Archive for 2013-02-03
Jerry Herman Flips Out in West Hollywood
LOCATION: West Hollywood, CA
PRICE: $4,295,000
SIZE: 4,088 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Even though a December 2010 article in the Washington Post stated it would be "his final living space," much lauded, applauded and treasured theater icon Jerry Herman has flipped his fully renovated West Hollywood, CA condo on the market with a $4,295,000 price tag.*
Cinema snobs and reality t.v. watchers may not recognize Jerry Herman's name but Broadway queens around the damn globe certainly know he's a legendary lyricist and composer who came up with the scores for a handful of the most successful—not to mention gayest—Broadway musicals evuh including Hello, Dolly!, Mame and La Cage aux Folles.
Your Mama knows some y'all may not give a whit about Mister Herman since he's not on t.v. or a regular in the tabs but, children, in his musical theater world he is the absolute shit so show some respect, okay? Anyhoo, Mister Herman's theatrical efforts have has earned him two Tony awards plus three more nominations and a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. He's an inductee into both the Theater Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Face and along with seriously accomplished folks like dancer/choreographer/artistic director Bill T. Jones, and media mogul Oprah Winfrey, Mister Herman was a recipient of the prestigious 2010 Kennedy Center Honors.
Property records reveal that Mister Herman only purchased the two-unit combo condo in September 2010 for $3,875,000 and listing details show the high-floor spread has three bedrooms and five bathrooms in 4,088 fully renovated square feet. Mister Herman's West Hollywood aerie also includes four deeded and secured underground parking spots and at least a couple city view balconies.
According to the Washington Post, it was Mister Herman—no doubt in conjunction with and a team of lady and/or nice-gay decorators and burly contractors—who installed the Brazilian mahogany front doors and the lustrous white limestone floors. He may (or may not) be responsible for the installation of the swanky home automation system that, at the touch of a button or two, controls the electric shades, lighting, surround sound and media equipment.
The sparely furnished loft-like main living space has a "formal" living room area with—natch—and ebony grand piano and the rather beige "formal" dining room's only visual pop is a red, hair curl-like sculpture affixed to the wall. Just off the living/dining area is a petite media lounge that flows into a minimally furnished office space lined wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling on two walls with vividly colored and vivaciously graphic marquee posters for six or seven of Mister Herman's most famous theater creations.
The floor-to-ceiling glass walls in the main living area slide back to seamlessly open the room to a somewhat shallow covered terrace, also with white limestone flooring and unimpeded views that listing information says extend over the city all the way to Catalina Island.
The sleek, open-concept custom-designed Italian kitchen is just off the dining area and is filled to the brim with top grade appliances that include a smooth top range that blends in with the black slab counter tops (of unknown material) and a full-height wine refrigerator that makes The Doctor Cooter swoon with envy.
Both guest bedrooms—one of which Mister Herman uses as a home office where at least one of the walls is hung salon-style with gold records, photographs and other memorabilia of his life in the thee-uh-tuh—have generous closet space and en suite facilities. The master bedroom, according to listing details, includes a spacious bathroom with spa tub, a roomy walk-in closet and direct access to a private balcony.
The $2,778 in monthly maintenance fees covers use and access to the building's myriad services and amenities. There are, according to details of the building we dug up on the interweb, doormen and concierge services, 24-hour valet and guest parking, a fitness room, a resident's only banquet room, a tennis court and—although at 80-something years old Mister Herman's sunbathing in a Speedo days are probably over—a roof top swimming pool and garden with wrap around city and mountain views.
Mister Herman's building, just off Sunset Boulevard in the heart of West Hollywood, has been home to any number of stars and starlets over the years. Once upon a time Tinseltown buffoon Lindsay Lohan lived there as did her former-gal pal Samantha Ronson although they did not, as far as we know, live together. It's Your Mama's understanding from various sources and resources that pop-rocker and 8th season American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert—who simply wears too much face make-up for Your Mama's taste—recently moved into the building where his across the hall neighbor is rock-n-roll scion/fashion-minded television personality Kelly Osbourne.
Mister Herman is well known amongst property gossips for his frequent buying and selling of homes. The Washington Post article said the West Hollywood condo he now has on the market was the 38th home he'd decorated and/or renovated.
Over the years Mister Herman has owned a handful of homes and condominium in Palm Springs (CA), a.k.a the Hot as Hades Land of the Grays, Gays and Gray Gays. Last July (2012), Mister Herman unloaded Villacage, a decidedly matronly 5,500-plus square foot single-story mock-Med in a gated Palm Springs enclave for $1,100,000.
Long before that Mister Herman owned a privately situated residence in Beverly Hills (CA) that he sold to Will & Grace co-creator Max Mutchnick in early 2004 for $5,800,000. Mister Mutchnick gave the house and property a spectacular overhaul and sold it in late 2007 for just over $29 million to chat show hostess Ellen Degeneres and her wife Portia di Rossi who quickly snatched up several more adjacent properties (and houses), had the house photographed for the November 2011 issue of Architectural Digest and then—natch—sold the sprawling, multi-residence compound to newly minted Tinseltown tycoon Ryan Seacrest for a very a-list $37,000,000.
Multiple online resources reveal Mister Herman maintains a residence in Florida and according to both property records and a friendly informant we'll call Billy Bridgethegap Mister Herman owns a small-ish condo in a Michael Graves-designed ocean front complex in Miami Beach, FL that he picked up in May 2006 for $1,250,000. Mister Bridgethegap also informed us that in May 2012 Mister Herman dropped $3,100,000 on a spacious but decoratively dated, 8,885 square foot contemporary in guard-gated CocoPlum community in Coral Gables.
*The 15th floor condo-crib actually and very quietly first popped up on the open market in June 2012 with an asking price of $4,595,000, a figure that dropped in late October to its current $4,295,000.
exterior photo: Top L.A. Condos
interior listing photos: Coldwell Banker
Your Mama Hears...
Hold on to your britches beotches because Your Mama hears from two separate but equally well-connected snitches that there's budding new real estate baller in Los Angeles and her name is Sybil Robson Orr. Simmer down now, children. Your Mama knows that Miz Orr isn't really a celebrity—or even a "celebrity"—but make no mistake, butter cups, the lady is loaded.
According to the research of our frequent and indefatigable informant Yolanda Yakketyak, Miz Orr's father, Nick, is the brother of Helen Robson Kempner, the now-deceased widow of Wal-Mart co-founder Sam Walton. At the time the Widda Walton went to meet her maker, in April 2007, she was listed at #29 on the Forbes 400 with an astounding net worth estimated to have been worth $16.4 billion.
We don't have any idea how much of the Wal-Mart money has trickled down into Miz Orr's coffers—plenty, it would seem, based on her much whispered about recent real estate activities, which we'll get to in a minute—but all the children know how much money those Walton people have, right?
According to a December (2012) article in/on Forbes the Walton family's total wealth hovers around $100 billion, an amount greater than that of the bottom 30% of Americans...combined. Their unfathomable fortune, built on selling massive amounts of goods and services out of big box stores at prices lower than small locally owned businesses can typically compete with, is equal to .14% of all U.S. Wealth. Whatever anyone may think of the income inequality issue in the good ol' U.S. of A., those are some jaw dropping statistics that could cause a regular, run of the mill free market capitalist to need a damn nerve pill.
In addition to whatever slice of the Wal-Mart money pie Miz Orr has or has access to—and we really don't know an iota about her income or net worth—she's married to a fellow named Matt Orr, a financier turned entrepreneur who we can all probably pretty safely assume has amassed a substantial financial nut of his own. Anyhoo...
Before Your Mama gets to the meat of the real estate part of the story let's first have a wee lesson in Los Angeles real estate geography. At the western end of the famed Sunset Strip a basket weave of winding streets twist and turn their way up into through canyons and along the ridges of the rugged Santa Monica Mountain range. The decidedly affluent neighborhood is usually referred to as "The Birds" because—you got it smarty pants—all the streets are named after birds and has long been favored by rich and famous Angelenos who both appreciate the easy-access central location and covet the exact sorts of jetliner views from which so many Tinseltown real estate dreams are made.
Near the top of The Birds there are a trio of properties that make up what is sometimes referred to in L.A. real estate circles as "the Crown," a mostly flat pie shaped promontory with unimpeded panoramic canyon, city and ocean views. It is this so-called Crown that Your Mama wants to discuss today, especially as it pertains to the aforementioned Wal-Mart heiress—and occasional film producer—Sybil Robson Orr.
In early 2010, international arts and culture maven Daria Zhukova—she's the Russian born but America bred daughter of oil tycoon and arms dealer Alexander Zhukov and the long-time lady-mate/baby momma of Russian billionaire real estate baller Roman Abramovich—dropped $19,500,000 for a bulky, 9,691 square foot ochre-colored Mediterranean mansion that occupies the Crown's 1.05 acre middle parcel.
The existing residence had been custom built in the 2000s by t.v. writer/producer Adam Chase (Friends, Veronica's Closet) who sold the property in the fall of 2006 for $19,150,000 to hedge fund honcho Robert Krail. It was the Greenwich, CT-based Mister Krail who, in turn, sold the 8 bedroom and 10 bathroom mansion in January 2010 to Miss Zhukova.
So the scuttlebutt goes, Miss Zhukova—along with Mister Abramovich, we imagine—hoped to acquire the two flanking parcels that comprise the Crown. Alas, that was not to be and, it seems, if she couldn't have the whole Crown Miss Zhukova wanted no part of the the Crown at all.
On the 15th of November Miss Zhukova's no longer wanted west coast pied-a-terre unexpectedly popped up on the real estate listing aggregator Redfin with an asking price of $16,500,000. Your Mama (dissed and) discussed the property the very next day. Almost immediately we heard from a representative of Miss Zhukova who insisted that the house was not for sale and the listing evaporated from the internets. But, lo, Miss Zhukova did, in fact, want to sell the house and did, in April 2011, for $19,500,000, exactly what she paid for it just over a year earlier. Although the name of the owner of the property is obscured behind a blind trust, according to Yolanda Yakketyak and our very well-connected contact Laurel Canyon, the buyers were none other than Sybil Robson Orr and her hubby Matthew.**
To the north of the Chase/Krail/Zhukova cum Orr mansion is a 1.22 acre lot where Mexican-born actor Ricardo Montalbán lived since the early 1980s in a boxy modern manse designed by accomplished Mexican minimalist architect Ricardo Legoretta. Easily accessible online documentation shows the property was purchased from the estate of Mister Montalbán in November 2010 for $9,000,000 by a investor/developer who spec-built a massive and glassy über-contemporary residence*** that sold to an as yet unidentified buyer in late November 2012 for—brace yourselves—$38,980,000.
The smallest of the three lots that make up the Crown lies to the east of Chase/Krail/Zhukova cum Orr property. The .66 acre spread was owned, for a short time, in the latter 1990s by music industry icon Lionel Richie In 2003 the Crown estate was acquired for $7.5 million by motivational speaker Grant Cardone who teaches sales people how to sell stuff in a hard charging yet non-confrontational manner that has become his well-honed signature style.
Real estate watchers in Los Angeles may recall that Mister Cardone wanted to unload his Bird Streets aerie since as far back as 2005. Your Mama can recall the house being listed as low as $14,900,000 and last year when Mister Cardone appeared on Selling LA he actually said on national t.v. that he'd take $16 million for the mini-estate. However, being the salesman he his, he must have sniffed out some serious real estate desire because property records reveal that Mister Cardone figured out how to get someone to quietly pay $17,000,000 for the property in an off-market deal in August 2012.
The Cardone property, according to listing details still accessible online, includes a single story villa (of indeterminate architectural style) with five bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in 6,099 square feet. Listing details go on to show the .67 acre spread is also jam-packed with a separate guest house, a shaded loggia, party-sized terraces, a negative edge salt water swimming pool and spa plus a tennis court.
Now here's where things get really interesting, children. The identity of the buyer of Mister Cardone's house is obscured behind a blind trust but according to both Yolanda Yakkety Yak and Laurel Canyon, the buyers were—didja already guess it?—the Wal-Mart heiress and her financier husband.
Those of you that have made it this far may wonder why Mister and Missus Orr would spend $17 million to buy the house next door the the $19.5 million house they bought just a couple years ago. Well, sit tight 'cause we're gonna tell you. Yolanda Yakkeyak told Your Mama that word on the Bird Street real estate gossip grapevine is that the Orrs—who also maintain a residence in London—purchased the old Richie/Cardone property because "they feel a bit crowded up there." Their plan, according to Yolanda, is to raze the existing residence, remove the swimming pool and tennis court, re-route the driveway and add a guesthouse.
As if the Orrs spending $17 million for a property that they just want to tear down so they can have a guest house and more impressive driveway isn't enough to make the children pee their property panties wait until you hear what Laurel Canyon later told Your Mama Mister and Missus Orr want to do up there on the Bird Streets Crown. According to Miz Canyon, not only do Mister and Missus Orr plan to level the old Richie/Cardone they also plan to tear down the Chase/Krail/Zhukova cum Orr mansion so they can start completely fresh.
Did you gasp? We did when we first heard it too. Take a minute to think about that, hunties. If there is any veracity to these whispers and rumors, Mister and Missus Orr coughed up a hair raising $36,500,000 for a pair of parcels that combined come to just 1.73 acres. Sure, they are two prime pieces of land and 1.73 acres does provide some room to roam right in the middle of one of the world's largest urban centers but, people, that's nearly forty million for the land.
The ever-knowledgeable Miz Canyon thinks that it'll probably take another $20-25million to custom build a house and install grounds worthy of a piece of land for which someone has paid $36,500,000. This is not the sort of spot where somebody throws up some 3,500 square foot pre-fab thing. No, babies, this is where someone inordinately rich builds a serious residential monument to their wealth, power and privilege. And that, children, is exactly what Your Mama, Yolanda and Laurel Canyon all expect Mister and Missus Orr will do.
Yolanda tattled to Your Mama that she knows of a couple other Wal-Mart heiresses who own homes in the Bird Streets 'hood but that's really another story for another day.
*Christy Walton, the widow of Sam Walton's second oldest son John, may in fact be the richest woman in the world. She comes in at #6 on the Forbes 400 list, as of September 2012, with has an estimated net worth of $27.9 billion; Jim Walton, the youngest of Sam Walton's progeny, ranked #7 with an estimated net worth of $26.8 billion; Alice Walton, Sam's only daughter, came in at #8 with an estimated net worth of $26.3 billion; With an estimated net worth of $26.1 billion, S. Robson Walton, Sam's oldest, slotted in at #9.
The other side of the Walton family, the descendants of Sam Walton's (deceased) brother Bud, doesn't seem to have nearly as much money as their spectacularly rich cousins but they're hardly hurting. Ann (Walton) Kroenke, Bud's oldest, came in at #79 on the Forbes 400 list as of September 2012 with a net worth of $4.5 billion. Ann's younger and only sibling, Nancy (Walton) Laurie—bless her heart—has the least amount of money of all her Walton cousins. She ranked #100 and—ahem—makes do with an estimated $3.9 billion.
**Use yer noggins now, chickens. Your Mama can't prove Mister and/or Missus Orr own the house with property records. We're going on information provided to Your Mama by two oft-proven very reliable sources with deep connections to the high end real estate whirl in Los Angeles and as reliable as these two are it's all just some high end real estate rumor and gossip...at least until one of the property gossips in one of the more respectable media outlets reports it.
***Thanks to one of the children for the link to the link to photos of the new house built where Montalbán's Legoretta once stood.
According to the research of our frequent and indefatigable informant Yolanda Yakketyak, Miz Orr's father, Nick, is the brother of Helen Robson Kempner, the now-deceased widow of Wal-Mart co-founder Sam Walton. At the time the Widda Walton went to meet her maker, in April 2007, she was listed at #29 on the Forbes 400 with an astounding net worth estimated to have been worth $16.4 billion.
We don't have any idea how much of the Wal-Mart money has trickled down into Miz Orr's coffers—plenty, it would seem, based on her much whispered about recent real estate activities, which we'll get to in a minute—but all the children know how much money those Walton people have, right?
According to a December (2012) article in/on Forbes the Walton family's total wealth hovers around $100 billion, an amount greater than that of the bottom 30% of Americans...combined. Their unfathomable fortune, built on selling massive amounts of goods and services out of big box stores at prices lower than small locally owned businesses can typically compete with, is equal to .14% of all U.S. Wealth. Whatever anyone may think of the income inequality issue in the good ol' U.S. of A., those are some jaw dropping statistics that could cause a regular, run of the mill free market capitalist to need a damn nerve pill.
In addition to whatever slice of the Wal-Mart money pie Miz Orr has or has access to—and we really don't know an iota about her income or net worth—she's married to a fellow named Matt Orr, a financier turned entrepreneur who we can all probably pretty safely assume has amassed a substantial financial nut of his own. Anyhoo...
Before Your Mama gets to the meat of the real estate part of the story let's first have a wee lesson in Los Angeles real estate geography. At the western end of the famed Sunset Strip a basket weave of winding streets twist and turn their way up into through canyons and along the ridges of the rugged Santa Monica Mountain range. The decidedly affluent neighborhood is usually referred to as "The Birds" because—you got it smarty pants—all the streets are named after birds and has long been favored by rich and famous Angelenos who both appreciate the easy-access central location and covet the exact sorts of jetliner views from which so many Tinseltown real estate dreams are made.
Near the top of The Birds there are a trio of properties that make up what is sometimes referred to in L.A. real estate circles as "the Crown," a mostly flat pie shaped promontory with unimpeded panoramic canyon, city and ocean views. It is this so-called Crown that Your Mama wants to discuss today, especially as it pertains to the aforementioned Wal-Mart heiress—and occasional film producer—Sybil Robson Orr.
In early 2010, international arts and culture maven Daria Zhukova—she's the Russian born but America bred daughter of oil tycoon and arms dealer Alexander Zhukov and the long-time lady-mate/baby momma of Russian billionaire real estate baller Roman Abramovich—dropped $19,500,000 for a bulky, 9,691 square foot ochre-colored Mediterranean mansion that occupies the Crown's 1.05 acre middle parcel.
So the scuttlebutt goes, Miss Zhukova—along with Mister Abramovich, we imagine—hoped to acquire the two flanking parcels that comprise the Crown. Alas, that was not to be and, it seems, if she couldn't have the whole Crown Miss Zhukova wanted no part of the the Crown at all.
On the 15th of November Miss Zhukova's no longer wanted west coast pied-a-terre unexpectedly popped up on the real estate listing aggregator Redfin with an asking price of $16,500,000. Your Mama (dissed and) discussed the property the very next day. Almost immediately we heard from a representative of Miss Zhukova who insisted that the house was not for sale and the listing evaporated from the internets. But, lo, Miss Zhukova did, in fact, want to sell the house and did, in April 2011, for $19,500,000, exactly what she paid for it just over a year earlier. Although the name of the owner of the property is obscured behind a blind trust, according to Yolanda Yakketyak and our very well-connected contact Laurel Canyon, the buyers were none other than Sybil Robson Orr and her hubby Matthew.**
Real estate watchers in Los Angeles may recall that Mister Cardone wanted to unload his Bird Streets aerie since as far back as 2005. Your Mama can recall the house being listed as low as $14,900,000 and last year when Mister Cardone appeared on Selling LA he actually said on national t.v. that he'd take $16 million for the mini-estate. However, being the salesman he his, he must have sniffed out some serious real estate desire because property records reveal that Mister Cardone figured out how to get someone to quietly pay $17,000,000 for the property in an off-market deal in August 2012.
The Cardone property, according to listing details still accessible online, includes a single story villa (of indeterminate architectural style) with five bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in 6,099 square feet. Listing details go on to show the .67 acre spread is also jam-packed with a separate guest house, a shaded loggia, party-sized terraces, a negative edge salt water swimming pool and spa plus a tennis court.
Now here's where things get really interesting, children. The identity of the buyer of Mister Cardone's house is obscured behind a blind trust but according to both Yolanda Yakkety Yak and Laurel Canyon, the buyers were—didja already guess it?—the Wal-Mart heiress and her financier husband.
Those of you that have made it this far may wonder why Mister and Missus Orr would spend $17 million to buy the house next door the the $19.5 million house they bought just a couple years ago. Well, sit tight 'cause we're gonna tell you. Yolanda Yakkeyak told Your Mama that word on the Bird Street real estate gossip grapevine is that the Orrs—who also maintain a residence in London—purchased the old Richie/Cardone property because "they feel a bit crowded up there." Their plan, according to Yolanda, is to raze the existing residence, remove the swimming pool and tennis court, re-route the driveway and add a guesthouse.
As if the Orrs spending $17 million for a property that they just want to tear down so they can have a guest house and more impressive driveway isn't enough to make the children pee their property panties wait until you hear what Laurel Canyon later told Your Mama Mister and Missus Orr want to do up there on the Bird Streets Crown. According to Miz Canyon, not only do Mister and Missus Orr plan to level the old Richie/Cardone they also plan to tear down the Chase/Krail/Zhukova cum Orr mansion so they can start completely fresh.
Did you gasp? We did when we first heard it too. Take a minute to think about that, hunties. If there is any veracity to these whispers and rumors, Mister and Missus Orr coughed up a hair raising $36,500,000 for a pair of parcels that combined come to just 1.73 acres. Sure, they are two prime pieces of land and 1.73 acres does provide some room to roam right in the middle of one of the world's largest urban centers but, people, that's nearly forty million for the land.
Yolanda tattled to Your Mama that she knows of a couple other Wal-Mart heiresses who own homes in the Bird Streets 'hood but that's really another story for another day.
*Christy Walton, the widow of Sam Walton's second oldest son John, may in fact be the richest woman in the world. She comes in at #6 on the Forbes 400 list, as of September 2012, with has an estimated net worth of $27.9 billion; Jim Walton, the youngest of Sam Walton's progeny, ranked #7 with an estimated net worth of $26.8 billion; Alice Walton, Sam's only daughter, came in at #8 with an estimated net worth of $26.3 billion; With an estimated net worth of $26.1 billion, S. Robson Walton, Sam's oldest, slotted in at #9.
The other side of the Walton family, the descendants of Sam Walton's (deceased) brother Bud, doesn't seem to have nearly as much money as their spectacularly rich cousins but they're hardly hurting. Ann (Walton) Kroenke, Bud's oldest, came in at #79 on the Forbes 400 list as of September 2012 with a net worth of $4.5 billion. Ann's younger and only sibling, Nancy (Walton) Laurie—bless her heart—has the least amount of money of all her Walton cousins. She ranked #100 and—ahem—makes do with an estimated $3.9 billion.
**Use yer noggins now, chickens. Your Mama can't prove Mister and/or Missus Orr own the house with property records. We're going on information provided to Your Mama by two oft-proven very reliable sources with deep connections to the high end real estate whirl in Los Angeles and as reliable as these two are it's all just some high end real estate rumor and gossip...at least until one of the property gossips in one of the more respectable media outlets reports it.
***Thanks to one of the children for the link to the link to photos of the new house built where Montalbán's Legoretta once stood.
Barbie® Lists Malibu Dreamhouse®
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $25,000,000
SIZE: 8,500-plus square feet, 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A little birdie chirped to Your Mama earlier this week that Barbie®, the world's most famous and anatomically impossible doll, has put her internationally renowned Malibu Dreamhouse® on the market exclusively through Trulia with a dolltastic $25,000,000 price tag. That's right, children, Barbie® is selling up in The Bu.
Naturally, Barbie® chose an equally polished, tan and successful Realtor to help her unload her big, pink beach house Dreamhouse®: The dapper Million Dollar Listing star Josh Altman of the real estate brokerage powerhouse Hilton & Hyland.
Marketing materials Your Mama received via covert communique from the hardworking assistant to a superstar PR diva with whom we're friendly indicates Barbie's® Malibu bachelorette pad sits on an unusually roomy for Malibu 23,456 square foot lot with 150 feet of prime beach frontage. The towering, tri-level residence—generously described as "Contemporary Glam" in listing details—measures in at more than 8,500 square feet but includes just one bedroom and one bathroom. Guess that means when Skipper, Todd or Tutti come to town they have to curl up on the love seat or shack up in a motel.
Listing information reveals Barbie's® lone bathroom, located just off and open to the second floor sitting room, has a single pedestal sink, radiant heat flooring and a stand-up corner steam shower with a glass door that, like the elevator, is imprinted with Barbie's® pony tailed profile.
We're not really sure what sort of—ahem—doll might want to buy Barbie's® beach side Dreamhouse® but Your Mama thinks Mister Altman may want to reach out to some of those goulish and increasingly popular Monster High dolls like, say, Cleo de Nile™ or Venus McFlyTrap™who would surely Goth the place up with cobwebs, crucifixes and scads of candelabras.
Your Mama doesn't have any specific intel on Barbie's® future real estate plans in Malibu but could she finally be fixin' to trade up into the glassy, gorgeous and über contemporary, five-level spread that won the 2011 AIA Barbie® Dreamhouse® Design Competition? Let's hope so.
NOTE: This is for entertainment purposes only. This is not descriptive of the actual Barbie® Dreamhouse® Toy.
Photos: Mattel, Inc. via Hilton & Hyland via Trulia
A Real Housewife (Quietly) Unloads OC Mansion
LOCATION: Newport Coast, CA
PRICE: $16,450,000
SIZE: Unknown
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: There are those who can surely and successfully argue that The Real Housewives of... franchise jumped the proverbial Showbiz shark a long time ago. Maybe it has. None the less, Your Mama and the Doctor Cooter still faithfully tune in—well, we DVR it anyways—whenever those bejeweled blouse wearing beotches down in Orange County pop up on the boob toob. We can't help it. We can't.
Maybe after all these years we just feel loyal to all those over-Botoxed and faux-breasted women. Maybe we're simply sad, sheep-like creatures of t.v. watching habit. Maybe its a sick addiction we need Dr. Drew Pinsky to address. Or maybe—and most embarrassingly—we just can't get enough of all those grown-ass women wrapped in the glitzy trappings of wealth who may or may not actually be rich but still act like catty and entitled high school cheerleaders whenever they get a few cocktails in them. Whatever the reason(s), we can't resist them. We can't. We probably shouldn't admit that out loud but, there, it's done. Iffin any of the children don't want to hear about these Orange County vixens and vamps and/or their recent real estate activities, then we suggest you check back soon when we'll have moved on to a celebrity or "celebrity" more to your liking. Okay?
Anyhoodles poodles, Your Mama received a covert communique the other day from someone we'll call Tawny S. Kinh who told us that Heather DuBrow—who joined the RHOOC in mid-2012 for the 7th season and is slated to appear in the upcoming eighth season—and her prominent and clearly well-compensated plastic surgeon husband Terry DuBrow very quietly sold their custom-built mansion in the swanky and gated Pelican Crest enclave in Newport Coast, CA in the latter days of December 2012 for, according to property records, $16,450,000. The buyer is rich, of course, but not famous.
Sports minded real estate watchers may recall that Pelican Crest is the same pricey 'hood where L.A. Laker Kobe Bryant and his now ex-wife Vanessa were in the process of custom building a huge house when they split up and became the sold property of ex-Missus Bryant in early 2012 as part of their divorce settlement. But we digress...
As best as Your Mama can tell from a careful perusal of property records, Dr. and Missus DuBrow may have picked up the then-vacant parcel in September of 2004 for $3,275,000 and a couple years later taken out a whopping seven million dollar construction loan to pay for the custom erection of the existing mock-Med villa.
The DuBrow's mansion was not, as far as we can tell, ever on the open market so we weren't able to dig up any listing details about the house on the internets. Interestingly, property records are also frustratingly devoid of details so we can't even tell y'all how many square feet, the number of bedrooms or how many bathrooms the Orange County Tax Man thinks the house has because we didn't see them called out in any of the handful of data bases we accessed. All we really know is that their 2011 taxes came to just under $85,000 and that in the final days of 2012 Dr. and Missus Dubrow sold their luxurious Pelican Crest crib for $16,450,000.
Of course we saw bits and pieces of the luxurious and clearly quite large residence on season seven of The Real Housewives of Orange County. As our boozy memory recalls there's an impressive double height foyer sized like the lobby of a small hotel, a roomy and well-fitted eat-in kitchen and a spacious master suite complete with closets and dressing rooms that would make an average clothes horse simper with envy.
We also recall—and can surmise from aerial imagery readily accessible on the interweb—that there are several terraces and loggias on both levels at the back of the house that have broad coastline and ocean views. There's also a small formal garden centered around a fountain, a narrow but very wide and desirably flat swathe of grass and a gated driveway that leads to an underground parking area of unknown size. There is not, as far as we know, a swimming pool on the property unless there's one in the basement.
We peeked and poked around in various property record data bases but we were unable to figure out to where Dr. and Missus DuBrow have decamped. Did they downsize? Up size? Did they head inland or did they opt for something closer to the beach? Unless that cross-eyed reality t.v. exec and chat show hostess Andy Cohen gives Your Mama a ringy-dingy we may just have to wait until season 8 begins to get a bead on things. We tease, Andy. Your Mama luvs you like the dickens even though you never return our calls, texts or tweets.*
Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Bueller?
*Not that he would if we did but Mister Cohen never returns Your Mama's calls because we've never actually called, texted, tweeted or otherwise attempted to contact him.
aerial image: Google
Actor Aaron Paul Snags Fiancée and New House
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,399,000
SIZE: 2,396 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Every now and again The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial query Your Mama about a property they believe to be owned or have been purchased by a famous person. Such was the case this week with a 1930s Spanish-style villa nestled inon a steep hillside on a quiet and little known cul-de-sac just above the Sunset Strip that sold last April (2012) for $1,399,000.
We didn't know who bought the house and property records show ownership is obscured behind a generically named trust. So, natch, we gave our exceedingly reliable friend and informant Lucy Spillerguts a ringy-dingy. Your Mama can't prove it but our Miss Spillerguts swears the city-view residence was purchased by the newly engaged actor Aaron Paul of the hard-edged AMC series Breaking Bad. Mister Paul, the youngest of five kids born to an Idaho preacher man, may or may not share the house with his documentary filmmaker/"girl-against-girl 'crime'" activist fiancée Lauren Parsekian.
Although Mister Paul (née Sturtevant) didn't get his big Showbiz break until 2007 when he was cast as a recurring character on Big Love he's been floating around Hollywood since the the early 2000s when he appeared as a contestant on The Price is Right, popped up in a couple of music videos and was seen on a number of commercials for products like chewing gum and breakfast cereal. His resume also includes a handful of mostly forgettable films (Help! I'm a Fish, Bad Girls from Valley High, Mission Impossible III) and a smattering of boob-toob appearances (CSI and CSI: Miami, X-Files, 3rd Rock from the Sun). But it is, of course, his plum lead role as the likable but screwed up drug addict and meth cooker Jesse Pinkman on the critically acclaimed Breaking Bad series that made him famous and earned him not just one but two Emmy statuettes.
Anyhoo, listing information we dug up on the internets shows the two-story house sits high above the street atop a tight two-car garage, measures 2,396 square feet and contains a total of four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.
At the street level, a curving retaining wall is painted in with graphic ochre and brick red horizontal stripes that are not only very reminiscent but very nearly identical to the horizontally striped retaining walls of Castillo del Lago, the fabled, 1920s Mediterranean compound perched privately high above Lake Hollywood and was once the L.A. hideaway of Bugsy Siegel. The 8 bedroom spread and was owned for a few years in the mid-1990s by Madonna Herself who sold it in 1996 for about $5.3 million to commercial director Joe Pytka who, in turn, sold it in the summer of 2010 for $7 million to fashion designer Leon Max. Fascinating as the history of Castillo del Lago may be, it is not the property we're here to discuss today.
The rustic wood front door of the Sunset Strip Spanish Mister Paul (allegedly) purchased opens into a stone tile floored central stair hall off of which is a opens a combination living/dining room with dark brown wood floors, wood beams across the ceiling, a hulking stone fireplace that almost but not quite looks like something ripped out of a French chateau and a dead on head on view of the perennially chic Chateau Marmont. We're just gonna look past the yellowish, sponge-painted (or faux finished or whatever) walls and assume that Mister Paul and Miss Parsekian had the decorative good sense to re-paint them.
On the other side of the central stair hall there's a compact but expensively equipped eat-in kitchen outfitted with high-quality commercial style appliances including a pair of side-by-side fridge/freezers. That adjoining breakfast room has a pitched and beamed ceiling and four wood-framed corner windows that allow for sweeping city and sky views.
The main portion of the house has three bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms including a spacious master suite with a window-lined sitting area and a very beige, suburban-looking attached bathroom. Once again Your Mama hopes Mister Paul and Miss Parsekian had the good sense to rip all that banal nonsense out and replace it with something more stylistically authentic to the 1930s Spanish style of the house.
The lower level of the house can, according to listing details, be accessed from inside the house or by way of its own exterior entrance and includes a living room area, wet bar, bedroom and bathroom. Obviously it's the perfect spot for a live-in domestic, home office or a surly teenager.
As far as we know this is the first and only home Mister Paul owns. Then again, what does Your Mama really know about anything.
listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty
California Burger Heiress Lynsi (Snyder Seawell Martinez) Torres Sells Glendora MacMansion
LOCATION: Glendora, CA
PRICE: $2,599,000
SIZE: 7,018 square feet (per listing), 6 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: There seems to be a lot of attention the international tabloid presses this week—including in the U.K.'s always dishy Daily Mail—about Lynsi Torres, the young, super low profile and arguably unconventional heiress to a Southern California fast foot fortune.
Thirty year old Miz Torres is the owner, by inheritance, of the privately held and money-minting In-N-Out fast food hamburger chain that was originally started in the late 1940s by Miz Torres's paternal great-grandparents Harry and Esther Snyder.
We're not sure if all the recent attention is because the folks at Bloomberg recently published a profile of and added Miz Torres to their growing list of billionaires that almost nobody has ever heard of before or if it has something to do with the ongoing fascination there seems to be about the wild and wooly history of Miz Torres's frequently feuding and tragedy visited family as chronicled in Stacey Perman's hard-edged and sometimes salacious unauthorized family biography, In-N-Out Burger (2009).
The children may recall that last September (2012) Your Mama discussed Miz Torres—a deeply religious drag race aficionado who was recently married for the third time and is the mother of young twins plus two step-children—after it had been brought to our attention by trusted tattletale Bradbury Barker that the publicity eschewing heiress quietly dropped $17,410,961 to acquire professional baseballer Adrían Beltré's rather garish, 16,600-ish square foot mansion in little-known but exceedingly affluent Bradbury, CA.*
Ever since she bought Mister Beltré's behemoth residence in one of the most expensive zip codes in the entire U.S. of A., it seemed to Your Mama only a matter of time before young Miz Torres would try to unload her old house, a big but banal and quintessentially suburban faux-Tuscan villa sort of thing set on almost two gated acres in the the guard-gated Gordon Highlands community in Glendora, CA.
Sure enough, puppies, thanks to our ever-intrepid source Yolanda Yakketyak, Your Mama recently learned that Miz Torres did indeed put her mock-Med(ish) Glendora macmansion on the open market, in mid-January (2013), with an asking price of $2,599,000. Property records show Miz Torres bought her approximately 7,000 square foot house in the Gordon Highlands enclave for $3,150,000 back in February, 2006. It doesn't take a math expert or even Your Mama's bejeweled abacus to see that the listing price is $551,000 less than Lady Hamburger paid for the property seven years ago.
The wildly wealthy young Miz Torres can certainly afford to lose half a million or more on the sale of this house, which is in currently in escrow according to online listings. Howevuh, Your Mama hears she may not be losing as much on the sale of this house as her purchase price ($3,150,000) and price tag ($2,599,000) might indicate. Although we can't verify or vouch for the intel, according to the always eerily well-informed Yolanda Yakketyak there were multiple offers on the property and when it finally closes the new owner will have paid more than the asking price.
Anyhoo, whatever it finally sells for, listing information shows the two-story residence has six bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms, garaging for four cars, front and back staircases, hand-scraped hardwood and marble floors throughout, monthly home owner's association dues of $504 per month and a $100,000-plus security system that the children can bet includes a slew of discreetly mounted security cameras.
A formal central foyer leads to the various public and private areas of the house that includes formal living and dining rooms and a spacious study/library/home office with built-in bookcases. The double island kitchen has a dark brown raised panel cabinetry, a couple different types of counters tops, top-grade commercial style appliances including a built-in coffee/espresso maker and a walk-in pantry. The kitchen opens up to a family room with fireplace and direct access to the loggia that wraps around three sides of a central courtyard.
The courtyard overlooks a lower level area with a dark-bottom negative edge swimming pool and a raised semi-circular spa flanked by sunbathing terraces with long views over and beyond canyons and ridge tops to—on a clear day—the often smoggy San Gabriel Valley.
In addition to her new digs in Bradbury property records reveal Miz Torres also owns a five bedroom and five bathroom home in a gated community in Glendora, CA that she acquired in 2010 for $1,175,000. The house—according to Bradbury Barker—was acquired to house her second ex-husband, a former In-N-Out employee turned ordained minister and the father of Miz Torres's young twins. Yolanda Yakketyak swears—and there is plenty of evidence in various property record data bases—that Miz Torres and/or her family also owns a 100-plus acre compound in Northern California's rugged and scenic Shasta County but, in all honesty children, the property records are all screwy so we can't be totally sure.
*Yesterday the kids at Curbed re-posted a cache of photographs of the Miz Martinez's massive new manse sits on more than four landscaped acres and features—among other residential extravagances—seven bedrooms, 16 bathrooms, a separate three-bedroom guesthouse, a pool cabana with kitchen, tennis court, swimming pool and a rec room/batting cage.
listing photos: Coldwell Banker Top Team
Morning Morsel: Will Ferrell
Mister and Missus Farrell—who live primarily in Los Angeles behind the electronic gates of semi-secluded Hollywood Hills compound they purchased in early 2006 from chat show queen Ellen Degeneres for nine million bucks—scooped up their nearly 2,699 square foot Greenwich Village loft in May 2010 for $4,200,000.
The bi-coastal couple hired designer/decorator Shawn Henderson to do up their Big Apple digs and do them up but good he did. He ripped out all the nonsense but retained the good stuff like the original rough-hewn wood beams on the ceiling, replaced the kitchen and bathrooms and painted all the walls white white white to harness sunlight and set off a small but serious collection of contemporary artworks—think Sol LeWitt and Roy Lichtenstein. The deft decorator created several sitting and dining areas including one centered around a minimalist fire box and flat-screen t.v. and furnished with a Hans Wegner Papa Bear chair and a grouping of variously sized boulder-like poufs and pillows that ought to remind anyone who knows a damn thing about decoratin' history of legendary California decorator Michael Taylor.
photo: William Waldron for Architectural Digest
Morning Morsel: Macauley Culkin
Ever wonder what the inside of former child star turned ironically-inclined arteest Macauley Culkin's 5,100 square foot Manhattan loft looked like. Frankly, Your Mama hadn't either until we ran across this eye-popping partly-pictoral nugget in the art/fashion/culture publication Bullett and is it ever a ding-dang urban hipster-dipster doozy of a place.
photo: Kelsey Bennett for Bullett
Morning Morsel: Courtney Sale Ross
According to the property gossips at the New York Post, philanthropist Courtney Sale Ross—the very rich widow of former Time Warner CEO Steve Ross—has floated her 5.5 acre Georgia Pond fronting estate in East Hampton on the market as a so-called pocket listing with a $75,000,000 asking price.
High end property watchers will recall that Miz Sale Ross sold her 20-plus room duplex co-operative apartment in New York City at the very high-nosed 740 Park Avenue last year for $52,500,000 to money manager Howard Marks who himself recently unloaded his fully renovated and landscaped 10-ish acre ocean front compound in Malibu (CA) for around $75,000,000.
aerial image: Bing
Afternoon Tidbits and Links: Elton John
Have a delicious look-see via Architectural Digest at what Million Dollar Decorator Martyn Lawrence Bullard did to the glassy, low-slung Beverly Hills (CA) contemporary that music industry icon Sir Elton John and his man-friend/baby daddy David Furnish bought last year for $7,250,000.
Sir Elton and Mister Furnish may have two young sons but they still live a globe-trotting rock star lifestyle and maintain a handful of decadent, high-maintenance digs around the world including in Atlanta, Georgia; in both London and Windsor in the U.K.; Nice, France; and Venice, Italy.
Sir Elton and Mister Furnish may have two young sons but they still live a globe-trotting rock star lifestyle and maintain a handful of decadent, high-maintenance digs around the world including in Atlanta, Georgia; in both London and Windsor in the U.K.; Nice, France; and Venice, Italy.
photo: Roger Davies for Architectural Digest
Afternoon Tidbits and Links: Celebrity House Calculator
The folks over at Movoto created a fun little calculator that allows all us regular folks to figure out home many of our own—ahem—modest houses will fit into the celebrity-style mansions of a handful of famous people such as Rihanna, Tom Brady and Kim Kardashian.
photo: Movoto
Afternoon Tidbits and Links: Another Nine Figure Asking Price
On the heels of the spine-tingling—and record breaking—news that Bay Area financier Tully Friedman sold his nearly nine acre Woodside (CA) estate to multi-billionaire Japanese businessman Masayoshi San for $117,500,000 along comes a much larger and far more storied 47.4-acre spread in nearby Hillsborough with an toe curling asking price of $100,000,000.
Although the largely wooded estate, situated about 20 minutes south of San Francisco, has been owned by the family of it's current shepherd, Christian de Guigné IV, for the last 150 years, the opulent and downright correct Mediterranean villa was originally designed in 1916 by the esteemed San Francisco architects Walter Bliss and William Faville. The existing residence currently weighs in with seven bedrooms and 8.5 bathrooms—plus half a dozen or more staff rooms, a ballroom and a flower arranging room—in about 16,000 square feet of decorative decadence dreamed up and done done done by decorator Anthony Hail.
As the always on top of things kids at Curbed noted, there's a bit of a twist: 75-year old Mister de Guigné the Fourth wishes to retain a life estate on the property, a stipulation that would allow him to occupy the main manse for the remainder of his life. Now, children, let's get real. What bazillionaire buyer willing to drop anywhere close to a hundred million damn clams is gonna go for that sort of thing?
listing photo: Sotheby's International Realty
UPDATE: Peter Morton and Elvis Presley
At the time Your Mama heard from two separate sources that Mister Morton planned to tear the house down and replace it with something larger and more modern but the ever-clever kids at Curbed have subsequently reported that the property's provenance—it was not only owned by Elvis Presley but originally designed by too-littled lauded master architect Rex Lotery—and a recently adopted preservation ordinance in Bev Hills may in fact prevent Mister Morton from tearing the existing residence down.
Your Mama recognizes that none of this to raze or not to raze bizness will matter much to most folks in places like Peoria and Timbuktu but we've come to understand from our more architecturally inclined confreres that his has become an eminently watchable real estate soap opera with dedicated architecture preservationists in Los Angeles and beyond.
listing photo: Coldwell Banker
Are Katy Perry and John Mayer Really House Hunting Together?
For months now rumors have circulated across the celebrity gossip world that candy-colored international pop princess Katy Perry and seven time Grammy-winning musician and celebrity heart breaker John Mayer—that horn dog, children, has dated more stars than there are in the damn sky—are on the hunt for a house in Los Angeles where they can live together in unwedded bliss.
The rumors first surfaced in the British tabs last November after the newish couple had been dating just a few months and heated up again last week after the inauguration attending couple were reported to have together toured a "handful of homes" in Los Angeles two weekends ago.
Your Mama pretty much ignored these celebrity real estate whispers until our long-time gal pal Miss Anne up in San Francisco sent us a message the other day through the Words With Friends app—that beotch, dontcha know, beats Your Mama's wordsmithing butt the majority of the time—and asked if the rumors about Katy Perry and John Mayer moving in together are true.
We quickly made some queries on Miss Anne's behalf with a couple of our better connected sources inside the Tinseltown real estate game and quickly heard back from our always well-informed confrere Skipper Skuttlebutter who was adamant that the increasingly rampant rumors are not true...at least not entirely true.
According to Skipper, word on the rock-n-roll real estate street is that Miz Perry is house hunting in the five to ten million dollar range. However, while her man-beau Mister Mayer may accompany her on her real estate related activities and although he will likely spend many of his days and nights in whatever swank and seriously secure residence Miz Perry finally purchases, they are absolutely not currently looking to buy a house together.
Property records indicate Mister Mayer still owns a 2,063 square foot, Armani/Casa-decorated New York City condo-crib situated on the busy border between the chic and trendy, boutique shopper friendly SoHo and NoLiTa neighborhoods that he picked up back in early 2005 for $2,173,690. Until January 2011 the Twitter-quitting singer/songwriter owned a decoratively decked out residence in L.A.'s Pacific Palisades community that he bought in mid-2006 for $1,750,000 and sold at a considerable loss in January 2011 for $1,291,875.
It's been widely reported that the acoustic rock/bluesy musician maintains homes in both L.A.'s super-suburban San Fernando Valley—where Your Mama was once told he used to lease a house in Hidden Hills—and somewhere in or around Bozeman (Montana) but, honestly buttercups, Your Mama doesn't know anything concrete about either of these alleged residences.
Miz Perry's real estate portfolio has been in a near constant state of flux the last few years. Just before she and her now ex-husband, the loquacious and unkempt-looking English comedian Russell Brand, were married in a decadent ceremony in India in the fall of 2010 she shelled out $2,980,000 for a quirky duplex penthouse in New York City's TriBeCa area (building exterior above) that she sold at a small loss in July 2012—right after their divorce was finalized—for $2,625,000.
At about the time they met, Mister Brand scooped up a four-story contemporary Mediterranean (above) in L.A.'s celeb-friendly Los Feliz area where he and Miz Perry camped out when they were in town. Mister Brand sold the house for $3.3 million in July 2011, just about a month after he and his then missus Miz Perry dropped $6,500,000 on Park Hill, an historic, nearly three acre gated estate in the Laurel Canyon area with a seven bedroom and nine bathroom 1920s Mediterranean fixer-upper mansion (below).
It wasn't long after the erstwhile couple acquired Park Hill that they split up. Mister Brand is widely believed (and reported) by most property gossips to have handed the keys to the property over to Miz Perr and acquired a bachelor pad in the Hollywood Hills.
It's many times been whispered to Your Mama from several of our better connected informants that Miz Perry wants to unload Park Hill but—sorry Charlies—we don't have any specific intel on that quite yet. What we do know—or at least we've been told by the sorts of people who know these things—is that for some months now the globe-trotting Miz Perry been shacked up in a rental apartment in a fabled Old Hollywood-style apartment house in the heart of West Hollywood.
all images: Pacific Coast News
The rumors first surfaced in the British tabs last November after the newish couple had been dating just a few months and heated up again last week after the inauguration attending couple were reported to have together toured a "handful of homes" in Los Angeles two weekends ago.
Your Mama pretty much ignored these celebrity real estate whispers until our long-time gal pal Miss Anne up in San Francisco sent us a message the other day through the Words With Friends app—that beotch, dontcha know, beats Your Mama's wordsmithing butt the majority of the time—and asked if the rumors about Katy Perry and John Mayer moving in together are true.
We quickly made some queries on Miss Anne's behalf with a couple of our better connected sources inside the Tinseltown real estate game and quickly heard back from our always well-informed confrere Skipper Skuttlebutter who was adamant that the increasingly rampant rumors are not true...at least not entirely true.
According to Skipper, word on the rock-n-roll real estate street is that Miz Perry is house hunting in the five to ten million dollar range. However, while her man-beau Mister Mayer may accompany her on her real estate related activities and although he will likely spend many of his days and nights in whatever swank and seriously secure residence Miz Perry finally purchases, they are absolutely not currently looking to buy a house together.
Property records indicate Mister Mayer still owns a 2,063 square foot, Armani/Casa-decorated New York City condo-crib situated on the busy border between the chic and trendy, boutique shopper friendly SoHo and NoLiTa neighborhoods that he picked up back in early 2005 for $2,173,690. Until January 2011 the Twitter-quitting singer/songwriter owned a decoratively decked out residence in L.A.'s Pacific Palisades community that he bought in mid-2006 for $1,750,000 and sold at a considerable loss in January 2011 for $1,291,875.
It's been widely reported that the acoustic rock/bluesy musician maintains homes in both L.A.'s super-suburban San Fernando Valley—where Your Mama was once told he used to lease a house in Hidden Hills—and somewhere in or around Bozeman (Montana) but, honestly buttercups, Your Mama doesn't know anything concrete about either of these alleged residences.
It's many times been whispered to Your Mama from several of our better connected informants that Miz Perry wants to unload Park Hill but—sorry Charlies—we don't have any specific intel on that quite yet. What we do know—or at least we've been told by the sorts of people who know these things—is that for some months now the globe-trotting Miz Perry been shacked up in a rental apartment in a fabled Old Hollywood-style apartment house in the heart of West Hollywood.
all images: Pacific Coast News
Carly Simon Gives It Another Go in the West Village
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $2,495,000
SIZE: (approx.) 1,200 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Looks like multi-Grammy, Golden Globe and Oscar winning singer/songwriter Carly Simon is giving it another go, re-listing her New York City duplex pied-a-terre with an asking price of $2,495,000.
Some of the children who have been hanging around here for a long time may recall that Your Mama first (dissed and) discussed Miz Simon's quirky and quintessentially West Village co-operative apartment way back in June 2008 when she pushed it on the open market with an in-hindsight grievously optimistic price tag of $3,850,000. The listing agent at the time was—not surprisingly—Miz Simon's sister Joanna Simon at Fox Residential. By the time un-sold duplex was taken off the market almost two years later, in the spring of 2010, the price had plummeted to a much lower but still far too rose-tinted asking price of $2,975,000.
In April 2012, for reasons entirely unknown to Your Mama, Miz Simon decided not to re-hire her real estate agent sister and instead engaged the services of high-powered über-agent Raphael De Niro—Robert De Niro's son—at Douglas Elliman who popped her duplex pied-a-terre back on the market with a substantially lower but, alas, still Utopian $2,750,000 asking price. Two and a half months later the price dropped even further to $2,490,000 before it disappeared from the open market.
Miz Simon, bless her real estate heart, jumped back on the merry-go-round last week and heaved her West Village duplex on the open market last week with a third new real estate agent—Corcoran young gun Nick Gavin—who put an ever so slightly and curiously higher asking price of $2,495,000 on Miz Simon's tough to sell West Village digs.
Property records and reports indicate Miz Simon purchased her West Village hideaway in the early 1800s Federal style red brick townhouse in early 2004 for around $1,200,000. She reportedly gut renovated the two floor unit but retained much of the apartment's original details such as the rough-hewn wide plank wood floors, exposed brick and the two wood-burning fireplace, one in the downstairs living room and the other in the upstairs sitting room where Miz Simon has incongruously installed both a baby grand piano and a claw-footed soaking tub.
The apartment is entered on the lower level through a small foyer off of which open a laundry closet and a full bathroom blessed with an actual window. The adjoining living room has a free-standing exposed brick fireplace with blue and white pattern tiles around the firebox. Openings on either side of the fireplace connect through to the renovated trapezoidal kitchen outfitted with open shelving and budget-friendly stainless steel appliances.
A very narrow, open staircase wraps around the kitchen where it arrives at a small landing/dressing area with a trio of small closets. Flanking the above-mentioned sitting room where Miz Simon has a piano and a bathtub—in the same room—are a small (master) bedroom and a compartmentalized and windowed half-bathroom.
Thankfully and—no doubt—much to the pleasure of the listing agent, Miz Simon has thinned some of the furniture, pared back a bit on some of the bric-a-brac and and fabric draping that she seemed so partial to back in 2008. It looked, decoratively, like the sort of Big Apple pied-a-terre Your Mama thought scarf and scrap material loving musicians Stevie Nicks or Steven Tyler might swoon for. But, alas....
Since the very narrow, townhouse-type co-operative building has only two other (quite tiny) units—one of which is owned by a journalist/non-profit executive who was once erroneously romantically linked in the tabloids to presidential mistress Monica Lewinsky—the approximately $2,400 per month maintenance fees for Miz Simon's house seem unusually high for the size of the apartment, especially given that there are no high end conveniences or services—i.e. doormen, fitness center, etc.—available to the small handful of residents. What the duplex does have going for it is it's location on one of the most charming and desirable residential nooks of the once bohemian and now exceedingly gentrified and shockingly expensive West Village.
As far as Your Mama knows, Miz Simon's primary residence is still Hidden Star Hill, the sprawling 25-plus acre Martha's Vineyard, MA, compound near the town of Tisbury that her five-time Grammy winning singer/songwriter ex-husband James Taylor bought in the late 1960s and transferred over to Miz Simon following their 1983 divorce. In addition to an approximately 5,000 square foot main house, the property includes a haphazard collection of several other residences—two of which are occupied by her and Mister Taylor's two adult children—several outbuildings and barns, a swimming pool, tennis court and a small pond.
exterior photo: Kate Lenova for Property Shark (2005)
listing photos and floor plan: Corcoran
