Archive for 2013-04-14
Its Official: Courtney Sale Ross Lists Cody House
LOCATION: East Hampton, NY
PRICE: $75,000,000
SIZE: 7,500 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In late January and early February all us property gossips went cray-cray over the reported real estate rumor that wealthy widow and education oriented philanthropist Courtney Sale Ross* had quietly floated her pond-front East Hampton (NY) compound as a pocket listing with an ear pricking and publicity ensuring asking price of $75,000,000.
A brief and unexpected missive from our ever-vigilant aide de camp Hot Chocolate informed us that the property, dubbed Cody House, has hit the open market today with the expected $75 million price tag.
Listing details for the 5.42 acre spread comprises four separate parcels with 460 prime feet of Georgica Pond frontage and a small private dock for tying up dinghies, rubber rafts, kayaks, canoes, sail boats, row boats and/or other non-motorized water craft.*
Two of the parcels are essentially undeveloped but for the high hedges and broad sweep of well-watered and meticulously mowed grass that runs up the the pond's edge. A gated, tree-lined driveway cuts through the front lawn to the approximately 7,500 square foot main house that sits right up on the pond's edge on the largest of the four parcels and offers up seven bedrooms and six full bathrooms, according to listing information. The back of the house wraps around a jigsaw puzzle-like stone terrace and dark bottom kidney shaped swimming pool with long views over Georgica Pond. The final parcel includes a separate three bedroom guest house, barn and itty-bitty and undeniably charming waterside cottage.
In addition to a whole lotta insanely rich financiers, captains of industry and one or two scions of vast family fortunes, some of the nearby estates are owned by swanky, well-connected sorts such as Hollywood royal Steven Spielberg, the heirs of acclaimed screenwriter and filmmaker Nora Ephron and serious journalists Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee who own the famed Grey Gardens and had it up for lease for $125,000 for a short summer season from Memorial day through July.
Avid watchers of the high end East Coast property markets may recall that last year The Widda Ross dumped her sprawling, 20-plus room duplex at the hideously expensive and famous exclusive 740 Park Avenue for $52,500,000 to Left Coast based money manager and notoriously hardcore real estate baller Howard Marks.
In 2010 Miz Ross—not to be confused with the Miss Ross—spent $7,300,000 to acquire a far more modest by comparison condo crib New York's TriBeCa nabe from Fuze drinks founder Lance Collins. Listing details Your Mama dug up show the 2,758 square foot corner apartment has—or had when she bought it—2-3 bedrooms, three (windowless) bathrooms, a small but expensively equipped galley style kitchen, a 29-foot long living/dining room with humongous factory-style floor to ceiling windows and a 500-plus square foot private terrace.
*Miz Ross hails from a reasonably well to do Texas family but by far the vast bulk of her current fortune passed down to her in 1992 when Steve Ross, the well-compensated CEO of Time Warner and her husband of 10 years, died of complications due to prostate cancer. At the time he died, Mister Ross was estimated to be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion.
**As far as Your Mama knows—and we really know so little—except for crab boats, the Georgica Pond home owners association bylaws (or whatever) forbids the use of motorized boats on the pond.
listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty
Real Estate Roundup: The Real Housewives of Orange County
All the children who have been hanging around here for a while now already know neither Your Mama nor The Dr. Cooter can resist a "real housewife" from The Real Housewives of Orange County real estate story so we were subsumed with delight earlier this week when we received a series of unexpected covert communiques from a well-informed snitch we call Tawny S. Kinh about the real estate and home decorating activities of each of the housewives down behind the proverbial Orange Curtain.
Some of you won't know who these ladies are and others won't give a shit. But, of course, wasn't it Abe Lincoln who said, "You can please some of the people some of the time all of the people some of the time some of the people all of the time but you can never please all of the people all of the time."? Amen, sister.
Now then, if you're on board with the program today Your Mama suggests you take a moment to snatch up a snack and a prepare a beverage—preferably something mood altering—and settle in for the long haul. Or maybe read it in bits and pieces over the next day or two. Okay? Forward, Harch!
VICKI GUNVALSON
Freshly divorced and dating but not exactly empty nesting* new grandmommy Vicki Gunvalson has had her prototypically suburban abode behind the guarded gates of the Coto de Caza community on and off the market numerous times since 2007 at a variety of increasingly smaller asking prices from $3.75 to $2.395 million. However, the program's only original cast member—who is not actually a housewife but rather a hard-charging insurance broker—appears to be staying put in her big ol' Coto crib...At least for now.
Miz Gunvalson and her newly refreshed face recently had the peeps from Bravo in for a brief spin through her also newly refreshed residence that tax records show sits on a full acre and measures around 5,400 square feet. (We had to go there, children. You know we did.) While waving her arms around like some sort of Carol Merrill she casually unveils her "theme" for the brushed up but still mostly brown and beige day-core was "light" and "bright" "California Mediterranean." We do rather like the addition of the hand-painted mural pattern applied to one wall in the formal dining room but we don't particularly care for all the painstakingly karate-chopped custom-made pillows in the refurbished family room.
Miz Gunvalson and her now ex-husband Donn purchased the property during happier marital days in December 2001 for $1,100,000. The couple spent, according to listing details we dug up on the internets, about half a million clams on a super-deluxe resort-style swimming pool complex complete with a five stool swim up bar, a water slide that winds through a pile of (probably faux) boulders, an outdoor kitchen and a built-in fire pit plus multiple built-in ambient gas heaters for taken the edge of chilly evenings. A roomy, recessed grotto is outfitted, so the listings say, with a television, spa and—a feature boozy users of the swim up bar will surely appreciate—a convenient adjoining full bathroom.
*Miz Gunvalson's daughter Briana (Wolfsmith) Culberson, her husband Ryan and their new baby boy Troy currently live with Grandma Gunvalson...or at least they did during the taping for the eighth season.
GRETCHEN ROSSI
As far as we know, the always impeccably maquillaged an unnaturally blond handbag hawker and budding make-up mogul Gretchen Rossi still lives in the approximately 2,400 square foot faux-Craftsman-style house in Costa Mesa that she purchased for $838,500 back in January 2005 when she was still married to her first husband. They divorced in 2007 and she lickety-split got engaged to Midwest millionaire Jeff Beitzel who, may he rest in peace, met his early end in 2008 before they married. Yesterday it was announced in all the celebrity gossip glossies that Miz Rossi and her long-time live-in man-beau Slade Smiley—now a newly syndicated radio host who was previously engaged to another (former) housewife, Jo De La Rosa—are officially engaged. It was, apparently, she who proposed to him atop a skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles. Anyways, mazel tov!
Your Mama didn't—or couldn't—find a home tour video on Bravo's site but Miz Rossi did post a slew of (2012) holiday photos taken in her house on her website. We're not really sure what's more disturbing: the over-eager department store-style holiday day-core that's both inside and outside, the sad little Santa suit coats she made her poor little dogs wear or the downright bizarre and inappropriately sexy Mrs. Claus outfit she apparently wore...on Jesus's birthday. What do the children think?
TAMRA BARNEY
Fearlessly and fearsomely outspoken Housewife Tamra Barney—a real estate agent who now owns and operates a fitness facility in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA—and her three youngest children left their post-divorce rented residence and moved in with her afianced man, Eddie Judge. Mister Judge, the CEO of his father's Irvine law firm, picked up his semi-custom, faux-Tuscan tract house in the guard gated Covenent Hills community in Ladera Ranch, according to property records, in 2006 for $1,301,500.
Although it really ain't no body's bidness, documentation Your Mama easily accessed online indicates that in mid-2011 Mister Judge tangled with foreclosure but, we're happy to say the mess was all worked out by June 2012 when a Notice of Rescission was filed and recorded. Most likely it was just a case of misplaced paperwork or some such snafu, right? Anyhoo...
In her video tour of the home for the folk at Bravo Miz Barney unveils her plan to use the formal dining room as a music room where her three younger children can take piano lessons. In the family room, off the well-equipped and very brown two-island open-concept kitchen, soon-to-be Missus Judge proudly displays a full wall of custom cabinetry she had installed around a (gas) fireplace that hold and hides the audio-visual equipment and etc.
In the upstairs master bedroom she flops across her big ol' bed and pretends to find a leather cat-o-nine-tails hidden under one of the 49,000 decorative pillows because, well, ever-lusty Tammy B. can not—at least it seems to Your Mama—go three damn minutes on camera without cracking a cringe-worthy sex joke. Don't get Your Mama wrong. We love us some shade-tossing sassy-pants Tammy B., for sure, but, seriously girl, you need a new comedy shtick, unless you don't mind coming off like a slightly creepy, sex-obsessed cougar. Cool it people. We're not being catty. We're just offering Miz Barney a little unsolicited image assistance.
We digress...
LYDIA McLAUGHLIN
The newest Housewife in Orange County is Canadian-born entrepreneur and media heiress Lydia McLaughlin. She, along with her husband Doug, owns a high end media marketing operation, a modern art gallery and recently launched an eponymous jewelry line. Though they live in the O.C. they also own, edit and publish the glossy Beverly Hills Lifestyle Magazine. On her website Miz McLaughlin's bio states: "She sees reality television as a platform to be a positive role model for women around the world." Oh...Hmm...Well, good luck with that, hunny. Your optimism as you dive into the viper pit of reality t.v. is charming.
During the taping of the either season Mister and Missus McLaughlin—they named their two boy children Stirling and Maverick—occupied a luxuriously appointed rented residence in the exclusive Ritz Cove enclave in Dana Point, the same affluent beach side enclave where Housewife Alexis Bellino and her husband Jim leased a house during the taping of the seventh season.
We really have no idea how much Mister and Missus McLaughlin actually pay their landlord each month for the privilege of living in such suburban looking splendor but we did find online evidence that the 4,800 square foot "Mediterranean" residence was leased in April 2012 with an an asking price of $8,500 per month.
Lease listing details go on to reveal the house has five bedrooms, five bathrooms, an open-concept kitchen/family room and a second floor master suite complete with fireplace, private balcony and spa-like bathroom. The resort-style backyard—these resort-y backyard set ups seem to be quite popular in the more upscale enclaves of Orange County—has a waterfall, swimming pool, spa and built in barbecue and less than ideally backs up to frequently busy and too often traffic choked Pacific Coast Highway.
In her video tour of the fully furnished but only lightly decorated house for the Bravo cameras, gravel voiced and reed thin Missus McLaughlin pads into the kitchen and makes a big play of taking a small bite of red velvet cake she had stashed up in the microwave oven. She moves into the formal dining room and proudly announces that even though her family of four has never actually eaten in the dining room she still thinks it looks "you know, beachy but also kinda elegant and contemporary, so...." Upstairs Missus McLaughlin takes us into the master suite where she shows how she's converted the adjoining but separate sitting room into a "shoe gallery" complete with (gas) fireplace.
Property records show the house was purchased by its current owner in early 2004 for $2,881,000. We don't know the status, but we found evidence online the property was deep in foreclosure doo-doo and scheduled to be sold at auction on the 8th of April (2013) with a minimum bid of $2,329,923. We don't know what the result of all this ugliness is but it could be that Mister and Missus McLaughlin will soon have to pack their bags if they haven't already.
HEATHER DUBROW
It was actually our aforementioned tattletale Tawny S. Kinh who—a couple of months ago—first whispered to Your Mama that Dr. and Missus Dr. Dubrow had quietly sold their custom built mansion in Newport Beach's super posh and guard-gated Pelican Crest community for an eye catching $16,450,000. Your Mama's brief and unscientific research shows that's the second highest price paid in the last three years for a residence in the swank enclave that perches grandly atop the hills above the scenic and almost unspoiled Crystal Cove State Park.
We looked some but didn't come up with a current home tour but last season Missus Dr. Dubrow allowed the Bravo cameras to peep and poke around their giant, custom built mansion that includes a foyer scaled to accommodate large parties and designed to impress guests with its double staircase, paneled walls and double-height ceiling. Other luxuries include: a glass roofed solarium with ocean view; a gargantuan, gadget-filled kitchen; a darkly-paneled "man's library" with an all but hidden corkscrew staircase that leads up to the master suite and down to the home's basement level fitness room. There's also a huge rec room in the basement as well as a walk-in temperature controlled wine cellar.
Doctor and Missus Dr. Dubrow's private chambers are entered through a private vestibule in which their interwoven initials are inlaid in the marble floors. Well, children, to be quite frank, Your Mama startled the first time we saw that bit of hyper-customized finish work flash by in the video. Anyways, the suite is completed by a custom-designed boutique-like dressing room/closet area and a super-sized all marble bathroom where Missus Dr. Dubrow un-ironically says she personally believes the key to a good marriage is: "Don't share a toilet." She might be right.
As it turns out, the Pelican Crest mansion wasn't the only Newport Beach house Dr. and Missus Dr. Dubrow owned or sold in the last year. Property records show the couple purchased a house in the Harbor View community in September 2005 for $2,795,000 that they unloaded at a huge loss in January 2013 for two million clams. It doesn't take any clicks or clacks of the well-worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus to determine that Dr. and Missus Dubrow lost a spine straightening $795,000 not counting carrying costs, expenses, improvements an real estate fees. Probably the well-to-do plastic surgeon and the reality t.v. star won't go hungry due to their financial set back but, still, that's gotta sting a little.
Listing details we managed to cajole out of the internets shows the vaguely Cape Cod-style house, nested into a short cul-de-sac, backs up to a very busy thoroughfare, measures 3,660 square feet with five bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, 3 car attached garage and at least two fireplaces. What it does not have, at least not according to any of the online resources we consulted, is a swimming pool. The children will recall the Dubow's domicile in Pelican Point did not have a swimming pool either, until they put a tiny one in to make it more attractive to sell.
We can't vouch for the accuracy of the intel but Tommy Tellyou told Your Mama that the couple are in the process of purchasing another vacant parcel in the Pelican Crest development where they'll spend years and millions building their next home, a mansion that Your Mama would bet our long bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, will be bigger and even more lavish than the deluxe digs they left behind.
ALEXIS BELLINO
The real estate trials and travails of Alexis Bellino and her businessman husband Jim have been well documented by celebrity and property gossips around the globe. After they sold their house in Newport Beach at a punishing $3 million dollar loss, the avidly Christian couple—they own a paint ball course in Anaheim or something odd and unexpected like that—decamped for a leased macmansion with five bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms and a subterranean garage for eight or more cars in the ritzy Ritz Cove development in Dana Point.
During the high voltage seventh season reunion show, after some of her Housewife sisters accused her for putting on pretentious airs, Missus Bellino snapped back that her finances are no body's business. Then she said—on national television, mind you—that she and the Mister planned to pay cash for their next house. Well, children, thanks to Tommy Tellyou we have learned that Mister and Missus Bellino, through a trust, recently paid $2,000,000 for a large residence in a gated community in San Juan Capistrano. They did not, as far as Your Mama can tell from our perusal of online documentation, pay all cash for the property.*
Listing details from the time of the sale show the classic, Orange County mock-Med mini-mansion sits on almost three-quarters of an acre and contains about 6,000 square feet with four bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, six fireplaces. An interior gated motor court gives access to garage parking for up to five cars or, as per the online listing, three cars and a recreational vehicle.
Listing photos show the home's fittings and day-core were woefully dated at the time they purchased it but by the time Missus Bellino had the Bravo cameras into her house she and her mister had orchestrated a full-scale, gut renovation that updated, upgraded and completely contemporized the entire house.
In the video we are introduced to an automatic player piano in the all black and white but still bordello-esque formal living room and then shown through the formal dining room with its white tufted leather chairs pulled up around a dark wood table that's still splattered with wax from the previous night's dinner party. A quick stop in the colossal center island kitchen and we see it's expensively equipped with top quality commercial-sized appliances. And finally, the real reason they bought the home, she says, she swoons over and swans on about the massive, meandering Great Room that sports wood-inlaid stone tile floors, a vaulted wood-beamed ceiling, a two way fireplace, a giant flat screen television—for Jim's Monday night football things—and—for her—a slew of glittery chandeliers.
We don't normally like to discuss the rooms of children but Missus Bellino invites us in to see two girlish bedrooms for her two girl children and one boyishly decorated bedroom for her one boy child. The Bellino master suite encompasses the entire second floor and—as far as we can surmise—includes a bedroom with high beamed ceiling, a private terrace, what we imagine to be a large private bathroom but we don't get to see in the video, and a massive walk-in closet and dressing room plus a separate custom-fitted walk-in handbag and shoe closet that is very likely larger than most peoples' bedrooms.
*In the interest of information fairness: Your Mama and The Dr. Cooter also have a mortgage on our home. So what? So do most people.
If you made it this far...Thank you very much.
Some of you won't know who these ladies are and others won't give a shit. But, of course, wasn't it Abe Lincoln who said, "You can please some of the people some of the time all of the people some of the time some of the people all of the time but you can never please all of the people all of the time."? Amen, sister.
Now then, if you're on board with the program today Your Mama suggests you take a moment to snatch up a snack and a prepare a beverage—preferably something mood altering—and settle in for the long haul. Or maybe read it in bits and pieces over the next day or two. Okay? Forward, Harch!
VICKI GUNVALSON
Freshly divorced and dating but not exactly empty nesting* new grandmommy Vicki Gunvalson has had her prototypically suburban abode behind the guarded gates of the Coto de Caza community on and off the market numerous times since 2007 at a variety of increasingly smaller asking prices from $3.75 to $2.395 million. However, the program's only original cast member—who is not actually a housewife but rather a hard-charging insurance broker—appears to be staying put in her big ol' Coto crib...At least for now.
Miz Gunvalson and her newly refreshed face recently had the peeps from Bravo in for a brief spin through her also newly refreshed residence that tax records show sits on a full acre and measures around 5,400 square feet. (We had to go there, children. You know we did.) While waving her arms around like some sort of Carol Merrill she casually unveils her "theme" for the brushed up but still mostly brown and beige day-core was "light" and "bright" "California Mediterranean." We do rather like the addition of the hand-painted mural pattern applied to one wall in the formal dining room but we don't particularly care for all the painstakingly karate-chopped custom-made pillows in the refurbished family room.
Miz Gunvalson and her now ex-husband Donn purchased the property during happier marital days in December 2001 for $1,100,000. The couple spent, according to listing details we dug up on the internets, about half a million clams on a super-deluxe resort-style swimming pool complex complete with a five stool swim up bar, a water slide that winds through a pile of (probably faux) boulders, an outdoor kitchen and a built-in fire pit plus multiple built-in ambient gas heaters for taken the edge of chilly evenings. A roomy, recessed grotto is outfitted, so the listings say, with a television, spa and—a feature boozy users of the swim up bar will surely appreciate—a convenient adjoining full bathroom.
*Miz Gunvalson's daughter Briana (Wolfsmith) Culberson, her husband Ryan and their new baby boy Troy currently live with Grandma Gunvalson...or at least they did during the taping for the eighth season.
GRETCHEN ROSSI
As far as we know, the always impeccably maquillaged an unnaturally blond handbag hawker and budding make-up mogul Gretchen Rossi still lives in the approximately 2,400 square foot faux-Craftsman-style house in Costa Mesa that she purchased for $838,500 back in January 2005 when she was still married to her first husband. They divorced in 2007 and she lickety-split got engaged to Midwest millionaire Jeff Beitzel who, may he rest in peace, met his early end in 2008 before they married. Yesterday it was announced in all the celebrity gossip glossies that Miz Rossi and her long-time live-in man-beau Slade Smiley—now a newly syndicated radio host who was previously engaged to another (former) housewife, Jo De La Rosa—are officially engaged. It was, apparently, she who proposed to him atop a skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles. Anyways, mazel tov!
Your Mama didn't—or couldn't—find a home tour video on Bravo's site but Miz Rossi did post a slew of (2012) holiday photos taken in her house on her website. We're not really sure what's more disturbing: the over-eager department store-style holiday day-core that's both inside and outside, the sad little Santa suit coats she made her poor little dogs wear or the downright bizarre and inappropriately sexy Mrs. Claus outfit she apparently wore...on Jesus's birthday. What do the children think?
TAMRA BARNEY
Fearlessly and fearsomely outspoken Housewife Tamra Barney—a real estate agent who now owns and operates a fitness facility in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA—and her three youngest children left their post-divorce rented residence and moved in with her afianced man, Eddie Judge. Mister Judge, the CEO of his father's Irvine law firm, picked up his semi-custom, faux-Tuscan tract house in the guard gated Covenent Hills community in Ladera Ranch, according to property records, in 2006 for $1,301,500.
Although it really ain't no body's bidness, documentation Your Mama easily accessed online indicates that in mid-2011 Mister Judge tangled with foreclosure but, we're happy to say the mess was all worked out by June 2012 when a Notice of Rescission was filed and recorded. Most likely it was just a case of misplaced paperwork or some such snafu, right? Anyhoo...
In her video tour of the home for the folk at Bravo Miz Barney unveils her plan to use the formal dining room as a music room where her three younger children can take piano lessons. In the family room, off the well-equipped and very brown two-island open-concept kitchen, soon-to-be Missus Judge proudly displays a full wall of custom cabinetry she had installed around a (gas) fireplace that hold and hides the audio-visual equipment and etc.
In the upstairs master bedroom she flops across her big ol' bed and pretends to find a leather cat-o-nine-tails hidden under one of the 49,000 decorative pillows because, well, ever-lusty Tammy B. can not—at least it seems to Your Mama—go three damn minutes on camera without cracking a cringe-worthy sex joke. Don't get Your Mama wrong. We love us some shade-tossing sassy-pants Tammy B., for sure, but, seriously girl, you need a new comedy shtick, unless you don't mind coming off like a slightly creepy, sex-obsessed cougar. Cool it people. We're not being catty. We're just offering Miz Barney a little unsolicited image assistance.
We digress...
LYDIA McLAUGHLIN
The newest Housewife in Orange County is Canadian-born entrepreneur and media heiress Lydia McLaughlin. She, along with her husband Doug, owns a high end media marketing operation, a modern art gallery and recently launched an eponymous jewelry line. Though they live in the O.C. they also own, edit and publish the glossy Beverly Hills Lifestyle Magazine. On her website Miz McLaughlin's bio states: "She sees reality television as a platform to be a positive role model for women around the world." Oh...Hmm...Well, good luck with that, hunny. Your optimism as you dive into the viper pit of reality t.v. is charming.
During the taping of the either season Mister and Missus McLaughlin—they named their two boy children Stirling and Maverick—occupied a luxuriously appointed rented residence in the exclusive Ritz Cove enclave in Dana Point, the same affluent beach side enclave where Housewife Alexis Bellino and her husband Jim leased a house during the taping of the seventh season.
We really have no idea how much Mister and Missus McLaughlin actually pay their landlord each month for the privilege of living in such suburban looking splendor but we did find online evidence that the 4,800 square foot "Mediterranean" residence was leased in April 2012 with an an asking price of $8,500 per month.
Lease listing details go on to reveal the house has five bedrooms, five bathrooms, an open-concept kitchen/family room and a second floor master suite complete with fireplace, private balcony and spa-like bathroom. The resort-style backyard—these resort-y backyard set ups seem to be quite popular in the more upscale enclaves of Orange County—has a waterfall, swimming pool, spa and built in barbecue and less than ideally backs up to frequently busy and too often traffic choked Pacific Coast Highway.
In her video tour of the fully furnished but only lightly decorated house for the Bravo cameras, gravel voiced and reed thin Missus McLaughlin pads into the kitchen and makes a big play of taking a small bite of red velvet cake she had stashed up in the microwave oven. She moves into the formal dining room and proudly announces that even though her family of four has never actually eaten in the dining room she still thinks it looks "you know, beachy but also kinda elegant and contemporary, so...." Upstairs Missus McLaughlin takes us into the master suite where she shows how she's converted the adjoining but separate sitting room into a "shoe gallery" complete with (gas) fireplace.
Property records show the house was purchased by its current owner in early 2004 for $2,881,000. We don't know the status, but we found evidence online the property was deep in foreclosure doo-doo and scheduled to be sold at auction on the 8th of April (2013) with a minimum bid of $2,329,923. We don't know what the result of all this ugliness is but it could be that Mister and Missus McLaughlin will soon have to pack their bags if they haven't already.
HEATHER DUBROW
It was actually our aforementioned tattletale Tawny S. Kinh who—a couple of months ago—first whispered to Your Mama that Dr. and Missus Dr. Dubrow had quietly sold their custom built mansion in Newport Beach's super posh and guard-gated Pelican Crest community for an eye catching $16,450,000. Your Mama's brief and unscientific research shows that's the second highest price paid in the last three years for a residence in the swank enclave that perches grandly atop the hills above the scenic and almost unspoiled Crystal Cove State Park.
We looked some but didn't come up with a current home tour but last season Missus Dr. Dubrow allowed the Bravo cameras to peep and poke around their giant, custom built mansion that includes a foyer scaled to accommodate large parties and designed to impress guests with its double staircase, paneled walls and double-height ceiling. Other luxuries include: a glass roofed solarium with ocean view; a gargantuan, gadget-filled kitchen; a darkly-paneled "man's library" with an all but hidden corkscrew staircase that leads up to the master suite and down to the home's basement level fitness room. There's also a huge rec room in the basement as well as a walk-in temperature controlled wine cellar.
Doctor and Missus Dr. Dubrow's private chambers are entered through a private vestibule in which their interwoven initials are inlaid in the marble floors. Well, children, to be quite frank, Your Mama startled the first time we saw that bit of hyper-customized finish work flash by in the video. Anyways, the suite is completed by a custom-designed boutique-like dressing room/closet area and a super-sized all marble bathroom where Missus Dr. Dubrow un-ironically says she personally believes the key to a good marriage is: "Don't share a toilet." She might be right.
As it turns out, the Pelican Crest mansion wasn't the only Newport Beach house Dr. and Missus Dr. Dubrow owned or sold in the last year. Property records show the couple purchased a house in the Harbor View community in September 2005 for $2,795,000 that they unloaded at a huge loss in January 2013 for two million clams. It doesn't take any clicks or clacks of the well-worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus to determine that Dr. and Missus Dubrow lost a spine straightening $795,000 not counting carrying costs, expenses, improvements an real estate fees. Probably the well-to-do plastic surgeon and the reality t.v. star won't go hungry due to their financial set back but, still, that's gotta sting a little.
Listing details we managed to cajole out of the internets shows the vaguely Cape Cod-style house, nested into a short cul-de-sac, backs up to a very busy thoroughfare, measures 3,660 square feet with five bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, 3 car attached garage and at least two fireplaces. What it does not have, at least not according to any of the online resources we consulted, is a swimming pool. The children will recall the Dubow's domicile in Pelican Point did not have a swimming pool either, until they put a tiny one in to make it more attractive to sell.
We can't vouch for the accuracy of the intel but Tommy Tellyou told Your Mama that the couple are in the process of purchasing another vacant parcel in the Pelican Crest development where they'll spend years and millions building their next home, a mansion that Your Mama would bet our long bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, will be bigger and even more lavish than the deluxe digs they left behind.
ALEXIS BELLINO
The real estate trials and travails of Alexis Bellino and her businessman husband Jim have been well documented by celebrity and property gossips around the globe. After they sold their house in Newport Beach at a punishing $3 million dollar loss, the avidly Christian couple—they own a paint ball course in Anaheim or something odd and unexpected like that—decamped for a leased macmansion with five bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms and a subterranean garage for eight or more cars in the ritzy Ritz Cove development in Dana Point.
During the high voltage seventh season reunion show, after some of her Housewife sisters accused her for putting on pretentious airs, Missus Bellino snapped back that her finances are no body's business. Then she said—on national television, mind you—that she and the Mister planned to pay cash for their next house. Well, children, thanks to Tommy Tellyou we have learned that Mister and Missus Bellino, through a trust, recently paid $2,000,000 for a large residence in a gated community in San Juan Capistrano. They did not, as far as Your Mama can tell from our perusal of online documentation, pay all cash for the property.*
Listing details from the time of the sale show the classic, Orange County mock-Med mini-mansion sits on almost three-quarters of an acre and contains about 6,000 square feet with four bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, six fireplaces. An interior gated motor court gives access to garage parking for up to five cars or, as per the online listing, three cars and a recreational vehicle.
Listing photos show the home's fittings and day-core were woefully dated at the time they purchased it but by the time Missus Bellino had the Bravo cameras into her house she and her mister had orchestrated a full-scale, gut renovation that updated, upgraded and completely contemporized the entire house.
In the video we are introduced to an automatic player piano in the all black and white but still bordello-esque formal living room and then shown through the formal dining room with its white tufted leather chairs pulled up around a dark wood table that's still splattered with wax from the previous night's dinner party. A quick stop in the colossal center island kitchen and we see it's expensively equipped with top quality commercial-sized appliances. And finally, the real reason they bought the home, she says, she swoons over and swans on about the massive, meandering Great Room that sports wood-inlaid stone tile floors, a vaulted wood-beamed ceiling, a two way fireplace, a giant flat screen television—for Jim's Monday night football things—and—for her—a slew of glittery chandeliers.
We don't normally like to discuss the rooms of children but Missus Bellino invites us in to see two girlish bedrooms for her two girl children and one boyishly decorated bedroom for her one boy child. The Bellino master suite encompasses the entire second floor and—as far as we can surmise—includes a bedroom with high beamed ceiling, a private terrace, what we imagine to be a large private bathroom but we don't get to see in the video, and a massive walk-in closet and dressing room plus a separate custom-fitted walk-in handbag and shoe closet that is very likely larger than most peoples' bedrooms.
*In the interest of information fairness: Your Mama and The Dr. Cooter also have a mortgage on our home. So what? So do most people.
If you made it this far...Thank you very much.
In Case You Missed It...
Scandal-tainted and publicly shamed cyclist Lance Armstrong sold one Austin (TX) compound for an unknown amount and purchased another for $4,340,000 that comprises four structures and 12,000 square feet of modern living space and private access to Lake Austin by way of an exceptionally long steel and ipe wood cabled bridge.
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Although most reports say that she still plans to move back her her Canadian hometown of Ladysmith (near Vancouver) but, after just about a month on the open market at $7.75 million, Tinseltown bombshell Pam Anderson has reportedly taken her newly and expensively renovated house in the famed guard-gated Malibu Colony off the market because there were just "'too many people interested...it scared me.'" Really, Pam? Too much interest? That sounds reasonable. Anyhoo... As of three o'clock p.m. today—18 April, 2013—the property remains an active listing on both the MLS and the listing agent's website.
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She may be only 23 years old but sweet faced and occasionally vengeful country music queen Taylor Swift has bought and sold more houses than the average millionaire in an entire lifetime.* She currently owns a small compound in Beverly Hills and in Nashville she has an oddly decorated duplex penthouse plus a large house with an impressive Greek Revival entry portico that some say is where her parents live. Last year the singer/songwriter spent millions on a water front house next door to her teenage then-boyfriend Conor Kennedy's famous family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
Now comes word that Miss Swift is house hunting in Rhode Island where she was photographed touring a massive water front mansion with a price tag of more than $20 million.
*Your Mama does not, of course, have any actual statistics on how many private homes an average millionaire—whatever that means—buys and sells in a lifetime.
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Yet another of the "real housewives" from Bravos Real Housewives super-franchise faces foreclosure on her large suburban mansion. This time it's New Jersey's Jacqueline Laurita who, as it turns out, also owes a lot of back taxes. We're sure there's a vague explanation forthcoming about how all this financial ugliness is nothing more than a soon-to-be-cleared-up misunderstanding.
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They've yet to unload their quixotically configured Upper East Side triplex maisonette but David Duchovney's semi-estranged wife Tea Leoni has already dropped $5,120,000 on a bachelorette pad—also with a somewhat funky layout—on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
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Months after every real estate gossip on the planet relayed rumors and reports about pop star turned apparel mogul Jessica Simpson buying Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne's tangentially Cape Cod style mansion in Hidden Hills, the L.A. Times revealed the sale price was exactly $11,500,000, almost a million dollars less than the $12,388,500 that the rock-n-roll royals paid for the 11,000 square foot house in 2007.
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Ajit Khubani, the South Florida-based sick-rich creator of the "As Seen on TV" empire, spent a record breaking $34 million for a pair of John Pawson designed triplex penthouses atop Ian Schrager's (the cumbersomely monikered) The Residences at the Miami Beach Edition. Mister Khubani allegedly out-bid Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick. So goes the real estate life of the super-rich.
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Although most reports say that she still plans to move back her her Canadian hometown of Ladysmith (near Vancouver) but, after just about a month on the open market at $7.75 million, Tinseltown bombshell Pam Anderson has reportedly taken her newly and expensively renovated house in the famed guard-gated Malibu Colony off the market because there were just "'too many people interested...it scared me.'" Really, Pam? Too much interest? That sounds reasonable. Anyhoo... As of three o'clock p.m. today—18 April, 2013—the property remains an active listing on both the MLS and the listing agent's website.
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She may be only 23 years old but sweet faced and occasionally vengeful country music queen Taylor Swift has bought and sold more houses than the average millionaire in an entire lifetime.* She currently owns a small compound in Beverly Hills and in Nashville she has an oddly decorated duplex penthouse plus a large house with an impressive Greek Revival entry portico that some say is where her parents live. Last year the singer/songwriter spent millions on a water front house next door to her teenage then-boyfriend Conor Kennedy's famous family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
Now comes word that Miss Swift is house hunting in Rhode Island where she was photographed touring a massive water front mansion with a price tag of more than $20 million.
*Your Mama does not, of course, have any actual statistics on how many private homes an average millionaire—whatever that means—buys and sells in a lifetime.
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Yet another of the "real housewives" from Bravos Real Housewives super-franchise faces foreclosure on her large suburban mansion. This time it's New Jersey's Jacqueline Laurita who, as it turns out, also owes a lot of back taxes. We're sure there's a vague explanation forthcoming about how all this financial ugliness is nothing more than a soon-to-be-cleared-up misunderstanding.
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They've yet to unload their quixotically configured Upper East Side triplex maisonette but David Duchovney's semi-estranged wife Tea Leoni has already dropped $5,120,000 on a bachelorette pad—also with a somewhat funky layout—on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
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Months after every real estate gossip on the planet relayed rumors and reports about pop star turned apparel mogul Jessica Simpson buying Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne's tangentially Cape Cod style mansion in Hidden Hills, the L.A. Times revealed the sale price was exactly $11,500,000, almost a million dollars less than the $12,388,500 that the rock-n-roll royals paid for the 11,000 square foot house in 2007.
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Ajit Khubani, the South Florida-based sick-rich creator of the "As Seen on TV" empire, spent a record breaking $34 million for a pair of John Pawson designed triplex penthouses atop Ian Schrager's (the cumbersomely monikered) The Residences at the Miami Beach Edition. Mister Khubani allegedly out-bid Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick. So goes the real estate life of the super-rich.
Your Mama Hears...
In case you don't know, Miz Annenberg is the only surviving child of the late multi-billionaire publishing and media magnate, art collector, philanthropist, former ambassador to Britain, and Ronald Reagan b.f.f. Walter Annenberg. After her step-mother Leonore "Lee" Annenberg passed on to the other side in 2009 Wallis Annenberg became the head honcho of The Annenberg Foundation, the family's eponymous $1.6-plus billion charitable juggernaut that has given away well over $4 billion since it was established by Walter Annenberg in the late 1980s.
Nonagenarian Los Angeles socialite Betsy Bloomingdale—her husband Alfred was an heir to the Bloomingdales department store fortune—quipped in a 2009 in Vanity Fair that Miz Annenberg "is becoming the Brooke Astor of Los Angeles." That, children, is high praise in the rarefied and increasingly microscopic milieu of well born, well married and/or well divorced helmet-haired senior citizen socialites who have—or, in some cases, had—deep pockets for their chosen charitable causes. Anyhoo...
Property records reveal Miz Annenberg, now in her seventies, long-divorced and the mother of four grown children, acquired the Malibu beach house in October 2006 through an ambiguously named trust that shelled out $22,750,000 for the extra-wide ocean front parcel and existing house, then an architecturally out-moded cedar-shingled 1970s-ish contemporary once owned by the late actor Michael Landon.
Miz Annenberg hired accomplished and esteemed Santa Monica-based architect Frederick Fisher* who transformed the old girl into a new-fangled study of slate gray stucco, shimmering glass and horizontally applied Ipe wood cladding. Rancho Mirage-based decorator Sam Cardella added the modern organic interior finishings, fittings and furnishings including a monolithic hot rolled steel fireplace in the living room. The results may not be to one's particular taste by they are none-the-less spectacular and have been published in at least two upper-end lifestyle and shelter publications (Town and Country via Curbed, C California Style).
The Los Angeles County Tax Man's records and various other articles about the house found on the interweb shows the house has five bedrooms and seven bathrooms in 6,913 square feet. When the sometimes fickle coastal weather permits numerous decks allow for easy indoor-outdoor living and a heated lap pool means Miz Annenberg and her house guests can swim year round regardless of wind and fog.
As it turns out, Miz Annenberg's portfolio of private residences includes a second house in the Malibu Colony. Property records show that in March 2010 Miz Annenberg, again through the ambiguously named trust, paid $6,000,000 for the house directly across the street from the one she already owned and now—allegedly—wants to sell. The L.A. Tax Man's records show the small, single-story hip roof ranch-style bungalow sits on just over a quarter acre lot and has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a detached two car garage and a pill-shaped swimming pool.
The civic-minded Miz Annenberg also maintains a 6,736 square foot townhouse-type condo at the guard-gated Century Woods community in Century City. A quick peek into property records shows Miz Annenberg has owned the four bedroom and five bathroom townhouse since at least the late 1990s.
Fun real estate factoid #1: Although she doesn't live in either one of them—remember all the recent brouhaha about not being able to extend the lease on her rental apartment until construction and decoration of her $47 million penthouse at The Century was complete—Candy Spelling owns two of the townhouse condo residences at Century Woods.
Fun real estate factoid #2: In the 1970s Miz Annenberg's father paid around $2 million for a 22-room Tudor mansion on in Beverly Hills. The stately and dignified Wallace Neff-designed residence, originally built in the 1930s, was once owned by an heir to the great Vanderbilt fortune and was later owned for a few years by long ago divorced Tinseltowners Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. The house—and the one next door—are currently owned by hedge hog Jon Brooks.
*A spin through Mister Fisher's website reveals that Wallis Annenberg has kept Mister Fisher and his eponymous firm very busy over the years. In addition to doing over her beach house residence in Malibu, Mister Fisher also transformed the remains of the old William Randolph Hearst/Marion Davies beach side estate in Santa Monica into what's now known as The Annenberg Community Beach House, a magnificent, wildly popular and free public swimming and beach-going facility on five very prime ocean front acres in Santa Monica. Additionally Mister Fisher designed the building that houses the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Center for Information Science and Technology at CalTech as well as the newly built Sunnylands Center & Garden at the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands, the 200-plus acre Rancho Mirage (CA) winter home of Walter and Lee Annenberg.
photos: Lisa Romerein for C (California Style)
40 Million Clams for 48 Acres in Mandeville Canyon
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $40,000,000
SIZE: 12,000 square feet, 13 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Last night, whilst we perused some of the newest listings in and around Los Angeles we stumbled across a 48-acre compound tucked up in the L.A.'s Mandeville Canyon that's just popped up on the open market with an asking price of $40,000,000. That's right, puppies, that's 48 contiguous residential acres in the middle of goddamn Los Angeles.
Although ownership of the compound is through a trust, no fewer than three of Your Mama's beloved coterie of canaries previously told us the unusually expansive property in urban-rustic Upper Mandeville Canyon is owned by wealthy widow and philanthropist Glorya Kaufman.* The bulk of Miz Kaufman's vast fortune comes from her late husband Donald Kaufman who, with business partner cum art world super-patron Eli Broad, founded the home building behemoth Kaufman & Broad, now known as KB Home, and went to meet The Great Contractor in the Sky in 1983.
We're not actually sure when Missus Kaufman acquired her Mandeville Canyon mega-estate but it was not after 1992 and all of y'all can all be assured she paid only a fraction of its current forty million dollar asking price.
Custom electronic gates swing open to a quarter mile long tree-lined driveway that swoops up, around and over a short bridge that spans a narrow finger of a multi-acre private lake to a parking lot-sized circular motor court at the front of the main mansion, an approximately 12,000 square foot two-story ranch residence originally built in 1964.
Listing details show there are 13 bedrooms and 7.5 bathrooms but, to be honest, chickens, Your Mama isn't sure if those figures reflect the number of bedrooms and bathrooms in the main house only or if they also encompass any bedrooms and bathrooms located in the other half dozen structures on the property that include a separate guest house, a caretaker's apartment, a pavilion that overlooks the lighted tennis court and a substantial maintenance building.
The acreage immediately around Miz Kaufman's house and its satellite structures is landscaped with such meticulous abandon that Miz Kaufman surely employ at least one full-time groundskeeper to keep all those shrubs, flower and trees looking 5-star resort worthy.
Miz Kaufman has decided to downsize and two of Your Mama's better informed sources whispered that last May (2012) the elderly but still vivacious and socially engaged philanthropist shelled out $18.2 million for a very private single-story villa in Beverly Hills that she purchased from Las Vegas-based media mogul Carl Parmer, owner of the Robb Report, a glossy publication dedicated to the luxury lifestyles of the rich and super rich.
*Uh oh. At least one former employees is mad as a hornet and has lots of less than flattering things to say about Miz Kaufman and the authenticity and motivations of of her numerous philanthropic endeavors, specifically as they relate to her eponymous Glorya Kaufman Dance Foundation. that recently endowed an new school of dance at the University of Southern California.
listing photos: Mark Singer Photography for Keller Williams Beverly Hills
Chris Meloni Flipping Out in New Canaan
LOCATION: New Canaan, CT
PRICE: $4,750,000
SIZE: 8,063 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5 full and 3 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Looks like well-built and increasingly in-demand 50-something year old actor Chris Meloni and his former set designer turned occasional decorator wife Sherman Williams Meloni have caught a classic case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle.
It was only last August (2012), the children will recall, that Mister and Missus Meloni shelled out $4,381,000 for a four acre country estate in affluent and bucolic New Canaan, CT with what Your Mama previously described as "an unquestionably luxurious but perfectly ordinary two-story proto-suburban mansion with 8,063 square feet of expensively but blandly finished interior space."
Thanks to Phatlady Sings, a sassy and well-informed Connecticut-based real estate canary we've learned that Mister and Missus Meloni flipped their five bedroom and five full and three half bathroom spread in New Canaan on the market in early April (2013) with an asking price of $4,750,000. Miz Sings has no idea why Mister and Missus Meloni have decided to up and sell their New Canaan crib just eight months after buying it or where they might be going. She did, howevuh, cattily snitch to Your Mama that Mister Meloni is well known around town for staring other well-welled but not famous residents down at the supermarket—or wherever—until they acknowledge his celebrity eminence. Oh, dear. Ouch! Your Mama really hopes that's not true because that sort of behavior would be, well, vulgar and depressing. Anyhoo...
Current listing details show the spacious but architecturally vague residence was originally built—no surprise—in 1987 and has recently "undergone a complete interior transformation" with all new interior paint, newly refinished and stained hardwood floors throughout, the installation of a hard-wired generator for when the power goes out.
A privately situated home office, according to listing information, was re-vamped—one imagines—to the specifications of Missus Sherman Meloni who floated a long and narrow desk in front of a bay window, placed a Jacobson Egg Chair covered in beautifully worn brown leather in the corner and set a manly antique ship model mounted in a wood-framed vitrine on the floor in front of a towering, 26-pane arched window. Despite the ill-chosen teal paint on the walls—we know teal is decoratively hot right now but Your Mama is not feeling it—would it help any of the children to like this room more if they knew it has a private half bathroom and a wet bar?
We can't be certain but appears to Your Mama that a wall was removed between the wood-panelled billiards room with its fully stocked wet bar and the adjacent wood-panelled library with fireplace and direct access to the backyard through a room-wide bank of French doors. Based on a comparison of current listing photos and those included with online listings at the time of Mister and Missus Meloni's purchase we can, however, surmise that, short of paint, few alterations to have been made in the master bathroom or the open-concept kitchen and family room where Your Mama notes there are a few new light fixtures over the center island snack bar but, sadly, the seller's same ol' ho-hum plaid window shades.
Upstairs there are three guest/family bedrooms, each with private three-quarter en suite facility, plus a smaller fourth bedroom that makes use of a large double-sink three-quarter bathroom across the hall. The master suite occupies its own wing of the upper level and encompasses a bedroom with fireplace, a large marble-floored bathroom, and spacious windowed walk-in closet/dressing room and, finally, a private loggia with a corkscrew staircase the descends to a lower level veranda with swimming pool access and ascends to a roof terrace with wrap around views.
Other notable features include an attached three car side-facing garage with convenient direct entry, a total of four fireplaces, two mud rooms that both connect through to the kitchen/family room, butler's pantry, walk-in pantry and walk-in wine room off the kitchen, a fully finished basement and front and back stairs.
The tree-ringed grounds include a long driveway off a semi-private lane, a super-sized circular driveway, vast swathes of lawn, deep flagstone terraces bordered by lush foliage, a free-form swimming pool and spa set into a cluster of boulders and a charming red barn large enough to park six cars and a second floor convertible to an art studio, home office, yoga retreat, party room or whatever.
Mister and Missus Meloni also own an almost 3,000 square foot aerie on the 60th floor of the Park Imperial building on Manhattan's Upper West Side that they had photographed for the March 2008 issue of Architectural Digest and heaved on the open market in March 2012 with a $12 million price tag. The price has since plummeted to $9,950,000 and is currently in contract to be sold to an unknown buyer for an unknown sum of dinero.
Property records also reveal that Mister and Missus Meloni also maintain a 4,600-plus square foot lake front getaway in Candlewood Springs, CT, near New Milford, that they scooped up in November 2003 for $1,325,000. As far as we can tell, the property is not currently on the market.
listing photos: Prudential Connecticut Realty
Didja Hear...
...that Ekaterina Rybolovleva, the ludicrously pampered daughter of Russian potash potentate Dmitry Rybolovlev, has agreed to pay $154,000,000 to acquire the famed private Greek island of Skorpios and the neighboring island of Sparti from legendarily rich Sao Paulo Brazil-based Greek shipping heiress Athina Onassis Roussell? Well, she did. The two island purchase was, in fact, confirmed by the Rybolovlev family investment office.
The rumor is that Missus Onassis Roussell's grandfather Aristotle Onassis picked up the islands in 1962 for only about £10,000. He married Jackie Kennedy on Skorpios in October 1968.
This is hardly the first time the Miss Rybolovlev and her free-spending father have have made the international property gossip columns. In late 2011, amid a deluge of publicity, the 24-year old competitive equestrian spent $88,000,000 on a nearly seven thousand square foot Manhattan penthouse pied-a-terre and several years earlier her father—on behalf of his daughters—coughed up $95,000,000 to acquire a grotesquely opulent ocean front villa in Palm Beach from the famously brash businessman Donald Trump.
Such are the mind numbing real estate ways of the global super rich, children.
The rumor is that Missus Onassis Roussell's grandfather Aristotle Onassis picked up the islands in 1962 for only about £10,000. He married Jackie Kennedy on Skorpios in October 1968.
This is hardly the first time the Miss Rybolovlev and her free-spending father have have made the international property gossip columns. In late 2011, amid a deluge of publicity, the 24-year old competitive equestrian spent $88,000,000 on a nearly seven thousand square foot Manhattan penthouse pied-a-terre and several years earlier her father—on behalf of his daughters—coughed up $95,000,000 to acquire a grotesquely opulent ocean front villa in Palm Beach from the famously brash businessman Donald Trump.
Such are the mind numbing real estate ways of the global super rich, children.
UPDATE: Sonja Tremont-Morgan
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $9,950,000
SIZE: 4,500 square feet 4-5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It was way back in April 2010 when Your Mama last discussed the real estate machinations of The Real Housewives of New York City cast member Sonja Morgan. At that time Miz Morgan—a former luncheon hostess at the tycoon-friendly Midtown eatery San Pietro who became the fourth ex-wife of wildly rich J.P. Morgan descendant and heir John Adams Morgan the Third—had her slender 15-foot wide townhouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side on the open market with a $7,250,000 price tag, hugely reduced from its original $12 million asking price.
Despite the much-publicized financial reorganization plan she filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan in 2011 in which she declared her long-time townhouse was her '"most necessary and cherished asset,"' the sometimes ditzy and recently charmingly drunk in public Miz Morgan re-listed her Manhattan townhouse late last week for $9,950,000, as was first reported by the folks at The Real Deal.
Property records show the reality star turned wannabe toaster oven mogul and her much older ex-husband acquired the limestone-faced townhouse in April 1998 for $9,100,000. A surface glance of the 1998 purchase price and the current list price would indicate there's not much equity in the property but 2010 bankruptcy filings by Miz Morgan reveal she does not—or did not then—carry an underlying mortgage on the property. That means, of course, that Miz Morgan stands to take the full sale price less expenses, real estate fees and etc. Presumably she'd be required to use a substantial portion of the proceeds of a sale to pay off the film production company that successfully sued her for seven million dollars a few years ago.
Reality television aficionados will recall that on the last season of The Real Housewives of New York City Miz Morgan grappled with a handful of water leaks throughout the townhouse. She even got uncomfortably flirty with her plumber....on camera. Remember that? Naturally, the listing says nothing of any leaks or water damage and—one hopes—Miz Morgan has repaired the leaks and any resulting damages because, well, their existence was documented on national television.
Your Mama discussed at length Miz Morgan's elevator-equipped four bedroom and 5.5 bathroom five floor townhouse three years ago and simply can't bear the thought of doing it again so if any of y'all care for a tetch of snarky commentary about the the rich old lady style day-core and its less than ideal location next door to a parking garage between Lexington and Third Avenues then we suggest you have a look at our previous discussion.
Lo and behold, children, Mister and Miz Morgan's co-owned Rocky Mountain getaway is currently on the open market with an asking price of $9,150,000. The ranch property (above), located in the exclusive Gray Head enclave with direct views of the craggy Wilson Range, includes an 8,362 square foot main residence with six bedrooms and eight bathrooms plus numerous fireplaces, an expensively equipped open-concept kitchen and a cavernous great room with stone walls, rustic wood accents and a staggering 35-foot timber-framed vaulted ceiling.
We're not entirely sure but Your Mama is pretty sure that last year Miz Morgan managed to unload a small house in the South of France that she was granted in her divorce and for what it's worth to anyone who might be interested, Miz Morgan's ex-husband continues to own Caritas Island, a 3.5 acre private island compound off the coast of Stamford, CT with a 14,000-plus square foot main house (plus guest cottage, greenhouse and staff quarters) that he originally listed for $25,000,000 but had on the market late last year for the much-reduced asking price of $15,400,000.
exterior photo (New York City): Sotheby's International Realty (via Street Easy)
listing photos and floor plan (New York City): Corcoran
listing photos (Telluride): Telluride Real Estate Corp.
UPDATE: Christina Aguilera
SELLER: Tom Gores
LOCATION: Sherman Oaks/Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $10,000,000
SIZE: 11,107 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Looks like Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton and Robbie Williams are getting a new superstar neighbor. The latest celebrity real estate report from the celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ is that Christina Aguilera has dropped $10 million for a gated, Mediterranean mansion of 11,107 square feet set on a .84 landscaped acre in the guard-gated Mulholland Estates community that's nestled into the Santa Monica Mountains between Sherman Oaks and Beverly Hills (CA).
The seller was private equity multi-billionaire Tom Gores who owns the Detroit Pistons and who bought the property in June 1999 for $4,595,000. Last year Mister Gores leased the house to the newly and acrimoniously divorced businesswoman and (former) Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast member Adrienne Maloof for—so the scuttlebutt goes—around $20,000 per month.
In addition to substantial formal living and dining rooms and a manly wood panelled library, listing details show Miz Aguilera's new crib has six bedrooms, nine bathrooms, at least five fireplaces and two bars plus a walk-in wine cellar. A den/family room has a double height ceiling and the colossal eat-in center island kitchen with walk-in pantry and top grade appliances including a massive La Cornue range that Your Mama can assure the children cost more than the car Miz Aguilera's maid drives.* Listing information also indicates there's a screening room and an enclosed loggia with wood panelled ceiling, completely muraled walls and several over-sized arched glass doors that link the to lush backyard entertainment areas.
Each of the five guest/family bedrooms has a private en suite facility and the celebrity-sized second floor master suite comprises a behemoth bedroom with carved stone fireplace and direct access to a private terrace with outdoor fireplace, a separate private office that Your Mama imagines will soon become Miz Aguilera's dressing room, two walk-in closets and a massive two-room marble-floored bathroom with twin vanities and free standing soaking tub.
The lush grounds have mature landscaping, flagstone terraces, a fountain or two, a saltwater swimming pool and spa with a nearby bathhouse for convenient mid-swim evacuations, a stone gazebo and a built-in barbecue station. Naturally the entire property is secured with a state-of-the-art security system and equipped with high-tech audio/visual systems.
As it turns out this isn't the first time Miz Aguilera has owned a home in the Mulholland Estates enclave. In late 2000 when the former Mickey Mouse Club performer was in her early 20s she shelled out $2,750,000 to acquire a 7,492 square foot mock-Med mac-mansion. She quickly caught a classic case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle and flipped the property at a loss just over a year later to its current owner for $2,575,000.
For the last five or six years Miz Aguilera has owned a walled and gated mansion in Beverly Hills that she bought in August 2007 for $11,500,000 from Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. More than two years ago, not long after it was revealed she and her now ex-husband music exec Jordan Bratman were to be divorced, Miz Aguilera's exuberantly festooned domicile was dropped on the open market with an asking price of $13,500,000. Current online listings show the 11,571 square foot mock-Med mansion is currently in escrow and Your Mama was told by a little birdie who often knows such things that word on the Platinum Triangle Real Estate Street is that the buyer is foreign.
*Your Mama has no idea if Miz Aguilera employs a maid and, if she does, what sort of car the maid drives.
listing photos: Hilton & Hyland
