SELL BUY PROPERTY

The celebrity real estate gods were smiling on sitcom star Kevin James who sold his sprawling mansion in Encino, CA for $55,000 more than asking in just 38 days. (Trulia Luxe Living)

listing photo: The Partners Trust

Ben Stiller wasn't so lucky as he just sold his New York City duplex digs for a $8,995,000. That's $605,000 less than his original asking price, $405,000 less than its last asking price of $9.3 million, and a smidgen more than a million clams less than the $10,000,000 he and his missus paid for the 4,000 square foot Hudson River view spread in August 2008. (Coop Sales via Curbed)

floor plan: Prudential Douglas Elliman
In other New York City celebrity real estate news, Charlotte (NC)-based NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon has pushed his very contemporary three bedroom spread at 15 Central Park West on the market with a $30,000,000 checkered flag. Mister Gorden picked up the 3,454 square foot park view apartment for $9,670,000 back in 2007 and even though he clearly spent a sizable wad doing the place up he's still looking at a very good return on his money. (New York Times)

floor plan: Halstead

Million Dollar Listing star Fredrik Eklund—he's the smarmy, lantern-jawed Swedish broker who has a gay porn past that's he's refreshingly unashamed of—has put is own sun-flooded 2,400 square foot loft-style condo in New York City's Chelsea 'hood on the market for $3.25 million.

Your Mama hears from a tattle tale we'll call Jimmy Crackcorn that Mister Eklund and his husband—and their fiercely cute little dogs—have already decamped for "a better part of Chelsea," specifically a rental apartment in a fairly new, full service luxury building where studio apartments cost upwards of $3,600 a month and a 1,200 and some square foot two bedroom and two bathroom apartment on a high floor runs $10,000 per month. (Curbed)


floor plan: Prudential Douglas Elliman

And, finally, back on the west coast, those crazy kids at Curbed produced a fascinating map of 15 of gazillionaire—and hardcore real estate baller—Larry Ellison's various property holdings in Malibu that all together cost him well over $200,000,000.

And let's not forget he also owns—for all intents and purposes—the entire Hawaiian island of Lanai, an historic mansion in Newport, RI, once owned by the Astor family, several multi-residence water front compounds on Lake Tahoe, a massive modern mansion in San Francisco's posh Pacific Heights 'hood, a vast compound in Woodside, CA, based on an Imperial Japanese royal palace or feudal village (or some such thing), and a 249-acre resort-style estate in Rancho Mirage, CA, with handfuls of guest houses and a private 18 hole golf course with clubhouse. And that's not even the entirety of his personal property holdings. (Curbed)

photo: Curbed

SELLER: Ali Landry and Alejandro Monteverde
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,925,000
SIZE: 3,700 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It's not so tough to spot a celebrity or "celebrity" owned home when online listings make a point to call it out as "Celebrity Owned." Such is the case with the online marketing materials for a fairly modest if hardly inexpensive Spanish style casa in Los Angeles's star-studded Los Feliz community owned by model/actress/entertainment news hostess Ali Landry who shares with her Mexican-born filmmaker husband of six or seven years, Alejandro Monteverde, and listed it this week on the open market with a price tag of $1,995,000.

Miz Landry, native of the great state of Loozeeanna, is a brown haired bayou babe turned beauty queen who may have come in 7th at the 1990 Miss Teen USA competition but took home the sash and crown as Miss Louisiana USA in 1995 and, the following year, Miss USA. For several years in the late 1990s she was best known as the wholesome yet smoldering, gymnastically inclined spokeswoman for Doritos brand chips. In 1998 she was named to People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People and she popped up in all her scantily clad physical glory on the 100 Sexiest Women lists for both FHM and Stuff Magazine.

Her television career picked up a little steam in the late 1990s and early Aughts with recurring roles on Pensacola: Wings of Gold, Felicity, and Eve. Nowadays, among other mostly ho-hum Showbiz projects, she regularly hosts Tinseltown award show fashion wrap ups for TV Guide and occasionally guest hosts on E! News. 

Since 2006 she's been married to and making babies with Mexican-born filmmaker Alejandro Monteverde whom she met at a church bible study. The couple have been open—public, really—about their decision to abstain from sex before they were married. That's really neither here nor there as regards to the real estate matter at hand but it is probably pretty damn unusual in the sexually gluttonous land of Hollywood hook ups and does sort of tie in to a recent interview she gave during which she stated that she and hubby "are seeking to provide more Christian based entertainment projects" such as the direct to DVD Me Again staring Miz Landry, David, A.R. White, and Hollywood holly roller Della Reese.

Despite her more than two decades in the Business of Show, Miz Landry is is perhaps still most famous—at least in the snarky eyes of schadenfreude bitten celebrity bloggers and gossip glossy readers—not so much for her professional accomplishments as for her six year relationship and two-week, whiplash marriage to swahvey t.v. personality Mario Lopez in 2004. By her own public account she dumped his meticulously manicured and man-scaped dog-ass due to his inability to keep it in his pants.*

Property records show Miz Landry purchased her vintage Spanish casa in the prosperous hills of Los Feliz in January 2004—just before her marriage mistake with Mario Lopez—for $1,099,000. Current listing details show the updated 1927 Spanish residence has a total of four bedrooms and three bathrooms in about about 3,700 square feet. For the record, the L.A. County Tax Man puts the house at 2,781 square feet with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Make of the discrepancies what you will.

Set a bit above the street the asymmetrical structure visually coalesces at its center where a turret stands next to an elaborately tiled archway that effectively signifies the main entrance and connects through to a tight, partially tiled entry portico. Inside there are cocoa brown hardwood floors, original stained glass windows and vibrant tile detail work, most of which does not appear to be original but—what do we know?—very well may be. A gently coved ceiling provides both a soupçon of grandeur and a feeling of cozy intimacy in the living room where a rustic wood mantelpiece surrounds a wood-burning fireplace with decorative iron screen and French doors provide direct access to an elevated terrace with over-the-tree-tops view.

The formal dining room has a wood-paneled ceiling (that we don't particularly care for) and an off-center French door with direct terrace access. A two-tiered antique chandelier effectively apes the overlapping circular shapes in the abstract artwork and lights a rustic farmhouse table topped with a hodgepodge of stone, ceramic and glass things. The adjacent kitchen doesn't appear in listing photos to be particularly big but is well equipped with an "eat in island" plus commercial-style range top backed by an extra wide tiled inset arch. The medium brown raised panel cabinetry and the mottled granite counter tops are big snooze for Your Mama but the copper apron front sink is decadent in a way we can appreciate.

The upper level master suite, furnished with a behemoth four-poster bed and settee that appear to consume almost the entire space, has a weirdly pitched ceiling and direct access to a city view veranda. The attached master bathroom is "Moroccan style" according to listing details and also has a slightly cattywompus ceiling. It also has a long sink vanity, a semi-private crapper cubicle, and a free-standing soaking tub set on a stone tile floor in front of a pebble stone-tiled arch-shape punctuated by three smaller, wood-lined arched insets for displaying candles, bubble bath products and other bath time accouterment.

Two more family bedrooms share a hall bathroom and a fourth bedroom with private bathroom offers a separate entrance that's perfect for live-in domestic staff and naughty, boundary-crossing house guests—like Your Mama's dear old boozy b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau—who have an uncontrollable and prurient tendency to squirrel someone in for an indiscriminate slap and tickle without their host(s) being the wiser. Anyways...

The living and dining room (as well as the kitchen) connect to a spacious and elevated pergola shaded terrace for dining, lounging and barbecuing. A lower level walk out basement family room has white washed brick walls, ashy brown wood floors and bursts at its brick seams with what appear to be a carefully if exuberantly curated and displayed assortment of vintage flea market finds and religious iconography. Listing details show the faux-basement has a fireplace and a wide bank of sliding French doors that open to a compact, plaza-like Mexican-paver tiled terrace with a tiled quarter moon-shaped fountain that does double duty as a spa.

We really don't know where Miz Landry and Mister Monteverde plan to move but we'd bet both out long-bodied bitches that their desire to move has something to do with their recent announcement that they're expecting a third child. Mazel tov!

*Okay, people, use yer noggins. Miz Landry didn't call him a "dog-ass" say he didn't "keep it in his pants" or otherwise publicly discuss Mister Lopez's obviously laborious grooming habits. Not so far as we know anyways. But she is on record repeatedly saying she kicked Mister Lopez to the curb—or whatever the kids call dumping a dog-ass spouse or trifling baby daddy nowadays—due to his infidelity.

listing photos: Keller Williams / Los Feliz

SELLER: Breckin Meyer and Deborah Kaplan
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $2,995,000
SIZE: 4,888 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6 bedrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It has come to our attention via our nightly online meander through new real estate listings that three time Emmy nominated actor/writer/producer Breckin Meyer and screenwriter Deborah Kaplan have put their family home in Beverly Hills, CA on the market for $2,995,000.

Brought up on the mean streets of the Platinum Triangle where he went to elementary school with Drew Barrymore and attended high school at the world famous Beverly Hills High School, Mister Meyer has been shaking his Show Business money maker since he was a teenager when he appeared in  a number of commercials and popped up in a handful of t.v. programs including The Wonder Years and L.A. Law. The nineties brought a handful of short-lived sit-coms (The Jackie Thomas Show, The Home Court), a few forgettable t.v. movies, and a small role in the 1995 sleeper hit comedy movie Clueless. Mister Meyer spent the first decade of the Aughts providing a variety of character voices for the animated sitcom The King of the Hill and the better part of the last decade writing and pulling dozens of voices on the long- and still-running stop motion animation series Robot Chicken. In addition to Robot Chicken Mister Meyer also currently co-stars in the crime-comedy series Franklin & Bash with former child star Mark-Paul Gosselaar.

Miz Kaplan's professional credits include mostly goofy comedy movies like A Very Brady Sequel, The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, Josie and the Pussycats—which she also directed, and a little holiday-time cinematic ditty called Surviving Christmas. She's listed as a screenwriter for the the upcoming Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus starring Oscar winning cop-sasser Reese Witherspoon.

They aren't exactly Brad and Angelina in the punishing hierarchy of Hollywood but, make no mistake, they are carrying members of the young Tinseltown establishment. Alas, the sale of their vibrantly dressed residence in the Bev Hills Post Office probably has something to do with their decision last year to go their own ways.

Property records show Mister Breckin and Miz Kaplan bought the property in September 2003 for $1,875,000. Thanks to the always informative Brenda Blabsitall the property was formerly owned by Joan Collins during her Dynasty years and before she hightailed it up to a low-slung Buff and Hensman-designed dwelling bove Coldwater Canyon that was later owned by Jerry Herman, Max Mutchnick, Ellen Degeneres and now Ryan Seacrest.

High hedged and double gated on a typically narrow canyon road deep and high the mountains above Beverly Hills and the Sunset Strip, the architecturally pastiche-d, prairie house-ish center hall traditional abode sits on a rustic stone plinth with stucco and clapboard siding. Listing details show the somewhat low-slung two story house was originally built in 1936, anchors a one-third acre parcel that slopes steeply at its eastern back, and contains a total of five bedrooms and six bathrooms in 4,888 square feet of fully renovated, updated and upgraded interior space.

The quirky decorative tone for the public rooms of the Meyer-Kaplan micro-manse* is set—as it should be—right inside the front door in the elegantly proportioned entrance hall where the erstwhile couple or their lady or nice-gay decorator flanked a Chinoiserie-style bamboo console catch-all with an acoustic guitar and a bongo drum. We know that Mister Meyer is musically inclined and has played in a number of punk and rock bands over the years but an acoustic guitar and a bongo drum right inside the front door just seems a little to, well, aggressive to Your Mama but who cares, right?

The almost unrestrained whimsy hinted at in the foyer really takes hold into the spacious formal living room where one seating area with a fanciful oculus faces a fireplace and fearlessly marries a bevy of idiosyncratic furnishings such as a Moroccan pouf, a deer antler chandelier; a green ceramic elephant stool, a vintage-looking woven basket that looks African or maybe Native American, and a pair of tufted wing back chairs swaddled in what appears to be but may or may not be white leather. All that and a brazenly graphic David Hicksian-patterned rug in dark brown and eggshell white. It's a lot, but it's feasty for for the eyes even if it crosses your personal decorative boundaries. The other end of the room has two chunky yet sleek and masculine armchairs covered in delicious looking caramel colored leather that stand in tense, contemporary opposition to a decidedly campy, zebra stripe upholstered Louis the Something style settee. Two walls of of wood-framed glass doors expose the room to light and the backyard.

The decorative excitement flowers into its full high-camp fruit in the adjoining dining room that has an exposed wood ceiling that is both peaked and dramatically high. A second wacky-cool oculus sits off-center in a wall muraled or otherwise papered with a tree pattern that skews to an Asian vibe. Atop the massive carved stone mantelpiece of the off-center fireplace stands—your eyeballs do not deceive thee, children—a fully feathered stuffed peacock. Who knew anyone besides Your Mama's Step Momma and Big Daddy had a full-on taxidermy peacock on display up in their house? But we digress...

Things get a little more stylistically ordinary and even outdated in the center island eat-in kitchen that's expensively outfitted with high grade commercial-style appliances but still slathered in (passé) black granite counter tops and ringed by pale, raised panel wood cabinets that don't quite extend to the ceiling but do have (disturbingly) elaborate cornices. It's not, by far, the cookery of Your Mama and The Dr. Cooter's domestic dreams, but it's a workable size for renovation and we do appreciate all the children's artwork framed and hung salon-style in the breakfast area.

For better and/or worse, cooler and less kitchy decorative heads prevailed in the family room, a generously sized space with an all earth tone palette, a massive micro-suede sectional sofa, a pair of Mad Men-era arm chairs in cocoa brown leather, and a big ol' built in wet bar long enough to accommodate three fat-assed booze hounds in a trio of upholstered and padded bar stools with stable backrests.

The reasonably roomy second floor master bedroom has a private deck that overlooks the backyard and, although barely decorated at all, is all done in a variety of shades of mushroom, khaki, camel, and biscuit. The attached bathroom is spacious and (almost) all marble with a glass enclosed steam shower and separate soaking tub. The walk-in closet is, as per listing details "fabulous."

The lower level of the back of the house opens up to outdoor leisure and entertaining spaces that include some flagstone terracing that extends underfoot into a large shaded porch nestled into the slope under the master bedroom deck. The terraces give way to a small but flat patch of grass where, somehow, the Meyer-Kaplans managed to refrain from erecting an embarrassingly expensive jungle gym for their young daughter.


One of those grim but necessary child safety fences awkwardly divides the aforementioned areas of the backyard from the swimming pool that is ringed by flagstone terracing. On the far side of the pool, a pergola shaded dining pavilion looks nice for al fresco dining even it is a long way from the kitchen and a long and shallow, east facing loggia that's punctuated by two more street-facing oculi creates a welcomed swathe of poolside shade in the scorch of typical southern California summertime afternoons.

We don't know where either of this former couple have gone or will go but divorce ain't easy and we wish them a smooth road...for the children's sake, you know? Anyways...

*For our purposes, today, we estimate and designate the size range of a micro-manse at about 3,500-6,000 square feet. Anything above 6,000 square feet but under about 9,000 square feet is a mini-mansion and anything in excess of 10,000 square feet is just a plain ol' mansion.

listing photos: Teles Properties

...that international music industry superstars Beyoncé and Jay-Z dropped $41 million (or maybe $45 million) to buy the palatial Malibu (CA) mansion of another music industry icon: Cher.

Everybody knows Cher has had her walled, gated and heavily fortified ocean view estate on the bluffs near Pepperdine University on an off the market since at least mid-2008 when it popped up for sale with a $45,000,000 price tag. The price was later dropped to $41 million.

Listing information from a few years ago—and other online resources—shows the 13,126 square foot Gothic-inspired Italian Renaissance extravaganza sits on 1.72 fully landscaped and heavily fortified acres and includes six bedrooms and seven bathrooms, a stone-walled entrance hall, elaborately dressed living and dining rooms, a den, an office, a home theater and a fitness facility. Your Mama imagines there's a secret, temperature controlled room for Cher's many wigs somewhere up in there, don't y'all?

At the front of the house a grid of mature palm trees shades the long driveway and a fully walled tennis court sits on top of an underground parking garage. The back of the house opens up to various terraces, patios, loggias and an infinity edge swimming pool all with panoramic views up and down the Malibu coast line.

Cher had the Ron Wilson-decorated residence photographed for the August 2002 issue of Architectural Digest but we imagine—and hope—that she may have made some alterations to the lavish day-core since then. Then again, maybe she hasn't touched a thing.

For the record, these rumors of Cher selling to Beyoncé have been floating around since at least January (2013) and Your Mama has no inside intel about Cher's alleged sale to Sasha Fierce and Jay-Z. We remain—to say the least—skeptical. Property records do not yet reflect a transfer of ownership and, children, keep in mind that Your Mama has many times been told by various players in the high stakes world of high price L.A. real estate that Cher has at least twice turned down offers in excess of $40 million. It also seems a very costly and unnecessarily high maintenance choice as a West Coast pied a terre for the East Coast-based couple who, in addition to a huge penthouse in New York City's TriBeCa 'hood, own a handful of condos in an ocean front building in Miami Beach (FL) plus a couple of estates in Houston (TX) that—as far as we can tell—are used primarily by her family. The power pair have long been rumored to own a mansion in or around Scarsdale, NY but, honestly children, we don't know anything about that.

Stranger things have happened in the wacky world of celebrity real estate but, at this point, we're not betting either of our long-bodied bitches this wild and wooly rumor of Beyonce and Jay-Z setting down real estate roots in Cher's massive Malibu manse has any veracity. Remember, puppies, back in February there were rumors and reports they wanted to buy Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. Remember that bit of celebrity real estate cray-cray?

Stay tuned...

photo: Pacific Coast News

Settle down children and other butter beans, Your Mama already knows only about six of y'all probably know who Jon Brooks is. He is not, to be sure, a Show Business celebrity or even an entertainment industry executive. Rather he own and operates a lucrative hedge fund and, as potentially budding real estate baller of the low-key variety, is a pretty darn good example of how some rich people make a rabid habit of filling their property portfolios with multiple multi-million dollar residential properties purchased as investments and for personal use.

Before we get started we'd like to give a shout out to Yolanda Yakketyak. It was she, after all, who some weeks ago by way of a covert communique not only first brought Your Mama's property attentions to Mister Brooks and his in flux but expanding collection of multi-million dollar homes in Los Angeles but beotch did all the damn leg work and provided Your Mama with a very thorough dossier of her efforts.

Mister Brooks perhaps first came to the attention of property gossips back in March 2006 when he made a baller move and paid an impressive $22,500,000 for the 11,000-plus square foot Wallace Neff-designed mansion in Beverly Hills house then owned and extensively renovated by long ago divorced Hollywood royals Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt. Previous owners and/or occupants of the property include philanthropic media heiress Wallis Annenberg and Oscar-winning Golden Age actor Frederic March (The Best Years of Our Lives, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).

Property records and other online resources show the walled and gated mansion was built in 1934 and has nine bedrooms, eight bathrooms. At the time Mister Pitt and Miz Aniston sold the property to Mister Brooks the house was fully equipped with all the usual formal entertaining spaces streamlined to Mister Pitt's exacting specifications, a paneled library, a screening room and an all stainless steel kitchen. Mister Brooks' 2006 acquisition included a separate but adjacent lot at the rear of the property where he's installed a tennis court. It may mortify some and elate others to know that a couple quick tabulations with the well-worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows Mister Brooks combined 2012 tax bill for the two parcels rang up to almost $280,000.

Last June (2012) Mister Brooks pulled a classic real estate baller move and coughed up $7,750,000 to acquire the approximately 8,000-plus square foot house immediately next door to the old Aniston-Pitt-Annenberg-March mansion. He paid, according to online information we dug up, a quarter million bucks more than the $7.5 million asking price. A baller in full bloom would, of course, raze the existing residence and incorporate the property into the other two parcels but Mister Brooks is still a bit of a baby baller and has opted instead to put the six bedroom and seven bathroom residence—described in listing details as a "Gated Paul Williams style traditional"—up for lease at $45,000 per month.

Online marketing materials show the house has an elegant winding staircase, hardwood floors in many rooms and French doors in both the formal living and dining rooms for direct outdoor access. Four of the bedrooms are located up the winding staircase, according to listing information, and a finished, walk-out basement space offers up a media/game room, a gym/massage room and a kitchenette with direct access to the red brick terrace that wraps around a classic, kidney-shaped swimming pool.

According to the Los Angeles Tax Man Mister, 2012 property taxes totaled a bit more than $86,000. Obviously Mister Brooks didn't pay that entire amount as he didn't own the house the entire year but for our purposes it's probably fairly safe to assume his 2013 tax bill with be somewhere in that ballpark.

Like many L.A.-based people with significant incomes and/or fortunes, Mister Brooks maintains an ocean front residence in Malibu that property records show was scooped up in February 2005 for $9,860,000. About a year ago, we first learned for Yolanda, the property popped up on the market with an asking price of $17,500,000. The property was de-listed last year and re-listed this year with a substantially lower $14,995,000 price.

The irregular-shaped lot tucks into a treed promontory just below the massive estate Howard Marks that recently sold to a still-anonymous buyer for $75 million. Online marketing materials show the otherwise dramatically situated property encompasses .89 acres with sweeping views up and down the coastline and direct, shared access to what appears to be a rocky stretch of an all but private beach.

The 1970s era villa of indistinguishable architectural vernacular measures in at a fairly modest 2,810 square feet of earth tones decorated spaces on two floors connected by a custom crafted all-wood corkscrew staircase. There appear to be faux-rustic wood floors under foot and lots of carved wood or pressed tin ceiling details over head. We counted a couple of fireplaces with carved stone mantelpieces and numerous French doors that exit to various balconies, patios and terraces that surround the house. I

Each of the four bedrooms, according to listing information, has a private balcony and ocean views and there are a total of either four or 4.5 bathrooms.* Listing photos show a wind sheltered courtyard with outdoor fireplace and built-in outdoor kitchen/barbecue station. There's a built-in fire pit nested into the rocky slope just above the beach and listing details say the "PH balanced pool" that sits above a freshwater creek that runs down to the oceans is surrounded by ipe decking and is equipped with a fancy pants underwater sound system.

Public records show the 2012 tax bill for his Malibu getaway rang up to nearly $125,000.

Mister Brooks added to his property portfolio last October (2012 when he paid exactly six million clams for a completely undistinguished six bedroom and four bathroom mini-mansion just below Sunset Boulevard in the affluent Flats of Beverly Hills. Of course, Your Mama don't know nuthin' about nuthin' but as far as we can tell the deal went down off-market and we don't have an inkling of Mister Brooks' plans for the property.

The L.A. County Tax Man shows the sellers benefited from a pre-Prop 13 property tax rate that came to just $5,479.37 in 2012. However, unless later re-assessed at a lower value, property taxes in CA are based directly on the last purchase price of the property and, based on normal property tax rates in southern California, Your Mama would expect Mister Brooks' tax bill for 2013 will easily top $60,000.**

Mister Brooks most recent residential real estate acquisition (that we know about) came in February (2013) when he shelled out $17,500,000 for a Holmby Hills estate of nearly two acres sold by super-producer Bud Yorkin and his actress wife Cynthia Sikes.*** Next door is the English County Tudor pile that Kelsey Grammer and his third ex-wife Camille still co-own and can't seem to sell no matter what price they put on it—it seems to be off the open market at the moment—and across the street is the long-time compound of Connie Stevens, currently on the open market for $17,999,000.

One might have imagined that Mister Brooks bought such a substantial property in such a hoity-toity neighborhood in order to occupy it himself but he's opted instead to put the somewhat historic estate up for lease at $99,000 per month.

The house was built in the late 1930s and—so the story goes—was owned by gangster Bugsy Seigel who housed his wife and kids here but never properly lived there himself. It should not be mistaken with his mistress's house where he was shot dead. We've read that make-up mogul Max Factor once owned spread but we don't now anything about that. We're not exactly sure when they bought it or for how much they paid but we do know Mister and Missus Yorkin owned the estate since at least the mid-1990s.

The Yorkins first heaved the estate on the open market in early 2010 with a skin-chapping $49,500,000 price tag. After almost a year on the market the price plummeted in one melodramatic tumble to $29,500,000. It took another two years before Mister and Missus Yorkin had an honest to goodness real estate come to Jesus moment and accepted a final sale price that represents a 70% markdown from their original, sky high asking price.

Listing details from the time of the sale show the walled and gated two-story traditional mansion measures 10,528 square feet with five bedrooms and 7.5 bathrooms. Guests are impressed in the double-height foyer with its wood inlaid marble floor and curvaceous staircase. In addition to the ballroom-sized 60 foot long formal living room the mansion include a spacious formal dining room, a dark-paneled library, a roomy eat-in kitchen and a 35mm screening room. The expansive master suite was designed with dual closets and bathrooms plus a separate fitness suite with steam shower.

Deep terraces connect to rolling lawns that hill and dale down to a nearly hidden lighted tennis court with viewing pavilion, a gazebo set amid a flourishing formal garden, and a swimming pool area with half-moon shaped spa, an outdoor kitchen/barbecue set-up, and plenty of room for sunbathing and dangerous poolside horseplay.

A quick spin through various property record data bases reveals the 2012 property taxes came to a healthy $87,534.60 but, again, since California property taxes are tied directly to the most recent purchase price it would not surprise Your Mama in the least if the property taxes for the Siegel/Yorkin/Factor cm Brooks estate exceeded $175,000 in 2013. Of course, we don't know shit from shinola so we'd be very careful quoting that number like it actually means something.

Maybe we shouldn't have but Your Mama employed a digital abacus to tabulate the total amount of estimated—and likely not anywhere near accurate—property tax bill Mister Brooks might face for the above discussed properties in 2013. A conservative calculation brings the sum to a pocketbook brutalizing $726,000.

That amount, children, would take a California minimum wage worker more than 2,269 forty hour work weeks to earn.**** That's a huge number by any standard but a financial liability easily wiped by the $1,728,000 rent roll that will pour into his coffers if Mister Brooks and his team of real estates succeed at installing asking price rental tenants into the two mansions he currently has up for lease.

We don't know if Mister Brooks property portfolio includes any vacation homes in any high-priced luxury resort areas like, say, Lake Tahoe, Aspen or the Hamptons, but a cursory search turns up evidence in property records that in September 2010 he purchased a New York City pied a terre.

In a move that doesn't even really qualify for baby real estate baller states, records show Mister Brooks paid $255,000 for a 1/12 fractional ownership of what listing details from the time of the sale called the Empire Suite, a 1,445 square foot space at the St. Regis Residence Club in Midtown Manhattan with two bedrooms, three bathrooms and a nearly non-existent kitchenette located—for all intents and purposes—in the foyer. Meh. We really have zero idea if he does or not or if he even thinks in such terms if Mister Brooks wants to achieve actual real estate baller status he better dump this timeshare crap and snatch up a more permanent pied a terre in a posh full-service building on or around Park or Fifth Avenue. Just a suggestion

*As noted in marketing materials the L.A. County Tax Man shows the house has two bedrooms and three bathrooms. Make of those discrepancies what you will.

**This figure is, of course, a complete estimation based on a taxable rate of 1% fo the sale price of the property. In most cases in California the rate is actually a bit higher depending on what additional tax sliver the city may levy on the property.

***Most media reports of the transaction say the sale price was $19.5 million but at least two property record databases show the sale price at $17.5 million.

SELLER: Larry Kramer and David Webster
LOCATION: Warren, CT
PRICE: $3,500,000
SIZE: 4,092 square feet, 4-5 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A little birdie recently brought Your Mama an unexpected real estate worm in the form of a digital press release about the fairly traditional and scenically sensational Connecticut country house owned by famously controversial writer and pioneering AIDS activist Larry Kramer and his long-time architect man-friend David Webster who recently heaved their 15-plus acre lake view spread on the market with an asking price of $3,500,000.

Mister Kramer, for those of y'all who may not recognize his name, started out as a screenwriter in Tinseltown and earned an Oscar nomination in 1969 for his adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love. In the 70s he pretty much switched to novels and plays, largely with overt and sociopolitically polemical homosexual themes. First came the play Sissies' Scrapbook and then the (still) polarizing novel Faggots.

Increasingly disturbed with the mysterious illness that began to sweep through the gay community and angered by the lack of public attention and governmental action,* Mister Kramer jumped feet first, heart and soul into his well-known role as a fearless activist for the the gay community. He went on to co-found the Gay Mens Health Crisis (GMHC), the largest organization to assist people living with HIV and AIDS. Later, still angry with the apathy he saw in the medical community, public and governmental organizations and the gay community, Mister Kramer founded AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, an aggressive and sometimes combative, in-your-face direct action protest organization more commonly known as ACT UP. Despite his frequently controversial ways and outsider status in mainstream culture and often even within the gay community, Mister Kramer made use of the power of public protest to change the game. He harnessed the hot lens of the media to bring oceans of attention to the threats and realities of HIV/AIDS and to successfully change public policy and social mores.

He took home two Obies and a Pulizter Prize nomination for his 1993 play The Destiny of Me, a kind of sequal to his blistering 1985 play The Normal Heart, the latter of which is currently in pre-production as a t.v. movie produced by Ryan Murphy and Brad Pitt. The all-star cast includes Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons, Mark Ruffalo, Taylor Kitch, Julia Roberts, Alex Baldwin and Joe Mantello. It was recently announced Mister Kramer will receive the 2013 Isabelle Stevenson Award at the 67th annual Tony Awards. Anyways...

As best as Your Mama can tell from property records Misters Kramer and Webster purchased the first of their two parcels—the larger, 9.49 acre parcel on which the main residence sits—in January 1992 for $485,000. The smaller adjacent parcel—5.62 acres–was picked up in the fall of 1998 for just $140,000 and remains largely if not entire undeveloped. A quick consult with Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows the couple's total outlay for the lake view property was $625,000, not counting improvements, upgrades, upkeep and carrying costs. Won't be a bad return for them if they get anywhere near their asking price, right?

The Kramer/Webster property occupies an elevated spot on the north side of Lake Waramaug, a small, semi-private recreation lake about 90 miles northeast of Midtown Manhattan in Connecticut's fantastically bucolic Litchfield County. Once upon a time Your Mama knew a small handful of folk who owned homes around Lake Waramaug and we can tell you from actual experience it's a pretty fantastic fookin' spot, particularly as a getaway from the madness of New York.

Listing details show the barn-style farmhouse residence has 4-5 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in 4,092 square feet of space that Your Mama presumes has been worked over by at least once by Mister Webster the architect. A sky lit foyer/stair hall connects through to a formal living room with wood floors, French doors, a full wall of floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with actual books, a large fireplace and a soaring double height ceiling.

Additional spaces include a media room, offices (plural as shown in listing details) and a notably lengthy dining room with French doors, a fairly low-looking beamed ceiling and a herringbone pattern brick fireplace so tall a short person could stand up in there. The dining room is open, loft-style, to the kitchen that marries vintage country house details like bead board cabinetry and barn-wood paneled walls with modern conveniences like an industrial stove and high-grade stainless steel appliances. French doors set into a peaked wall slathered in classic white subway tiles provides a direct and convenient access to the outdoors. A brick-floored sun porch ringed with over-sized 18-pane windows has a direct—if through the trees—over the lake and the wooded rolling mountains around its sinuous perimeter.

At least four of the bedrooms are tucked up into the eaves with sloped ceilings and low windows. One bedroom has a fireplace and a sitting area, another has French doors that open to balcony and a third has built-in twin-sized beds on either side of the door to an attached bathroom. All are dressed in a funky, mixy-matchy melange of mis-matched patterns and fabrics. There are plaids with florals and florals with stripes and stripes with plaids, for example. The pattern mixing is, to be sure, bold and even quite brazen at moments and nobody loves a mis-matched decorative ensemble more than Your Mama but the overall decorative vibe of the place is much less, well, radical than we expected for such a radical person. But that probably says more about our own limited psyche than it does about Mister Kramer's, does it not? Impermanent decorative issues aside...

The hilltop grounds include generous brick terraces, one with a raise circular spa with lake, hill and sky views; a large flat, lake view croquet lawn and a long driveway that rises as it sweeps by the front of the house to the four-car attached garage. Set below the house there's a lap-lane swimming pool with grass on two sides and a red brick terrace wraps around the other. Nearby there's an open air cabana with outdoor shower.

We don't know if any other high profile and/or Showbiz people summer around or near Lake Waramaug—we'd be surprised if there weren't one or two—but our research turned up evidence that Mister Kramer and Websters' scenic spread backs up to a much larger and more developed 35-acre compound purchased in 2009 by maverick Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava for about $5.5 million from former American Express Chairman and CEO James Robinson III.

Mister Kramer and Mister Webster also have an apartment in a swank, full-service building on lower Fifth Avenue that overlooks Washington Square Park.

*We do not know Mister Kramer and really don't know if those are words he would choose to describe how he was feeling but we sort of imagine that for someone to engage so vociferously over such a long period of time he or she would have to feel both angry and disturbed by the status quo.

Listing photos: The Matthews Group

Still touring senior citizen rock star Rod Stewart and his long-time lady-wife Penny Lancaster have reportedly shelled out around £4,650,000* for Durrington House, a hulking, Grade II listed Palladian-style pile about 30 miles north-east of London on 46 bucolic acres near Epping Forest on the Essex/Hertfordshire border.

According to information Your Mama dug up on the internets, the country estate includes a substantial main house with four reception rooms, a paneled formal dining room plus a separate morning room, a billiard room, 10 principal bedrooms, five bathrooms, three fireplaces with carved wood mantels, and a wine cellar in the basement. The oldest part of the house dates back to the early 18th century with later additions from the 19th century.

The property's numerous outbuildings four cottages, a stable block and a carriage house with an 18th-century clock tower. The estate's grounds include vast lawns, formal and informal gardens, a rose garden, an orchard, a greenhouse and potting sheds, a croquet lawn, tennis court and alfresco dining terraces.

Mister Stewart's property portfolio includes another country estate just about 30 minutes from Durrington House plus a nearly 13,000 square foot house in Palm Beach (FL) and an almost 19,000 square foot behemoth in the famously steroidal Beverly Park community in Beverly Hills (CA).

*As far as we can tell, £4,650,000 is the last known asking price for the property. A few quick clicks and clacks on Your Mama's handy-dandy currency conversion contraption shows that amount equals $7,239,820 at today's rates. It's not known—or at least it's not yet been revealed—what amount Mister Steward and Miz Lancaster have agreed to pay for the property.

listing photo: Savills (via the Financial Times)

The real estate news out of Boston is that former first daughter Caroline Kennedy—recently selected by President Obama to be the ambassador to Japan—has heaved two separate and undeveloped parcels on the blue-blooded resort island of Martha's Vineyardon the market for a total of $45,000,000.

The smaller parcel—39.1 acres with more than 1,000 feet of frontage on Squibnocket Pond and over-the-dunes view of the Atlantic Ocean—has an asking price of $20,000,000. The larger, nearly 54 acre beach front parcel carries a $25,000,000 price tag.

The two parcels were originally purchased by Miz Kennedy's mother Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as part of a 366 acre purchase she made back in 1978. According to The Martha's Vineyard Times, in 2006 the original 31 separate parcels acquired by the former first lady were combined and reconfigured into seven sprawling parcels, the largest being 106 acres and the site of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg's pond-front compound. Three equal-sized lots were reserved for the three Kennedy-Schlossberg children, a fifth was "declared forever non-buildable, to preserve the coast environment," and the remaining two, those that are now for sale, set aside and allowable for sale to pay taxes and/or other expenses.

aerial image: Bing

The property peeps at The Real Deal revealed that music industry honcho L.A. Reid has hoisted his sprawling condo-crib on New York City's posh Park Avenue on the market with a sizable $18,900,000 price tag.

The three-time Grammy winning record exec, producer and songwriter acquired 5,003 square foot, full-floor spread back in 2000 for $9.43 million.

A quick scan of the floor plan included with online marketing materials shows the apartment has an art-friendly foyer, a nearly 600 square foot corner living room with two walls  of over-sized windows, an adjoining formal dining room, and an eat-in kitchen and roomy laundry/service wing that could easily be remade into a prison cell-sized staff suite.

There are four dedicated bedrooms, each with a private attached bathroom, plus a library—also with private attached bathroom—that's quickly and easily converted to a proper bedroom. In addition to the two spacious walk-in closets in the master bedroom, the floor plan shows a separate, windowless walk-in closet/dressing room located down the hall.

Listing details indicate the four-exposure apartment is offered with a separate studio apartment (with kitchenette) located on a lower floor. Building amenities include: full-time doormen; concierge and valet services; a state-of-the-art residents only gym; a residents only dining room; private storage rooms; and private climate-controlled wine cellars. Monthly common charges and property taxes come to $14,806 per month according to listing details.

Mr. Reid also owns a substantial residence on 3.27 acres in the Hamptons, Sagaponack to be more specific. Property records she he purchased the swimming pool-, tennis court- and private pond-equipped estate in February 2006 for exactly $10,000,000.

Mr. Reid has long maintained a home in Atlanta and property records show that since 2008 he's owned a modest, 1,326 square foot townhouse residence in a gated community about 8.5 miles northwest of downtown that he picked up for $239,200.

listing photo and floor plan: Brown Harris Stevens

BUYER: Reese Witherspoon
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $3,000,000
SIZE: 3,053 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: As pearl clutchingly scandalicious as the tabloid storm over the recent arrests of otherwise wholesome Oscar winning actress Reese Witherspoon and her talent agent second hubby Jim Toth in Atlanta (GA) may be—he for driving drunk, she for cop sassing—it's their most recent, semi-secret real estate doings that really grab the attentions of real estate obsessed folk like Your Mama.

Some of the children may recall it wasn't too long ago that word made its way down the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine and into Your Mama's increasingly prodigious lap about how the Witherspoon-Toths were scouring the better zip codes of Los Angeles for a secluded new spread in the $15-20,000,000 range. Indeed, multiple sources snitched to Your Mama that, among other similarly sized and priced properties, the couple had a look see at but passed on NBC Broadcasting Chairman Ted Harbert's ex-wife Susan's secluded two-plus acre spread in Pacific Palisades that was then being quietly shown off market but is now listed on the open market with an $18.5 million asking price.

Despite an exhaustive search for a pricey new pad to house their growing family of five it seems Miz Witherspoon and Mister Toth may have decided to stay put in Miz Witherspoon's long-time residence in a discreet, gated enclave in L.A.'s tony Brentwood community where, Your Mama recently discovered, last December she/they surreptitiously shelled out exactly $3,000,000 for the house next door.

The first piece of Miz Witherspoon's three property puzzle was picked up way back in late 2003 when she was still married to actor Ryan Phillippe. She paid, according to property records, $4,725,000 for the corner property and its nearly 7,000 square foot mock-Med mini-mansion.

In July 2009, not too long after she and Mister Phillippe parted ways, Miz Witherspoon forked over $3.325 million for one of the two neighboring properties. She subsequently razed the 3,000 residence and re-landscaped the property to incorporate it into the existing backyard area.

A couple of quick and crude calculations on Your Mama's beloved bejeweled abacus shows that Miz Witherspoon has spent a total of $11,050,000 on her three parcel spread that combined encompass 1.32 acres.

Miz Witherspoon's newest  acquisition had long been owned by handsome NCIS actor Mark Harmon's mother, the late fashion designer turned Maybelline model turned Tinseltown starlet turned painter mother Elyse Knox who was married to Heisman Trophy winning father Tom Harmon until his death in 1990.


Listing details from the time of the sale show the existing, perfectly ordinary single story ranch-style house was originally built in 1956, on a .66 acre lot and includes a total of three bedrooms and three bathrooms—plus an additional staff bedroom and bathroom—in 3,053 square feet. The grounds include a brick-paved motor court and attached two car garage, expansive brick terraces, a swimming pool and a separate stone and glass art studio/guest house. Your Mama has no idea what Miz Witherspoon and Mister Toth have planned for the property.


Avid celebrity real estate watchers know that Miz Witherspoon and by extension Mister Toth have been in mood to shake up her/their portfolio of high-priced properties over the last few years. In 2008 the Miz Witherspoon snatched up Libbey Ranch—a stunning historic ranch in Ojai, CA—from Million Dollar Decorator Kathryn Ireland for $5.8 million. She had the landscaping worked over by accomplished landscape designer Jay Griffith and the interiors all did up by lady-decorator Kristen Buckingham and in March 2011 she and Mister Toth were united in holy matrimony on the grounds in front of a slew of celeb guests. It wasn't long after the pristine property appeared on the cover and in the glossy pages of Elle Decor (Sept. 2012) that it popped up for sale with a $10 million price tag. She recently slashed the asking price by $2.75 million.

In August 2010—half a year before she married Mister Toth—she bought a secluded, equestrian friendly 2.53 acre spread in the prosperous and rustic Mandeville Canyon area of Los Angeles from idiosyncratic actor Steven Seagal for $6.9 million. She quickly leveled the property's various structures before she caught a classic case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle and flipped the property back on the market with an asking price of $7.995 million. The property was quietly sold it in November 2012 for $7.5 to seven-time Oscar nominated producer Kathleen Kennedy and five-time Oscar nominated producer Frank Marshall who, the children may recall, sold their previous home in L.A.—a gigantic Gwathmey Siegel & Associates-designed pile —early 2010 for just over $26 million to Tinseltown royals Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson.

Miz Witherspoon's property portfolio also includes a 6,462 square foot residence in the guard-gated Sugartree enclave in her native Nashville, TN that she scooped up in April 2005 for $760,000.

listing photo: Coldwell Banker Beverly Hills North