Archive for 2013-02-10
There's Some Seriously High Priced Malibu Madness Going On
You Mama was having a digital yakkety-yak the other day with a trusted, valued and well-connected source and we got to trippin' about the handful of recent sales in Malibu that topped $30,000,000.
Of course, thirty million clams for a single private residence is multi-millionaire real estate child's play in place like London and the craggy coastline of the South of France but, hunties—spectacularly pricey as it is by comparison to places like Columbus and Kalamazoo—in Malibu 30 million bucks is still a helleva lotta damn money.
Not being a scientist, an economist or a real estate professional we really can't say if these sky-high prices in Malibu are the new normal in a world people by unfathomably rich jet setters or if they represent an anomalistic blip in the upper end property marketplace.
Of course, the reigning Queen Mother of all recent high end sales in Malibu is, of course, the still somewhat secrecy enshrouded sale of financier Howard Marks' 9.5 acre bluff-top spread that went for a rumored and widely reported price to be about $75,000,000.
Your Mama don't know a thing from a thang but several weeks ago, when this titanic transaction was making headlines in property gossip columns around the globe, it was tattled to Your Mama by a well-placed canary that the deal included just about every stick of the very posh and very expensive furnishings selected by frequently lauded and applauded nice-gay decorator Michael Smith.
Despite much speculation by real estate watchers, Your Mama included the identity of the buyer has yet to be confirmed. We first heard from a lady we know that it might be billionaire junk bond bigwig Michael Milkin. It was not. Then we heard from a source we call Cinnamon Stick who told us that word on the Malibu real estate gossip highway was that the buyer was a young Russian couple with "suitcases full of cash." We queried a few of our better informed confreres and, after some initial trepidation, one of them fingered billionaire Oakley sunglasses founder James "Jim" Jannard as the new owner. Since then one of the property gossip gals at the Wall Street Journal described the buyers as, "a Russian billionaire couple" and Your Mama heard back from Cinnamon Stick who was emphatic the buyer is not Mister Jannard. So, we don't really know at this point who coughed up the record breaking wad but we shall see, butter beans, we shall see.
Super producer Jerry Weintraub—Oceans Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen, The Karate Kid, Oh God) isn't shy about his somewhat unconventional romantic life: He's been married for nearly 50 years to his wife Jane but lives with his long-time mistress, Susan Ekins. Even more unconventionally, in April 2010 Mister Weintraub was quoted saying that Missus Weintraub and Miz Elkins are "best friends." Well, alrighty then....
And here Your Mama used to think our family was a clusterfucky freak show because Big Daddy's third wife's children from a previous marriage used to spend a week or two every summer at the beach with Your Mama's momma, who was Big Daddy's first wife.
Anyhoo, once again we can't verify it but Your Mama's been told by multiple sources that Mister Weintraub and Miz Ekins occupy his Beverly Hills estate as well as his 10,000 square foot contemporary desert digs in Rancho Mirage while Missus Weintraub has long commandeered their nearly seven acre estate perched on a bluff above Malibu's Paradise Cove.
Mister (and Missus) Weintraub have had the nearly seven acre spread on and off the (open) market since way back in 2007 and, finally, nearly a half dozen years later, Your Mama hears from someone who knows these things that they have finally sold their real estate white albatross for $41,000,000.* The buyer, our tattletale told us, is apparel mogul Serge Azria.**
The (alleged) purchase price is a big number, certainly by Malibu standards, but it is far less than the daringly optimistic $75,000,000 Mister Weintraub originally wanted for the ocean side compound that, in addition to substantial if architecturally very ordinary main house, encompasses three guest houses, a swimming pool complex, a lighted tennis court and extensive equestrian facilities including a two barns, stables and a riding ring.
Platinum Triangle property watchers may remember that is was Serge Azria and his missus who, in February 2010, paid $21,000,000 to buy the former Jane Wyatt estate in Bel Air, a 1930s Paul Williams-designed Colonial in Bel Air that had been fully reconstructed and greatly expanded by Showbiz tycoon turned high end house flipper Sandy Gallin.
*Property records do not yet reflect a sale, making this transaction and the details discussed here little more than rumor and gossip.**Serge Azria is not to be confused with his fashion designer brother Max Azria who owns some of his own pretty impressive real estate in Los Angeles.***We're not sure if Miz Wyatt's house was actually designed by the legendary architect Paul Williams but it does bear some of his iconic flourishes such as the sweeping circular staircase in the entrance hall and listing details from the time it was sold to Mister Gallin called it an "elegant PAUL WILLIAMS trad."
Everyone who knows even a smidgen about the real estate doings of big livin' billionaires knows that Larry Ellison is pretty much the Grand Poobah of trophy property buyers in America. The man owns more high-maintenance estates than Your Mama has fingers and toes. He's got a painstakingly constructed Imperial Japanese style compound in Woodside (CA), a massive modern mansion in San Francisco, a vast spread in Rancho Mirage (CA) with a private 18-hole golf course and he's said to have spent well over $100 million piecing together and building a colossal compound on the glittering shore of Lake Tahoe. Hell bells, butter beans, the man bought almost the entire island of Lanai last year.
In addition to his collection of private residences Mister Ellison is well known as one of the largest owners of residential and commercial property in the low key but swanky seaside town Malibu (CA). He owns, according to property records and various reports, at least a dozen ocean front homes on Carbon Beach alone, including a small cottage rented by Jennifer Aniston in the immediate wake of her split with Brad Pitt all those years ago.
Of course, Mister Ellison needs another high maintenance ocean front home in Malibu like he needs a goddam peg leg. Howevuh, hunties, last September the jet-setting bajillionaire surprised even us jaded property gossips when he shelled out a very complicated $36,943,890 for former Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel's quintessentially late-80's early 90s post-modern minded Michael Graves-designed compound situated on 151 feet of prime Carbon Beach ocean frontage.
The three pavilion complex contains a total of 9 bedrooms and 13 bathrooms in 10,317 square feet of interior space that includes a soaring three-story rotunda entrance gallery and a barrel vaulted screening room.
We're not sure why Mister Ellison felt compelled to buy Mister Semel's old house but buy it he did. Anyone want to take bets Mister Ellison isn't done buying up houses in on Carbon Beach?
The 6.6 acre Malibu estate of architecture appreciating computer industry pioneer/philanthropist/patron of the arts and big time lefty liberal political donor Max Palevsky first hit the open market in July 2010 with an in hindsight quite high $55,000,000 asking price. By the end of the year the price had plummeted to $45,000,000 and two long years after that, in December 2012, the Palevsky family finally settled for what property records reveal to be $36,500,000.
The buyer is listed in property records by an unimaginatively named corporation but—lean in close, now—Cinnamon Stick snitched to Your Mama that the buyers are "very rich Russians." She did not give us their names but clearly Cinnamon Stick has some sort of preternatural-like bead on all the filthy rich Russians (allegedly) snapping up top end real estate in Malibu.
Anyhoo, the 7 bedroom and 8.5 bathroom main house—an 11,313 square foot Mediterranean villa originally built in 1975—sits well off Pacific Coast Highway and privately behind a 12-foot wall. The estate claims almost 340 feet of ocean frontage, according to listing information from the time of the sale, and, as best as Your Mama can tell, the beach is only accessible by way of a fantastically long, zig-zagging staircase. Any lazy person or glutially weak individual who aches in their very core to stroll the sand or bob in the ocean would most certainly think thrice before they made the trip down to the beach knowing full well they'd have the make the much more physically harrowing trip back up.
On the ocean side of the main house there are numerous and varied covered porches, balconies and terraces that all possess panoramic vistas up and down the—let's be honest, chickens—drop dead dee-VINE California coastline.
One the other side of the house there's a courtyard planted with a painstakingly maintained spoke-pattern formal garden with a star shaped fountain at its hub. Through the courtyard and across the driveway there's a large heated swimming pool with plenty of sunbathing space. Tucked back into some trees beyond the swimming pool, there's a fenced and lighted tennis court with viewing pavilion and convenient half bathroom. Somewhere there's a one bedroom and one bathroom guest house/staff quarters with kitchen, living room and separate study.
Malibu may not be every one's cup of often traffic-snarled seaside tea and none of these houses may be architecturally acceptable at any price to some of the children but each of these ocean front estates is most definitely extraordinary in its own way. Maybe it's got some architectural zhuszh to it. Maybe the amount of land in that location is particularly rare. Whatever but something, you know? Your Mama's own real estate requirements are much more humble and we think a person has to be a little cray-cray to spend more than $30 million for any house. None the less, not to recognize where there is real value in these unusually expensive properties is just to be silly, snooty and/or small minded.
Discuss...
listing photos (Palevsky): Pritchett-Rapf & Associates
Of course, thirty million clams for a single private residence is multi-millionaire real estate child's play in place like London and the craggy coastline of the South of France but, hunties—spectacularly pricey as it is by comparison to places like Columbus and Kalamazoo—in Malibu 30 million bucks is still a helleva lotta damn money.
Not being a scientist, an economist or a real estate professional we really can't say if these sky-high prices in Malibu are the new normal in a world people by unfathomably rich jet setters or if they represent an anomalistic blip in the upper end property marketplace.
Your Mama don't know a thing from a thang but several weeks ago, when this titanic transaction was making headlines in property gossip columns around the globe, it was tattled to Your Mama by a well-placed canary that the deal included just about every stick of the very posh and very expensive furnishings selected by frequently lauded and applauded nice-gay decorator Michael Smith.
Despite much speculation by real estate watchers, Your Mama included the identity of the buyer has yet to be confirmed. We first heard from a lady we know that it might be billionaire junk bond bigwig Michael Milkin. It was not. Then we heard from a source we call Cinnamon Stick who told us that word on the Malibu real estate gossip highway was that the buyer was a young Russian couple with "suitcases full of cash." We queried a few of our better informed confreres and, after some initial trepidation, one of them fingered billionaire Oakley sunglasses founder James "Jim" Jannard as the new owner. Since then one of the property gossip gals at the Wall Street Journal described the buyers as, "a Russian billionaire couple" and Your Mama heard back from Cinnamon Stick who was emphatic the buyer is not Mister Jannard. So, we don't really know at this point who coughed up the record breaking wad but we shall see, butter beans, we shall see.
And here Your Mama used to think our family was a clusterfucky freak show because Big Daddy's third wife's children from a previous marriage used to spend a week or two every summer at the beach with Your Mama's momma, who was Big Daddy's first wife.
Anyhoo, once again we can't verify it but Your Mama's been told by multiple sources that Mister Weintraub and Miz Ekins occupy his Beverly Hills estate as well as his 10,000 square foot contemporary desert digs in Rancho Mirage while Missus Weintraub has long commandeered their nearly seven acre estate perched on a bluff above Malibu's Paradise Cove.
Mister (and Missus) Weintraub have had the nearly seven acre spread on and off the (open) market since way back in 2007 and, finally, nearly a half dozen years later, Your Mama hears from someone who knows these things that they have finally sold their real estate white albatross for $41,000,000.* The buyer, our tattletale told us, is apparel mogul Serge Azria.**
The (alleged) purchase price is a big number, certainly by Malibu standards, but it is far less than the daringly optimistic $75,000,000 Mister Weintraub originally wanted for the ocean side compound that, in addition to substantial if architecturally very ordinary main house, encompasses three guest houses, a swimming pool complex, a lighted tennis court and extensive equestrian facilities including a two barns, stables and a riding ring.
Platinum Triangle property watchers may remember that is was Serge Azria and his missus who, in February 2010, paid $21,000,000 to buy the former Jane Wyatt estate in Bel Air, a 1930s Paul Williams-designed Colonial in Bel Air that had been fully reconstructed and greatly expanded by Showbiz tycoon turned high end house flipper Sandy Gallin.
*Property records do not yet reflect a sale, making this transaction and the details discussed here little more than rumor and gossip.**Serge Azria is not to be confused with his fashion designer brother Max Azria who owns some of his own pretty impressive real estate in Los Angeles.***We're not sure if Miz Wyatt's house was actually designed by the legendary architect Paul Williams but it does bear some of his iconic flourishes such as the sweeping circular staircase in the entrance hall and listing details from the time it was sold to Mister Gallin called it an "elegant PAUL WILLIAMS trad."
In addition to his collection of private residences Mister Ellison is well known as one of the largest owners of residential and commercial property in the low key but swanky seaside town Malibu (CA). He owns, according to property records and various reports, at least a dozen ocean front homes on Carbon Beach alone, including a small cottage rented by Jennifer Aniston in the immediate wake of her split with Brad Pitt all those years ago.
Of course, Mister Ellison needs another high maintenance ocean front home in Malibu like he needs a goddam peg leg. Howevuh, hunties, last September the jet-setting bajillionaire surprised even us jaded property gossips when he shelled out a very complicated $36,943,890 for former Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel's quintessentially late-80's early 90s post-modern minded Michael Graves-designed compound situated on 151 feet of prime Carbon Beach ocean frontage.
The three pavilion complex contains a total of 9 bedrooms and 13 bathrooms in 10,317 square feet of interior space that includes a soaring three-story rotunda entrance gallery and a barrel vaulted screening room.
We're not sure why Mister Ellison felt compelled to buy Mister Semel's old house but buy it he did. Anyone want to take bets Mister Ellison isn't done buying up houses in on Carbon Beach?
The buyer is listed in property records by an unimaginatively named corporation but—lean in close, now—Cinnamon Stick snitched to Your Mama that the buyers are "very rich Russians." She did not give us their names but clearly Cinnamon Stick has some sort of preternatural-like bead on all the filthy rich Russians (allegedly) snapping up top end real estate in Malibu.
Anyhoo, the 7 bedroom and 8.5 bathroom main house—an 11,313 square foot Mediterranean villa originally built in 1975—sits well off Pacific Coast Highway and privately behind a 12-foot wall. The estate claims almost 340 feet of ocean frontage, according to listing information from the time of the sale, and, as best as Your Mama can tell, the beach is only accessible by way of a fantastically long, zig-zagging staircase. Any lazy person or glutially weak individual who aches in their very core to stroll the sand or bob in the ocean would most certainly think thrice before they made the trip down to the beach knowing full well they'd have the make the much more physically harrowing trip back up.
On the ocean side of the main house there are numerous and varied covered porches, balconies and terraces that all possess panoramic vistas up and down the—let's be honest, chickens—drop dead dee-VINE California coastline.
One the other side of the house there's a courtyard planted with a painstakingly maintained spoke-pattern formal garden with a star shaped fountain at its hub. Through the courtyard and across the driveway there's a large heated swimming pool with plenty of sunbathing space. Tucked back into some trees beyond the swimming pool, there's a fenced and lighted tennis court with viewing pavilion and convenient half bathroom. Somewhere there's a one bedroom and one bathroom guest house/staff quarters with kitchen, living room and separate study.
Malibu may not be every one's cup of often traffic-snarled seaside tea and none of these houses may be architecturally acceptable at any price to some of the children but each of these ocean front estates is most definitely extraordinary in its own way. Maybe it's got some architectural zhuszh to it. Maybe the amount of land in that location is particularly rare. Whatever but something, you know? Your Mama's own real estate requirements are much more humble and we think a person has to be a little cray-cray to spend more than $30 million for any house. None the less, not to recognize where there is real value in these unusually expensive properties is just to be silly, snooty and/or small minded.
Discuss...
photos: Ferguson &; Shamamian via Homes of the Richlisting photos: (Weintraub/Azria): Westside Estate Agency
listing photos (Semel/Ellison): Hilton & Hylandlisting photos (Palevsky): Pritchett-Rapf & Associates
Week End Update: Kim, Jessica and Christina
So the celebrity real estate scuttlebutt goes, not-quite-divorced K.K. and her notoriously magniloquent baby daddy Kanye West are set to drop a wad on an even bigger, 9,000-ish square foot mock-Med macmansion with five bedrooms and seven bathrooms in the guard gated Beverly Crest 'hood. As of this morning the property in question is currently in escrow, according to online listings, and was last priced at $10,750,000.
In other real estate news about another unmarried and rapidly procreating famous lady...
Mister and Missus Osbourne paid $12,388,500 for the 2.25 acre estate and its 10,930 square foot contemporary farmhouse-style mansion that they subsequently hired hilariously affected Million Dollar Decorator Martyn Lawrence Bullard to work over in his signature high-glam style. The house was photographed for the June 2011 issue of Architectural Digest but the rock-n-roll royals soon caught a case The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle and flipped the estate back on the market in June 2011 with it's first and only asking price of $12,999,000.
Mister and Missus Osbourne long ago moved back over the hill, first to a leased pied-a-terre at Sierra Towers building in West Hollywood and then to a stunning Spanish style rental in the flats of Beverly Hills that's owned by one of the Platinum Triangle's most successful and well known real estate agents.
Miz Simpson has long owned a foliage enshrouded house in same secluded Beverly Hills (Post Office) where other homeowners and residents include (but are not limited to) Tinseltowners like Cameron Diaz—who bought her compound from Candice Bergen; Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem—who bought their modestly sized house from Sara Gilbert and her former lady mate and baby momma, writer/producer Allison Adler; And actress Nicole Kidman and her country crooner hubby Keith Urban—who bought their West Coast pied-a-terre back in 2008 from music executive Ron Fair.
In other real estate news sort of related to Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne....
X-tina doesn't appear to have changed much on the outside but the 10,000-plus square feet of interior space was transformed by the L.A.-based decorating duo (Ron) Woodson & (Jaime) Rummerfield into a kaleidoscopic cornucopia of rich and vibrant colors, mixy-matchy patterns, lush textures and madcap celebrity-style accoutrement that include a boutique-like dressing room with leopard print wall-to-wall carpeting and a private beauty salon.
In March 2011, a bit more than six months after X-Tina and Mister Bratman publicly called off their marriage, the property popped up on the open market with a $13,500,000 price tag. Well, don'tcha know, children, it's only taken two years—or just shy of two years, anyways—to unload her residential white elephant but yesterday the status changed from "active" to "pending" on all the online real estate listings. As the inestimable Shangela Laquifa Wadley of the Houston Wadleys from RuPaul's Drag Race might say, "Halleloo!"
Although we've been told she's beefed up her house hunt in the last few weeks and would be willing to spend in the low eight figures on her new digs, as far as Your Mama knows X-Tina has yet to select her next residence.
all aerial images: Pacific Coast News
Your Mama Hears...
The other day Your Mama had a covert confab with one of our better connected Beverly Hills-based informants. Some of y'all may remember this particular canary from previous discussions as the inestimably well connected and charmingly jaded Shanahnduh Rotahnda, a very busy, plugged in lady whose ear is always pressed tight to the ground when it comes to high end Platinum Triangle property gossip. Along with some other tasty real estate related nuggets that popped our eyes wide, Shanahnduh ever so nonchalantly dropped a 225-pound pocket listing bomb that blew Your Mama's gin-soaked eyes right out of their boozy sockets.
One thing the super rich know well is that everything is for sale if the price is right and, hunties, we mean every-damn-thing. Apparently the seemingly rapid pace of ultra-high end trophy property acquisitions across the country over the last year or so—think the (still alleged) $75 million sale of Howard Marks' 10-acre bluff top estate in Malibu, the $88 million purchase of a New York City penthouse and the $49 million sale of Hala Ranch in Aspen—has more than a few trophy property owners thinking they might like to cash in if—that's right, darlin'—the price is right.
Anyhoo, Shanahnduh snitched to Your Mama that she's heard word come down the upper-est of the upper end real estate gossip grapevine that telecom tycoon turned diversified private investor and budding green tech mogul Gary Winnick has, on the down low, let it slip to one or more of the more successful real estate people in the Platinum Triangle that he might be willing to sell up Casa Encantada, his lavish 7.5-acre Bel Air estate that's long been and is sometimes still referred to in Old School upper end real estate circles as the "Weber Mansion." And how much might be the right price for Mister Winnick to sell his enchanted house? Shanahnduh says the number floating around in her fancy-pants real estate clique is—brace yerselves, buttercups—$225,000,000.
Did that gargantuan figure reduce anyone else to a dry-mouthed puddle of real estate flabbergast the first time you saw that like it did Your Mama? Have mercy. We don't know if that man is crazy or if he's sly like a financial fox. Hells bells, butter beans, we don't even know if this is true. But iffin it is...holy mackerel!
Your Mama is just gonna do an abbreviated version of the palatial property's illustrious and fascinating history but iffin any of the children want to know the what's-what and nitty-gritty about Mister Winnick's house you should pick up Unreal Estate, Michael Gross's exhaustively researched, most recently published and deliciously dishy real estate-related page turner about some of L.A. most famous estates, a short list that includes Mister Winnick's Casa Encantada.
The original and essentially Georgian style pile was built in the mid- to late-1930s by Hilda Boldt, a lady who married her chauffeur very soon after her very rich husband died. The Widda Boldt and her chauffeur cum husband are said to have paid a hundred grand for the property in 1936 and spent a staggering two million more having their dream mansion built. They hired dernier cri designer T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings to do up the day-core in an au courant style that would help them gain entry into the high-glam Hollywood society set.
Alas, The Widda Boldt and her former driver never quite made it in Tinseltown's closed and snooty society scene and in 1950 the property passed into the hands of hotelier Conrad Hilton, the paternal great-grandfather of sometimes tawdry tabloid denizen Paris Hilton who paid just $225,000 for the epic property. Mister Hilton is said to have retained much if not off of the work of Mister Robsjohn-Gibbings. The house was transferred in 1963 over to some sort of corporate entity tied to the Hilton family with a lifetime tenancy agreement for Mister Hilton who died in 1979.
In 1980 Casa Encantada was sold for $12,400,000 to David Murdock, the wildly wealthy real estate developer and investor who—surely y'all recall—recently sold his 98%-plus controlling interest in the Hawaiian island of Lanai to bazillionaire software fat cat Larry Ellison for an undisclosed amount often reported to be somewhere between $5-600 million.
It was Mister Murdock who, in the fall of 2000, sold the the house to Mister Winnick and his wife, Karen, for—so the story goes in Mister Gross' book—two parcels of land valued at about $26 million plus an additional cash payment that pushed the final purchase price to about $94,000,000.
Mister Winnick and his missus quickly engaged the expensive services of lionized architect—and hardcore leather fetish gear fan—Peter Marino to give the profoundly proportioned 1930s mega-mansion a multi-million dollar make-over. We don't know exactly what alterations, additions, restorations, replacements or etc. that Mister and Missus Winnick made to Casa Encantada but we've heard and read here and there the extensive renovations involved structural upgrades, all new mechanical and electrical systems and the conversion of a staff wing into studio space for Mister Winnick's wife, Karen, an author and illustrator of children's books.
We do know from aerial images and various property record data bases—including the L.A. County Tax Man—the 23-room main residence sits prominently on 7.47 fully landscaped acres, measures 28,725 square feet and includes seven bedrooms and 20 full bathrooms* plus garage space for 15 cars.
The estate—no doubt as tightly secured as the queen's jewels—occupies a private, elevated peninsula that's wrapped on three sides by the well-manicured golf course of the very hoity-toity Bel-Air Country Club. Set well and privately behind a short stone wall and towering hedge, the house stands at the tail end of an impressively gated driveway that snakes up to a parking lot sized motor court at the front of the house. A second, less impressive but still imposing gate opens to a driveway and second motor court for staff service and vehicles.
Residents and their privileged guests have access to a slew of resort-like luxuries and recreational amenities that include—but are certainly not limited to—a swimming pool complex with two cabanas and a pool house that Your Mama would bet both our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, is bigger than our entire house; a lighted tennis court hidden behind towering hedges; a lighted full-sized basketball court; a putting green complete with sand trap; a lighted boccie ball court—or maybe it's a lighted horseshoe throwing arena; and a concrete jogging circuit around the perimeter of the property that's also used to efficiently get around the estate via golf cart.
The completely landscaped, high-maintenance estate also offers numerous shaded and unshaded terraces that over look the grounds and golf course, vast lawns and both formal and kitchen type gardens. Several detached structure are hidden behind the tennis court that may or may not be used for guests, office space and/or housing live-in domestics.
There are those who will say the property is so one-of-a-kind in the heart of the Platinum Triangle that the alleged $225 million number is justified and doable. There are others who will think it's utterly ludicrous since no single, private residence in the history of Los Angeles has ever sold for more than $100 million, let alone two hundren million clams. We'll let the children duke this one out in the comments. One, two, three...Go!
But, before we trundle off to make some Chinese food for The Doctor Cooter's Valentine's Day dinner, and just in case we need to remind any of the children: This is all just some high end real estate rumor and gossip and you did not hear it as fact from Your Mama. You'll have to wait until one of the property gossips in one of the more respectable publications latches on to the story for that...
*Have mercy. If there really are 20 full bathrooms—a count that may or may not include the numerous other bathrooms in the various outbuildings sprinkled around the estate—Mister and Missus Winnick surely must be required to retain at least one full-time minimum wage girl whose sole responsibility is to keep all 20 of them terlits sparkling like the Hope Diamond."
aerial image: Google
U2 Bassist Sells Big Apple Spread to Bruce Willis
SELLER: Adam Clayton
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $8,695,000
SIZE: 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama must be feeling in a New York state of mind because lately we've been drawn to any sort of Big Apple celebrity real estate news like a duck to water so when we read this morning in the New York Post's always fun and informative Gimme Shelter column that middle aged action flick actor Bruce Willis and his second and—natch—much younger wife, model Emma Heming, were in contract to buy a swank spread listed at $8,695,000 at the storied and gloried Eldorado building on Central Park West in New York City we just couldn't resist.
What the well informed lady property gossip at the New York Post surely knew but didn't reveal—but the kids at Curbed did last fall—is that the seller of the completely renovated, art-filled and decoratively serene and sophisticated fourth floor apartment is none other than U2 bassist Adam Clayton who quietly pushed the apartment on the market last October with an $8,695,000 price tag.
Listing details don't reveal the actual square footage of the nine into 7.5 room residence but a few quick tabulations on Your Mama's hard-working abacus puts it at around 3,000 square feet, give or take. In its current configuration there are 19 windows—seven with direct Central Park views, four exposures, nine or ten closets depending on how one counts, four full bathrooms and three proper bedrooms and a shy handful of elegantly proportioned living and entertaining spaces.
Although Mister Willis is a well-preserved 57 years old and has three grown daughters he made with hardly working anymore actress Demi Moore, he and new Missus Willis also have a toddler age daughter who will no doubt have a damn ball riding an expensive tricycle up and down the highly polished and deliciously over-scaled herringbone pattern wood floors in the 38-plus foot long entrance gallery.
Wood, steel and glass doors slide back into the walls and connect the gallery to both the formal living and dining rooms. With more of the soon-worthy herringbone patterned wood floors under foot, the 500-plus square foot living room has a decorative fireplace, custom-designed open shelving for media equipment and three nearly floor-to-ceiling multi-paned casement windows filled with the leafy tree tops that line the perimeter of Central Park. At almost 28 feet long and with two multi-paned park-facing casement windows of its own, the adjacent formal dining room—accessible from the living room through another wood, glass and steel door that disappears into the wall when slid open—can easily and comfortably accommodate twelve or more for a sit down dinner.
What was originally a narrow, galley style kitchen, two prison cell sized staff rooms and a compact bathroom was opened up into a spacious eat-in kitchen with north and west exposures, terrazzo flooring and a semi-separate butler's pantry/laundry room with service entrance. While we're not so into the stainless steel inset into the cabinet doors, it is otherwise beautifully done with custom terrazzo flooring, subway tiled walls, slate counter tops and top-grade commercial-style stainless steel appliances. The once puny staff bathroom was reconfigured and slightly expanded and now serves as a convenient powder room/guest bath.
Two roomy guest/family bedrooms—one is a generous 23 feet long—occupy the south facing west wing of the U-shaped apartment. Each has two over-sized windows, a walk-in closet and a restored vintage bathroom.
The corner master bedroom—which Mister Clayton appears to have used as some sort of sitting room—connected to the living room through another of those sliding steel, glass and wood doors—has a decent sized but hardly huge private bathroom slathered in marble and outfitted with with a soaking tub and separate stall shower. Beyond the bathroom, in the space that was once a fourth bedroom, there's a sizable windowed dressing room finished with custom shelving and closets.
With monthly maintenance charges that tally up to $6,426, according to listing details, residents can and should expect white glove services and amenities such as 24-7 hour doormen, concierge services, a state-of-the-art fitness room, a play room for the kiddies, a mini-basketball court and a bike storage room.
The Eldorado has long attracted (and allowed) Showbiz types including U2's front man Bono, Faye Dunaway and Alec Baldwin who listed his pair of apartments in late 2011 and quickly sold the larger one for its $9.5 million asking price. Diminutive, meat-free musician Moby—now based in L.A. in the wacky and storied ridge top compound known as Wolf's Lair and the writer of one of L.A. more quirky and charming blogs about architecture—briefly owned one of the four-floor tower penthouses that he bought in 2005 for $4.5 million, renovated, flipped back on the market in the summer of 2007 for $7,500,000 and finally sold in August 2008 for $6,700,000 to financier TM Dempsey.
Mister Willis has a fairly substantial property portfolio that includes a handful of residential and commercial properties in Hailey, ID; a Beverly Hills mansion bought in June 2004 for $9,000,000 and just a hop, skip and a jump from the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel; and a 2,900 square foot ranch-style residence on L.A.'s famed Mulholland Drive that's all but next door to the mansion Annette Bening and Warren Beatty recently completed re-building after it was destroyed in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
*Mister Roth designed a long list of definitive New York City buildings, many of them with his signature twin-towers. Roth's often Art Deco or Beaux Arts style confections include 930 Fifth Avenue, the venerable Beresford at 211 Central Park West, the celeb-friendly San Remo at the corner of Central Park West and West 75th Street, the super-fab, Mayan temple like Ardsley; and The Normandy on Riverside Drive at West 86th Street where Mister Roth lived in his retirement.
exterior photo: Christopher Bride for Property Shark
listing photos and floor plan(s): Halstead Property
Musician Dave Matthews Buys in the Bu...Or Did He?
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $6,575,000
SIZE: 7,000 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms
UPDATE (02-15-13): Your Mama heard word from a representative of Dave Matthews who would kindly like to make it clear that Mister Matthews did not buy this house and does not currently own a home in California. There you go, children. Straight from the mouth of the horse's paid representative. Disregard all below that specifically relates to Mister Matthews buying the discussed property.
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Truth be told, Your Mama wouldn't know a Dave Matthews ditty if it walked up and whacked us across our damn kneecaps. We may be, however, in the minority in that regard. For the decade starting in 2000 Mister Matthews and his band—that would be the eponymous Dave Matthews Band—were the overall top grossing concert act in North American and raked in more than $529 million in gross receipts and ticket sales. That's right, butter beans, more than half a billion bucks spent buy music consumers and concert goers over ten years to watch and listen to this. And this.
Anyhoo, given the way Mister Matthews mints music industry money it should come as no surprise to the children that he maintains an impressive property portfolio that bulges with a modest bungalow in Seattle's Wallingford 'hood as well as extensive holdings in scenic Charlottesville, VA that include a winery (Blenheim Vineyards) and Haunted Hollow, a private state-of-the-art recording studio set on 140 remote acres.
Mister Matthews also owns more than 1,000 rural farmland acres near Scottsville, VA and, according to our ever-knowledgeable informant Yolanda Yakketyak, in late December (2012) the South African-born acoustic guitar playing tycoon shelled out $6,575,000 for a low key but luxurious gated estate on Malibu's celeb-studded Point Dume.
Mister Matthews purchased the property, according to records we peeped, from Maura Kaplan—a real estate investor and the daughter of two time Emmy nominated comedic actor Leslie Nielsen—who picked up the property in April 2007 for $4,125,000.
Listing details originally provided to Your Mama by Miss Yakketyak shows the gated estate spans 1.78 mostly flat and usable acres with a recently renovated six bedroom and 5.5 bathroom "European Country" style residence that frames two sides of a massive crushed granite (or maybe gravel) motor court and measures in at about 7,000 square feet.
The interior spaces include a center entry hall, a large step-down formal living room with fireplace and a bank of French doors with direct backyard access, a sun-flooded adjoining den with polished concrete floors and a formal dining room that comfortably seats eight or more. Pale wood floors—we think they could be white oak—and Rustic wood beams criss-cross the ceiling in the spacious and expensively equipped kitchen that's spill out to a breakfast area and family room.
The ceilings pitch and slant in many of the upstairs bedrooms including the master suite that includes a country-chic attached bathroom with wide plank wood floors, a soaking tub for two and a room subway tile lined shower enclosure.
The back of the house opens up through numerous French doors to a multi-level terrace that's partially shaded by a pergola and overlooks an expanse of lawn. Beyond the grass patch there's a nascent apple orchard and, set at a slight angle to the house, an exceptionally long rectangular swimming pool and spa with contemporary concrete coping and sunbathing patio.
Listing information indicates there's a two car attached garage and that the property is large enough to accommodate a tennis court and/or a couple of horses. Marketing materials from the time of the sale also stated that permits were already in place to add a separate (approx.) 900 square foot guest house.
Although not situated on the beach, listing information does show that the property includes deeded Riviera III beach rights to access Little Dume Beach, an essentially private sliver of sand over looked by swank estates owned by saxophonist Kenny G and movie star Julia Roberts and where late last year a dead and decomposing 40,000 pound whale washed ashore.
listing photos: Prudential Malibu Realty
Senator Marco Rubio Sells Middle Class Miami Residence
LOCATION: West Miami, FL
PRICE: $675,000
SIZE: 2,699 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We don't know if any of the more tabloid oriented and/or reality t.v. watching children caught it but last night in the Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address, Senator Marco Rubio of Miami, FL—the Republican Party's great Latino hope for a presidential future—made a big stink about how, even though he's Senator with a $174,000 per year salary and future money making opportunities up the wazoo, he still lives with his family in their middle-class house in Miami.*
Well, at least for now. Thanks to the kind folks over at Estately, Your Mama has come to learn that Senator Rubio and his wife Jeanette Dousdebes have had their self-described middle class house in West Miami on the market since last November. It currently has a $675,000 price tag.
For the record, according to a recent report by the Bloomberg people, the median price of an existing home in America is—or was in December 2012—$183,900, more than 3.5 times less than the current price tag hanging on Senator and Missus Rubio's West Miami residence.
Property records reveal the hip-hop loving Senator and his former Miami Dolphins cheerleader missus paid $550,000 for their two-story house at the tail end of a quiet cul-de-sac that they scooped up in December 2005. Current listing information shows the red-tile roofed and faux-quoined mock-Med mash up was built in 2005—indicating it was brand spanking new when the Rubios bought it—spans 2,699 square feet of marble and carpeted interior space and includes four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.
Listing photos show the Senator's house has a formal living room with a decadent double-height ceiling and an adjoining formal dining area. The less formal family quarters include an open concept kitchen area with built-in breakfast banquette and a compact family room/den with built-in entertainment unit and direct access to the outdoor living areas. There also appears to be a separate family room area, also with built-in entertainment cabinet, beyond the kitchen. The kitchen itself—a more modern take on quintessentially uninspired traditional haute-suburban style—has walnut-colored cabinetry with streamlined hardware, speckled beige and black granite counter tops, tumbled stone back splashes and mid-grade (mostly) stainless steel appliances.
The backyard isn't very big—the lot is a quite tiny .17 of an acre—but it's jam packed with adult-and child-friendly outdoor living amenities like a shaded outdoor lounge area with a wall-mounted flat screen t.v., more uncovered patio space with a basketball hoop, a tiny lawn uncomfortably crowded with a jungle gym and a trampoline. There's also a somewhat petite swimming pool that, unfortunately, appears in listing photos to be overlooked by the upper floor of the next door neighbor's house.
Your Mama isn't sure if Senator and Missus Rubio are moving their children to another middle class home in Miami, if they plan to upgrade their residential circumstances or if—as some press reports suggest—they're packing up and moving to Washington. Whatever the case they won't be living in the middle class house that played such a role in proving his middle class bona fides in Senator Rubio's response to the State of the Union.
*Technically Senator and Missus Rubio's residence is located in West Miami, directly west of downtown Miami and not quite six miles due south of the airport.
listing photos: Centrust Realty via Estately
Cher Wants to Unload in West Hollywood
LOCATION: West Hollywood, CA
PRICE: $5,500,000
SIZE: 4,000 (or so) square feet,
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama heard it the other day from two separate but impeccable sources but the ever-intrepid celebrity gossips at TMZ got to it before we did and revealed today that Showbiz über-icon Cher has quietly floated her duplex pied-a-terre at the star sprinkled Sierra Towers building in West Hollywood, CA as an off-market listing with an asking price somewhere around $5,500,000.
Your Mama actually heard from both our tattletales that Cher has allowed the duplex to be shown for some time now with an asking price closer to six million bucks and a third, also impeccable informant, told us not to be surprised if the duplex—located on the 26th and 27th floors and joined by a tight, corkscrew spiral staircase—soon pops up on the open market.
Most reports say Cher paid $4.5 million for the two floor condo-crib but the property records we peeped clearly show she actually purchased the pied-a-terre in January 2006 for $3,000,000 from eccentric actor/producer and part-time high end house flipper Vincent Gallo.
Most reports also say the two-floor apartment measures somewhere around 4,000 square feet and maybe it does. However, according to the L.A. County Tax Man, the combo condo contains just 2,302 square feet. Make of those discrepancies what y'all will.
Anyhoo, like her former Sierra Towers neighbor Sir Elton John, soon after Cher acquired her in-town hideaway, the Malibu resident engaged the flamboyant services of wildly pretentious Million Dollar Decorator Martyn Lawrence-Bullard who worked the duplex over as an "ethnic, spicy and romantic" faux-Buddhist fantasia that she had photographed for the high-gloss pages of Architectural Digest's July 2010 issue by superstar photographer Tim Street-Porter.
Some of the other current high-profile residents/owners at Sierra Towers include Courtney Cox, Joan Collins, PJ Harvey, Diahann Carroll and Tawny Kitaen. Previous owners include Matthew Perry, Harry Morton, David Geffen, Sidney Poiter and, as mentioned above, Sir Elton John and his hubby David Furnish who recently sold their pair of adjacent but un-combined Martyn Lawrence-Bullard decorated apartments for a combined $4,634,000.
For what it's worth, we also heard through the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that, even though she previously turned down two full price offers for her massive, Italian Renaissance-style Malibu mansion, if you know who to call it can still be shown with its same ol' $45,000,000 price tag.
photos: Tim Street-Porter for Architectural Digest (via Curbed)
Floor Plan Porn: River House Duplex
LOCATION: NewYork City, NY
PRICE: $25,500,000
SIZE: 7,000 (or so) square feet, 3-5 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms (plus a three bedroom and two-ish bathroom staff wing)
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama has loads of celebrity real estate dish waiting in the wings but we thought it might be fun to switch gears this morning and dive into some good ol' fashioned floor plan porn in the form of a heavy duty high floor duplex at the once high and mighty but currently less coveted River House building in New York City that—we learned via our unofficial aide de camp Hot Chocolate—unexpectedly popped up on the open market yesterday with an asking price of $25,500,000.
The hulky and bulky building—a dignified if dour Art Deco pile built in the early 1930s and once the very quintessence of real estate snootiness in Manhattan—has fallen on less glorious times and lower sale prices over the last few decades. According to New York City-based real estate writer Michael Gross in a recent column for Avenue magazine, that's partly due to its often difficult and somewhat isolated location. Although it's hardly Timbuktu, River House stands several long blocks too far east of Midtown to be considered convenient by many of today's more high-nosed types and the building backs up to the murky East River, directly on top of the loud and filthy six-land F.D.R. Drive. The nearest shopping and dining drag is a rather lackluster stretch of First Avenue, hardly a big draw for folks who can afford to drop $400 on a plain white t-shirt at Bergdorfs and eat at Per Se every night of the week.
Another reason the otherwise baronial building has fallen out of favor with the Manhattan's newer moneyed elite, according to Mister Gross, is the negative perception many have of the (in)famously persnickety board that can capriciously determine who passes muster as a potential resident and who does not. Over the years the powerful board is rumored to poo-poo just about anybody showy or Showbizzy including Diane Keaton and Gloria Vanderbilt who sued over her River House rejection alleging it was because she dated black men. She eventually backed down from the legal imbroglio after the board let it slip it was her shaky balance sheet and not her—ahem—jungle fever that barred entré into what was then one of the most aristocratic, expensive and prestigious apartment houses in the world.
So the possibly untrue rumors go, after notoriously tightly wound Tinseltowner Joan Crawford was rejected by the River House board she engineered the installation of the gigantic, glaring and scenery chewing Pepsi-Cola sign located directly across the river from River House. At the time, Miz Crawford was married to Pepsi-Cola CEO Alfred Nu Steele and the River House board president was (former) Coca-Cola CEO Robert Woodruff. We don't know if the story is true—we can only hope it is because it's such a delicious tale—but y'all can see how it took root and blossomed in the fascinating lexicon of New York's high-brow real estate rumor mill.
The board famously nixed the application of disgraced president Richard Nixon in the dark days following his landmark resignation but did, however, give a pass to highly controversial statesman Henry Kissinger who has shacked up in River House for-evuh.
In addition to Mister Kissinger and a slew of well-to-do attorneys and financial industry fat cats, our entirely unscientific research shows that some of the other plutocratic residents of River House include Dutch West India Company scion Kiliaen Van Rensselaer; Georgia-Pacific paper heiress Celeste Cheatham O'Neil; Ellen Meckler, the wealthy widow of beauty salon tycoon Nathan Finkelstein; and financier Sir Evelyn Robert de Rothschild of the extremely influential and powerful Rothschild banking dynasty.
Also living up at River House are Rosalind P. Walter, the well-born gal who inspired the term "Rosie the Riveter" during World War II; William McCormick Blair, Jr.—the former abassador to both Denmark and the Philippines—and his stylish, helmet haired socialite/philanthropist wife Catherine "Deeda" Blair; and, finally, Arlene Farkas, the ex-wife of bigamist real estate heir Bruce Farkas whose double-life was exposed after he stupidly sent children from both his concurrent marriages to the same swank private school.
Anyhoodles poodles, according to Michael Gross, the seller of the apartment are the executors of the estate of the very recently deceased Betty Evans, the educated, cultured and socially registered ex-wife of Dr. William "Farny" Farnswoth Loomis and the third wife and widow of the hard charging corporate raider Thomas Mellon Evans.
With its $25,500,000 price tag, Miz Evans' posh pied-a-terre duplex is by far the priciest apartment currently on the open market at River House* and, according to listing details, the monthly maintenance comes in at $16,473, a figure that adds up to a $197,676 per year.
A careful perusal of the floor plan and Your Mama counted 16 (or so) rooms, five fireplaces (one decorative), 20 closets (half of them walk-ins) and 53 windows with a very rare quadruple exposure. Listing details show the decidedly patrician spread has five bedrooms and six full and five half bathrooms. However, a careful perusal of the floor plan included with online marketing materials (above) and Your Mama came up with slightly more nuanced figures. More on that in a minute.
The public spaces are sumptuously scaled and include an ample and impressive entrance gallery with a wacky, faux-stone wall treatment and inset black and beige marble floors, a baronial formal living room that stretches nearly 30 feet long with direct river views and a 27+ foot long formal dining room furnished with a high-gloss Chippendale table as long as a damn runway at Lincoln Center Fashion Week. This sort of prim and traditional day-core where the shimmering taffeta drapery is laden with all manner of fringe and pasamenterie is hardly Your Mama's cup of decorative tea but we'll take that super-fab, egg-shaped chandelier in the dining room, thank you very much.
Double doors in the formal living room open to a more contemporary and casual—but still quite staid—corner library/den all done up and did over, according to listing details, by famed decorator Billy Baldwin. There's also, Your Mama noted with envy, a wet bar tucked up behind the library. We are not talking, children, about a wet bar hidden behind a cabinet faced with vintage verre églomisé, we're talking about an entire room with a southern city view window that's solely devoted to the storage, mixing and imbibing of booze. Heaven.
A big butler's pantry joins the dining room to the only slightly larger main kitchen as well as the breakfast room, service area(s) and staff wing. Just off the breakfast room there's a walk-in safe for silver storage and a temperature controlled wine room with extra space for—you got it—storing fur coats. Beyond the wine room there's an extensive staff wing with laundry room, three punishingly small bedrooms. Each of the staff bedrooms appears to have a sink and share two separate cubicles with toilets and tub/showers.
Up the curving, Scarlet O'Hara worthy staircase there are two corner guest/family bedroom suites, each with windowed bathroom and a walk-in closet. There's also a multi-room exercise suite equipped with a sauna almost as large as the three cell-sized staff bedrooms downstairs and could easily be converted to a third guest/family bedroom as is has with walk-in closet and attached private bathroom.
The master suite occupies the northeast and northwest corners of the upper floor and is probably bigger than Your Mama and The Doctor Cooter's entire house. The suite encompasses a private sitting room with fireplace, a corner bedroom, two large and windowed bathrooms and at least four walk-in closets. A large room in the northwest corner could be converted to a fourth guest/family bedroom with private bathroom but in its current configuration, according to the floor plan, it's only accessible through either one of the master bathrooms or through a bathroom that opens off the exercise room.
In addition to her vast duplex in Manhattan Miz Evans maintained substantial homes in the hoity-toity enclaves of Greenwich (CT) and East Hampton (NY). We're not sure if she retained any ownership but once upon a time Mister and Missus Evans owned Buckland Farms, a notable thoroughbred breeding and training facility in Northern Virginia.
*The children will note that the fine folks at StreetEasy show there are nine other apartments currently on the open market at River House that range in price from $3.5 million for a six room two bedroom spread to $12.2 million for a 2 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom triplex penthouse with two roomy roof terraces. Also of note, as far as Your Mama knows, the most paid for an apartment at River House since mid-2004 was the $11,650,000 that Chilean-born investment manager Manual Balbontin paid in February 2011 for the sprawling, 14-room ground floor duplex of (now deceased) Broadway producer Marty Richards.
listing photos and floor plan: Brown Harris Stevens
Rumor Has It...
According the well-connected folks at The Real Deal, Mister Cruise's Big Apple crib spans 2,200 square feet on the 10th floor spread of the American Felt Building in the East Village and features two bedrooms plus a state-of-the-art fitness room that's convertible to a third bedroom. The apartment was not on the open market so no listing photos or details exist online.
Property records indicate the L.A.-based Mister Cruise purchased the two-unit combo condo apartment in 1985, after his star-making role in Risky Business, and he reportedly shared the apartment over the years with a slew of wives (Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman, Katie Holmes) and gal pals (Rebecca de Mornay and Cher). Property records also reveal Other notable residents of the American Felt Building include writer/Twitter fiend Brett Easton Ellis and Fabrizio Moretti, the Brazilian-born drummer for the Strokes and the current man-friend former Saturday Night Live cast member and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Kristen Wiig (Bridesmaids).
The Real Deal went on to report that Mister Cruise also owns a substantial estate in Beverly Hills, CA, plus an "8,100-square-foot brownstone at 42 West 12th Street in Manhattan." We can confirm that Mister Cruise owns a Beverly Hills estate that he bought in April 2007 for $30,500,000 as well as a 200-plus acre ranch in Telluride (CO) but we've never been able to directly connect Mister Cruise to the above addressed townhouse that property records show was last purchased in April 2009 for $15,075,000. Indeed, a deep dive down into and a good long roll around various property record data bases and building permits accessible on the internets suggest to Your Mama that the Greenwich Village townhouse in question may not be owned by Mister Cruise but rather by a prominent and very rich real estate financier and developer. Whomever the owner may be secured permits to put a hot tub on the roof in 2011.
Ever since Katie Holmes unceremoniously dumped Mister Cruise last year there have been all manner of reports by real estate gossips around the globe that he's looking to buy an East Coast estate in order to have a home base near his youngest off-spring, Suri. In all honestly, Your Mama does not have any specific intel on any property he may have toured but—so the stories go—Mister Cruise has peeped properties in some of the more expensive zip codes in some of the more upscale and uppity suburbs that surround New York City including Westchester County (NY), Sneden's Landing (NY) and—natch—Greenwich (CT).
Interestingly enough, this business about Mister Cruise selling off his long-time digs at the American Felt Building comes quick on the heels of some fascinating—but totally unconfirmed—real estate scuttlebutt Your Mama heard late last week from a previously reliable informant—let's call him Dennis Dishesrealestatedirt—who says he knows people who have whispered to him that it's Mister Cruise who is behind the "architecturally quiet," not quite complete and secrecy shrouded Annabelle Selldorf-designed project that's located a big farther west on West 12th Street than the brownstone townhouse often reported to belong to Mister Cruise. Rumor and gossip, children, just some good ol' fashioned celebrity real estate rumor and property gossip.
exterior photo: Nicholas Strini for Property Shark
Film Director Joe Wright Sells Up in Spitalfields
LOCATION: London (Spitalfields), U.K.
PRICE: £2,645,000
SIZE: 3,123 square feet, 2 bedrooms (plus two studio spaces), 2 full and 2 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to one of Your Mama's savvy property snitches on the ground in London—we call him Harry Hound—we've learned that English movie director Joe Wright has quietly sold his three centuries old red brick row house in East London's arty-farty Spitalfields area for $2,645,000 to another well-known star of stage and screen.
Mister Wright, the son of a couple of puppeteers, started up his ladder of Showbiz fame and fortune in the late '90s and early 2000s directing short films and mini-series for the boob toob (The Last King, Bob & Rose). In the mid-Aughts he made the shift to feature films and in the last six or seven years has directed a healthy handful of sometimes well-regarded and sometimes harshly criticized movies including The Soloist, Atonement and Pride & Prejudice, a period piece adaption of the venerable Jane Austen novel of the same name. Mister Wright's most recent cinematic endeavor is the ambitious and currently in theaters Anna Karenina, a fantastical reinterpretation of Leo Tolstoy's epic novel of the same name that's been nominated for four Academy Awards. Mister Wright clearly has a bit of a thing for photogenic English actress Keira Knightley who has starred in three of his last five films.
In the fall of 2010 Mister Wright married Grammy-nominated sitarist and composer Anoushka Shankar and together have one child. Miz Shankar is, of course, the daughter of legendary and very recently deceased composer and musician Ravi Shankar and the paternal half-sister of nine-time Grammy winning songstress Norah Jones who, as it turns out, accepted a much deserved Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of her father at last night's Grammys.
Anyhoo, information provided to Your Mama by Harry Hound shows Mister Wright picked up the Georgian-style digs in Spitalfields in March 2008 for £2,150,000. That's $3,395,770 at today's rates for all us Americans. Mister Wright and his musically accomplished missus sold the house in the latter days of 2012 for £2,645,000, an amount that converts to 4,177,590 U.S. dollars at today's rates.
While Your Mama can't prove, our man Harry Hound swears the boho crib was bought by award winning Welsh actor and singer Jonathan Pryce (the Pirates of the Carribbean franchise, Glengarry Glen Ross and—our personal favorite—Brazil). As lauded and applauded for his work on the stage as for his admiarable versatility on the silver screen, Mister Pryce has won two Tony Awards, first for Comedians (1977) and then for the long-running musical Miss Saigon (1991).
In February 2010 Mister Wright gave an interview in the London Evening Standard in which he revealed his house in the once gritty now gentrified—and increasingly pricey—Spitalfields area was originally built in 1726 by the French and the floor plan included with the links to digital materials forwarded by Harry Hound shows it measures in at around 3,126 square feet and, in its current configuration, has two proper bedrooms, two bathrooms and two large semi-detached studio spaces, each with a half bathroom.
The rustic but well equipped and clearly custom fitted galley style kitchen—Harry Hound says it may very well be a very top end Chalon designed situation—has gray Shaker-style cabinetry, gray subway tile back splash and butcher block counter tops. There seems to be plenty of under-counter storage space but besides the opens shelves fitted into what was once a fireplace there seems to be a dearth of shelves for storage for tableware, food stuffs and other necessary kitchen knick-knacks. We're also not quite sure where the fridge or freezer is located but we'll guess they're tucked under the counter in the extra-wide peninsula that separates the kitchen from the dining area.
Besides the Wright/Shankar clan and now Mister Pryce, Spitalfields has long attracted artists types who include novelist and deli-owner Jeanette Winterson, entrepreneurial YBA artist Tracey Emin and art world grand poobahs Gilbert & George.
listing photos and floor plan: Rightmove
UPDATE: Tamara Ecclestone et al.
Your Mama had a catch-up chit-chat with one of our better informed sources the other day—let's call her Shanahnduh Rotahnda this time—and she casually asked if we knew how much Tamara Ecclestone paid to lease her temporary digs in L.A.'s ritzy Bel Air area.
We told Shanahnduh that we know what everyone knows, which is that the elder Ecclestone sister did not buy or lease Suzanne Saperstein's faux-Chateau, Fleur de Lys, as was widely reported by property gossips around the globe but rather a much smaller spread that backs up to the Bel-Air Country Club where the folks at the British tab Hello! already staged and published a big ol', high-heeled photo shoot.
"That's right," said Shanahnduh knowingly. "But do you know how much she pays?"
Well, hold on to your real estate horses, chick-a-diddles, because according to the always eerily well-informed Shanahnduh, Miss Ecclestone leased her temporary West Coast outpost for six months (or so) at a heart-stopping rate of $150,000 per month.
A few quick clicks of the battered beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that amounts to $900,000 for the six month term. By middle class and even average rich people standards that's a whole hell of a lot of money to drop on six months rent but for a spendy rich gal like Miss Ecclestone that's no dough than she probably forks over every year to to keep her fingers and toes slathered in a shimmery, custom-tinted shellac.*
Listing information we squirreled out of the internets shows the sprawling residence—let's just call it a new-fangled Euro-Regency style villa—sits on just over a gated acre and has nine bedrooms and ten bathrooms in about 19,000 square feet. That's huge by just about any real estate standard but it's definitely not on the proportional level with a house such as Fleur de Lys or her Petra's 56,000 square foot pile a few miles away.
Some of the interior spaces that were seen in the Hello! photo shoot include a center hall foyer with a glammy, Old School black and white checkerboard marble floor and grandly scaled public rooms that include a formal living room with adjoining conservatory and a double-height library/office. Less formal family quarters include an open-concept kitchen/breakfast/family room, a spacious fitness room and a temperature-controlled walk-in wine cellar.
The grounds include a spoke-patterned red brick driveway and motor court, a second side motor court for access to the three car garage, formal gardens, flat lawns and a vast bi-level slate terrace that surrounds a dark-bottoms swimming pool and overlooks the golf course at the fabled Bel-Air Country Club.
Ownership of the property is shielded behind a Houston, TX based corporate entity but several sources tell Your Mama that everybody in L.A.'s more uppity real estate circles knows that residence is owned by 30-something year old bank analyst turned junk jewelry fat cat Charlie Chanaratsopon who, it seems, sells enough cheap earrings and animal themed enamel bracelets via his 180-plus Charming Charlie shops in middle-brow malls around the country to afford to buy and maintain a high-maintenance estate in prime East Gate Bel Air that was purchased, as per property records, in late 2011 for $14,900,000.
A deeper drill down into the property records shows the property—if not the house itself which was recently (re-)built—has an interesting provenance. In the early 2000s it was owned by John J. Legere, the newly installed CEO of T-Mobile USA, who acquired the residence in late 2000 from theater legend Jerry Herman whose up for grabs West Hollywood condo-crib was discussed by Your Mama just last Friday and who bought the house from Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated film and television producer David L. Wolper (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory....the original one, Roots, The Thorn Birds, L.A. Confidential and etc.)
Now that the expansion and renovation of her 55-room mega-mansion on London's exceedingly well-secured Kensington Palace Gardens is complete—or nears completion, we're not sure—Miss Ecclestone recently hoisted her contemporary art-filled starter home in central London's Chelsea nabe on the market with a £19,750,000 asking price, an amount that Your Mama's currency conversion contraption shows converts to $31,193,700 at today's rates.
On a side note, iffin any of y'all think the young and unimaginably privileged Miss Ecclestone is paying an arm and a leg to lease her L.A. mansion you better swallow a nerve pill before we tell you that Shanahnduh Rotahnda also snitched to Your Mama that word on the Platinum Triangle real estate gossip grapevine is that Ritz-Carlton developer Mohamed Hadid recently leased his immoderately lavish 48,000 spec-built mega-monster manse directly across the street from the perennially posh Beverly Hills Hotel—you know the one, the one listed for sale with a stomach churning $58 million price tag—to a sick rich Russian for $300,000 per month.
*Oh, lowherd have mercy on Your Mama, we probably done really poked the hornet's nest now.
**Your Mama, of course, hasn't even the flimsiest notion how much money Miss Ecclestone spends every year having her fingernails clipped and painted. For all we know she and her baby sis Petra get together every Wednesday at eleven to paint each others' toenails and braid each others' hair.
listing photos (from Nov. 2011): Westside Estate Agency
