SELL BUY PROPERTY

BUYER: Mark Foster
SELLER: Maurice Benard
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,155,000
SIZE: 4,637 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: This one's for all the music hipsters and indie-pop aficionados out there who—like Your Mama—were swept up in the viral video cyclone that developed and raged over the last couple of years around a catchy little ditty called Pumped Up Kicks.

The song, which has a much darker lyric than its bubbly beat might suggest, first showed up on the You Tube in 2010 and quickly made its way to commercial radio where it shot up the charts in 2011. In a prime example of how social media affects and, arguably, shapes and even dominates the dissemination and digestion of art, culture and, even more so, pop culture, Pumped up Kicks has been remixed and remixed and remixed to death, hunties. To. Death. Key of Awesome did an awesome parody with Ducked Up Lips and bazillions of professional, au courant singers like Karmin—not to mention an army bedroom performers like Lizzy Land and Angelika Eide—gave the song their own spin. Miracles of Modern Science did it with classical string instruments and this young gal did it with a banjo. A slow moving but addictive video of a lithe young dancer doin' his thang to a Butch Clancy dubstep remix has already been viewed on the You Tube more than 87 million times. If you haven't been hit by this viral music train yet, well, you must be even older and more out of touch than Your Mama. And, good night children, we're old enough to have gray hair in places nobody wants it or ever thinks they're gonna get it. Anyways...

Last year (2012) Pumped Up Kicks earned the smiley, shaggy-haired front man Mark Foster and his semi-eponymous trio Foster the People* a Billboard Music Award for Top Rock Song plus two Grammy nominations, one for the song and another for the band's debut album Torches. We got it on the iTunes, puppies. We're not ashamed.

Foster the People may not be the next Rolling Stones—or Whitesnake or whatever band makes your personal Legendary list. None the less, in just the few short years they've surfed and sailed the wild popularity of a single song, front man Mark Foster has earned himself enough do-re-mi to buy himself a two and some million dollar country spread nestled into a secluded cranny of the Hollywood Hills where some of his nearby neighbors include Tinseltowners like Adam Carolla and Olivia Munn.

Digital resources show the property in question was sold in late March or early April (2013) for $2,155,000 by Daytime Emmy winning soap story veteran Maurice Benard who, along with his wife, Paula, purchased the first of the two parcels that comprise the mini-ranch for $420,000 in mid-1997. The following February Mister Benard and his missus paid another $274,000 for a much larger, undeveloped adjacent parcel. Based on property records we perused and our own rudimentary calculations Mister and Missus Benard shelled out a total of $694,000 for the two lots that combined span 54,450 square feet, a figure otherwise known as 1.25 acres.

Selling the property was a long slog for Mister and Missus Benard, a very long slog indeed. As best as we can surmise from online resources, the couple had the house on and off the market numerous times at a number of prices since they first heaved the unwanted ranch-ette on to the open market in September 2008 with an in-hindsight woefully optimistic asking price of $3,599,000. Four long years later—and at least one deal down the tubes—the semi-rural property was re-listed for the umpteenth time with a significantly lower $2,399,000 price tag. Property records show it took another 8.5 months before the Benards were kissed by the real estate leprechaun and, at long last, sold their white elephant in the Hollywood Hills. The buyer appears in property records as a vexingly named trust that our impeccably well-informed informant Lucy Spillerguts tattled to Your Mama is connected to—you got it, kitty cats—Mark Foster.

A ratty-looking black top driveway arcs up to an unreasonably and unnecessarily unattractive facade. Check, children, that architectural pearl clutcher of a two-car carport the juts angrily off the front of the otherwise nearly featureless, wood-clad facade. Yeesh! Not surprisingly, listing details Your Mama managed to tease out of the internets shows the residence was originally built in 1975—the pine plank siding is quintessential mid-70s and looks great with ferns—and is currently configured with three bedrooms and three bathrooms in 4,637 square feet of interior space.

Despite the two unfortunately placed doors on either side of that carport, it's through the Southeast Asian-looking wood and steel entry gates and down the full length of a deep, shaded veranda that one must go to find the residence's rather reclusive front door. Wood-framed glass front doors, slate tile flooring, wood treads and wrought iron spindles on the open staircase, and a soaring, double-height exposed wood ceiling pretty much sum up the earthy materials palette found throughout the loft-like, open-concept main living spaces on the ground floor.

Wood floors run on the diagonal in the living room area that's well lit via the sky light that pierces the pitched exposed wood ceiling. A full, trapezoidal wall of windows and sliders connects to a tatty looking courtyard-like outdoor space that, in the right hands, could be a fantastic garden lounge and dining terrace.

The floor switches to giant, square slate tiles that runs throughout a handful of flexi-use spaces—dining, den, sun room, family room, music lounge, reading nook, whatever—and right on into the cook-friendly kitchen. The kitchen is well-equipped with a center work peninsula and a bumper crop of high-grade stainless steel appliances that include a six-burner commercial-style range with built-in griddle section, and a side-by-side fridge/freezer set up. Dark raised panel cabinetry that we don't care for is topped by mottled gray granite counter tops and, opposite the fridge freezer, there's a lowered breakfast counter held up by a pair of disturbingly giant carved stone (or molded concrete) corbels that makes it a week bit difficult to access the inset microwave cubby.

A fully-equipped screening room—located in a space that Your Mama is pretty darn sure used to be a garage—has at least seven boxy black leather seats with built-in in drink holders in the double-wide armrests and an exterior entrance through one of those aforementioned unfortunately located doors that flank the carport.

Upstairs the pleasantly roomy master bedroom is blessed with a vaulted, exposed wood ceiling and punished with nappy-looking wall-to-wall carpeting that any sensible person would switch out before ever moving in. No shade Mister Benard, but do we really need to think about all the stuff that gets trapped in deep pile wall-to-wall carpeting...in the master bedroom? Anyways, a bank of windows and glass doors open to a private terrace that serves up an expansive if not exactly electrifying canyon view. According to an 2008 listing Your Mama teased up out of the internets the closet in the master suite is—or was—cedar lined and the attached bathroom is slathered in multi-toned slate tile with a double sink vanity, a sizable soaking tub and a separate shower space. There's at least one other bedroom on the upper level with direct access to a private terrace and listing information indicates there's also a "Sep. gym/maids & laundry room w/ loads of storage."

The kitchen and family room area wrap around a small dining deck that over looks a down-sloping swathe of bougainvillea encircled open space. It's a big ol' dirt patch, really. There's an over the tree tops canyon and mountain view and it seems just enough space for Mister Foster and his band mates to host a mini, backyard version of Coachella, although some of his neighbors might not be so keen about that idea.

*In addition to Mark Foster, Foster the People is composed of Mark Pontius and co-founder Cubbie Fink.

listing photos: Unlimited Style Real Estate for Hilton & Hyland

SELLER: Some say it's Tom Cruise, but y'all should be skeptical of that
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $28,000,000
SIZE: 8,300 square feet, 6 bedrooms,

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In 2009 property gossips in New York City and around the globe went plain ol' berserk over the wildfire celebrity real estate rumor that Tom Cruise and his then third and now ex wife Katie Cruise just might be the mysterious buyers who shelled out $15,075,000 for a stunning six floor townhouse on West 12th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the heart of the Gold Coast in New York City's Greenwich Village.

The speculation and rumors apparently got started by chit-chatting doormen on the block and they persisted even after both Mister Cruise and Missus Cruise—through their representatives, natch—issued denials of the much-alleged townhouse acquisition. Based on our own research into the scuttlebutt, Your Mama is not now and never was convinced that Mister and ex-Missus Cruise were the real buyers of the elegant1860 townhouse.

Whoever the owner may be, it has come to Your Mama's attention by way of a short missive from our ever-intrepid aide de camp Hot Chocolate that the townhouse long alleged to have been bought by Mister and ex-Missus Cruist back in 2009 has popped back up on the market with an attention getting $28,000,000 price tag, and, well, it's pretty damn spectacular.

Current listing details show the 21-foot wide and approximately 8,300 square foot townhouse, blessed with a magnificent wrought iron railed stoop, stands six stories above ground with an additional finished basement level below grade. There are a total five terraces, seven working fireplaces, 7.5 bathrooms, state of the art built-in surround sound and humidification systems, and an hydraulic elevator that conveniently services all but the penthouse level.  Listing details show the townhouse was worked over but good by accomplished New York City-based architect Steven Harris.

We counted six bedrooms on the floor plan included with online marketing materials, divvied up as follows: a staff suite with kitchenette and roomy full bathroom on the garden level; two ample, full-width bedrooms on the fifth floor, both with relatively compact windowless en suite facilities; two more smaller bedrooms on the fourth floor, one with small private study and puny bathroom and the other with small private terrace and unexpectedly spacious bathroom; and, finally, the master suite on the third floor that encompasses a full-width bedroom, a large walk-in closet plus additional closet space, and a luxuriously appointed but windowless marble bathroom with double sinks and cramped, windowless crapper cubby. The master bedroom connects through to the upper landing of the townhouse's rear stairs where French doors open to a terrace that's probably larger than a typical Greenwich Village studio apartment and the master bathroom has a back door into a street-facing library/private sitting room—also accessible from the stair hall—with built-in bookcases on either side of a fireplace.

The parlor floor hosts the primary public entertaining spaces and includes a vestibule entry and foyer, a cozy front parlor, and, separated by a short gallery that runs behind a well-placed powder pooper and elevator shaft, a more stately-scaled rear parlor. Beyond the rear parlor there's a sunny sun room that could also be used as a formal dining room or den). On the garden level below, a den—or possible dining room—generously spans the full width of the house and has a could-be-awkward attached three-quarter bathroom. A short corridor links the den/dining room to a top quality double-wide galley kitchen that opens at the back through a bank of French doors to a slender garden/terrace that wraps around to an interior courtyard nestled in between the kitchen and the den/dining room.

A glassed in solarium on the penthouse level opens on opposites ends through vast panels of glass to a pair decks that have been well planted for privacy. The smaller, south-facing street-side deck is equipped with an enclosed outdoor shower and—buckle your safety belts for this one—a partially sunken Japanese soaking tub for which Your Mama is living, hunties, living. Not because we like to sit like stew meat in a vat of near boiling water—we decidedly don't—but but The Dr. Cooter sure does, and on a regular basis. Had we a Redwood number like this on a drop-dead deck like that we might never have packed our bags and headed west. Anyways...

Whether Tom Cruise actually owns this show stopping townhouse or—as Your Mama thinks—it's owned by a much less famous but even richer businessman, it's a stunner sure to be a hot property, don'tcha think? Fer chrissakes, kids, about the only thing that might make this place better, really, would be a private garage. And, seriously, a person could suffocate holding their breath for an 8,000-plus square foot townhouse with a mid-block location on a prime street in the Greenwich Village Gold Coast with a private garage, you know? All real estate is a compromise even if it cost $28,000,000.

listing photos and floor plan: Brown Harris Stevens

Actor Sean Patrick Flanery (The Boondock Saints, Numb3rs, Criminal Minds and soon to be seen on Dexter) sold his house in the Hollywood Hills for $910,000.

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Without a Trace star Enrique Murciano listed his rectilinear mid-century modern in the Hollywood Hills for $1.79 million. He bought the property in 2009 for $1.6 million.

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Although Hugh Hefner and his 27-year old Playmate wife, Crystal Harris, live lavishly at the legendary Playboy Mansion in L.A.'s Holmby Hills, the octogenarian soft-porn peddler does not personally own the sprawling party pad. It's owned, rather, by Playboy Enterprises.

In order to ensure his young enough to be his great-granddaughter wife has a place to live after he's gone, he romantically snatched up a sexy-sexy-sexy five million dollar contemporary crib in the Hollywood Hills where the third and current Missus Hefner can reside in her widowdom.

Bless her valiant real estate heart, television hospital drama royal and  Kate Walsh is giving it another go. The Private Practice actress has re-listed her Spanish style house in L.A.'s star-studded Los Feliz area for $4,750,000, the exact same price she paid for the 5,940 square foot walled and double-gated mini-estate back in June 2007. This marks the fourth time in three years the red-headed divorcée has heaved her house on the open market.

Listing details show the two story main house has a turreted porch and a double-height entrance hall sure to impress guests and the Chinese food delivery man alike. There are four upstairs en-suite bedrooms—one Miz Walsh uses as a dressing room, a total of six bathrooms and three fireplaces as well as roomy entertaining room that include formal living and dining rooms and a spacious center island eat-in kitchen that adjoins a small t.v. lounge with French doors that open to the backyard.

The landscaping looks lush and mature and there are several outdoor living areas including a pergola shaded lounge with modern-minded concrete outdoor fireplace. A sizable, three-room detached structure at the back of the property near the swimming pool where Miz Walsh has a couple of offices, a Pilates studio and an updated bathroom.

Here's hoping the fourth time's a charm.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty

First he testified under oath that Michael Jackson never touched him inappropriately.

Then, already an in demand choreographer amongst the boy band and bubblegum pop star set, Wade Robson became a judge on the televised dance competition So You Think You Can Dance.

Recently he filed something called a creditor's claim again Michael Jackson's estate that, despite his previous sworn testimony, alleges he was repeatedly child molested by Michael Jackson over a seven year period. Obviously, neither the Jackson family nor their sassy attorney Thomas Messereau is having any of that. Anyways...

Now comes word down the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that Wade Robson sold his three bedroom and 2.5 bathrooms Santa Monica condo for $825,000, $36,000 more than the asking price.

So the story goes, he and his missus—and baby makes three—plan to move to the wife's native state of Hawaii.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Montana

Until recently, 26-year old music industry supernova Florence Welch—the vibrantly diaphanous, ginger tressed front woman for The Machine—lived in South London with her mum. Could you die? Anyways, the idiosyncratically stylish singer recently settled into her own place, a wee Georgian cottage just a 10 minute walk away from mom.

Not surprisingly, as seen in a spread in the May (2013) issue of global fashion authority Vogue, the humbly scaled cottage presents as a slightly peculiar and authentically personal synthesis of grandma-style vintage meets organically inclined modern with a whole lotta gypsy glamour sprinkled on top and stuffed in the closets. Just like, some might say, Miss Welch who, along with her fearsome band, have two Brit Awards in their pocket and three Grammy nomination notches on their designer belts.

Anyways, children, note the giant oculus sky light over the eight-seat farmhouse table in the rustically wood-floored kitchen and check the number of dangerous spike-toed flats Miss Welch has at her ready disposal in her glamgranny-girlish designer duds stuffed dressing room.

photo: Angelo Pennetta for Vogue (via Curbed)

Property gossip reports out of South Florida are nine kinds of breathless over the scuttlebutt that lewd, crude and redonkulously rich radio shock jock Howard Stern and his wife Beth Ostrosky dumped (around) fifty million bucks in an off-market deal for a robber baron worthy ocean front compound along the most expense stretch of sand in pompously posh Palm Beach, FL.

The 19,800 square foot Palladian behemoth, owned by New Hampshire textile magnate Martin Trust, has 12.5 bathrooms, according to property records and previous reports, as well as an elevator, a croquet lawn, garage parking for 23 cars and an annual tax bill of more than half a million bucks.

Some of  Mister and Missus Stern's new nearby neighbors include the conservative blowhard Rush Limbaugh, billionaire Nelson Peltz and Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev who bought his ocean front spread for $95 million from Donald Trump. Imagine those backyard barbecues...

Now then, what's to become of Mister and Missus Stern's massive ocean front home in the Hamptons? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Bueller?

aerial photo: Bing

They say entertainment industry juggernaut Jennifer Lopez finally bit the real estate bullet and bought herself a ten million dollar classic shingled gambrel in the Hamptons, just down the road from scenically stunning Mecox Bay in the sleepy but tony Water Mill area, to be exact.

Listing details show the L-shaped mansion sits on two separate parcels that total about three acres. There are five family bedrooms on the upper floor, a staff suite tucked between the kitchen and the direct entry three car garage on the ground floor plus two more potential bedrooms in the fully finished basement for less favored guests and/or live-in domestic staff. We counted seven full and two half bathrooms, three fireplaces and numerous covered porches on both above ground floors.



In addition to the two potential bedrooms the finished basement also features a steam room and separate sauna just outside a fitness room, an "art room," a "recreation area" and a media room. Wedged into a tight spot just outside the basement level library is a tiny, windowless massage room massage room and just down the hall there's an over-sized walk-in cedar closet.

Meanwhile, Marc Anthony, JLow's third ex-husband and the father of her children, spent a comparatively meager $2.5 million on a much less exciting mock-Med macmansion in Encino, CA. Guess we know who wore the financial pants in that family.

listing photos and floor plan: Corcoran

SELLER: Rob Dyrdek
BUYER: Blake Anderson
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,175,000
SIZE: 2,792 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: As of June 2012 professional skateboarder turned hard-charging entrepreneur and reality television host Rob Dyrdek (Rob and Big, Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy, and the currently in airing Ridiculousness) owned not just one but three million dollar-plus houses in L.A.'s fabled Hollywood Hills: one in the Mount Olympus community, another in the Hollywood Knolls nabe and a third in a little known 'hood called Laurel Hills.

Mister Dyrdek's most recent addition to his property portfolio came in June 2012 when he shelled out $2.5 million for a fully renovated two story contemporary in the sleepy Laurel Hills neighborhood at the top of Laurel Canyon. Listing details from the time of his purchase show the residence of just over 3,700 square feet has four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a long, just about unimpeded view that sweeps across a wide swathe of the San Fernando Valley.

Last November (2012) Mister Dyrdek sold a boxy, concrete and glass contemporary in the Mount Olympus neighborhood above Laurel Canyon for $2,125,000, a figure that represents a bank account brutalizing $334,000 loss from the $2,459,000 he paid for the place back in May 2008.*

Fortunately for Mister Dyrdek, he recently and finally, after almost five years on and off the market at a variety of prices, unloaded a mid-sixties modern in the somewhat geographically discrete Hollywood Knolls neighborhood. No, puppies, Your Mama did not make a liquor-fueled typo. The house really was on and off the market for nearly five years. Unfortunately, like with Mount Olympus house on which he lost a bundle, Mister Dyrdek sold his Hollywood Knolls house at a significant loss. Property records show he paid $1,400,000 for the hillside house in June 2005 and online evidence suggests he first listed it in June 2008 at $1.75 million. By October of 2012 the asking price had fallen to $1,199,000 and property records reveal Mister Dyrdek managed to shed his real estate albatross a few weeks ago, in mid-March 2013, for $1,175,000.

A few clicks and clacks on the well-worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that Mister Dyrdek has tallied up a throat constricting real estate loss of $559,000 in the last year, not counting other also significant expenses such as (but not necessarily limited to) carrying costs, improvements and real estate fees. Presumably Mister Dyrdek's money managers and accountants know how to turn all those losses into a tax benefit. Isn't that how it's done?

The Hollywood Knolls house was purchased, according to property records, through a vaguely named trust that Your Mama's celebrity real estate Deep Throat Lucy Spillerguts tells us is controlled by the thickly mustachioed and crazily kinky-haired comedian and actor Blake Anderson.

Mister Anderson may not be a big household name in the vein of au courant comedians like, say, Louis C.K., but he's been a solidly upwardly mobile minor player in the comedy scene for the last several years. He studied with the legendary improv comedy groups The Groundlings and the Upright Citizens Brigade before he co-founded his own sketch comedy group, Mail Order Comedy, with longtime b.f.f.s and fellow comedic up and comers Adam DeVine, Anders Holm, and Kyle Newacheck.

Over the last few years the recently secretly married Mister Anderson has popped up on a couple of primetime sitcoms programs (Community, Entourage) and a handful of short form t.v. series (Crossbows & Mustaches, 5th Year) but unarguably his big Showbiz break came in 2010 when he and his Mail Order Comedy cohorts were tapped to write, produce and co-star in Workaholics, a raunchy and low brow yet smartly conceived scripted series, now in its third season with two more seasons already ordered by the network. The show centers on three sophomoric post-college man-children—and their dopey drug dealer—who live together and share a single cubicle at a soul-crushing telemarketing company. It's kind of Girls for guys, dudes and brahs who think sexting is sexy and farting is funny. Just FYI, kids: underneath all that frizzy hair and slacker-hipster attire there lurks the slender, taut and hairless body of a twink but that's really neither here nor there, is it? Anyways...

Property records show the glutially unfriendly multi-level mid-century modern post and beam residence was built high on the hillside of a steep but generous .45 acre lot in 1967 and listing details Your Mama squirreled out of the interweb show there are three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms in 2,792 square feet.

The street-level two car garage is an excellent feature in the tightly packed Hills of Hollywood but it only takes eyeballs to see the house looms spectacularly high over the street. This is not, children, a house for anyone with underdeveloped haunches or a bad ticker. By Your Mama's observation and estimation it's at least two full flights from the street to the front door that opens (awkwardly) directly into a combination foyer/sitting room with raised fireplace and mottled copper and ocher slate tile flooring.

It's another full flight up to a proper living room with yellow blond wood floors under foot and a wonderfully decadent 15-foot ceiling overhead. Your Mama appreciates the architectural meatiness of the massive raised hearth fireplace with its double smoke stake flue and we swoon for the full wall of glass panels and sliding glass doors that connects to a small terrace with big canyon and sky views. Knowing this neighborhood as we do, Your Mama thinks this house might have a terrific view of the 101 Freeway as it bends its way through the Cahuenga Pass between Hollywood and Studio City in the San Fernando Valley.

Behind the fireplace another half flight of stairs leads up to an open concept dining and kitchen space that overlooks the living room. As inconvenient as it might be to have the living room on a separate level from the dining room and kitchen, it's the three-plus flight hike from the street to the kitchen that really seems like, well, a literal and figurative pain in the patooty. We know for sure that our house gal Svetlana would demand a minimum of a 20% raise if we were to ask her to schlep our groceries, cleaning supplies and other kitchen and bathroom necessities up all them stairs on a regular basis.

The kitchen isn't huge but it is certainly reasonably well equipped with decent grade stainless steel appliances, speckled granite counter tops on cherry-finish cabinetry, and a center island snack bar with built-in microwave cubby. However, the kitchen also looks like a bit of an after thought that was shoved thoughtlessly up into corner. With all that head space Your Mama wonders why the kitchen designer didn't take the cabinets all the way to the ceiling or anchor the airy space more effectively with a larger center island but, alas.


The master suite occupies a private end of the upper level and claims a full wall of glass sliders that open to a private terrace in the tree tops that's perfect for a post coital cigarette and/or a weekend wake and bake with a loved one. The average sized attached master bathroom is almost entirely decked in white with a contrasting gray slate tile floors. Along one wall there's a double sink vanity that looks to Your Mama like it might be from Ikea and on the opposite wall there's a glassed in white tile shower stall. Two more bedrooms with a shared hall bathroom and laundry facilities located on a separate floor ensure seclusion for guests and secretive teenagers.

The dining area opens through sliders to a slender pergola shaded dining terrace that makes a long run between the back of the house and the plunge-sized swimming pool. The swimming pool may be in-ground but the spa shown in listing photos is one of those above ground things that we imagine had to be craned in since—as we've repeatedly mentioned—it's a long, long, long haul from the street. The backyard is remarkably roomy and flat for a house in the hills and besides the pool and spa includes a small deck for sunbathing, a wee patch of lawn and a towering retaining wall that holds back the steep and densely foliaged up slope behind the house.

We don't know if Mister Anderson currently owns (or previously owned) any other residential property in Los Angeles or in the Bay Area where he was born and bred but we do know that in 2011 the moe-ron fractured his damn spine when he jumped off the roof of his house and landed on a beer pong table. This ass-hat move, children, was not only captured on video but put up on the internets for the world to gawk at. Now that, children, is classy with a capital K.

*Interestingly the non-celebrity buyer immediately caught a severe case of The Real Estate Fickle and flipped the property back on the market two months later with the familiar asking price of $2.125 million. A couple months later the asking price was raised to $2,295,000. A marketing maneuver like that might seem counterintuitive to some but was absolutely effective because the property was put into escrow just two weeks later.

listing photos: Prudential California

SELLER: Michael Rapino
BUYERS: Anna Faris and Chris Pratt
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $3,300,000

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Back in late February (2013) Your Mama (dissed) and discussed a gated mock-Med villa above Hollywood in L.A.'s lower Nichols Canyon area then owned and listed by Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino and his actress missus Jolene Blalock. The 4,700+ square foot house had been a few weeks earlier with an asking price of $2,975,000 and, by the time we got around to reading the residence up and down, it was already in escrow.

Well, children—as an indication of the temperature of the upper end real estate market in Los Angeles, there must have been multiple offers on the three bedroom and 3.5 bathroom mini-estate because property records show it sold in early March for—drum roll please—$3.3 million.

It was The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial that first got Your Mama sniffing back around the property records and we came up stymied. Our always impeccably well informed friend and confidant Lucy Spillerguts, on the other hand, snitched with the utmost confidence that property was purchased for $325,000 over the asking price by up and coming comedic power pair Anna Faris and Chris Pratt.

In addition to her voice over work on the animated sitcom series King of the Hill in the early to mid Aughts and a handful of money making animated movies that include Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise, Miz Faris's resume includes a growing list of well regarded feature films like Lost In Translation and Brokeback Mountain. She also has under her professional belt a number of schlocky but successful movies such as Scary Movie (1, 2, 3 and 4) and a couple of goofy rom-coms like The House Bunny and the dismal performing What's Your Number. All careers have warts, right?

Mister Pratt cut his Showbiz teeth in the early and mid-Aughts on popular programs like Everwood and The O.C. He currently does a downright stand up job as one of the charmingly idiosyncratic doofuses—doofi?—on the the sitcom Parks and Recreation. His credits also include a few serious movies like Zero Dark Thirty and Moneyball as well as a silly rom com or two like the dismal performing The Five Year Engagement. All careers have warts, right?

Avid, long-time followers of the celebrity real estate scene may recall that way back in 2007 Miz Faris and her first and ex husband, actor Ben Indra, pushed their Hollywood Hills house on the market with an asking price of $1,995,000, the exact same price they paid for the place two years earlier. Property records do not reflect a transfer of ownership and it's Your Mama's understanding from several nearly always reliable sources that the house was retained by Miz Faris who remained in residence with her second husband—that would be Mister Pratt—and their small child.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Beverly Hills South

BUYER: Jennifer Love Hewitt
LOCATION: Pacific Palisades, CA
PRICE: $3,250,000
SIZE: 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Boobtastic B-list actress Jennifer Love Hewitt* sold her recently deceased mother's six bedroom and six bathroom mini-mansion in L.A.'s celeb-stocked Toluca Lake nabe last December (2012) for $2,150,000 to a well-regarded L.A.-based Italian chef. Earlier in the year she put her own semi-Spanish style lake-front house—located catty-corner across the street from moms—up for lease at $12,500 per month. So, although unexpected, it came as no surprise when we received a covert communique from a tattle tale we'll call Wanda Tellyousomething who whispered to Your Mama that the 20+ year Showbiz veteran—and occasional celebrity gossip blog laughing stock and punching bag—dropped $3.25 million on a new, contemporary home in the sleepy, family friendly and exceedingly affluent Los Angeles beach community of Pacific Palisades.


Miss Love Hewitt came to Los Angeles as a wee child from a tiny town in central Texas with lots of heart and stardust in her pre-teen eyes. She booked numerous commercials before she got her big t.v. break in 1989 on Kids Incorporated starring none other than Stacey Ferguson, the entertainer now known as the uni-monikered Fergie. In 1995 the ambitious young actress landed on the enormously popular primetime family drama Party of Five, a high-profile ensemble gig that resulted in a starring role in the very short-lived sequel Time of Your Life. A number of hokey t.v. movies followed (The Audrey Hepburn Story, Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber) until 2000 when she snagged a five year run as the clairvoyant star of the popular Ghost Whisperer, canceled in 2010. Miss Love Hewitt currently stars in all her curvaceous physical glory in The Client List, a naughty-themed primetime drama about an upscale Sugar Land, TX massage parlor that specializes in happy endings and other extra sexual treats for a cadre of affluent and sometimes pervy gentlemen.

Along the way, for better and worse, the famously unlucky in love Miss Love Hewitt became just as well known for her merry-go-round romantic life as for her professional accomplishments. JLove—don't you imagine she might describe herself as a hopeless romantic?—has reportedly dated or "dated" scads of famous and semi-famous men including but not limited to Jamie Kennedy, Ross McCall, John Mayer, Shaggy, Ethan Zohn, Wilmer Valderrama, Carson Daily and Joey Lawrence. She's currently hot and heavy with her Client List co-star Brian Hallisay. He plays her husband and the father to her young children. Is this art imitating life or life imitating art? None of the above? Who cares? Anyways, Wanda also told Your Mama that until they move to their new digs in the Palisades the couple of less than a year are shacked up in unmarried sin in a rented penthouse pad atop one of the swankier high-rise apartment towers that line Wilshire Boulevard near Westwood and Century City.


As recently as mid-April some of the celebrity-based blogs and gossip glossies reported that Miss Love-Hewitt and her co-star/man-friend were house hunting and planning to make a baby, in that order. Turns out, butter beans, by mid-April Miss Love Hewitt was already deep in escrow on a modern-minded house in Pacific Palisades that property records show she closed on in late April (2013) for exactly $3.25 million. For the record, since the property was purchased via a property trust long connected to Miss Love Hewitt and her Toluca Lake residence it's not clear to Your Mama if Mister Hallisay has any financial stake in or ownership of the residence.

Property records indicate Miss Love Hewitt bought the modern abode from designer denim mogul Peter Koral who co-founded the wildly successful 7 for all Mankind brand that he and his partners sold in 2007 for more than three quarters of a billion bucks.

Listing details don't include the square footage for the two-story contemporary but does reveal the urban loft inspired single family dwelling was designed by Santa Monica-based architect Melinda Gray and built in 2007. The steel, glass, concrete and wood structure sits firm-footed on a (quite tight) .13 acre mid-block lot above Temescal Canyon with four bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, and an uplifting butterfly roof that evokes—or mimics, really—a classic, mid-century modern architectural affect.

The urban meets organic interior spaces include an open plan main living area with a double height living room/lounge large enough to accommodate a substantial sitting area in front of a television surmounted fireplace plus host a baby grand piano in front of a wide wall of glass that slides open up to a dense thicket of up-lit bamboo that shields the view from the upper floor of the closely situated neighboring house.

At the back of the sprawling room a dining area and adjacent den area function as a single space along with the spacious open concept center island kitchen outfitted with granite topped custom bamboo cabinetry and a multi stool snack and booze bar. A plethora of high quality commercial style appliances includes two ovens, two dishwashers, a six burner range, and a built-in espresso maker. A floor-to-ceiling glass panel pocket door disappears into the wall and unites the interior to the bamboo ringed courtyard-style backyard. Somewhere on the ground floor there's a small bedroom/office/den with direct access to a bamboo enshrouded concrete patio.

A sky lit and satisfyingly muscular open tread floating staircase fashioned of wood and steel with frosted glass panel banister ascends to a wee library loft on the second floor. A sphincter tightening glass-railed catwalk spans the living room below and connects to the master suite that's complete with walk-in closet, street-side balcony with (what appears to be) a fire pit and over-the-tree-tops view towards the ocean, and an expensively appointed but hardly huge custom tiled bathroom with separate soaking tub and steam shower.

Back downstairs the courtyard-style backyard isn't very big by any standard except perhaps an urban one. It is, howevuh, well (if maybe over ) equipped and smartly organized for a handful of recreational utilities. At the back there's a slightly raised plunge-sized swimming pool backed by a stacked stone wall. Up against the house there's a television lounge area with outdoor fireplace and, back in the corner, there's a built-in fire pit. Why, children, a backyard this bantam needs both an outdoor fireplace and a built-in fire pit is beyond Your Mama's ability to fathom. It just seems like a fireside overkill, you know? Anyhoodles poodles...

The still somewhat nascent couple have reportedly already talked babies and mazel tov for them. We expect that soon after Miss Love Hewitt gets impregnated and/or married she and Mister Hallisay soon start another extensively exhausting hunt for a larger, more family-oriented home with a backyard large enough to accommodate both a ludicrously expensive jungle gym and ludicrously lavish (and pricey) birthday parties. Because, let's be honest, children, if ever there were a Tinseltowner who Your Mama could imagine would spend big on a jungle gym for her tiny tot or drop a small fortune on an extravagant, themed birthday party for a one or two year old—a tiny child who will not remember a single spendy second of the damn thing, mind you—it would be Miss Love Hewitt. And—no doubt—one of the gossip glossies would be invited to report on the elaborate festivities and one of the gossip glossies would happily do just that. Are we wrong?

With a new house not so far from beach—we guesstimate it's about 2,500 feet as the crow flies—it remains to be seen what Miss Love Hewitt plans to do with her old house in Toluca Lake.**

*Don't hate, people. She's the one who recently publicly jested she ought to insure her 36Cs for five million bucks. And—all T no shade—she is B-List. You know she is. Don't misunderstand Your Mama. The lady has worked, relatively speaking, steadily since she was prepubescent and she's earned (and earns) an enviable fortune in the dream crushing cat eat pony world of Hollywood. So kudos for that. But in the overall hierarchy of Hollywood—and there most certainly is a merciless hierarchy in Hollywood—she's not exactly an A-List actress in the vein of, say, Jessica Chastain or Jennifer Lawrence. Can we agree? Anyways...

**Your Mama heard through the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that Miss Love Hewitt leased her Toluca Lake residence to Jessica Simpson's mother Tina after she moved from the Encino mansion she once shared with her former preacher husband who—as it turns out and so the stories go—is a homosexual. We can't vouch for the veracity of the scuttlebutt and we don't know if it is true that Miss Love Hewitt leased her house to ex-Missus Simpson if the newly divorced celebrity mom remains in residence or if she's moved on.


listing photos: Prudential California

BUYER: Jensen Ackles and Danneel (Harris) Ackles
LOCATION: Malibu
PRICE: $4,800,000
SIZE: 4,698 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Last week the long-legged blond at Trulia Luxe Living revealed that handsome soap star turned sci-fi actor Jensen Ackles (Days of Our Lives, Dark Angel, Dawson' Creek, Smallville, Supernatural) and actress Danneel (Harris) Ackles (One Life to Live, One Tree Hill) "sold not one but TWO homes in Los Angeles!"

In mid-February (2013) the young, attractive and currently preggers pair unloaded Mister Ackles' modest—if not exactly cheap—two bedroom and two bathroom bachelor pad starter home in the foothills just above Studio City for $700,000.*

The following month the comely couple sold a much more substantial walled and gated mini-compound just south of Sunset Boulevard in the prosperous Brentwood area for exactly $3 million. Your Mama (dissed and) discussed the property when it first popped up on the open market in July 2012 with an asking price of $3,495,000.**

At the time of her report, the long-legged blond didn't have any specific intel on where Mister and Missus Ackles planned to set down their next real estate roots. Thanks to a The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial and a subsequent unequivocal confirmation from our always wickedly well-informed tattletale Lucy Spillerguts Your Mama has learned that in late December (2012), months before they sold either above mentioned house, Mister and Missus Ackles quietly dropped a considerable $4.8 million on a gated mini-estate in the star-studded Point Dume area of Malibu (CA).

Property records and other online resources show the Ackles' new abode, a two-story mock-Med surrounded by lush tropical foliage, was first hoisted on the open market in mid-2011 with a $5,950,000 price tag. Set well back from the road behind a towering wall of dense foliage and electronic driveway gates on a mostly flat 1.3 acre lot, the house was originally built in 1962 with five bedrooms and six bathrooms in 4,698 square feet.

Wide steps lead up from the shady front motor court—there is also a second gated motor court at the rear of the property with garage access—to the front door along to a long colonnade with vine draped exposed beam roof structure. Listing photos show the renovated if stylistically outdated home has a formal living room with stone tile floors, a (probably gas) fireplace, a low looking ceiling and large windows that wrap around the room. We're down with the big windows but we're bothered by their white frames and we're even more perturbed that the window on the right side of the fireplace drops lower that the one on the left. Would it really have been so difficult for the architect or contractor to spec in windows of equal height?

Anyways, listing photos show a surprisingly petite formal dining room with wood floors and two walls of wood-framed glass doors with immediate access to the swimming pool terrace. Listen, chickens, nobody likes a glimmering metallic more than Your Mama—just a quick look into our closet will turn up at least a handful of metallic sneakers—but holy moly bat girls and boys the non-celeb sellers had the walls and ceiling painted what appears to Your Mama's boozy and snarky eyeballs to be a rather disturbing metallic copper hue that we can only hope Mister and Missus Ackles had the good decorative sense to paint over immediately.

Less formal family quarters include a large center island kitchen with breakfast area and adjoining family room. The kitchen is certainly large and well equipped with plenty of room to whip up a large meal but also has odd rounded corner cabinetry, a couple of ugly ceiling fans mounted into a sky-lit ceiling recess and a cargo van-sized center island over which menacingly looms a pot laden pot rack that looks like it's dying to snag a weave that gets to close or drop a copper pot on a child's head.

The adjoining family room has wood floors, a shallow vaulted ceiling and a fireplace surmounted by a flat screen t.v. and flanked by narrow inset cabinetry for stashing media equipment and other family room blah-di-blahs like puzzles and board games. Above the cabinets are a couple of bizarre quarter moon shaped windows that probably provide for an extra bit of light for the room but look, as far as we're concerned, nine kinds of wrong.

The master suite privately occupies the entire second floor and is complete with fireplace, vaulted ceiling and direct access to a private balcony with—on a clear day—an over-the-tree-tops view of the ocean and Catalina Island. Listing photos from the time of the Ackles' acquisition shows the attached master bathrooms has a built-in hair and make-up vanity, glassed in steam shower, separate soaking tub and is slathered in some sort of marble that looks disturbingly too much like mortadella for Your Mama's personal decorative finish proclivities.

Backyard recreation and entertainment spaces include a broad swathe of grass almost the exact size and shape of a tennis court and a smaller lawn at the back where the sellers had a jungle gym and where the soon-to-be new parents will likely install a jungle gym of their own choosing. A U-shaped built in outdoor kitchen/barbecue station has a three stool snack and booze counter and a spacious stone tiled terrace for sunbathing dining and lounging terrace wraps around a bottle green L-shaped swimming pool and spa lined with decorative Spanish tiles.

Perhaps one of the best and most coveted attributes of the Ackles' new spread in Da Bu is the deeded "beach key" access to Little Dume, probably the most exclusive of the quartet of private Point Dume beaches that's overlooked by swanky abodes owned by Tinseltown luminaries such as semi-reclusive movie star Julia Roberts and saxophonist Kenny G. A short list of other notable Show Biz types who have beach key access to Little Dume include Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves, Pink and Carey Hart, and billionaire film producer Sydney Kimmel who, backin early 2007, paid around $38 million for the multi-lot bluff-top compound of the late late night talk show legend Johnny Carson.

*Property records show Mister Ackles picked up the property a decade earlier for $645,000.

**Property records show Mister Ackles purchased the property in September 2009 for $2,435,000.

listing photos: via Zillow

Jennifer Lopez's third ex-husband Marc Anthony reportedly snatched up a 2.5 million mock-Med mini-mansion in the hot as Hades L.A. suburb of Encino (CA). (TMZ)

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Hollywood scion and up-and-coming actress Bryce Dallas Howard—she's Oscar-winning director Ron Howard's daughter—sold her Hollywood Hills house for $445,000 less than she paid for it in 2006.

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Sitcom star Kelsey Grammer was a bit luckier that Miss Howard real estate wise. He flipped his purdy Spanish style casa in the fancy Flats of Beverly Hills for $200,000 more than the $6.5 million he paid for it just about year ago. (E! Online)

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Contrary to scads of published reports by celebrity real estate gossips, squeaky clean American Idol host Ryan Seacrest says he did not by ballroom dancer turned country music singer Julianna Hough a three million dollar house as a break-up gift. (TMZ)


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After she unsuccessfully tried to sell it off-market for $12 million sitcom queen Patricia Heaton and hubby David Hunt listed their Elmer Grey-designed Mediterranean mansion in L.A.'s Hancock Park 'hood for $8,295,000 and sold it last week for exactly $8,000,000 to a not-famous person.

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Sometimes cryptic and world renown endurance oriented performance artist Marina Abramovic sold a two family townhouse with a very rare private (outdoor) swimming pool in New York City's Soho area for $3,063,000 million to b.f.f. fashion designer Riccardo Tisci, Creative Director for the venerable House of Givenchy.

Miz Abramovic bought the 21-foot wide Federal style townhouse in July 2011 for $5,337,500 so it's not entirely clear if she sold Mister Tisci a portion of the townhouse or if she simply took a punishing $2,274,500 loss on her real estate change of heart.

Iffin we were the betting type—and we are not—we'd wager both our long bodied bitches that Miz Abramovic kept the über-minimalist modern art-studio style unit on the lower two floors (plus the basement) for herself and sold Mister Tisci the 3-4 bedroom and 2.5 bathroom upper unit that opens at the back to a private terrace that overlooks the swimming pool. (Coop Sales via Curbed)

Last week it was revealed here, there, and everywhere that New York-based Tinseltown scion Ben Stiller—his parents are the incomparable comedic legends Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller—sold his Upper West Side Hudson River view duplex for more than a million bucks less then he paid for the place in August 2008.

Of course Your Mama don't know an agave from a honey bee so we really can't say if Mister Stiller and his wife Christine Taylor plan to purchase a new home base in Manhattan but we do know, thanks to an assist by the ever-busy Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial, that the Stillers and their coupla kids very likely decamped to their sprawling 30-plus acre country spread in serene and bucolically scenic Chappaqua, NY, that they very quietly purchased in September 2010 for exactly $10,000,000.

As best as Your Mama can tell, the ten million dollar deal appears to have gone down off market and a careful read of the somewhat convoluted property records suggests Mister and Missus Stiller purchased the gated estate about 40 miles from Midtown Manhattan from a non-famous fellow who acquired it just two years earlier from a somewhat infamous couple named Theodore and Ilona Muldoon. Presumably Mister and Missus Muldoon sold the well outfitted estate after she—a bookkeeper—was convicted in 2007 for embezzling more than fifteen million bucks from her employer. Missus Muldoon, in case you might be curious, was sent to the white collar pokey for half a dozen years and ordered by the judge to pay $15.5 million in restitution for her fraudulent financial activities. Anyways...

Listing information that Your Mama managed to dig up from the depths of the interweb from the time the Muldoon's sold the landed gentry-style estate to the non-famous fella in late 2008 shows a long, tree-lined driveway sweeps across vast, rolling lawns to a sizable circular drive set into the inside corner of a grand, L-shaped Colonial-style mansion originally built in 1913 and extensively updated in the early Aughts. Listing details shows the main house has—or had at the time of the Stiller's acquisition—9 bedrooms and 9 full and 2 half bathrooms in about 10,500 square feet of living space on three floors.

Listing information goes on to reveal that both the formal living and dining rooms and the library all have fireplaces and French doors for easy access to the outdoors. There's a fourth fireplace in the family room that adjoins the butler's pantried kitchen and a fifth fireplace in the extensive master suite that also offers dual dressing room and bathrooms.

At the time of the 2008 sale the estate included two two-bedroom guest/staff cottages, a separate carriage house and a barn. Recreational amenities included a fenced-in in-ground swimming pool and pool house, a children's playground with a public park worthy jungle gym, a tennis court set well away from the house, and a two hole golf course complete with sand traps.

Avid celebrity real estate watchers will recall that after trying to sell it as a compound with a $12.5 million asking price Mister and Missus Stiller (fairly) recently sold their two residence compound in the celeb-friendly Outpost Estates neighborhood in Los Angeles (CA) in two separate transactions. The rather fetching Spanish style main house was purchased in August 2011 for $7,325,000 by well-built British action-flick actor Jason Statham and the secondary residence sold the following April (2012) to a not-famous guy for $2,600,000.

As far as we know, besides their landed gentry-style spread in Chappaqua, Mister and Missus Stillers property portfolio includes a small, nondescript house in Studio City bought back in 2006 for $1.1 million and an extensive ocean front estate on the north shore of the Hawaiian island of Kauai they picked up for $8.5 million in October 2002.

aerial image: Bing