generating $52,500,000 purchase of Courtney Sale Ross's epic 30-room duplex at 740 Park Avenue in May 2012.

In October 2010 the high hoggers paid ad man turned television personality Donny Deutsch a staggering $30,184,000 for a pair of adjacent parcels in East Hampton, NY, one of which is ocean front and together total (approx.) 3.3 acres.

We've also been told by someone who tends to know these sorts of things that for at least the last six or seven years Mister and Missus Marks have maintained a very large, very expensive and very fancy 19th century flat in the central London's natty, naboby and punishingly expensive Belgravia district that they also had over-hauled by Michael Smith.

P.S. We also have vague intel that there's an even bigger deal in the works up north in the Bay Area. More on this to come as we have more to gossip about.

*Neither of our sources know—or would reveal—the alleged buyer of the baronial estate perched atop the rugged Encinal Bluffs but iffin any of the children might like to enlighten Your Mama we'll be sure to keep your identity on the down low. 

aerial image: Google