SELL BUY PROPERTY

SELLER: Annie Leibovitz
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $33,000,000
SIZE: 10,202 square feet with 13 fireplaces

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It's just come to Your Mama's attention, via the hard work of our unofficial  researcher Hot Chocolate, that world famous and financially beleaguered photographer Annie Leibovitz has put her townhouse compound in New York City's historic West Village 'hood on the market with a sizable but probably not unreasonable $33,000,000.

This development may not be such a surprise to celebrity and high-end real estate watchers who surely recall that the celebrity snapping Miz Leibovitz ran into some financial issues a few years ago that just about forced her West Village compound into foreclosure. Several years ago, so the sordid story goes, Miz Leibovitz needed to scare up a toe curling $24,000,000 to cover a myriad of liens, loans, lawsuits, renovation costs and other debts.

Like many bankable artists in a pinch, Miz Leibovitz went to Art Capital Group, a private banking operation that provides loans to artists who often back the loans with their own art collection and future work(s). In Miz Leibovitz's case, the leviathan loan was collateralized by her significant but heavily mortgaged real estate holdings as well as the negatives and intellectual property rights to every photo she has ever taken. That's right puppies, every photo she has ever taken.

The brouhaha as settled in early 2010 with a kind of detente. Miz Leibovitz reportedly re-arranged the terms of the loan agreement in such as way as to buy her more time, re-purchased for an undisclosed amount the rights to act as her own "exclusive agent in the sale of her real property and copyrights...within the context of the loan agreement, which shall prevail until satisfied."

The complex consists, as per listing information, of three distinct but contiguous and at least partially interconnected ivy-covered red brick townhouses that surround a private garden. Property records and previous reports indicate Miz Leibovitz acquired the bulk of the complex in April 2002 for $4,150,000. She paid $1,870,000 for the third piece of her downtown real estate puzzle a few years later, in 2003.

Most if not all of one townhouse was converted and customized for Miz Leibovitz's studio space and offices. There are soaring ceiling in the main studio, multiple fireplaces, a private office, several smaller studios/work spaces and access to the garden through the English basement where there's more work space, ample storage and a kitchen. A triplex guest suite with living room, kitchen, and at least one bedroom with a full bath occupies at least part of the second townhouse.

The third townhouse was given over to the photographer's personal living space and includes—as best as we can surmise from listing information—a pared down but plush parlor level living room with two fireplaces and some of the most marvelous wide plank hardwood floors Your Mama has seen in a long time. Two doors in the living room lead into the formal dining room and a third into a compact but well and expensively equipped kitchen finished with a red leather built-in breakfast banquette, a wall of floor-to-ceiling stainless steel cabinets, marble counter tops, open shelving for daily dishware and direct access to the garden.

The third floor of the main residence is devoted entirely to the master suite and contains a large bedroom with wood-burning fireplace, a large walk-in closet plus several smaller ones as well, a windowed bathroom and a private den that opens into a sun room. There is convenient direct access from the den in the master suite to Miz Leibovitz's studio. There are four additional guest/family bedrooms and two bathrooms on the top floor—each with a wood-burning fireplace—plus a laundry room and a sky-lit playroom.

The English basement level has a separate entrances and offers one more bedroom and bathroom for guests or a live-in domestic worker, a second laundry room, enviable storage space and a spacious mud room.

As far as we know Miz Leibovitz still retains ownership of her 200-and-some acre country spread country off scenic River Road in Rhinebeck, NY.


listing photos: Brown Harris Stevens

It recently came to Your Mama's attention that Emmy- and People's Choice Award-winning comedian cum late night chat show host Conan "Coco" O'Brien lost a bundle on the luxurious Los Angeles, CA mansion he bought in January 2008 for $10,750,000 and very quietly sold off-market in June 2012 to a non-celebrity couple for $9,250,000.

It doesn't take a mathematics genius or even a bejeweled abacus to see that Mister and Missus O'Brien took a substantial $1,500,000 gut punch to their pocketbook, not counting carrying costs, expenses related to any improvements and renovations they may have undertaken and the significant real estate fees associated with with selling a property of this magnitude.

Avid celebrity real estate watchers will recall that Mister O'Brien and his missus Liza acquired the walled, double-gated and high-hedged mini-estate—located on a leafy and low-key but star-lined street in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles—in January 2008, not long before he began his tumultuous and short-lived but very lucrative stint as the host of The Tonight Show.

Alas, due to crap ratings and tense negotiations over time slot shuffling, Coco's heyday as the host of The Tonight Show went south in eight short months, albeit with a gasp-worthy $32,500,000 payout that surely cushioned and palliated the putrid sting of the $1.5-plus million dollar loss.

The recent transfer of ownership came as a surprise to Your Mama since we did not even know the house was for sale. Some research suggests the house was never on the open market and, of course, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of pocket listings in the pricier zip codes of Los Angeles that Your Mama does not know a damn thing about.

We can't be sure what—if any—changes the O'Briens may have made to the residence since 2008 but listing information from the time of their purchase shows the newly built mansion had six bedrooms, a total of 8.5 bathrooms, six fireplaces and 10 foot ceilings, no doubt a real plus for the statuesque ginger. Listing information also indicated the house was designed with a state-of-the-art screening room, a temperature controlled 1,500 bottle wine room, indoor and outdoor kitchens and a 60-foot long veranda at the back of the house. Beyond the swimming pool, spa and poolside pavilion there are multi-million dollar views that stretch to the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.

The house was purchased by a non-celebrity couple.

So where, oh where has the O'Brien clan gone, you might ask? Your Mama queried Freddie Finefellow, one of our better clued in celebrity real estate canaries, who quickly shot back a detailed communique that revealed Mister and Missus O'Brien have decamped Brentwood for the Pacific Palisades where—way back in June 2011—they surreptitiously shelled out somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty million clams for a remarkably similar walled, gated and high-hedged East Coast traditional, this one situated on more than an acre in the leafy, low-key but very ritzy Riviera 'hood.

The interweb has been scrubbed clean of most references to the O'Brien's new estate but a little elbow grease and a leg up from Our Fairy Godmother in Pacific Palisades turned up a few details about the clapboard side and black shuttered center hall neo-Colonial including is sale price of $19,475,694.

The 11,600-plus square foot residence, according to listing information, was originally built in 2005, sits on more than an acre of landscaped grounds and includes 5-6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms, a double-height foyer, formal living and dining rooms, a capacious kitchen/breakfast room/family room complex that opens to a broad red brick terrace, his and her offices, a home theater, a home gym, a chef-friendly kitchen with walk-in pantry, and a children's playroom.

The expansive, pancake flat and grassy grounds are well suited to outdoor entertainments and include an outdoor living room with massive river rock fireplace, a sports court, loopy bike path, an in-ground trampoline, and heirloom vegetable garden, fenced in swimming pool with inset spa and a patch of grass plenty big enough to add a soccer pitch or pitch a super-sized bridal tent.

The neighborhood is rife with high maintenance homes owned by a long list of Showbiz luminaries like Steven Spielberg, Whoopie Goldberg, Bill Cosby, Sugar Ray Leonard, Dan Castellaneta, Adam Sandler and Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.

The sellers of the Pac Pal estate, according to property records, were the philanthropically-minded Edward and Shari Glazer who have moved on to a recently completed, custom constructed and far more grand, 19,000-plus square foot mansion in the guard-gated Beverly Park community.

We're not sure if Mister and Missus O'Brien currently maintain a residence in Manhattan where they lived before schlepping west but they previously owned a massive, park view duplex at the magical Majestic building located on a particularly swank stretch of Central Park West.

At some point, no doubt in response to their relocation to Tinseltown, the O'Briens discreetly made their New York apartment available for purchase. It never, as far as Your Mama knows, appeared on the open market. There were rumors floating 'round the property gossip sphere that the titanic duplex was saddled with a hefty $35,000,000 asking price. The Wall Street Journal pegged the price at $29,500,000 and the New York Times revealed the apartment was sold, fully furnished, in July 2010 for $25,000,000 to David David M. Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery Communications.

The Majestic is the same building where Susan Soros, the much younger second ex-wife of the newly engaged octogenarian macdaddy super-tycoon George Soros, recently listed her spectacularly sited 19th floor spread—once owned by boo-teek hotelier Ian Schrager—on the open market with a eye opening and publicity ensuring $50,000,000 price tag.

aerial photo (Brentwood): Pacific Coast News
listing photo: Sotheby's International Realty (via Haute Living)

LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $18,000,000
SIZE: 9,000 square feet, 6-8 bedrooms, 7 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It's a tad bit dull on the celebrity real estate front this morning so Your Mama thought it might be fun to shift gears a little and, thanks to our unofficial aide de camp Hot Chocolate, help the children get over hump day with some good, old-fashioned New York City real estate porn in the form of a vast, 9,000-ish square duplex maisonette with 6-8 bedrooms, 7 full and two half bathrooms and an $18,000,000 asking price.

A maisonette, for those not familiar with with the the variety or urban living spaces, is usually located on the ground floor of a multi-story building. It is not just however, just an ordinary ground level apartment. A maisonette, by definition, has direct and private access from the street. In addition to one or more service entrances, a maisonette typically but does not always have a secondary public access point through the building's lobby or other common spaces. This is convenient so that on bitter winter days when Heidi Housekeeper goes to pick up the mail, flirt with the doorman or accept a delivery from Bergdorf's or Dominos she need not go through the trouble to bundle up and make mad dash along on the sidewalk to the building's main entrance.

Of course, there are those who think it's unspeakably inelegant to live on the ground floor in a dirty and dangerous place like Manhattan even if it is a 9,000 square foot spread in an architecturally understated—even dour—and punishingly expensive limestone edifice (above) built in the early 1930s by Gilded Age heir and philanthropist Vincent Astor. Mister Astor long and famously occupied the top floor of the building with two of his three wives, first Mary and then Brooke who, of course, eventually became the undisputed dowager queen of uptown high society and moved on from 120 East End Avenue to her duplex residence at 778 Park Avenue with its six terraces, five fireplaces, four staff rooms, two dozen closets and internationally renown blood red lacquered library.

Anyhoo, while New York City hardly lacks for roomy apartments and titanic townhouses for the fortunate few who can afford them, it is fairly rare to find 9,000 or so square feet of living space that does not feel like an ill-conceived, frightfully cockamamie and utterly perplexing puzzle-like amalgamation of previous separate but contiguous units. New York is filled with those places. But 9,000 square feet of elegant and well-resolved residential space? Not so much.

The massive maisonette sits very and way too far east for some high-nosed folks but is none-the-less directly across from Carl Shurz Park, the location of Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the Mayor of New York City that Mister Mayor Bloomberg declined to inhabit in favor of his townhouse. Both the street entrance and lobby entrance function in harmony and connect to a grandly scaled reception gallery with party-sized walk-in coat closet and and two nearby powder rooms, both separated from the common areas by a small, privacy enhancing antechamber.

The formal living room, about the size of a suburban tract house three car garage, has a wood-burning fireplace at the far end, simple but heavy duty moldings, a magnificent trio of park-facing floor-to-ceiling multi-paned windows outfitted with decorative security screens and a narrow-gauge chevron patterned hard wood floor that's been—regrettably, in our humble and meaning opinion—bleached, stained or otherwise painted white.

The day-core in the living room, as throughout the mammoth maisonette, is eclectic to the point of being downright weird. That's not necessarily a bad thing, puppies. Although we're quite certain the better glossy shelter publications are beating down the door to photograph this place, we'll take a dynamic and decoratively mystifying set up like this long before we'd go in for one of those behemoth proto-suburban beige-fests furnished with a ship load of heavy, carved wood furniture that looks like it came from someplace with the word "warehouse" in its name.

Across the reception gallery from the ballroom-sized living room, three steps flanked by turquoise-colored glass vases lead up to an almost as large room marked as the "library" on the floor plan. Howevuh, hunties, despite the built-in bookcases Your Mama does not spot a single book in the listing photograph. What the room does have is the same white chevron pattern hard wood floors as in the gallery and formal living room, a second wood burning fireplace, three more floor to ceiling park- and street-view windows also with decorative security screens and at least on piece of really good art.

The formal dining room, plenty big enough to host a well-attended holiday party, is accessed from the foyer down a wide, picture-lined corridor and through an the main stair hall with its sweeping spiral staircase that's screaming to have someone dramatic swoon down it in a caftan and bejeweled princess heel slippers.

The stair hall's day-core is predictably unpredictable and, well, a bit of a flummox. We feel sick over the white-painted wrought iron work that swoops up the partially carpeted staircase and Your Mama would, of course, pick up and remove that silly ewer set on the ground beneath the table. We also can not bear an overstuffed vase of yellow lilies. But, children, the steroidal sunburst mirror mixed and mashed with the three-legged round table, the Old-Timey cyrstal chandelier and that freaky bust of some Roman emperor atop the white veined black marble pedestal all kinda work for Your Mama in that can-be-terribly-chic, ugly-duckling-in-a-tiara sort of way. The bland walls, although probably hand troweled Venetian plaster, need some pizazz. The lifeless stair runner has gotta go and something needs to be done to better disguise or highlight the awkward door wedged under the stairs that leads directly—and conveniently—into the kitchen. Speaking of the kitchen...

The very contemporary, open concept eat-in kitchen is, but for the daring and vivacious jewel-toned rainbow colors provided in juicy pops by an expansive collection of probably very expensive glassware. The are several windows in the kitchen but, alas, they face a narrow and probably quite dark channel between this and the neighboring building. The almost monochromatic sweep of space has snow white cabinetry topped with stone slab of unknown material, two work islands, two dishwashers, three sinks, one walk-in pantry/storage closet, and a double-wide industrial-style glass-fronted fridge/freezer that makes Your Mama's knees turn to jelly with appliance envy.

The service and staff wing—located back behind the kitchen, natch—includes a rear staircase for easy access to the upper level bedrooms, a bedroom-sized laundry room with slop sink, compact—and windowless—bathroom and two rooms for live-in domestics, one very narrow, one unusually generous and neither with a proper closet according to the floor plan. Of course, so few rich people choose to live with their domestic staff anymore. Today's super-rich are increasingly inclined—for obvious reasons—to put up their full-time help in and off-site location so this suite of rooms is quite likely and very comfortably utilized as a home gym, household office, meditation lounge, Pilates studio, etc.

In addition to a sitting room with fireplace and book laden book shelves(above, left) that connects through to the corner bedroom of the park-facing master suite, there are a total of six bedrooms upstairs, each with—we're thrilled to report—direct access to a private bathroom. Iffin Your Mama and The Dr. Cooter were in the market for a 9,000 square foot maisonette on on the Upper East Side of Manhattan—and we are not and will never be—we'd probably opt to co-opt the sitting room for exclusive use of the master suite occupants and also to incorporate the middle bedroom—the one with the bay window—into the master suite to create a much more substantial bathroom/closet/dressing room complex.

That alteration would still leave a room and private park-facing guest bedroom with walk-in closet at the front of the apartment (above, right) plus two more decent-sized guest/family bedrooms at the rear. There's also an itty-bitty bedroom off the tail end of the service entrance corridor that would very well work for a favored live-in domestic worker or might otherwise be pressed into use for a small child or house guests who do not sufficiently warrant over night occupation of the larger guest suite.

'Tis a pity—at least as far as Your Mama is concerned—to pay nearly twenty million clams and not get a square foot of outdoor space but such are the brutal sacrifices even the wildly wealthy sometimes have to make for 9,000 square fee of deluxiocity in one of the more expensive if not exactly central neighborhoods of one of the biggest, baddest and most urban centers in the world.

For almost half the money we'd much prefer—say—this much smaller and less pricey but rigorously executed Anabelle Seldorf designed townhouse in the West Village that maintains its original architectural envelope from 1869 around a meticulously conceived and strikingly modern interior. But that's just us...

exterior photo: Kate Leonova for Property Shark
interior listing photos and floor plan: Sotheby's International Realty

BUYER: Jodie Foster
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $11,750,000
SIZE: 5 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yesterday we awoke at the crack of dawn to a delicious series of covert communiques from our prodigiously plugged-in informant Freddie Finefellow who gleefully tattled to Your Mama that child star turned Oscar-winning actress/director/producer Jodie Foster (The Accused, The Silence of the Lambs, Taxi Driver) recently and very quietly paid $11,750,000 for a canyon and city view residence in Beverly Hills, CA.

Well, natch, that bit of scuttlebutt snapped the gauze from our gin saturated morning brain and, since Miz Foster—bless her heart—is notoriously famous amongst property gossips for hiding her real estate tracks with the energetic fastidiousness of a feline, embarked us on a good ol' fashioned celebrity real estate investigation.

Our Mister Finefellow figured the whole thing went down off-market because he was unable to locate on online listing for the pricey pad that's privately situated behind a Peeping Tom thwarting row of tremendously thick and tall hedges. Howevuh, hunties, just because the internet has been all but scrubbed clean of most listing details does not mean that Your Mama can't call on one or another of our clued-in resources to help sort out the situation.

Fortunately for y'all, our ever-efficacious and laudably efficient Fairy Godmother in Beverly Hills was able to provide us with a wee bit o' documentation that reveals the residence was originally listed in March 2012 for $14,700,000. The price quickly dropped to $13,750,000 and just about every property records data base we consulted show the property was acquired by an deliberately opaque entity in late June for—as aforeindicated—$11,750,000.

The house was sold, according to property records, by English super-producer Colin Callender, the former president of HBO Films who now heads up his own production company, Playground Entertainment. Mister Callender, as per property records, picked up the property in July 1999 for $1,625,000, a number that means he and the missus cashed in to the tune of ten million clams, not counting carrying costs, renovation expenses, real estate fees and etc.

Anyhoodles poodles, the two story center hall traditional, perched on a flat ridge top parcel of more than half an acre high above Franklin and Coldwater Canyons, is practically hidden from the street behind a towering wall of thick hedges and secured gates. This may technically be what's known as the Beverly Hills Post Office where services are provided by the city of L.A. and not the city of Bev Hills but—to be honest, butter beans—we're not sure and it doesn't seem important enough to figure out at this point. We are sure, however, there are scads of high-fallutin' zip code snobs out there who, we hope, can and quickly will clarify that for Your Mama and the children.

Property records show the house was originally built in 1952 and measures 3,752 square feet, although we suspect it may actually be larger. Documents surreptitiously provided by Our Fairy Godmother in Beverly Hills show the house is of undefined square footage with five bedrooms, six bathrooms and four fireplaces. There are formal living and dining rooms, a library/study and a den, and office, and eat-in kitchen and a media room equipped with a projection system.

Out front there's a gated driveway and two-car garages and a slender front yard pinched between the hedge and the house. Out back, the long, north side of the house opens to a several patios and trellised decks that spill out to a flat, narrow and long swathe of green grass. A covered terrace on the south end overlooks a dark bottomed and perfectly rectangular swimming pool backed by a visually impenetrable wall of trees and shrubbery.

Naturally we don't have any idea what Miz Foster plans to do with her new house in Bev Hills but we have a sneaking suspicion—let's just call it a hunch based on vague intel—she'll have it leased it out for the next couple of years. 

The fiercely private but out and proud lesbian lady owns at least one other house in the Los Angeles area, a 5,357 square foot Spanish-style nido,* set behind high hedges in the high priced Bird Streets neighborhood above the Sunset Strip, that she bought way back in 1995 from former supermodel Cheryl Tiegs.

In July 2005 Miz Foster reportedly paid $8,100,000 for a 1949 Connecticut country/Cape Cod style rancher in the flats of Beverly Hills that was once owned by Dinah Shore. It's not clear if Miz Foster ever actually moved into the house but property records show she sold the 7 bedroom and 8 bathroom estate in September 2011 for $8,300,000.

*That's nest in Español.

listing photo: Hilton & Hyland

For the last several days Your Mama's inbox has been deluged with breathless queries from curious folks who want to know if unfathomably pampered 28-year old British heiress and globe-trotting socialite Tamara Ecclestone really bought Fleur de Lys, the internationally renown and ridiculously conspicuous 12 bedroom and 15 bathroom French chateau style pile in Los Angeles's hoity toity Holmby Hills 'hood owned by wildly wealthy haute couture clad divorcée Suzanne Saperstein and listed since 2006 with a pie in the sky $125,000,000 asking price.

She did not, at least not according to property records and as far as any of Your Mama's better connected canaries deep inside the Platinum Triangle real estate game know.

Tamara Ecclestone is the daughter of diminutive Formula One racing bigwig and multi-billionaire Bernie Ecclestone and the dark haired older sister of brassy blond jet setter Petra Ecclestone who—and the children sure recall—(in)famously dropped a toe curling $85,000,000 on Candy Spelling's grotesquely gargantuan 50-some room mega-mansion in Holmby Hills after she made an unsuccessful eighty million dollar bid to buy Miz Saperstein's Frenchified pile of super-luxe imported limestone.*

The flood of requests for clarification re: the possible sale of Fleur de Lys to Tamara Ecclestone stem from a loquacious report late last week in the British tabloid The Daily Mail that stated the high-heeled, well-heeled, and newly single Miss Ecclestone—she recently booted her man-friend after she discovered he made sordid amateur sex video with another woman—"plans to rent the lavish property before buying it." For be if for Your Mama to slice hairs but planning to rent and/or buy is not the same thing as actually renting and/or buying. We plan to fit into our size 30 waist APC jeans one day but that does not mean we actually will. right?

While it's quite possible, of course, that Tamara may have arranged to lease the grandiose 4.25-plus acre estate, which would most certainly make a magnificent backdrop for her shockingly shallow reality program Billion $$ Girl, but Your Mama finds it almost unfathomable that she would cough up tens upon tens of millions of dollars for her sister's real estate sloppy seconds. Stranger things have happened but this snarky and cynical real estate gossip is not holding our boozy breath.

Interestingly, The Daily Mail printed and posted loads of photographs of the screamingly opulent Fleur de Lys all done up in a style Marie Antoinette might swoon over but everyone in Los Angeles who knows anything at all about the highest of the high-end properties currently on the market well knows that while the liberally gilded and heavily ornamented architecture remains intact Miz Saperstein recently had much if not all of her ludicrously expensive and finely pedigreed Frenchy frou-frou furnishings replaced with much more clean lined, comfortable and contemporary day-core.

Back in London, Tamara owns an historic 16,000 square foot mansion in the ultra-exclusive and hyper-secure Kensington Palace Gardens that she bought last year for about $70,000,000. Renovations will cost another $20-30 million add another 4,000 square feet, according to reports, and include a two level basement with indoor pool, nightclub and bowling alley. The  multi-room master suite was designed, so the stories go, with separate cocktail and Champagne bars because, well, why not? Her new, across the street neighbors will be Prince William and the newly preggers Duchess Catherine but we can't imagine they'll be borrowing much sugar from each other.

*We can't confirm it, of course, but several sources have told Your Mama that Miz Saperstein turned down an $80 million offer by Petra just as several years ago—so the stories go—she also rebuffed at least one other offer of $100 million. If either of those gossip nuggets are true, she had to be kicking herself in her perfectly tailored real estate pants.

aerial photo: Pacific Coast News

...from a seemingly well informed southern source—let's call her Stella Mockingbird—that newly single A-list actor and occasional musician Johnny Depp may have set down some multi-million dollar real estate roots in the swanky, semi-rural suburbs southwest of Nashville, TN.

It's hardly a secret amongst all us naughty-naughty celebrity real estate gossips that Mister Depp has been on the hunt for a house in NashVegas and, according to Miz Mockingbird, the three-time Oscar-nominated actor has (allegedly) settled on a massive mansion in a small gated enclave about 15 miles south of downtown Nashville and about equidistant between the historic towns of Franklin and Brentwood.

The almost absurdly opulent mansion in question sits on more than 47 sumptuously bucolic acres tucked into a tight curve of the snaking Harpeth River and was built in 2001 by Tennessee banker Gordon Inman who christened the palatial pile Bella Rosa. As far as we can tell, the double-gated estate first popped up on the open market earlier this year with a tongue-twanging $17,500,000 price tag but Miz Mockingbird snitched to Your Mama that word around the gated enclave is that Mister Depp snagged the place for significantly less.

Listing information we ferreted out of the interweb shows the massive, 19-room behemoth measures just over 19,000 square feet on three floors with four bedrooms, seven full and two half bathroom, nine fireplaces, one elevator, numerous wet bars, garaging for at least seven cars, and a pair floating spiral staircases the flank the center hall foyer.

Although we would expect Mister Depp to bring in a team of lady or nice-gay decorators to do the place up in a manner that suits his fancy, the existing day-core as seen in listing photographs show the gargantuan residence was worked over but good for the seller in decidedly swellegant fashion. There are dozens of chunky Doric columns, acres of faux-finished and richly paneled walls, miles of intricate and beefy moldings, expensive marble inlaid wood floors, a bazillion yards of swagged and heavily pasamenteried drapery and scads of glimmering crystal chandeliers, all of which are probably antique and most assuredly were fantastically expensive.

At almost 700 square feet with capacious double height ceilings and towering 20-ish foot tall windows the formal living room is notably baronial and the adjoining formal dining room easily seats ten or more at a chatoyant Louis the Something-style table.

The library strikes a masculine tone with fully paneled walls, built-in book cases and a heavy coffered ceiling that were all—no doubt—hand-rubbed by an expensively imported artisan. Furnishings include a couple of riveted wing back chairs upholstered in the most marvelous caramel colored worn leather, a carved wood desk the size of a shipping container and a small flat screen t.v. mounted about the carved wood fireplace between two identical gold-toned urns.

Less formal family quarters include a super-sized center island kitchen outfitted with a prodigious—and potentially lethal—pot rack laden with stacks of gleaming copper pots (above, bottom left), a separate breakfast room with rustic river rock fireplace (above, bottom right) and a tile-floored den/sun room with a second river rock fireplace (above, top right).

A spacious family/game room has a vaulted, wood-beamed ceiling, built-in cabinetry for the t.v. and a third river rock fireplace (below, top left). The family room connects through a wide and shallow arch to a billiards area (below, top right) with full-height wrap-around windows and French doors that provide a long view of the meadow that stretches out from the back of the house to the tree-lined edge of the Harpeth River.

Listing information also indicates there's a second, gigantic family room with campy leopard print carpeting and built-in entertainment unit and wet bar (above, lower left). There's more than two thousand square feet of finished basement space, according to listing information, with fitness room and massive media lounge equipped with state-of-the-art screening area with glowing ceiling treatment and and built-in bar with under-lit bar and temperature controlled wine cellar visible behind glass doors (above, lower right).

Although the size of a small department store, the house has just four bedrooms that include a main floor master suite (above) complete with columned entry vestibule, over-sized bedroom area with sitting area, and a fireplace over-mounted with a flat screen t.v. and flanked by French doors that open to a private terrace. There's copious closet space—natch—and dual bathrooms, one clearly done up for a him with lots of columns and a brown marble lined shower and the other all decked out for a her with a barrel vaulted ceiling painted like a cloudy sky, a make-up vanity and a plunge-pool sized soaking tub set into a columned and window-lined niche.

Numerous patios and terraces extend off the rear of the regal residence and include a grand space tucked into a double-height portico off the formal living room with expansive views over the 30-plus acre backyard.

A long colonnade runs along the swimming pool and sunbathing terraces and connect the main house to the garages and rear motor court and the open air pool pavilion with chevron pattern brick flooring, outdoor fireplace, full kitchen with industrial-grade range, and changing facilities that–we imagine but can not confirm—include at least one bathroom.

Although the immediate environs around the house are fully landscaped and include a sizable circular rose garden, much of the land is a flat expanse of prairie-like pastureland perfect for a herd of goats or—even better—a flock of llamas.

Now children, we ask that y'all keep in mind that as of today none of the property records databases that Your Mama consults show a transfer of ownership (yet) so this is all just some southern style celebrity real estate gossip for now. Howevuh, if the juicy scuttlebutt is true, and he really did acquire Bella Rosa, Mister Depp will be surrounded by a slew of Nashville notables. Just a few doors down, for instance, is the 9,200+ square foot home of ice skating legend Scott Hamilton and just outside the gates of the exclusive community is the 23-acre former spread of Roy Orbison, now owned by a fiber-optics tycoon who has it listed for $5,399,000. Just over the narrow Harpeth River are the the sprawling equestrian estates of sick rich businessman Orrin Ingram II and big-time booze distributor Robert Lipman as well as Sweetbriar, the 135-acre estate country music king Alan Jackson sold in mid-2010 for $28,000,000 to auto salvage magnate Willis Johnson.

Mister Depp, who needs another house like he needs a hole in his head, owns a healthy handful of high-priced properties around the globe that include but may not be limited to Little Hall's Pond Cay—a 45-acre private island in the Caribbean, a house in the upscale Paris suburb of Meudon and a country estate in Plan-de-la-Tour, about 10 or 12 miles from St. Tropez in the South of France.

In Los Angeles the somewhat mysterious and idiosyncratic superstar owns at a significant estate and at least four other homes on the same winding lane just above the Sunset Strip and over the summer (2012) he dropped $4.4 million on a five bedroom Mediterranean style villa in the Hollywood Hills for his ex-lady friend and baby momma Vanessa Paradis who is said to have also been granted the family estate in Plan-de-la-Tour.

There are unsubstantiated rumors Mister Depp also owns a canal front palazzo in Italy's water-logged Venice and a spread on the Isle of Wight, just off the southern coast of England but, for the record, Your Mama is highly skeptical of both of those real estate canards.

listing photos: Karen Morgan Realty

Halle Berry puts a $15,000,000 price tag on her walled and gated Los Angeles residence. It was here, the the driveway where Miz Berry's ex-husband and current beau threw it down macho man style the other day.

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1980s New Wave British rocker chick Siobahn Fahey—co-founding member of both Bananarama and Shakespears Sister and the former wife of Eurythmics co-founder Dave Stewart—dropped nearly two million smackers on a house in the Hollywood Hills so she can spend more time with her two L.A. based sons.

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Former fashion model turned reality t.v. denizen Kelly Bensimon—formerly of The Real Housewives of New York City—finally, after years of unsuccessful efforts, sold her five bedroom cedar shingled house in the East Hampton (NY) for $5,760,000, a lot of money by any standard by a far cry from the twelve million she (reportedly) wanted last summer and the $10,900,000 she (allegedly) wanted in spring 2009.

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Earlier this week some delish scuttlebutt made its way down the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that, despite recently spending six and some million on a Spanish Colonial mini-mansion in Beverly Hills, Emmy-winning actor Kelsey Grammer wants to move his new family into a swank Holmby Hills mansion he previously shared with his former family. Only thing is, ex-wife Camille Grammer, formerly of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, co-owns the home and she's not so keen on the idea, especially since it's on the market she thinks it'll be harder to sell with Kelsey living there.

But that's not even the good part. Newer reports cite court documents that reveal Mister Grammer wants to move into the Holmby Hills house because his cash flow's a bit pinched since his most recent sitcom, Boss, failed to find any Showbiz traction.

Turns out the carrying costs for the Holmby Hills estate come to a whopping $48,130 per month, half of which gets covered by ex-Missus Grammer who—one imagines—isn't so keen on coughing up 25 grand a month to house Mister Grammer, New Missus Grammer and their infant child.

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Elle Decor takes a glossy look-see into the Los Angeles (CA) home of much published, world renown and unapologetically pretentious nice-gay decorator Martyn Lawrence Bullard and, Lowerhd have mercy children, it's just as grand, graphic, glammy, multi-layered, kaleidoscopically colorful, expensive looking and internationally oriented as anyone who watches the flamboyant and whimsically dapper Mister Bullard on Million Dollar Decorator might well expect.

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Bazillionaire tech tycoon and famously voracious real estate buyer Larry Ellison picks up his tenth house on Carbon Beach, the hoitiest of the toitiest stretch of sand in Malibu. No word on how much he paid yet—transaction records have yet to surface on the interweb—but what is known is that he bought the house from super producer Jerry Bruckheimer and that he already owns the homes on either side of his latest acquisition.


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The contemporary home of the late, conservative and sometimes controversial commentator and political pundit Andrew Breitbart—in the affluent Westwood area of Los Angeles, CA—popped up on the market with a $1,995,000 price tag.

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Tinseltown icon Jack Nicholson put a $595,000 asking price on a now vacant, .4(ish) acre residential parcel high in the Hollywood Hills. Mister Nicholson bought the property in 1975 for just $49,000 and in September 2011 the existing residence—which he leased out—was irretrievably damaged by fire.

SELLER: Billie Joe Armstrong
LOCATION: Newport Beach, CA
PRICE: $1,895,000
SIZE: unknown square footage, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: On the heels of Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong's profanity-laced tirade on stage in September at the iHeartRadio music festival in Las Vegas—an unwise jeremiad that led to him entering a rehab treatment facility for unspecified substance abuse—he and his missus Adrienne have put their itty-bitty beach cottage in Newport Beach, CA on the market with an asking price of $1,895,000.

Property records show the sassy pop-punker and his eco-boutique owning missus picked up the petite cottage located just a couple short blocks from the beach in the densely packed Peninsula Point area of Newport Beach in May 2006 for $1,699,000 and listing information indicates the house was subsequently re-built from the studs up—no doubt at considerable expense—in 2007.

Listing information does not indicate the square footage but The Orange County Tax Man shows the fully renovated and upgraded 1946 shingled cottage measures just 924 square feet. Based on listing photographs it would seem to Your Mama that, although obviously compact, the cottage is considerably larger.

A short white picket fence defines the decidedly diminutive front yard that gives way to a deliciously deep and charming front porch. A glass-paned Dutch door—we do so adore a Dutch door in the right circumstance—opens directly into the relatively roomy living room finished and furnished with with wood floors that may or may not be bamboo, white-painted paneled walls, bamboo blinds, a too-tropical rattan ceiling fan and lots of porch-style wicker and rattan sofas and chairs. Built in shelves and a built-in niche flank the fireplace with hearty red brick surround and french doors at the back of the room open to an narrow, brick-paved and bamboo-shaded side/back yard patio where listing information notes there's an outdoor shower for rinsing off the sand and salt from beach excursions.

The living room opens to the spacious and cook-friendly eat-in kitchen equipped with white Shaker-style cabinetry, some sort of slab stone counter tops, lots of four-pane windows, top grade commercial-style appliances and a white porcelain farmhouse style stink.

There are a total of three adequate but hardly huge bedrooms, one downstairs with private bathroom and two more upstairs.

Mister and Missus Armstrong have long maintained a home base in northern California's Bay Area. In November 2009 they sold a 6,122 square foot French Normandy-style abode in a good part of Oakland for $4,800,000 and moved to a walled, gated and privately situated 7,178 square foot house with 6 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in the leafy and affluent Piedmont community—about 15 miles east of the restaurant lined streets of San Fran's Mission District—that they picked up in November 2005 for $3,200,000 and fully re-built.

listing photos: HOM Sotheby's International Realty

SELLER: Katherine Heigl and Josh Kelley
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE:$2,659,000
SIZE: 3,690 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Usually when a listing surfaces on the open market that announces that it's owned by an unnamed celebrity we usually find out the celebrity sits pretty far down Tinseltown's totem pole of fame. That, howevuh, ain't the case with a recently renovated 1920s center hall Colonial style residence in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles that popped up on the open market yesterday with an asking price of $2,659,000 and is owned by Emmy-winning hospital drama and rom-com actress Katherine Heigl (Grey's Anatomy) and her country music singing hubby Josh Kelley.

Property records and reports from the time of their purchase reveal the Miz Heigl and Mister Kelley—who recently adopted their second daughter—picked up the walled and gated residence for $2,550,000 in September 2007.

Your Mama happens to know the couple did a major overhaul of the property and, at it's current price—just $109,000 more than they paid—they're looking at a net loss of at least a couple hundred thousand when the renovation expenses, carrying costs and real estate fees are factored in. C'est la vie in the world of house-hopping celebrities who don't seem to blink or bat an fake eyelash at tossing a quarter million clams—or more—down the real estate drain every time they get sick of their house.

Anyhoodles poodles, current listing information, besides calling it "reminiscent of Architectural Digest" and "Celeb-owned," reveals the four bedroom and 3.5 bath traditional has 3,690 square feet with high ceilings, dark wood floors throughout and heavy duty crown moldings and a lot of vintage light fixtures.

The center stair hall—where the stairs are fitted with an awful but probably necessary baby fence—opens on the left through French doors to a glammed up formal living room where there's a fireplace, a lavender velvet sofa, an antique-looking library in the center of the room filled with objet and other tchotchke and two sets of French doors that provide a view of the lattice-lined driveway and the garbage bins.

The back of the central entry hall connects to the less formal and more private open-plan family area at the rear of the residence that includes a spacious center island kitchen that mixes a little bit of modern with a little bit of traditional. There are white Shaker style cabinetry and white subway tile back splashes, gray slab granite—or possibly concrete—counter tops, the usual collection of high grade stainless steel appliances and a stainless steel farmhouse-style sink, lots of multi-paned windows and a Sputnik-style chandelier hung over the center island work space and snack counter.

Thick columns hold aloft what seems to be an architecturally unnecessary archway that divides the kitchen from the breakfast room area. More columns and another seemingly unnecessary archway divides the breakfast room from the family room where there's a white leather sectional sofa that makes Your Mama feel squeamish in our belly, lots of built-in faux-distressed cabinetry and side-lit French doors to connect to a slender grillin' and chillin' deck that runs along the back of the house and over looks the fully landscaped backyard.

The second floor master bedroom has a fireplace, a Baroque, blood red tufted headboard straight out of Auntie Mame's manse, a walk-in closet and a sun-splashed corner bathroom with tumbled stone floors, marble topped vanity with double sinks, white tile accents, a separate soaking tub and an only partially glass-enclosed shower stall that we sorta think might have benefited from being fully enclosed.

A narrow, gated driveway runs up along one side of the house to a tree-shaded flagstone dining terrace with stacked stone outdoor fireplace. A detached two car garage at the very back of the property appears to have been converted to some sort of living space or at least it looks like it's not set up for parking cars anymore. A tall fence and lush plantings separate the driveway/dining terrace from the main part of the high-hedged backyard where there's a wee patch of grass, a sizable spa and smallish swimming pool.

Miz Heigl also owns a second house in the Los Feliz area that was purchased in September 2007 for $2,000,000 and the four bedroom and four bathroom abode is occupied—so we've been told but can not confirm—by Miz Heigl's ever-present mother. The Heigl-Kelleys also maintain a rural and semi-remote spread in a swank gated enclave just outside of Park City, UT that they appear to have purchased sometime in 2011.

Last year, in October 2011, after a long and bumby ride on the bucking bronco of real estate Miz Heigl finally unloaded a 3 bedroom and 2.5 bathroom residence—also in Los Feliz—for $965,000. That's all well and good except that property records show she paid $1,500,000 for the place in May 2006. That's a staggering, $535,000 loss, according to Your Mama's bejeweled abacus, not counting improvements, carrying costs and real estate fees.

See, we told you that some well-compensated celebs—and others with significant cash flow—are so emotionally invested in getting rid of a house they own they are, on a whim or otherwise, willing and able to take a hard hit to their deep pockets. Must be nice, right?

listing photos: Keller Williams Realty / Los Feliz

Today is a travel day for Your Mama so rather than leave the children totally high and dry we thought we'd post a few of our favorite videos from the YouTube:

SELLER: Pharrell
LOCATION: Miami, FL
PRICE: $16,800,000
SIZE: 9,080 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A little canary down in South Beach flew by the other day and let Your Mama know that uni-named Grammy-winning songwriter/producer/rapper, art collector, entrepreneur and sartorial daredevil Pharrell has hoisted his titanic tri-level penthouse condo in Miami, FL on the market with a sky-high asking price of $16,800,000.

Property records show Mister Pharrell picked up the penthouse in March 2007 for $12,525,000 from a well-known property developer and it wasn't long before he was involved in an ugly legal imbroglio over numerous water leaks that came, according to at least one online report, from "at least six sources in the home, such as the penthouse pool, plant watering system, and Jacuzzi."

Current listing information shows the sprawling, 40th floor penthouse measures a suburban mansion-sized 9,080 square feet with five bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms and knee-knocking 360-degree city, bay, ocean and causeway views.

In December 2010 Mister Pharrell had the art-filled aerie photographed for The Selby—if you don't know The Selby, then you should—and in July 2011 he had dextrous design writer and international style maven Mayer Rus all up in there to do a piece for W Magazine. Based on the lush photographs from both of those shoots it seems that Mister Pharrell may (or may not) have moved out much of his personal belongings, in particular his Ms. Pac Man and Galaga video game consoles, his colossal collection of sneakers and his impressive contemporary art collection that includes significant works by name-brand artists such as Takashi Murakami, Keith Haring, KAWS, and Andy Warhol.

The capacious main floor living/dining room has chestnut colored wood floors, a curving ribbon of nearly floor to ceiling glass with terrace access and panoramic water views, a built-in buffet in the dining area and a built-in entertainment center in the living area with a massive flat screen television. A floating staircase connects the main floor to the second floor landing where a gravity defying spiral staircase corkscrews up to a third floor lounge underneath a spectacular and downright Herculean frosted glass dome that defines the triple height space and for some reason isn't shown in any of the listing photographs we dug up online.

Listing photographs do show the penthouse is luxuriously equipped with a sleek center island kitchen, a six (or maybe nine) seat home theater with plush red leather recliners and paneled walls, a billiard room on the second level mezzanine and library/lounge with built-in bookcases and a smattering of multi-colored modern furniture including the naughty-naughty Perspective chair, designed several years ago by Mister Pharrell in conjunction with the French product manufacturing concern Domeau + Pérès. The chair, in case any of y'all aren't familiar, has human-shaped legs. The front legs are those a woman on her tippy toes and the back legs those of a flat-footed man. Mister Pharrell says the chair "represents the love between a man and a woman" but Your Mama—like most people—see the chair as a not very abstract depiction of the couple doing it doggy style.

Anyhoo, the master suite has a bedroom with watery view and direct terrace access, a big bathroom slathered in inlaid marble and what Mister Rus in W Magazine called a "steroidal closet...filled with a teenager's fantasy trove of Technicolor sneakers."

Three levels of vast terraces offer unparalleled all-around views, an outdoor summer kitchen, miles of tiled planter boxes, a spa and a plunge-sized swimming pool beneath a muscular, vine-draped pergola.

Property records show Mister Pharrell—recently engaged to his long-time lady friend and baby momma Helen Lasichanh with whom he has young son named Rocket Mann Williams—still owns the 9,116 square foot waterfront mansion in his hometown of Virginia Beach, VA that he bought way back in December 2001 for $1,850,000.

We really have no idea what real estate plans Mister Pharrell may have up his sleeve but in the W Magazine article he mentioned that his residential real estate fantasies include maverick architect Frank Gehry designing him a "Wyne Manor-style mansion" and avant garde architect Zaha Hadid doing him a domicile "that is partially submerged in the ocean." So there's that...

listing photos: Coldwell Banker Previews

SELLER: Robbie Williams
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $3,600,000
SIZE: 4,659 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms (total)

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to an informant we'll call Yolanda Yaketyyak we've just learned that British-born and L.A.-based pop star Robbie Williams has put his multi-residence compound and private soccer pitch in L.A.'s 90210 zip code on the market with an asking price of $3,600,000.

Property records indicate the new daddy purchased the two-parcel compound—located in the Bev Hills Post Office as opposed to Beverly Hills proper—in February 2005 for $3,700,000, an amount that ensures, even with a full price sale, a $100,000 loss not counting improvements, carrying costs and real estate fees.

The two parcel spread spans .81 acres and is set above the famed Mulholland Drive with long views out over the San Fernando Valley. Garden paths and exterior stairways connect two separate residences with separate gated driveways plus a detached guest house—also with separate gated parking pad—that all surround a regulation sized soccer pitch.

Current listing information and property records reveal the two-story main house was originally built in 1947 and measures 3,525 square feet and has three bedrooms, four bathrooms and a swimming pool encircled by trees.

A second, single-story house was originally built in 1951 and has 1,134 square feet, two bedrooms, one bathrooms and its own pickle-shaped swimming pool and free-form terrace with sweeping valley view.

A third, two-story structure adjacent to the fully-netted soccer pitch offers additional living space/lounge plus garage space for four cars.

When Mister Williams sells his soccer oriented compound above Mulholland Drive he'll be far from homeless in Los Angeles. Property records show he continues to own the 10,681 square foot multi-winged mansion located just over half a mile from his private soccer pitch on one-plus gated and landscaped acres inside the manned gates of the Mulholland Estates community that he bought in July 2002 for $5,450,000 from country music superstar Clint Black. We're not sure what alterations and/or customizations Mister Williams may have made since but at the time he purchased the property it had six bedrooms, eight (or nine) bathrooms, a private recording studio, an elevator, pub room, massive master suite with gym, and a swimming pool with built-in slide.

aerial photo (top): Pacific Coast News
listing photos: The Agency

Even though five-time Emmy winner Kelsey Grammer recently forked out $6,500,000 for a Spanish Colonial Revival style mini-mansion in the flats of Beverly Hills he reportedly wants to move with his current, fourth wife and new baby into a larger Holmby Hills mansion he once shared with his third wife, Camille, and their two children. Problem is, Camille is having none of that real estate merry-go-round nonsense. The 10,000-plus square foot quasi Country English sprawler has been on the market for an eternity at a variety of asking prices and is currently listed at $16,000,000, recently reduced from $17,000,000.

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Just months after signing a $54,000,000 contract extension with the New England Patriots, 23 year old tight end Rob Gronkowski spent about $1,600,000 to buy a mock-Med mini-mansion in Tampa, FL, where—so our research revealed—the Patriots do their off-season training.

Besides that the three story house measures 4,781 and has four bedrooms, five bathrooms, three outdoor entertainment areas, a swimming pool and spa, a whole-house surround sound system and one custom built-in fish tank, the only other figure about The Gronk or his new bach-pad in Tampa that our ball crazy b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau thinks is important is—ahem—his size 16 foot.

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The Office's Jenna Fischer and her writer hubby Lee Kirk just dropped $1,900,000 on the Mediterranean style estate of legendary baseballer Casey Stengel in the unlikely celebrity locale of Glendale, CA

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One of the late and fiercely reclusive copper heiress Huguette Clark's two eighth floor apartments on New York City's Fifth Avenue plus an unknown portion of the other have been sold for $22,500,000 to private equity pasha Frederick Iseman.

The children may recall that Miss Clark's 12th floor spread—originally owned by her mother—was purchased in July for $25,500,000 by hedge fund honcho Boaz Weinstein.

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Professional basketballer Danny Granger of the Indiana Pacers has flipped the contemporary Los Angeles, CA residence he bought six months ago for $3,715,000 with an asking price of $4,195,000. The six-foot-eight forward, whose salary topped $13 million in 2012, bought the 5,140 square foot house in the hills from Tinseltown screenwriter Kevin Williamson.

Your Mama don't know a thing from a thing, natch, and we don't mean to be a real beotch about things but we can't really come to terms with the $480,000 price increase in just six months since current listing photos, when compared to listing photos from the time of the July purchase, don't show much if any changes except the addition of a whole lotta depressingly banal furniture and "artwork" that reeks of the handiwork of Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota.

SELLERS: Lisa and Lenny Hochstein
LOCATION: Miami Beach, FL
PRICE: $10,750,000
SIZE: 9,944 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5 full and 3 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen children, Your Mama and Sister Woman (and clan) drove out to Big Daddy's ranch the other day morning in the goddamn middle of nowhere where not only isn't there any available WiFi service but there isn't, believe it or not, any internet service at all. We thought about popping into Tinyville to see if we could scare up some WiFi at the dinky diner but we got distracted by a Christmas tree catastrophe—don't ask—and before we knew it it was time to head back to civilization...

Anyhoo, on Thanksgiving, before we left for Big Daddy's, in a glorious haze of tryptophans and gin, we received a covert communique from Betty Butterball who let us know that Dr. Lenny and Lisa Hochstein have their Miami Beach, FL mansion on the market with an asking price of $10,750,000.

Missus Hochstein, in case her name does not ring your celebrity bells, is a former nude model who appears in all her plasticine glory on the second (and current) season of The Real Housewives of Miami and Doctor Hochstein is a well known and highly successful Miami-based plastic surgeon who specializes in facial rejuvenation and boob jobs. Presumably it's Doctor H. who's responsible for Missus H.'s super-sized and very unnatural looking bazooms.

Turns out the Moscow born and New Jersey raised plastic surgeon and the substantially younger and balloon chested former Playboy model have had their house on the market since March 2011—when it was listed with an asking price of $10,750,000—and a few minutes on the interweb tells us we are hardly the first property gossip to discuss the waterfront mini-estate that's located on the northern shore of the northernmost isle of the swank and pricey four-island Sunset Island neighborhood located in the Biscayne Bay just north of South Beach.

Property records show Doctor Hochstein, along another man and woman with the same Hochstein surname, first purchased the property in April 2005 for $4,350,000. They proceeded to custom-build the existing mock-Med manse they dubbed Palacio del Eden and sometime in 2007, right about the time the house was completed, Doctor Hochstein bought out his same-surnamed partners and became the sole owner of the palatial abode where the nipped, tucked and Botoxed couple married in October 2009.*

Current listing information and property records show the essentially symmetrical and decidedly showy domicile sits tightly on just over half a landscaped acre and has five bedrooms and five full and three half bathrooms in 9,944 square feet of gaudy interiors dressed to impress with elaborate frescoed ceilings, intricate vine-like wrought iron railings, solid marble columns and archways, heavy carved wood furniture and cabinetry by the boat load, damask wall coverings and dozens upon dozens of arched windows and French doors.

The meretricious manse was prominently featured on the second season of The Real Housewives of Miami and was the scene of a couple of spectacular and downright tawdry cat fights during which one sassy queen pushed another mouthy queen into the swimming pool and one "housewife" smacked another across the face. There is, of course, absolutely nothing redeeming in behavior like that but ain't none of y'all will convince Your Mama that was not high-larious to watch a bunch of rich and "rich" people who claim to be high brow members of Miami's affluent social circuit screeching like drunken banshees and acting like wild eyed trailer trash.

Anyhoo, a gated driveway paved with herringbone pattern brick passes between two detached two-car garages and into a central motor where a pair of towering palms stand on either side of the main entrance. For reasons Your Mama can not fathom or recommend, there are dense thickets of potted plants placed under the twin floating staircases in the gilt-trimmed double-height foyer. Overhead there's a 14-foot diameter stained glass dome that back lit for maximum architectural (melo)drama.

Ample public spaces for large scale entertaining surround and open to a piazza-sized central courtyard and include formal living and dining rooms and a billiards room fitted with a heavy carved wood built-in buffet and display cabinet, a frescoed groin vaulted ceiling and an unapologetically lurid red and gold brocade sofa that sends shivers up and down Your Mama's delicate decorative spine.

Less formal spaces include a colossal center island kitchen with a soaring barrel vaulted brick ceiling, unnecessarily florid carved wood cabinetry and an adjacent family room that opens through a series of arched french doors to a deep loggia and back yard. The lack of decorative restraint reaches its apex, perhaps, in the thirteen seat gold and blood red home theater. Beyond the oppressively—ahem— sumptuous day-core, who puts puts thirteen seats in a home theater? We don't know who cleans the Hochstein's humongous house but Your Mama and The Dr. Cooter's deeply superstitious house gurl Svetlana would have a violent and destructive conniption if we so much as asked her to step into let along tidy up a room with thirteen of anything. Other necessities of the luxe life include a wine cellar and a home fitness room.

The second floor water-side master suite is certainly sizable but who could sleep peacefully in a room that garish? Plus, Your Mama knows it gets hot and icky humid in Miami in the summertime but, still, why didn't anyone think to purchase a rug to cover up the acre of tile flooring in there? And the big ol' master bathroom, well, let's just say a bathroom that decoratively vulgar binds Your Mama right up.

The courtyard and the back of the house open to a mostly stone-tiled waterside back yard where there's a massive, Versace-style mosaic tiled negative edge swimming pool and an open air poolside cabana with built-in barbecue and crapper that means no one needs to traipse through the house soaking wet from a dip in the pool. A row of palm trees along the 100-plus feet of bulk headed shore line where there's a private dock and boat lift.

Although they can probably afford to carry both mansions indefinitely, Doctor and Missus H. have soe incentive to sell their Sunset Island mansion since they've already acquired their next home on Miami Beach's notoriously affluent and star studded Star Island where some of the high profile residents and homeowners include Gloria Estefan, Rosie O'Donnell and Sean "Diddle Daddle" Combs—or whatever silly name he goes by now—along with a slew of real estate moguls and big business barons who include Vladislav Doronin, otherwise known as the beefcakey Russian billionaire man-friend of sometimes volatile supermodel Naomi Campbell.

Property records we peeped show the Hochsteins officially picked up their Star Island estate in late 2011 for $7,200,000 in a long, complicated and somewhat mysterious foreclosure situation.

The one-plus acre, wedge-shaped spread has, according to various online resources, 205 feet of Biscayne Bay frontage, a somewhat run-down 1920s three story Spanish Colonial style main mansion with 8,117 square foot plus three additional guest/staff residences for a total of eight bedrooms and seven full and three half bathrooms.

The house was used as the home of Al Pacino's iconic character Tony Montana in the 1983 movie Scarface.

*Other than her mammoth mammaries that are quite obviously surgically enhanced we really have no idea what if any other surgical or injectable alterations may or may not have been undertaken by Missus and/or Mister Hochstein.

listing photos (Sunset Island): Coldwell Banker Previews
listing photos (Star Island): Alex Shay