SELL BUY PROPERTY

BUYERS: Molly Sims and Scott Stuber
LOCATION: Wainscott, NY
PRICE: $5,495,000 (last listing)
SIZE: 8,026 square feet, 5 bedrooms 6 full and 3 half bathooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Way back in August 2008 bathing suit model turn boob-toob actress Molly Sims (Las Vegas) put her 1930s Spanish style residence in the hills above Hollywood on the market with an asking price of $2,999,000. Finally, in September 2011, not quite a year before she pushed out her first baby sired bythen boyfriend and now husband, television and movie producer Scott Stuber (Whitney, Ted, Love and Other Drugs, You, Me and Dupree), she sold the 3,043 square foot residence for $2,780,000.

We're not sure if the newly wedded new parents officially relocated to the East Coast but we do know, thanks to the NY Post, they've recently splashed shelled out several million clams for a sweet, stylish and recently completed shingled cottage in the Hamptons—in low-key but very posh Wainscott, to be precise. Not for lack of effort but Your Mama was unable to locate an digitally accessible record of the transaction that might reveal the exact price paid but, according to the Post, the house was last listed at $5,495,000.

The desirable, south-of-the-highway location puts the fully-landscaped, three-quarter acre corner spread just a brief, 1.4 (or so) mile bike ride from one of the Hamptons' most exclusive beaches that runs between gorgeous Wainscott Pond and the even more fah-fah-frou-frou Georgica Pond.

Listing information still floating 'round the interweb shows the newly constructed residence—a low-profile, contemporary take on a classic shingled cottage with a deep and charming covered porch entry—contains a total of 8,032 square feet with a total of six bedrooms and six full an three half bathrooms. That's 5,032 in the two above-ground living levels and another 2,500 in the finished basement.

The luxurious and luxuriously under-stated interior spaces have top quality finishes—think rift-sawn antique oak floors, hand-brushed tongue-and-groove mill work, 8-foot solid core doors, vintage industrial lighting fixtures and exquisite English-made water fixtures—and include a massive combination living/dining room with stone fireplace and a full wall of south-facing French doors that connect to the broad, partially covered terrace that runs the full width of the house. A fully paneled library/media offers a cozier, more intimately scaled room to hunker down in when the weather turns nippy.

The party-and family-friend eat-in kitchen has a box car sized center island with snack bar, custom, snow white Shaker-style cabinetry with marble and walnut counter tops, open and glass-fronted shelving for dish and kitchen knick-knack display, and a walk-in pantry. A side-entry mud room with half bathroom allows for easy access to the pebble-stone driveway and detached two-car garage while the adjoining breakfast area opens out to a shaded terrace with an outdoor, raised-hearth fireplace.

A main floor junior suite offers lucky guests a walk-in closet and a private bathroom and the master suite, privately situated in its own wing on the second floor, includes a private south-facing mahogany deck that overlooks the backyard and a vast, spa-style bathroom with radiant heat tile flooring, a free-standing soaking tub, double vanity, and a party-sized stall shower. There are three more guest/family bedrooms on the second level—each have private en suite facilities, plus a (second) laundry room and a second mahogany deck that overlooks the backyard.

The massive, 2,500 square foot finished basement includes a staff suite with private bathroom, a 1,200 bottle wine cellar, a dedicated exercise room with a fully mirrored wall the vanity-fueled among us will love, a large laundry room and additional space with in-place wiring for a home theater.

The the backyard, tree-ringed and high-hedged for maximum privacy from nosy neighbors, has a pair of covered stone terraces off the back of the house—one with outdoor fireplace—and a 45-foot long, heated swimming pool elegantly sunk into a lush, soccer pitch sized lawn and girdled with a strikingly simple stone coping and sunbathing apron.

Other high-end summer home accessories and amenities include a central vacuum, security, irrigation, multiple-zone central air conditioning and gas-fired hot air systems.

Property records and other online resources reveal Missus Stuber continues to own a much more modest cottage on a thickly wooded acre in the ho-hum expanse of land between East Hampton and Sag Harbor that she picked up in May 2000 for $655,000.


Property records also show Mister Stuber has owned a home in the same Beverly Hills (CA) 'hood as supermodel turned reality television mogul Tyra Banks since 2003 when he paid $2,665,000 for a 3,910 square foot residence with four bedrooms and four bathrooms. Documents we dug up online show Miz Sims was added to the deed a few months before they hitched their wagons in the yes of God and government.

listing photos: Corcoran

SELLERS: Tamar Braxton and Vincent Herbert
LOCATION: Hidden Hills, CA
PRICE: $7,595,000
SIZE: 12,402 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6 fulland 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Oh lowherd, children, buckle your real estate stafety belts because we got a classic case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle coming your way. It was only last September (2011) that R&B singer-songwriter/reality t.v. denizen Tamar Braxton—the younger sister of singer six-time Grammy winner Toni Braxton—and her famously rotund music executive husband Vincent Herbert—he's often credited with discovering international alt-pop phenom Lady Gaga—acquired a nearly new mansion—let's call it a faux French Country-style pile—set high on a low rise in the guard-gated and star-studded equestrian-centric community of Hidden Hills, CA.

Well, dontcha know, butter beans, the oft-bickering couple, whose new reality television program (Tamar & Vince) premiered this month, have had a real estate change of heart and this week hoisted their 12,402 square foot behemoth back on the open market with an asking price of $7,595,000.

Your Mama's research on the internets turns up a discrepancy as to the amount the Braxton-Herberts actually paid for the humongous house in Hidden Hills: The MLS shows the property went for $6,900,000 in September 2011 while at least two other public data bases we perused show it sold for $3,400,000.

Current and previous listing information we dug up on the interweb shows the hulking, two-story mansion sits prominently and heavily on 1.31 acres and includes an ostentatious Macmansion-style double height entry with twin curved staircases, a large formal living room, a smaller library/study with custom paneling and fireplace, and a formal dining room with open beamed ceiling and adjoining wine cellar.

Less formal entertaining area include an expensively equipped center-island kitchen and adjacent family room with fireplace, a media room/home theater with titanic 125-inch wide screen and 7.2 surround sound, and a pub/game room with hand-carved built-in wet bar.

Listing information currently available online does not include any photographs—the listing photos above are from the time of the Braxton-Herberts' purchase—but does indicate the "extravagant master suite" includes a voluminous ceiling, dual custom-fitted closets, an all-stone bathroom with steam shower and spa tub, two fireplaces—one in the bedroom the other in the bathroom—and a private "walk-out balcony" with "forever views."

The back of the main level opens to numerous covered porches that give way to various stone patios, a built-in barbecue center, a fire pit ringed by semi-circular built-in seating, a fountain or two, and a swimming pool with elevated spa set into a lush strip of lawn. The hillside behind the house drops off to allow for long vistas across the scrubby, rolling hills of the far western suburbs of Los Angeles.

Other notable amenities of the property, as per current and previous listing information, include an attached, four-car side-entry garage, an "invisible" speaker system—whatever that is, an "expresso center" [sic], multiple security cameras, a safe room, and—ahem—a mirrored elevator.

listing photos: Re/Max Olson & Associates

We don't watch X Factor—or any of those other gawd-awful, long-past-their-prime televised pop music contests for that matter—but apparently, last night, the hopeful and over-excited X Factor contestants were invited to sing at one the four celebrity judges houses around the country.

Howevuh, kinderkins—as exposed by the celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ—turns out at least two of the extravagant homes shown were not even owned by the judges. Mister Cowell owns numerous luxury homes around the world including a sumptuous, custom-built mansion in the flats of Beverly Hills, a couple of low-slung mid-century moderns in the trendy Trousdale Estates 'hood, a large house in London's Kensington and a beach front getaway on the Lesser Antilles island of Barbados but, as far as Your Mama know, he does not owns any real estate in south Florida. In fact, the massive, über-modern Miami, FL mansion they claimed was sassy Simon Cowell's actually belongs to professional baseballer Alex Rodriguez who has it on the market for a stomach-churning $38,000,000.

Contestants who who were picked to perform at Britney Spears's house did so at a sprawling, six-plus acre bluff-top estate near the tail end of Carbon Mesa Road in Malibu (CA). Thing is, Miz Spears hasn't lived in Malibu for years...years, we tell you. She did live there back when she was married to Whatshisface, the  father of her children, and for a short bit after they split. But, after shacking up in Beverly Hills, Calabasas and Hidden Hills, Miz Spears currently resides in 10,000-plus square foot rented mansion behind the 24-hour guarded gates of the Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks.

Since we didn't see the show itself we can't say if the homes of L.A. Reid and Demi Lovato were their real homes but we suspect they, too, were not. For the record, until sometime in late 2010 or early 2011 the eminently likable but sometimes troubled Miss Lovato and her family leased a Spanish-style house in L.A.'s celeb-stocked Los Feliz area. The house is now owned, as it turns out, by actress Olivia Wilde who put it up for lease recently at eleven grand a month.

In late 2010 Miss Lovato dropped two-an-a-quarter million clams on a hillside compound in the more suburban L.A. community of Sherman Oaks that, in late 2011, she told gossip blogger turned budding media mogul Perez Hilton, she shared with her parents. Your Mama recently heard through the real estate gossip grapevine the former Disney darling may have decamped for a home of her own but—sorry, Charlies—we haven't got any inside intel on that real estate rumor.

As for L.A. Reid, we're not exactly where the influential music mogul actually lives but we do find evidence on the interweb that he and his Missus, Erica, own a 5,000+ square foot spread on Park Avenue in New York City, a multi-acre estate in super-swank Sagaponack (NY), and several residences in and around Atlanta, GA.

This X Factor real estate fakery shouldn't be all that surprising given that celebs do have a thing for protecting their real estate privacy and, more importantly, everybody with a goddamn brain ought know by now that most reality television involves a whole lotta smoke and mirrors meant to obscure what's really real.

SELLERS: Mark and Dina Waters
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $5,199,000
SIZE: 6,508 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to a covert communique from Our Fairy Godmother in Bel Air Your Mama has learned that low-key movie and television director Mark Waters and his low-profile and under-appreciated, stage-trained actress wife Dina Waters have put their elegant faux-French chateau in Los Angeles' historic and hoity toity Hancock Park 'hood up for sale with a $5,199,000 asking price.

Mister Waters is best known, perhaps, as a director for hire who steered the Showbiz ship for the quirky, low budget bomb The House of Yes with Parker Posey as well as a couple of successful pre-tabloid-trainwreck Lindsay Lohan vehicles (Freaky Friday and Mean Girls). More recently he directed the Jim Carry-comedy Mister Popper's Penguins and he's credited as the director of first season of the currently airing television program Made in Jersey, a series Your Mama has not seen with our own boozy and judgmental eyeballs but suspect may have missed Tinseltown's quickly fading obsession with all things New Joizee.

In addition to her theater credits that include the Broadway production of The Iceman Cometh with Kevin Spacey in the late 1990s, Missus Waters (nee Spybey) won a Daytime Emmy in 1993 for her starring role on Lifestories: Families in Crisis. Since then has appeared in—but not starred in—a slew of movies and television programs including Striptease, The First Wives Club, Remember WENN, Freaky Friday, Men Behaving Badly, Six Feet Under, Greg the Bunny and Just Like Heaven. Most recently Missus Waters lent her voice to the short-lived animated series Neighbors From Hell with Will Sasso and Molly Shannon.

According to our entire unscientific research on Redfin, the current, $5,199,000 price tag for Mister and Missus Waters' Hancock Park residence makes it the third most expensive property currently on the open market in the 90020 zip code, the most expensive being the fabled Dorothy Chandler estate that was listed since May (2012) at $11,250,000.

If a real estate rabbit gets pulled out of a hat and the Waters' house gets sold at full price it would only be the fourth most expensive property to sell in the 90020 zip code in the last three years, the most expensive being the 11,000-plus square foot mansion former sit-com star David Schwimmer sold in June 2012 for $8,865,000 and another being a 5 bedroom and 8 bathroom corner compound that oddball musical innovator Beck picked up in June 2007 for $6,750,000, foolishly listed a year later for $9,000,000 and finally unloaded in August 2010 at a dramatic loss for $5,600,000 to power house hospital drama-centric creator/writer/producer Shonda Rimes (Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice).

So—and sadly for Mister and Missus Waters bank accounts—while the $5,199,000 price tag is most certainly on the high side for comparable properties in the neighborhood it is, none-the-less, a purse-punching $400,001 less than the $5,600,000 property records show the couple coughed up for the fully packed if somewhat compact estate seven years ago, in August 2005, at the electrified apex of the most recent but long-ago-burst real estate bubble.

Current listing information shows the un-gated and stately, two-story faux-chateau was originally built in 1927, sits on a pancake flat .71 acre lot and measures a spacious 6,508 square feet with a total of 6 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms, plus a separate apartment privately located atop the attached two-car garage that's tucked discreetly down a long driveway at the side of the house and perfect for over-night house guests or live-in domestic worker.

The simple, unoffensive and fastidiously maintained landscaping at the front of the house is mirrored in the updated and upgraded but decidedly traditional interiors that include a grand, impress-the-guests-style double-height foyer with semi-glossy espresso-colored wood floors, white walls and a quietly theatrical curved staircase with tightly banister-ed wrought iron railing. The deep brown wood floors extend into the spacious formal living room with fireplace and soft gray walls set off against high-gloss white moldings, trim work and wall frames. Listing information indicates the Water's residence also contains a formal dining room and a wood-paneled library with built-in book cases and a second fireplace.

The horizontal strip wood floors change to a haughtier Parquet de Versailles pattern in the center island kitchen that's outfitted with white Shaker style cabinetry, speckled beige and brown granite counter tops and and expensive collection of top-grade, commercial-style stainless steel appliances. A wide but shallow archway separates the kitchen from the family room, also finished with Parquet de Versailles-style floors and outfitted with a third, corner fireplace plus a built-in entertainment cabinet and what appears to be—but may not actually be—a surround sound system.

The master suite occupies its own wing on the second floor and offers the homeowners a private sitting room and separate bedroom that overlook the backyard, a fourth fireplace and impractically pale gray wall-to-wall carpeting and lustrous, pewter and silver satin curtains on the over-sized windows and French doors that amp up the glam quotient and open to a wrought iron-railed Juliet balcony.

Several rooms on the main floor open to a covered loggia or multi-level entertainment terrace with pergola-shaded dining area, built-in outdoor kitchen and sun-exposed lounging area that butts up to but doesn't exactly overlook the lighted, north/south aligned tennis court. A wide sweep of lawn extends off the back of the house—and the side of the entertainment terrace—and around to the swimming pool and spa that's unfortunately, uncomfortably and somewhat inexplicably squashed into the rear corner of the property between a towering privacy hedge and an almost as high but far more penal-looking chain link fence that separates the slender sunbathing terrace from the basketball hoop-equipped tennis court.

Your Mama has no idea what Mister and Missus Waters' future real estate plans may be, and it seems unlikely they'll move their young family into a comparatively puny condo, but property records do reveal than in June 2011 the couple dropped $399,000 on a fairly contemporary, two bedroom and two bathroom, loft-style live-work condo in downtown Los Angeles, located just a few blocks from the shimmering, clover-shaped Westin Bonaventure Hotel and just around the corner from the perennially popular eatery Botegga Louie. It seems unlikely they'll move their young family into this comparatively puny and far more urban condo, but stranger things have happened, right?

listing photos: Coldwell Banker

SELLER: Hassan Nemazee via The United States of America
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $19,500,000
SIZE: (total of) 6 bedrooms, 6 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: After a brief hiatus from the open market—and a change from a VP/Associate Broker at Sotheby's to a much more prominent SVP/Managing Director at Brown Harris Stevens—the U.S. Marshall's Office has re-listed the art- and objet-filled New York City duplex of convicted and jailed financial fraudster Hassan Nemazee with an asking price of $19,500,000.

Mister Nemazee—for those of y'all who don't pay attention to the financial news and/or read the New York City gossip columns—was arrested in 2009 on scandalous charges of bank fraud. He later plead guilty to multiple charges that he sought and/or obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in bank loans secured with non-existent or value-inflated assets. He is now serving 12-and-some years in the clink.

Born into a wealthy Iranian family who fled to the U.S. during the run up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Mister Nemazee wasn't just any multi-millionaire white-collar crook. No siree Bob. Before his nefarious loan-seeking ways were exposed, prosecuted and proven Mister Nemazee was a major donor to and fundraiser for the Democratic Party. He was the New York finance chair for John Kerry's failed presidential bid in 2004 and the national finance chair to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2006. In the late 1990s then-president Bill Clinton nominated Mister Nemazee to be the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina. The nomination was withdrawn after a blistering and unflattering expose in Forbes magazine about some of Mister Nemazee's shady-seeming business dealings but that didn't stop Bill's wife Hillary Clinton from appointing him her national finance chairman when she made her own run for the presidency in 2007-8.

Anyhoo, as part of his plea agreement, Mister Nemazee agreed to surrender ownership of his Park Avenue apartment to the office of U.S. Marshall who took possession in the fall of 2009. In 2010, Mister Nemazee's Missus, Sheila, made a valiant but failed legal attempt to retain ownership of the apartment—as well as other real property assets—for which, she claimed, she provided the approximately $1,500,000 down payment.

Mister and Missus Nemazee purchased their posh and traditionally decorated duplex pad located on a high floor in a notably swank, pre-war Georgian-style dowager on Park Avenue in 1989 for around $5,800,000. The mouth-watering floor plan (above) and current listing information shows the palatial 14th and 15th floor apartment contains a total of 14 rooms with four family bedrooms, five full and 2 half bathrooms plus an additional staff suite with one bathroom and two cell-sized bedrooms. Listing information goes on to point out the three exposures, 28 windows, two terraces and substantial but certainly not unusually high common charges of $11,505 per month.

The lower level living spaces include a compact entry vestibule with adjoining powder room; a bedroom-sized foyer/stair hall with elaborate, geometric inlaid wood floor and faux-finished trim work; a just-about-baronial, 29-plus foot long double exposure formal living room with fireplace and peach brocade wallpaper; a more intimately-scaled 20-foot long library with inlaid herringbone wood floor, second fireplace, built-in cabinetry and forest green brocade wall coverings; and a formal dining room with built-in china and linen closets at one end and blood red brocade wallpaper all around.

A windowed and well-equipped butler's pantry connects the corner dining room—and the stair hall/foyer—to the spacious eat-in kitchen that, in turn, connect through a rear stair hall/mud room to a family room with adjoining half bathroom.

The rear stairs lead up to the aforementioned two bedroom and one bathroom staff quarters that also include a full-sized laundry room and three large closets. The main staircase in the front foyer curls elegantly around to the tail end of a T-shaped corridor off of which open four family/guest bedroom suites. Two of the family/guest bedrooms have walk-in closets and private poopers as does a third that also offers private access to a slender but still much-coveted set-back terrace. The two-room master suite encompasses a private study/sitting room with built-in cabinetry and direct access to a second, larger set-back terrace plus a separate 20-plus foot long bedroom, two walk-in closets and two additional standard-depth closets, and a pair of small but properly ventilated bathrooms.

This is not, it should be noted, the first time the U.S. Marshall's Office has been to the real estate rodeo with this particular Park Avenue apartment. In March 2011, more than a year after the apartment was seized, it was pushed on the open market with an overly-enthusiastic $28,000,000 price tag. Seven months later the price plummeted to $23,000,000 and in March of this year (2012) it was slashed to $19,500,000 before being taken off the market in mid-August.

It might also be interestingly noted that the most expensive apartment ever to trade hands at 770 Park Avenue was in October 2007 when private equity bigwig Robert Niehaus and wife Kate dropped $20,000,000 on the duplex apartment owned by Washington, D.C.-based businesswoman and real estate tycoon Connie Milstein, another shamed hot-shot Democratic mover and shaker, some of the politically-minded children may recall, who was (in)famously caught on camera attempting to bribe homeless potential voters in Wisconsin with cigarettes.

A few of the other real estate assets Mister Nemazee agreed to forfeit—but that his wife Sheila sued to retain—include a 2 bedroom and 3 bathroom fifth and sixth floor (5H) duplex apartment at 101 Warren Street purchased in both their names in April 2008 for $3,008,623, seized by the U.S. Marshall's Office in March 2010, listed the following month for $3,300,000 and sold for $3,105,662 in October of the same year. The apartment was reported by the kids at Curbed to have been previously occupied by one of the Nemazee's five children.

The pampered couple also maintained a 12.5-plus acre compound just north of New York City in the bucolic and supah-swank Westchester County community of Katonah, the same neck of the woods where Martha Stewart and Ralph Lauren both keep sprawling, high-maintenance country spreads. Records we peeped are a tad bit vague but it looks to Your Mama like Mister and Missus Nemazee acquired the two-parcel property—with multiple structures, swimming pool and tennis court—sometime in the late 1980s for around $1,500,000. The databases we scoured aren't clear when exactly the U.S. Marshall took posession but they do show the tony estate was sold in February of this year (2012) for $3,650,000 to a corporation linked to a man named Allan S. Gordon who appears to be the producer of a slew of Broadway barn burners like Rent, Hairspray, Spamalot, The Pee-Wee Herman Show and the current revival of Evita.

A May 2010 article in (and on) Forbes noted that the couple also maintained a luxurious apartment in Rome and a 14th-century farmhouse in Italy that Mister Nemazee "agreed to forfeit to federal prosecutors as part of a plea deal." Presumably those have already been or will soon be seized and sold.

listing photos: Brown Harris Stevens

BUYER: Amanda Bynes
LOCATION: Calabasas, CA
PRICE: $1,879,000
SIZE: 4,618 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: After a series driving mishaps that include—but are not limited to—one DUI arrest, a couple of moving violations and two hit-and-runs plus a mountain of unpaid parking tickets that resulted in the revocation of her driver's license, the apple-cheeked and newly raven-haired former child star Amanda Bynes (What I Like About You, She's the Man, The Amanda Show, All That), who declared her retirement from the Show Business via Twitter in June 2010 at the age of 24, decamped for the taxi-cab strewn streets of Manhattan where she says she'll pursue a career as a fashion designer.

Your Mama doesn't have even the remotest of notions where Miss Bynes beds down in The Big Apple but three separate and all very reliable informants snitched to Your Mama this week that young (and amok) Miss Bynes still owns a quintessentially suburban mock-Med mini-mansion in an affluent gated enclave in Calabasas, CA that she quietly scooped up last November (2011) for $1,879,000.

Almost two million bucks might seem to like a whole lotta dough for a 26-year old Showbiz retiree to spend on a large house in suburban Los Angeles in which she no longer plans to live. Believe it or not, butter beans, for a number of years in the mid-Aughts Miss Bynes was one of Tinseltown's top teen-aged earners and in early 2007—then just past her teen years at 20—Forbes declared her the fifth highest under-21 earner in Hollywood with an estimated 2006 take of around $2,500,000.

Listing information from the time of her purchase that Your Mama easily conjured up out of the interweb shows the "(mostly) one story)" stone and stucco tract house was built in 2005 with 4 bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms in 4,618 square feet of indisputably luxurious if almost entirely brown and beige interior space.

The expensively upgraded and customized interior spaces include an airy living/dining room with wood-burning fireplace, high beamed and bead-boarded ceiling, Travertine tile floors laid in a Versailles pattern, and a trio of transomed, 10-paned French doors that open to the compact, resort-style backyard.

The fancy Travertine flooring treatment continues into the large and expensively equipped—if very ordinary—center island kitchen with distressed wood beams on the ceiling, dark chocolate-stained wood cabinetry, an on-demand hot water system, the expected collection of high-grade stainless steel appliances, pale beige-colored granite counter tops and beige tile back splash.

One end of the kitchen open to a breakfast room with French doors that access the walled and gated entry courtyard and the other end opens to a family room with more distressed wood beams on the ceiling, a second fireplace, a built-in entertainment center and direct access to the backyard entertainment areas.

The main floor master suite has heavy-duty crown moldings at the ceiling, more Versailles pattern Travertine tile on the floor and private access to the backyard and swimming pool. The suite is—or at least was at the time of Miss Byne's acquisition—complete with a double-sized closet and a private pooper with dual sinks, separate make-up vanity, lots of mocha-colored cabinetry for lotions and potions storage, a jetted bath tub and a separate steam-equipped shower.

We don't know to what use Miss Bynes put the second floor loft space but the previous, non-celebrity owners filled it with all manner of exercise equipment.

The .37 acre grounds—a good portion of which is lost to a steep, landscaped hillside behind the house—include walled and gated courtyard with splish-splashy fountain at the front of the house and several flagstone  terraces at the back that are connected by stepping stone paths. An elevated stone terrace just off the family room has a built-in barbecue station and tented cabana that overlooks the free-form swimming pool that's nestled into the hillside with what listing information calls a "beach entry."

Now children, use yer noggins here. The listing photos show the house as the previous owners had it decorated. We don't care for for the day-core—it's far too wannabe English country house meets Shabby Sheek meets Pier One—but it's absolutely no indication that young Miss Bynes decorative tastes run towards chintz-covered couches and/or white-washed and faux-distressed buffets and armoires.

If the downright filthy condition in which she keeps the interior of her late-model 5-series BMW is any indication, Your Mama would bet both our long-boded bitches, Linda and Beverly, that the inside of Miss Byne's Calabasas crib looks like a post-party frat house with mis-matched, cigarette-burned couches, sheets thumb-tacked over the windows, bongs in the bathrooms and a plastic, 50-gallon garbage can in the kitchen over-filled with beer bottles and fast food containers. Ouch! Did we say that out loud? We tease, children. It's probably immaculate.

listing photos: Prudential California Realty (via Redfin)

Word on the celebrity real estate street is that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West were out peeping on some posh and pricey properties in Miami Beach, FL yesterday.

Your Mama—who does not know a a Gerbera Daisy from the Gerber baby—has no idea if the perpetually pap-trailed publicity magnets are just looking for a little free press to keep their fame flame aglow, if their just looking for a multi-million dollar part-time love shack or if they plan to settle their high-maintenance selves down and make babies (or whatever) in the high-energy, multi-culti mosh pit that is Miami Beach.

Call us a cynic—and we have been called far worse—but would any of the piglets be surprised if this here house hunt was taped for Kourtney & Kim Take Miami, one of Kimmy K's several reality program? Or of, instead of a nest to feather with K.W., she was just looking to lease a big ol' house to camp out in while filming said reality program? Well, we certainly wouldn't be surprised but, truth is, trying to figure out the difference between what is real and what is reality t.v. with these two—particularly with her—is like a trout trying to solve a damn Rubic's cube. It just can't be done.

Anyhoo, we spent a few minutes looking around to see if we could suss out which property or properties the couple toured—they reportedly checked out four water front properties priced between 7 and 10 million clams—but turned up empty handed. We'll have another look around and see what we can turn up or—better yet—maybe one of the better informed children down in Miami Beach will give Your Mama a ringy-dingy and clue us in. How's that sound?

The big-bootied amateur porn star turned gossip glossy staple and reality television supernova Kimmy K. owns a faux-Spanish mini-mansion in Beverly Hills she bought in February 2010 for $3,400,000 and the even bigger ego-ed Mister West owns an art-filled, multi-story hillside residence just above Hollywood that he bought in December 2003 for $1,750,000 and briefly had on the market in spring 2010 with a $3,995,000 price tag. Since at least the mid-Aughts fashion-obsessed Mister West has also maintained an apartment in New York City where he combined a two modestly sized units in a swank SoHo apartment house that he had worked over in an aggressively minimalist fashion by conceptual Italian architect Claudio Silvestrin.

SELLER: Billy Bob Thornton
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $9,995,000
SIZE: 11,012 square feet, 9 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to a covert communique we received late last night from Our Fairy Godmother in Beverly Hills, we've come to learn that Oscar-winning screenwriter and actor Billy Bob Thornton (Sling Blade, A Simple Plan, The Man Who Wasn't There) hoisted his mansion in the flats of Beverly Hills on the (open) market this week with an asking price of $9,995,000.

Property records reveal Mister Thornton and his then third wife, Academy Award-winning actress Angelina Jolie, purchased the property in August 2000 for $3,750,000 from former Guns 'n Roses guitarist Slash who had purchased the property just four years earlier for $2,100,000. As best as we can tell, around the time Mister Thornton and Miz Jolie put a legal end to their highly publicized and rather bizarre union in May 2003, the deed was signed over to Mister Thornton.

Property records and listing information show the walled, gated and high-hedged
1920s Spanish Hacienda-style mansion sits on a 27,699 square foot corner lot just below Sunset Boulevard and measures 11,012 square feet with a total of 9 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms.

Current, publicly available listing information doesn't have much in the way of photographs—we got our aerial photo from the folks at Pacific Coast News—but does indicate the hulking, U-shaped residence includes a two-story living room with fireplace and beamed ceiling, a "large formal dining room, huge kitchen" and "enormous family room." There's also, as per listing information, a library, a master suite with sitting area, a fitness room/gym, and recording studio—Mister Thornton started in Showbiz as a musician before he became an actor, dontcha know, and once opened for Hank Williams Jr.

The completely landscaped grounds, according to listing information, include circular driveway at the front, additional off-street parking and two-car garage at the rear, covered loggias, fountains, a swimming pool and spa and a lighted paddle tennis court.

Mister Thornton also owns a house in Malibu that's not on the beach—it's on the mountain side of Pacific Coast Highway, actually—that's 2,544 square feet with 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms and cost him $2,350,000 in April 2007.

aerial photo: Pacific Coast News

Listen kittens, we found ourselves burdened with some entirely unexpected and unavoidable issues that we have to grapple with so we have only a few minutes to provide the children with some links to a few recent celebrity real estate stories we didn't get to earlier...

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Celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ reported early last week that sit-com star John Krasinski and his movie star wife Emily Blunt recently splashed out $2,150,000 on a new, eco-friendly country spread in Ojai, CA. Although it's closer as the crow flies, the 5.17-acre property is just over 1.5 miles by car from the ranchette Reese Witherspoon and husband Jim Toth heaved on the market a few weeks ago to much media hoo-ha and hullabaloo with a $10,000,000 price tag.

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TMZ also reported last week that recently widowed Taylor Armstrong from The Real Housewife of Beverly Hills—she's the one with the really big lips—will soon have to vacate her rented 4,814 square foot faux-Spanish casa that her landlord listed last week for $3,695,000.

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The long-legged gal at Trulia Luxe Living revealed late last week that genuinely talented Oscar-nominated actor Albert Brooks (Drive, Broadcast News, Defending Your Life, Taxi Driver) listed his long-time residence in upper Bel Air for $6,995,000

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Actors Eric Dane and Rebecca Gayheart recently filed suit against Smashing Pumpkins front man Billy Corgan after a huge eucalyptus tree on Corgan's property, directly across the street, was felled by high winds and, according to the peeps at E!, "landed on the Danes' house, breaking power lines and a sprinkler system."


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The 6,000-ish square foot London duplex penthouse of Grammy-winning pop singer Duffy, estimated to be worth around £12,000,000, was destroyed in a fire last week. The singer, who was reportedly preparing to move out, managed to escape the conflagration with her housekeeper, two cats and dog.

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Does outspoken comedienne/chat show host Rosie O'Donnell really want to buy a new house for Honey Boo Boo?


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Not that it matters mean much, but did y'all know that presidential hopeful Mitt Romney personal property portfolio contains five homes with a total of 25 poopers while current president Barak Obama owns just one home with five?

OWNER: Olivia Wilde
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $11,000 per month
SIZE: 3,284 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It was only last May (2011), shortly after the increasingly in-demand actress Olivia Wilde (House M.D., the Tron film franchise, The O.C.) and her Italian aristocrat/documentary filmmaker husband Tao Ruspoli's separation was revealed in the gossip glossies, that the now-divorced couple sold their house in Venice, CA to a high-powered entertainment industry executive and her husband for its full, $3,095,000 asking price.

Interestingly, property records also show that Miz Wilde and Mister Ruspoli still co-own a townhouse-type loft condo—in Venice—originally bought by Miz Wilde's documentary filmmaker mother in 2003 for $1,090,000 before being quickly transferred over to the now-kaput couple. 

Anyhoo, a few months before she and her ex sold the house in Venice, property records reveal, cat-eyed and husky-voiced Miz Wilde dropped $2,295,000 on a new pad across town in the hills above arty-farty and celebrity-friendly Los Feliz that she now has available for lease on the open market at $11,000 per month.

Current lease listings Your Mama found on the interweb show the three-story Spanish villa was originally built in 1929 on a steep hillside, retains much of its dignified original detailing and measures 3,284 square feet with four bedrooms and three—or maybe 3.5—bathrooms.

The walled, gated and secured courtyard—the property is equipped with video entry system and surveillance cameras—connects to a turreted entry with original stained glass window, vintage floor tiles and an exposed wood beam ceiling.

A wrought iron-railed stairway descends elegantly into the decadently capacious "formal" living room with wood floors, wood-burning fireplace and several sets of French doors. The formal dining room looks over the living room through a wrought iron railed Juliet balcony and the somewhat compact adjacent kitchen—a rather haphazard melange of vintage and modern—is outfitted with white tile counter tops, glass-fronted upper cabinets, honeycomb-shape red tile flooring, and the ubiquitous-with-celebs high-grade stainless steel appliances.

Other rooms include a semi-circular solarium with pitched and beamed ceiling, a cozy den/office/library with corner fireplace and painted pine paneling and a lengthy, lower-level media room with built-in bar at one end and a wide projection screen that magically retracts into the ceiling at the touch of a button at the other.
Several rooms at the back of the house open to tiled terraces with canyon and over-the-tree top city views. Terraced gardens and pathways meander around the hillside below the property and include a spa nestled privately into a foliage-enshrouded wall of boulders out of which tumbles a short waterfall.

Before Miz Wilde's ownership, her now-up-for-rent Los Feliz residence was previously owned or occupied, according to listing information from the time she picked up the property, by "Oscar contenders, world-renowned musicians and iconic puppeteer." We don't know who the Oscar contenders or world-renowned musicians were but the iconic puppeteer, according to property records, was Brian Henson, the prolific, Emmy-winning producer son of Muppet's creator Jim Henson.

The reason Miz Wilde would like lease out her house in Los Angeles may—or may not—have something to do with her hot-and-heavy romance with actor and comedian Jason Sudeikis (Saturday Night Live, Eastbound and Down, The Cleveland Show, 30 Rock) who—as it turns out—resides primarily in New York City where (according to a tattletale we'll call Odette Overheard) Miz Wilde recently scooped up a multi-million dollar crib at The Porter House building in the used-to-be dank, prostitute-packed, blood-scented and impossibly chic and now boutique-lined, Apple Store-anchored and impossibly trendy Meatpacking District.

Property records show the apartment Missus Overheard told Your Mama Miz Wilde acquired (shown above) is owned by fantastically successful Tinseltown talent agent/manager Jason Weinberg who—dontcha know—represents Miz Wilde. A short list of Mister Weinbergs other current and past clients includes Kirstie Alley, Uma Thurman, David Caruso, Penelope Cruz, Naomi Watts, Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange, Debbie Harry, Demi Moore and once-promising actress turned tabloid catnip Lindsay Lohan. Until about a year ago Mister Weinberg's client roster also included Hilary Swank who has her own Spanish-style casa in Pacific Palisades, CA on the market with an asking price of $9,495,000. But we digress...

Property records don't yet reflect a transfer of ownership from Mister Weinberg to Miz Wilde—or anyone else for that matter—so we ask that the children use their noggins and recognize that makes this nothing more than a nugget of unsubstantiated celebrity real estate gossip.

What isn't scuttlebutt, at least according to the meticulous real estate record keepers at Street Easy, is that Mister Weinberg had his approximately 1,950 square foot, low-floor condo listed on the open market until mid-July (2012) with an asking price of $3,495,000 with relatively modest montlhy taxes and common charges that total $3,069.

Listing information from that time shows the sophisticated, art-filled corner unit was designed by the skilled architects at SHoP—the same folks who handled the conversion and expansion of The Porter House building itself—and outfitted with high quality interior fittings and finishings that include Brazilian cherry wood floors, custom built-in cabinetry and super shiny—and no-doubt high-maintenance—stainless steel sinks and vanities in at least two of the three bathrooms.

A walk-in coat closet and half bathroom open off the small but proper entry vestibule that opens into the main living and dining area that's more than 25 feet square with two banks of over-sized, west-facing windows. A sleekly finished, galley-style kitchen extends off the dining area and has glossy, custom Italian cabinetry, snow white counter tops and sinks a full suite of Viking brand appliances. The lack of overhead shelves or cabinetry for dish and food storage is more than made up for by the pair of pantries that bracket the service entrance at the rear of the kitchen area.

A laundry closet, guest bathroom and second bedroom open off a short corridor near the entrance and the master suite opens off a discrete niche in the living room area and includes a fitted walk-in closet and private bathroom with full-sized soaking tub, separate glass-enclosed shower stall, the aforementioned high-maintenance stainless steel sinks and vanity and—if we read the floor plan correctly—the largest medicine cabinet we've ever seen.

The 22-unit, full-service building offers residents part-time doorman service and a video-security system, a sleek lobby, private storage rooms, a bike storage room, fitness room and a landscaped room terrace.

If Your Mama drills down in the public property records readily available online we discover that Mister Weinberg has been in the mood to lighten—or at least change up—his property portfolio. He recently off-loaded a walled, gated, very contemporary and quite compact mini-compound located just off Abbott Kinney—arguably the hippest strip of boutiques and eateries in L.A. right now—that he bought in 2006 for $2,490,000 and sold in February (2012) for $2,875,000.

listing photos (Los Angeles): Rodeo Realty and Prudential California Realty (Sherman Oaks)
listing photos New York City): Sotheby's International Realty (via Street Easy)
listing photo (Venice): Charmaine David for Prudential California Realty

BUYER: Patrick Stewart
LOCATION: Brooklyn, NY
PRICE: $2,500,000
SIZE: 2,176 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The seemingly-sleepless real estate nuts at Curbed revealed this week that knighted, British-born actor Patrick Stewart coughed up $2,500,000 for a 2,176 square foot duplex penthouse perched atop a converted, turn-of-the-century carriage house in Brooklyn's beautiful and family-friendly Park Slope neighborhood.

The smooth-pated and still very—ahem—vigorous looking, 72-year old Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated thespian's new condo crib in The BK has a gated and secured building entrance plus a key-lock elevator that opens directly into an over-sized foyer with powder pooper and oodles of closets and storage space including a large enclosed cubby under the stairs.

The open plan living/dining/kitchen stretches 31 feet with lofty,11-foot ceilings and immaculate, yellow-blond hardwood floors. A massive and modern concrete chimney breast makes a strong—if not entirely successful—counterpoint to the wide row of more traditional multi-paned windows and the fireplace's rugged "mantle [sic] fashioned from the building's original beams" makes a solid—and very successful—connection to the building's history.

The open, center island kitchen is hardly huge but it's expensively-finished with dark, smoke-stained cherry wood cabinetry, white—or near-white—counter tops of unknown material, a white-porcelain farmhouse sink and the customary collection of upper-end stainless steel appliances that including Euro-style range.

The second floor contains a laundry room of unusually-generous-for-New-York-City proportions and two good-sized guest/family bedrooms. One bedroom has a second, very-contemporary, concrete-breasted wood-burning fireplace and both have convenient and direct access to a windowed, Jack-n-Jill style bathroom.

The master suite, privately situated in its own wing across the extra-wide corridor from the other bedrooms, is complete with a walk-in closet and a windowed dressing room, a properly ventilated Old-School meets new-fangled facility with separate claw-footed bathtub and stall shower, and a 200-ish square foot private terrace.

One more flight up, the exceptionally sized, 1,200 square foot roof terrace has an outdoor fireplace and panoramic views over Brooklyn to the towering Manhattan skyline.

Other notable amenities, according to listing information include radiant floor heating throughout the duplex, high-efficiency systems, central heat and air delivery and an additional, locked storage room in the basement.

listing photos: Brown Harris Stevens

Never mind that Your Mama blabbed it to the children about six weeks ago, it was finally reported this week by property gossips around the globe that multi-billionaire tech tycoon Larry Ellison dropped a stomach-churning $37,000,000—$36,943,890 to be exact—to acquire former Yahoo! chairman and CEO Terry Semel's kinda wacky, post-modern-minded Michael Graves-designed ocean front compound on Malibu's exclusive and sinfully expensive Carbon Beach.

But, children, as gargantuan as the nearly $37 million clams Mister Ellison dropped for his eighth house on Carbon Beach may be, it's an almost inconsequential drop in his over-flowing pecuniary bucket compared to the half a billion bucks (or more) he reportedly splashed out earlier this year to buy about 98% of Hawaiian island of Lana'i.

The property collecting bajillionaire enters the record books with a downright monumental residential property portfolio that includes more than $200,000,000 worth of prime real estate in Malibu (CA), a massive contemporary mansion in San Francisco's hoity-toity Pacific Heights 'hood and a fully-landscaped 23-acre estate in Woodside, CA, "modeled on a 16th-century Japanese emperor's residence," according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal.

Then, there's a sprawling, multi-residence compound on the pristine shore of Lake Tahoe, an historic mansion in blue-blooded Newport, RI that once belonged to the Astor family and a 249 acre estate in Rancho Mirage (CA) with 8 guest houses and a private 19-hole golf course. Oh, and let's not forget the recently acquired garden estate in Kyoto (Japan) that was reportedly listed for $86,000,000 or the 450-plus foot, cruise ship-like yacht co-owned by David Geffen and dubbed Rising Sun.

How-evuh—What the super-spendy media mogul might want with almost the entire island of Lana'i wasn't known...until now.

Many were concerned that Mister Ellison might try to further develop the fledgling—if quite fancy—hospitality options on the otherwise commercially undeveloped former pineapple plantation. Turns out, as he casually revealed in a recent interview on CNBC excerpted by Howzit Howard on the Hawaii New Now website, Mister Ellison actually plans to "turn Lanai into a model for sustainable enterprise" with desalinization plants, a fleet of electric cars, solar photovoltaic and solar thermal powered utilities and an extensive drip irrigation system to maximize produce exports. He went on to describe his future vision of his private island as a "laboratory for sustainability in businesses of small scale."

Well, isn't that lovely? An eco-minded gajillionaire. Or not. Listen, children, Your Mama is always happy to hear more about anybody's adoption of and commitment to sustainable energy options and practices. However—let's get real—just how committed to "green" and other eco-technologies can a man be whose "boat" has a gas tank that holds—we guesstimate based on available intel about other yachts of similar size—well in excess of 200,000 gallons and whose private golf course in Rancho Mirage surely requires a lake's worth of water to keep a deep and unnatural shade of green in a relentlesly arid locale where daily temperatures average well over 100 degrees during in the summer months?

SELLERS: Joe and Tina Simpson
LOCATION: Encino, CA
PRICE: $4,395,000
SIZE: 6,895 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: With unsubstantiated—and denied—rumors in all the celebrity gossip glossies of an amicable divorce in the works, Baptist minister turned Tinseltown talent manager Joe Simpson and long-time wife Tina have hoisted their 6,895 square foot faux-English cottage mini-mansion in Encino, CA on the market with an asking price of $4,395,000, as first reveal by the long-legged blond gal at Trulia Luxe Living.

Missus Simpson—a homemaker as far as we know—and Mister Simpson—a former Baptist minister who was recently charged with (and plead not guilty) to a two-count DUI—are the luxe-living parents of bubblegum pop singer turned dim-witted reality tee-vee star turned budding apparel tycooness Jessica Simpson and her younger, Showbiz-has-been sister Ashlee.

Property records show Mister and Missus Simpson coughed up $3,450,000 for the five bedroom and seven bathroom residence on 1.52, mostly hillside acres tucked into the tail end of a leafy cul-de-sac in The Colony, a guard-gated enclave of 19 luxurious suburban Mcmansions in the affluent Royal Oaks area of Encino.

Current listing information for the obviously meticulously kept and very beige and very traditionally decorated property—it looks painfully generic to Your Mama, like a pricey furniture showroom that caters to middle-brow decorative tastes—shows a double-height copper-roofed turreted entry with high school prom picture-style circular staircase and chestnut-brown parquet wood floors. The parquet continues into the formal living room with fireplace and pitched wood-beam ceiling and on into the formal dining room over-done with thick ceiling moldings and curved row of leaded glass windows.

The parquet flooring extends into some, but not all, of the less formal family areas. These include an octagonal breakfast room with direct backyard access and a roomy, center-island kitchen finished with bone-colored raised panel cabinetry, granite counter tops butler's pantry, white brick accents, and the usual slew of top-grade, commercial-style stainless steel appliances. The parquet floors turn to regular horizontal strip hardwood floors in the spacious—if woefully ordinary—family room with stone fireplace, exposed wood beams on the ceiling and a trio of French doors that connect to a backyard lounge terrace with built-in barbecue station and snack bar that can be shaded by a super-sized electronically-operated awning.

Three guest/family bedroom suites on the second floor are joined by a private office and state-of-the-art media room with jumbo, wall-mounted boob-toob. The commodious, second floor master suite occupies its own wing and is complete with a raised ceiling, a fireplace flanked by faux-distressed built-in cabinetry, dual walk-in closets and a large restroom with inlaid stone/tile flooring, free-standing soaking tub, separate steam-equipped shower, two sinks and a make up vanity. The fifth bedroom—outfitted as a home fitness room—has a private bathroom and separate entrance that makes it suitable for use by long-staying in-laws or a live-in domestic.

A man-made waterfall tumbles down a pile of (possibly fake) boulder into the free-form swimming pool—with grotto—nestled into a meandering flagstone terrace between the back of the house and the fully-landscaped and terraced hillside. Other backyard amenities include a sunken spa, de rigueur built-in fire pit and an outdoor fireplace (with a giant, decorative cross mounted on the breast), a petite putting green, a lighted sport court and an elevated gazebo with through the tree-tops view of the San Fernando Valley and two, Old Timey porch swings hung from the exposed rafters.

Property records indicate Mister and Missus Simpson also maintain a 5,229 square foot residence in an upscale but undistinguished development in Woodway, TX—that's just outside of Waco—purchased in February 2002 for $372,400.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty

SELLER: Gavin Polone
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $15,900,000
SIZE: 4,750 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yesterday, while Your Mama and our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, waited out a particularly scorching afternoon in the comfort of a blissfully air conditioned house, we combed through some of the newer real estate listings in Tinseltown's posh and pricey Platinum Triangle and turned up a multi-acre mini-compound perched privately on a curved ridge line high above Beverly Hills, CA this is now available on the open market with a plump, $15,900,000 price tag.

A quick scan of the public property records reveals the owner of the gated estate is the sassy, brassy, smart and savvy television and film producer Gavin Polone. Mister Polone may not be a household name in Pensacola or Kalamazoo but, children, he's absolutely a well-known entertainment industry veteran who's bumped around Hollywood since the late 1990s.

In addition to his (no-doubt lucrative) executive producer credits on a couple of successful boob-toob programs like the quirky comedy sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm and the single mother prime time soap story Gilmore Girls, Mister Polone also executive produced a handful or two of much less successful programs (Jane By Design, My Boys, The Showbiz Show with David Spade, Hack) as well as a scary slew of schlocky, made-for-TV movies (Life at Five Feet, The Angriest Man in Suburbia, and Backyards and Bullets). Along the way Mister Polone also executive produced a few pictures for the big screen that include Zombieland, Panic Room with Jodie Foster and the star-studded mockumentary flop Drop Dead Gorgeous.

In 2011 Mister Polone received the 7th of his eight Emmy nominations for the made-for-TV movie Cinema Verite, a fictionalized drama about the production of the ground-breaking,1973 television mini-series An American Family.* His seven other Emmy nods—none of which resulted in wins—were all for Curb Your Enthusiasm. Alas, Mister Polone has always been an Emmy bridesmaid and never a bride.

A recent profile and interview of Mister Polone by Patrick Goldstein in the L.A. Times—or maybe it only appeared on the L.A. Times blog, we're not actually sure—described him as "prickly, whip-smart, wickedly funny, fiercely libertarian and never shy about sharing his contrarian views about the entertainment business." The article goes on to say that the unflinchingly Mister Polone will—and does—fearlessly "bite the hand that feeds, taking on many of the sacred cows of showbiz" in his must-read weekly column for New York magazine's sprawling arts and culture website Vulture.

Property records are a wee bit perplexing—or maybe we're just too pie-eyed to parse them—and indicate that Mister Polone picked up the three parcels that comprise the 2.32 acre compound in more than one transaction sometime in 1998, 1999 and/or maybe early 2000 for a not-quite-clear amount of money. Whatever he paid, a dozen or more pre-bubble years ago, for the trio of contiguous properties—tucked privately behind gates at the tail end of a quiet cul-de-sac at the tippy top of the trendy and terrifically expensive Trousdale Estates—Your Mama thinks it's probably pretty safe to say it was a mere fraction of its nearly 16-millon smacker asking price.

The low-slung, single-story main house sits on the largest of the three parcels and, according to property records and current listing information, was originally built in 1960 and looks to Your Mama like a contemporized, classic California ranch that measures 4,750 square feet with four bedrooms and four—or maybe 4.5—bathrooms.

A discreet front door leads to an expansive, open-plan main space with polished concrete floors, a fireplace and a wide bank of sliding glass doors. Low book shelves divide the sunken living room from the dining room where a deep niche is fitted with a low, floating cabinet and two rows of floating picture/art display shelves.

The sizable, if unusually-shaped kitchen has custom cabinetry that may or may not be walnut or mahogany—some with frosted glass doors—and the expected collection of top-grade, commercial-style appliances typically found in multi-million dollar residences. An adjoining breakfast room has two walls of divided windows with lush garden view.

The polished concrete floors continue into the den/family room but appear in listing photos to switch to some sort of neutral-colored carpet tile in the bedrooms. The spacious but hardly huge master suite includes a corner fireplace, direct access to the outside through sliding glass doors and a sky-lit walk-in closet with built-in cabinets and hanging racks. The attached master bathroom with double sinks, sunken soaking tub and separate shower is divided—we're sorry to say—by a full-height wall of glass brick. There are, of course, absolutely excellent uses for glass brick in certain styles of residential architecture—like, say, Streamline Moderne. But, hunnies, with all due respect to Mister Polone—who we do respect—this isn't, in Your Mama's humble and utterly meaningless opinion, one of the better uses of glass brick we've come across.

Anyhoo, the main house opens to various, terraces, broad decks that lean out over the canyon and a flat lawn are just about big and private enough for a compact game of strip croquet. A wide set of stone steps ascends from the lawn and through a cut in a mid-height hedge aligned with the slender, dark-bottom swimming pool and slightly elevated spa simply set into a flat patch of thick, green grass. At the far end of the swimming pool a striking and pleasantly symmetrical, canyon view contemporary pool-/guesthouse pavilion with clerestory windows and alternating exterior panels of wood and glass. Inside, the airy, concrete-floor space has a bathroom, kitchenette, fireplace and built-in Murphy bed. A second, gated parking area is located behind the pool-/guesthouse.

We're not privy to any intel about whatever Mister Polone's future real estate plans may be once he sells his Bev Hills compound but should the firebrand desire a significant downsize, property records show he also owns a fairly ordinary, 1,946 square foot residence—purchased in April 2009 for $1,125,000—set on a hillside above one the rugged canyons that shoot north into the Santa Monica Mountains out of the proto-suburban, convenient-to-Tinseltown community of Sherman Oaks.

*Note the the children: If you've never seen An American Family, you really should. Its nearly impossible to find a copy of the 12-episode series that first aired on PBS, but it's definitely worth the effort.

listing photos: Rodeo Realty

SELLER: Paul Haggis
LOCATION: Santa Monica, CA
PRICE: $5,250,000
SIZE: 5,690 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Two weeks ago, the award-winning television and movie  screenwriter/producer/director Paul Haggis and his estranged, former-actress second wife Deborah Rennard quietly hoisted their long-time family home in Santa Monica, CA on the market with a $5,250,000 price tag.

We don't know a pouf from a poof, of course, but If Your Mama were the betting type—and we're not—we'd wager Big Daddy's citrus ranch up in Middle-of-Nowhere, CA that this mini-mansion in Santa Monica has lately been occupied primarily (if not exclusively) by soon-to-be second-ex-Missus Haggis, once a small-bit actress most known for her role as Texas oilman J.R. Ewing's loyal secretary on the 1980s nighttime soap story Dallas.

The couple have been amicably uncoupled for a few years now and Mister Haggis, who sired one child with Miz Rennard and three with his first wife, has reportedly been spending more time in New York City. In June 2010 the newly-single-again Showbiz scribe shelled out $3,950,000 on a 2,948 square foot loft-condo bachelor pad in SoHo with, according to listing information from the time of the purchase, 2 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and monthly taxes and common charges of $5,397

A notably prolific screenwriter, Mister Haggis has toiled in the trenches of Tinseltown since the late 1970s and early 1980s when he wrote for a heavy-duty handful of campy if iconic sitcoms that include Love Boat, Diff'rent Strokes, One Day at a Time and The Facts of Life. In the late '80s Mister Haggis was awarded an Emmy for his writing work on the prime time soap story thirtysomething and in the 1990s he primarily penned tee-vee crime and law dramas (L.A. Law, EZ Streets, Walker, Texas Ranger and Family Law).

His upwardly mobile foray into the world of cinema didn't begin in earnest until the early 2000s and almost immediately resulted in the much-gushed over and award-winning movies Crash, Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima, all three of which earned Mister Haggis Academy Award nominations. In 2004 Mister Haggis was awarded two of the plummiest of the Oscars—both for Crash, one for Best Original Screenplay and the other for the Best Motion Picture of the Year.

His output seems to have slowed in the last few years but, let's be honest, who could blame him if he wanted to slow down and shift focus a little bit after a pretty damn spectacular, non-stop thirty year (and counting) career? Mister Haggis's more recent efforts on the small screen (The Black Donnellys) and the big screen (Quantum of Solace, The Next Three Days) have not resulted in such bell-ringing accolades and, indeed, Mister Haggis may very well be less well known the last few years for his inventive screenplays as for his daring, full-throttled, articulate and very public renunciation of Scientology.

Mister Haggis voluntarily belonged to the religious organization for nearly 35 years but bitterly parted ways with the group in 2009 and, in a eye-popping early 2011 profile in The New Yorker entitled The Apostate, unequivocally called the polemical organization "a cult." But, children, fascinating as Mister Haggis' personal story may be—and a real damn ring tailed doozy of a tale it is—it's his real estate story we're here to discuss.

Property records show Mister and soon-to-be-second-ex-Missus Haggis paid $2,618,520 for the property that current listing information indicates spans a prairie-flat, 13,000-plus square foot corner lot located less than a mile from the beach and hosts a chunky, tree-enshrouded, East Coast-y sort of grey-shingled mini-mansion with 5 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms in 5,690 square feet.

A shrub- and boxwood-lined slate walk way (which we like), passes under an small arbor (which we don't) and cuts across a verdant, shaded lawn to the front door that opens dramatically into a mostly beige, unexpectedly spacious double-height entry with gleaming wood floors and a glimmering, rich-old-lady crystal chandelier.

There are—natch—predominantly beige and decoratively traditional formal living and dining rooms, the former with a fireplace and large enough to accommodate a baby grand piano and the latter with a steeply vaulted and sky-light dotted ceiling and a wide bank of French doors to the exterior entertainment areas.

Less stiff—if equally beige—family quarters include a giant, quite bright and faintly rustic, country-style eat in kitchen. This area is neatly outfitted with more gleaming hardwood floors, crisp white raised-panel cabinetry, gray (or maybe greenish-gray) stone counter tops, commercial-style appliances, a center island snack counter, and a built-in desk where Esmerelda the housekeeper can clip coupons and keep track of the floor waxing schedule.

An adjoining breakfast room opens into the backyard, as does the cavernous family room with high-drama exposed beam ceiling and flat-screen tee-vee built in to an entertainment center with enclosed storage cabinets—for games, scented candles, various paraphernalia, etc.—and two expanses of book shelves filled with actual books. We adore the deep window seat in the corner of the room where Your Mama can imagine spending hours upon hours reading and napping but—have mercy!—did soon-to-be-ex-Missus Haggis and/or Mister Haggis ever meet a shade of beige over which they did not break out in a sweat of decorative desire? Seriously!

Listing information indicates there are three bedrooms on the lower level, one a second master suite and another probably small enough—and probably also ill-located enough—to be identified as "Guest/Maids Quarters."

The second floor can accessed by a grand staircase in the (mostly beige) front foyer that somehow manages to be both amazingly ho-hum and Scarlett O'Hara worthy, or a far more prosaic staircase in the kitchen. A loft landing with book-filled bookcases connects to a private office/study with built-in wood cabinetry and a guest bedroom with private bathroom. Finally there is the tastefully if blandly decorated primary master suite with fireplace, over-sized walk-in closet and—not at all surprisingly—a pale beige bathroom with double sinks, soaking tub and separate, glassed-in and steam-equipped shower.

Several rooms along the back of the house open though French doors to a huge, slate terrace partially shaded by a slatted pergola. The terraces steps down to a built-in outdoor kitchen/barbecue center with snack counter and ambles down again to a shaded patch of grass where one might understandably expect to find—but does not find—a swimming pool and/or spa. Five and some million bucks in Santa Monica just don't buy a millionaire what it used to, does it? There is, perhaps as some consolation, also a detached three-car garage off the alley that runs behind the property.

Although they've owned their (former) family spread in Santa Monica for a dozen years, a slow peek and poke around public property record databases reveals Mister and soon-to-be second-ex-Missus Haggis together and separately bought and sold a significant amount of property during their 12-or-so years of marriage.

In May 2012 the now-kaput couple took a loss when they sold a small condo in Chicago, IL for $191,500 that they picked up in (presumably) happier times, in June 2006, for $242,000 and in August 2008 Mister Haggis coughed up $2,365,000 for a 2,262 square foot, single-story ranch-style residence a few blocks away from the family homestead in Santa Monica that he sold in July 2010 at a considerable loss for $2,000,000.

Sometime in 2002 or 2003—depending on where online one looks, and along with another non-celebrity couple, Mister Haggis acquired a pair of petite and charming if somewhat nondescript, side-by-side residences in Clearwater, FL that at some point he came to own on his own. Clearwater is, of course, the official headquarters of the Church of Scientology Corporation where acolytes of the secretive and frequently controversial religious organization travel to get audited—or whatever—at a non-contiguous campus that Scientologists reverently refer to as Flag Land Base. Mister Haggis may have left the church but is yet, according to property records we peeped, to unload his Clearwater cribs.

In June 2000 they took in $2,129,000 when they sold a 3,568 square foot house in Santa Monica they'd purchased just a couple years earlier for an unknown amount and about the same time in 2000 that they bought the Santa Monica mini-manse now on the market for $5,250,000, Mister and Missus Haggis also scooped up a vacant, ocean-view residential parcel in Pacific Palisades that they did not develop and sold in 2008 for undisclosed amounts.

listing photos: Prudential California Realtors