SELL BUY PROPERTY

Is Beyoncé about to dump $5.9 million on a—ahem—redonkulously palatial, 25,000 square foot pile with 16 terlits in Houston, TX as a gift for her beloved momma Tina? Well, we really can't say because we don't know but according to the CultureMap Houston website there's at least one real estate agent in town who's spreading that fun little celebrity real estate tidbit.

There's also some scuttlebutt that retired professional basketball hall of famer Michael Jordan is considering leasing the mansion to hold his 50th birthday party. Could be...

photo: HoustonMansion.com

In other Michael Jordan real estate news, Chicago-based property gossip extraordinaire Bob Goldsborough at the Chicago Tribune reported today that the lavish living basketballer has hacked $8,000,000 off the asking price of his 56,000 square foot mega-compound in Highland Park, IL. The new, $21,000,000 asking price still includes all the sleek contemporary furnishings not to mention a full-sized indoor basketball court.

photo: Baird & Warner

In other Chicago celebrity real estate news, nice-gay decorator Nate Berkus has finally, after two long years, unloaded his old Windy City condo for $1.6 million, a mere $100,000 more than he paid for the place way back in 2003 and just over a million dollars less than he hoped to get back in early 2011 when it was listed for $2.65 million.

photo: Pieter Estersohn/Elle Decor via Apartment Therapy

Former baseball bigwig—and alleged juicer—Barry Bonds listed his big ol' house in the guard-gated Beverly Park 'hood for $25,000,000 this week. The ever-alert kids at Curbed seem to have been the first of the property gossip to lay their mitts on the interior photographs and—have mercy—it is ever an equilibrium upsetting decorative doozy. Where, children, does a person even buy furniture like that? Seriously, where?

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Belgian-born martial artist and action flick actor Jean-Claude Van Damme and his fifth wife—who was also his third wife—have lived in Hong Kong the last six or seven years but must be planning to spend more time in Tinseltown since last July (2012) they dropped six million clams on a newly constructed townhouse-type mansion in Marina del Rey, CA.

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The gossip hounds at InTouch Weekly say sitcom star Ashton Kutcher and his former That 70s Show cast mate turned gal pal Mila Kunis want to buy a turn-key apartment overlooking Lake Michigan in Chicago. Call Your Mama suspicious of such real estate scuttlebutt but stranger things have happened, right?

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Three time Emmy winning television and movie actor Christopher Lloyd recently unloaded a newly constructed "Umbria-inspired" residence on five ocean view acres in fancy-pants Montecito, CA for $5,100,000.

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The ocean-fronting Santa Monica, CA penthouse apartment of late actor Larry Hagman (Dallas)—complete with some really horrific blue wall-to-wall carpeting in the main living room—has hit the market with an oilman's asking price of $5,200,000.

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The long-legged blond at Trulia Luxe Living revealed that legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin has listed his Los Angeles condo along the upscale Wilshire Corridor with an asking price of $3.3 million. Fun fact of no import: Your Mama and The Doctor Cooter used to share a cleaning lady with Mister Aldrin.

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Celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ snitched that house hunting Sean "Diddy-Daddle-Fiddle-Faddle" Combs went for a look-see at the old Harry Cohn estate in Beverly Hills even though super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer is said to be in escrow on the nearly 20,000 square foot mansion with an approximately $23 million sale price.

BUYERS: Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy
LOCATION: Los Angles, CA
PRICE: $3,800,000
SIZE: 4,566 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Since the late 1990s Oscar-nominated celebrity couple Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives) and William H. Macy (Shameless) have shacked up in a big house on three contiguous hillside lots in the star-studded Outpost Estates section of Los Angeles.

According to our valiant informant Yolanda Yakketyak—and confirmed by Your Mama with property records—the couple recently dropped $3,800,000 to acquire the long, low and run-down residence next door that brings the size of their growing estate to almost 2.75 prime and private acres with sweeping views over Tinseltown. For 45 or so years, the property was owned by semi-shady music industry veteran Artie Ripp.
Set up a cracked driveway that sweeps up the hillside to a large motor court and three car garage, the existing single-story house sits on 1.1 mostly flat acres, measures 4,566 bedraggled square feet, according to listing information, and includes five bedrooms and three bathrooms.

The grounds include a good-sized motor court, a semi-detached three car garage, broad flat lawns in both the front and back and a large swimming pool surrounded by a palm tree dotted terrace. ,

We really have no idea what sort of plans the Macy-Huffmans have for the house but listing photos show the interiors are dated, depressing and—let's get real—a goddamn hot mess of the highest magnitude long in need of a smart architect and nice-gay or lady decorator.

Mister Macy and Miz Huffman also maintain a small residence new The Grove shopping center in L.A. and a remote estate outside of Basalt, CO near the celebrity wintertime playground of Aspen.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty

SELLER: Judy and Jerry Sheindlin
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $9,000,000
SIZE: 2 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It was only just over three years ago now that the famously cantankerous television scold known as Judge Judy (Sheindlin) shelled out $6,750,000 for a two bedroom and 2.5 bathroom corner spread on the 11th floor of the impossibly posh Sherry Netherland building on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Thanks to an informant we'll call Penny Wise we've just learned that the extraordinarily well-compensated real judge turned boob-toob judge and her husband Jerry Sheindlin—also a real life judge turned (former) t.v. judge—have hoisted their Fifth Avenue pied-à-terre back on the market with an asking price of $9,000,000.

Current listing information shows the approximately 3,000 square foot apartment includes a good-sized foyer that spills into a nearly 30-foot square sun-splashed corner living/dining room with dark hardwood floors, subtly striped wall coverings and multi-million dollar views down Fifth Avenue and over Grand Army Plaza and lower Central Park. A dark paneled room next door makes for a cozy spot to watch some t.v. or read the latest gossip glossies and is convenient to the small but fully equipped kitchen and adjoining laundry room.

The floor plan included with current listing information shows the two bedrooms are well separated for maximum privacy and each has direct access to a private bathroom. The west facing master bedroom isn't particularly big but it does have a snazzy pair of custom-fitted walk-in closets, one larger than many Manhattan studio apartments.

Listing information shows the maintenance charges for the apartment run an pocketbook punishing $17,411 per month but that's a mere pittance for Miz Sheindlin who reportedly earns more than $123,000 per day. That's right, chickens, this lady pulls in more than $123,000 per day doling out televised legal lessons and vituperative moral lashings to the sorts of people who will sue their mother on national television over seven dollars.

Miz Sheindlin and her husband Jerry Sheindlin—who is also a former real judge turned t.v. judge—fly around in a private jet between their variou.s homes that include a penthouse condo in Naples, FL and a 9 bedroom mansion on a spectacularly landscaped estate in high-nosed Greenwich, CT that they bought in September 2007 for $13,200,000.

listing photos and floor plan: Corcoran

SELLER: Debra Messing
LOCATION: Los Angeles (Bel Air), CA
PRICE: $11,995,000
SIZE: 6,410 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It's already been more than a year since Emmy winning television actress Debra Messing (Will & Grace) announced that she and her now ex-husband Daniel Zelman were getting a divorce so it's not such a big surprise to property gossips like Your Mama that the former couple's former family home in prime lower Bel Air has popped up on the market with an asking price of $11,995,000.

Miz Messing, who now stars on the hokey musical melodrama Smash, purchased the estate in July 2002 from actress Renée Zelwegger for an amount reported at the time to be "close to $7.5 million."

Current online listings don't include many photographs—just one dark but tantalizing image of the front exterior—but do reveal the elegant, 1937 Paul Williams-designed center hall Colonial measures 6,410 square feet and includes a total of six bedrooms and six full and two bathrooms. There are formal living and dining rooms, a den with fireplace and a family-style kitchen that opens into a family room.

Listing information goes on to specify that there are two family bedrooms and bathrooms on the second floor plus a spacious master suite with dual bathrooms and large walk-in closets. The remaining bedrooms, we presume, are located in a separate, two story wing back behind the garage that includes guests quarters, office space and a home gym set up.

The gated and secured grounds have mature landscaping, large expanses of lawns, lots of off-street parking and a boomarang-shaped heated swimming pool with and adjoining pool cabana.

listing photo: Coldwell Banker

...from a trusted informant we call Charlie Chitchatter that retired film and television producer Burt Sugarman and his entertainment news reporter wife Mary Hart are quietly shopping their Beverly Hills, CA mansion off-market with an elephantine asking price between 37 and 39 million smackers.

The house—which may or may not have been originally designed by Cliff May—is situated on a pancake flat promontory on a particularly plummy cul-de-sac high in the trendy Trousdale Estates 'hood and was purchased by Mister Sugarman way back in 1975 for—are you sitting down for this?—$750,000.

Although we can't vouch for the accuracy, the L.A. County Tax Man's records show the single story residence sits on 2.2 acres—one of the largest single lots in Trousdale—and spans 11,536 square feet with six bedrooms, nine bathrooms, three fireplace and a roomy motor court with covered parking for up to five cars.

Our Mister Chitchatter snitched to Your Mama that the day-core is dated but well maintained and that the views out the back stretch all the way to downtown Long Beach and over to the Pacific Ocean.

Keeping in mind that television and music tycoon Simon Cowell coughed up $15.5 million for a much smaller but architecturally significant house a few doors down last years and that Oakley eyewear founder Jim Jannard shelled out $19.9 million three years ago for the house next door—that he's since razed—what do the children think of the off-market asking price?

Your Mama's wholly unscientific research on the internets shows Miz Hart and Mister Sugarman, married since 1989 with one child own a number of other residences including a two bedroom and three bathroom luxury condo at the ritzy Ritz-Carlton Residences at L.A. Live that they picked up in July 2011 for $1,864,500.

They also own a large spread in Whitefish, MT, according to property records and at least three properties in California's Coachella Valley: a modest 1,347 square foot condo at the Monterey Country Club in the upscale community of Palm Desert; a vacant residential lot formerly owned by Sylvester Stallone at the Madison Club in La Quinta purchased in December 2010 for $1,750,000 and a 7,723 square foot mini-mansion that backs up to the golf course at the super swank Bighorn Golf Club in Palm Desert.

Until 2011, the vivacious Miz Hart was the reigning high priestess of entertainment news journalism having hosted the celebrity new show Entertainment Tonight for 29 years. Mister Sugarman is best known for producing game shows and variety programs (Celebrity Sweepstakes, The Richard Pryor Show, the 1980s reprise of The Newlywed Game) and a small handful of films (Children of a Lesser God, Extremities, Kiss Me Goodbye).

BUYER: David Chase
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $9,650,000
SIZE: 2,700 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Last June, a 19th-century townhouse on a leafy street in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood was sold for $6,950,000. The seller's identity was well-shielded behind a generically named trust but was rumored among property watchers and real estate gossips to be seven-time Emmy winner writer/producer David Chase (The Sopranos, Northern Exposure, The Rockford Files).

Thanks to an eagle-eyed informant—let's call him Tommy Twoandtwo—Your Mama has learned that the very same mysterious trust associated with the sale of the Chelsea townhouse recently forked over $9,650,000 for a pedigreed penthouse pad atop one of the four towers that anchor the titanic London Terrace complex that encompasses an entire city block in the West Chelsea.

Over the years the massive London Terrace complex, partly comprised of high-priced rentals and partly comprised of high priced condos, has attracted it's fair share of high profile residents including (but not limited to) Debbie Harry (who owns two small combined units), Tim Gunn (who we're pretty sure has moved uptown now), actress Katherine Helmond, Nicole Kidman (who rented there briefly a number of years ago), Saturday Night Live cast members Chris Kattan and Bill Hader and Rufus Wainwright. It also happens to be the very building where Your Mama and The Doctor Cooter lived for years in a stupendous three bedroom duplex apartment where we would occasionally get mail for actress Christina Ricci whose mother, we were told, previously occupied the apartment.

Anyhoo, for many years the 20th floor penthouse in question was owned by influential author, activist and deep thinker Susan Sontag who died at 71 in late 2004. Miz Sontag's estate eventually sold the then two bedroom and two bathroom penthouse in October 2006 for $3,950,000 to William Diamond, an internationally renown interior designer/decorator who, along with long-time design partner Anthony Barratta, was famous for his cheeky, vigorous and playfully fearless use of color.

According to Tommy Twoandtwo, the now-retired Mister Diamond gutted the penthouse but ran into some financial difficulties having to do with Ponzi putz Bernie Madoff and was unable to complete the renovation. Mister Diamond put the gutted penthouse on the market in early 2009 and sold it in early May (2009) for $4,400,000 to an obviously well-heeled but un-famous couple who proceeded with a full-scale renovation and reconfiguration that replaced most if not all of the penthouse's original pre-war architectural details.

Listing information shows the existing, U-shaped penthouse measures about 2,700 square feet with three bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, three wood burning fireplaces, nearly a dozen closets and three terraces that provide more than 1,300 square feet of exterior space. Maintenance charges come to a pearl clutching $7,050 per month.

Your Mama might prefer not to be looking directly into the kitchen upon first entering a ten million dollar apartment but the floor plan is otherwise carefully considered unequivocally efficient. There are those who will bemoan the removal of all the original pre-war detailing but if y'all were to ask Your Mama—and no one did— the stripped down architecture allows the wrap around city and river views to take center stage from every room.

Even if one hates the fairly minimal architecture, the finishes are beyond reproach and include marvelously over-scaled white oak chevron-pattern hardwood floors, custom fabricated and absolutely correct casement windows and French doors and a custom, open-concept center island kitchen that looks like a luminescent configuration of sugar cubes.

A nearly thirty-foot long foyer/entrance gallery links the primary living spaces that include a downright spectacular living room with fireplace and windows on three sides and and open plan kitchen/dining room that's also warmed by a fireplace. The kitchen area is flanked by a laundry room on one side and walk-in pantry area on the other.

The three bedrooms are lined up along the northern side of the penthouse and include two guest/family bedrooms that each have private bathrooms and direct terrace access. The master bedroom isn't huge but it's privately tucked back in the northeastern wing of the penthouse and includes a long, closet-lined dressing hall, a spacious windowed bathroom and—count 'em—three separate exits to a secluded section of the 50-plus foot long north side terrace that allows for unimpeded uptown views that include Empire State Building and the Midtown skyline.

listing photos and floor plan: Brown Harris Stevens

SELLER: Barry Bonds
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $25,000,000
SIZE: 17,100 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 13 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In December 2011 former professional baseball player Barry Bonds was sentenced to 30 days house arrest—plus 2 years probation and 250 hours of community service—on federal charges of obstruction of justice during purposefully obfuscating testimony he gave regarding the doping scandal that rocked professional baseball in the mid-Aughts.

Presumably Mister Bonds did his time in unabashed luxury at his massive mansion in Beverly Park—the swank gated community of famously steroidal homes in Beverly Hills—that has quietly come up for sale with an asking price of $25,000,000.

Mister Bonds purchased the 2.56 acre property, according to property records, in late 2002 for $8,700,000.

The multi-winged mansion was originally built in 1999 with 11,448 square feet but a subsequent expansion by Mister Bonds brought the total to 17,100 square feet according to the listing agent's website. The two-story sprawler is said to have seven bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, garage parking for at least 4 four cars and an elevator. (Rich people just hate using stairs, apparently.) There's also a music room, home theater, wine cellar, spa and—natch—a home gym set up. The fully landscaped grounds include double motor courts, a sports court,

Some of Mister Bonds' nearest neighbors in the star-studded 'hood include Denzel Washington and country queen Reba McEntire.

aerial image: Google

For the last couple of weeks Your Mama has been yammering at the children about how hedge fund fat cat and hardcore real estate baller Howard Marks and his wife Nancy sold their nearly 10 acre ocean front estate in the northern reaches of Malibu, CA in an off-market deal for an astonishing $75,000,000, give or take a few million.

Over the least few days, while Your Mama has been down for the count with a particularly virulent case of the flu, there have been a couple of developments worth sharing. The first being that the mansion obsessed folks over at the Homes of the Rich blog turned up a small but ever-so-delicious cache of photographs of the house on the website of Ferguson & Shamamian, the first rate, New York City-based architecture firm responsible for the seven year overhaul of the massive Italianate villa and its numerous outbuildings.

We've included a handful of exterior images here but if y'all want to revel in the quietly luxurious interiors all done up and did over by President Obama's Oval Office decorator Michael Smith, have a look see here and here.

The second development came via our trusted Fairy Godmother in Bel Air who tells us she has it on unimpeachable authority that the buyer the the Marks' Malibu spread is, as we speculated last week, James "Jim" Jannard. Mister Jannard is the multi-billionaire founder and former owner of the eyewear and athletic apparel company Oakley who now owns the Red Digital Camera Company that primarily produces—as you might imagine from it's name—high end digital cinema cameras.

UPDATE (later same day): A source who claims some knowledge of the situation tells us Mister Jannard is not the buyer. At this point...who the goddamn knows?

photos: Ferguson & Shamamian via Homes of the Rich