Michael Jordon Lists Multi-Wing Mega-Mansion

SELLER: Michael Jordon
LOCATION: Highland Park, IL
PRICE: $29,000,000
SIZE: 32,683 square feet, 9 bedrooms, 15 full and 4 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Simmer down tater tots. We know we're a bit late to this particular rodeo. That's because, for better and/or worse, Your Mama spent this morning frying up a very different celebrity real estate fish.

While Your Mama got busy shucking, jiving and making petty jabs about Little Kimmy Kardashian and her recent (and alleged) real estate activities, the celebrity real estate pooper scoopers over at The Wall Street Journal revealed that long-ago-retired but still much-beloved professional basketballer and sports world entrepreneur Michal Jordon pushed his multi-wing mega-mansion in the upscale Chicago suburb of Highland Park (IL) on the market with a super-sized and publicity-ensuring $29,000,000 asking price.

Even Your Mama, who does not know a tight end from a power forward in the athletic sense, knows well that Mister Michael Jordan is one of America's most adored, accomplished, and highly paid professional athletes and product endorsers with a half billion dollar-plus fortune and fat property portfolio to prove it.

Mister Jordan was expensively divorced from his first wife Juanita in 2007; It reportedly cost him close to $170,000,000 or, seen another way, ten million clams for every 17 years they were married. At about the time of their legal severance of marital ties the family's long-time Highland Park estate was transferred in to a trust. Unfortunately, Your Mama has no specific intel about whether Mister Jordan (along with his new fiancée Yvett Prieto) or ex-Missus Jordon occupied and maintained the premises over the last five years. Whatever the case, the suburban estate with its mall-sized mansion is now up for grabs.

The electronically-controlled front gates bear the number 23, which Your Mama thought might be the property's street address until we did a little due diligence and discovered '23' was the number that appeared on Mister Jordan's jersey throughout his illustrious career on the hardwoods. The gates swing open to a tree-lined black top drive that swoops across the thoroughly landscaped 7.29 acre estate and around to a massive, tree-shaded circular drive that has far more in common with the motor court out front of some random resort hotel than it does the driveway of average American home. The snaking drive continues beyond the circular drive, past two separate (but attached), climate-controlled, three car garages, curves around to a pair of small parking lots and winds up at a rear motor court where there appears to be another three-bay, climate-controlled garage.
 
Listing information shows Mister Jordan's mega-mansion measures in at a titanic 32,683 square feet with a total of 9 bedrooms and 15 full and 4 half bathrooms. It doesn't take a bejeweled abacus to figure out that's a total of 19 terlits, an amount that ensures the owner/resident of this beast of a house employ a full-time minimum wager tasked only to locate and lave all 19 bathrooms on a twice weekly basis. The Wall Street Journal pegged the manse at "more than 56,000 square feet of space," an figure we think—but can not confirm—probably includes the colossal compound's "indoor basketball complex" and "three bedroom guesthouse."

The Wall Street Journal also reported the mansion was constructed between 1993 and 1995 and images show it retains its original, well maintained and liberally curvaceous 1980s-minded exterior articulation. The interior was extensively renovated in 2009 with a decidedly sleek and very contemporary aspect that skews vaguely corporate due in part to the large scale of some of the rooms. Interior spaces, according to listing information, marketing materials and/or previous reports, include hotel ballroom-proportioned 1,056 square living room and an almost 800 square foot family room with floor-to-ceiling glass sliders on two opposite walls and a massive triangular sky light that runs like a spine down the center of the 37-foot long room.

A circular dining area's soaring ceiling is topped by an octagonal sky light and the adjacent, sculptural kitchen has a huge center island (with cook top) that appears to float in the center of the room, full-height pantry and storage cabinets, and—one imagines—the most expensive appliances money can buy. We realize this kitchen will not appeal to those who see kitchens as the emotional heart of the home but for all those folks who prefer their cooking centers be more Maserati than mini-van, this one will surely make them pee their pants with culinary equipment desire.

Listing information indicates Mister Jordan's mansion also contains a 500-plus square foot second level library, a 600-plus square foot den on the main level, an office and a study also on the main level, and at least one laundry room the size of what would pass for a good-sized bedroom in a modest suburban ranch house.

The various and vast patios and terraces that extend off the back of the house drop down to high-maintenance manicured grounds that encompass acres of flat lawns with an amoebic putting green, tucked away tennis court, suggestively-shaped deep-water pond, and a children's playground with two elaborate jungle gyms. Both The WSJ and listing information we peeped indicate Mister Jordan's estate includes a swimming pool although we're unable to locate it listing photos and/or aerial images of the property.

The property's pièce de résistance—and also perhaps it's bête noire due to the obvious fact that so few people in the Chicago area who can afford it will actually want to own or maintain it—would most certainly be the fully custom, state-of-the-art indoor basketball complex completed in 2001 and equipped with, as per The WSJ, "a full-size regulation basketball court with specially cushioned hardwood flooring, adjustable backstops and baskets and competition-quality, high-intensity lighting. The complex has a sound system tuned to provide perfect acoustics within the court space."

As best as we know from our research, in addition to the Highland Park beast Mister Jordan heaved on to the market this week His Airness currently maintains a penthouse pad in Charlotte, NC (where he's part owner of some professional basketball team or another that we know nothing about), a major mansion in the a gated, golf community in Jupiter, FL that is either newly completed ought to soon be completed, and a substantial ski house on almost 4 acres in posh Park City, UT.

aerial photo (top): Bing
listing photos: Baird & Warner

Your Mama Hears...

...through the Tinseltown celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that reality television denizen Kim Kardashian has packed up her industrial-sized booty and moved into a leased mansion located just down the road and around the corner from a number of other trouble-making tabloid superstars like Paris Hilton, Charlie Sheen and Robbie Williams.

Hardcore celebrity real estate mavens and reality television aficionados may recall Little Kimmy Kardashian followed up the $885,000 sale of her 3 bedroom Los Angeles, CA kondo krib in January 2010 with the February 2010 purchase of a nearly 4,000 square foot faux-Tuscan villa high up above Beverly Hills, CA. The 5 bedroom and 4.5 bathroom mansion, gated, heavily secured and set very close to the street on a cul-de-sac that runs up a narrow ravine just below Mulholland Drive, cost K.K., according to property records, $3,400,000.

In late January of this year, in the turbulent wake of poor K.K.'s quickie marriage and divorce from some hunky Midwestern fella whose name we can no longer recall, an unhinged fan—let's call him Mister Delusional—showed up at front gate of K.K.'s Bev Hills home with luggage in tow. Mister Delusional claimed he'd flown into town all the way from North Carolina to work on the one of K.K.'s reality programs that include the long-running and exceedingly lucrative Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Kourtney and Kim Take New York , a program we've never seen but are absolutely sure is nothing less than scintillating and truly meaningful. Clearly Mister Delusional was, well, delusional and K.K.'s team of quick-thinking security guards snatched the wannabe intruder up and rang the po-po who, natch, escorted from moe-ron from the premises and—we imagine but don't actually know—served the nimrod with a well-deserved restraining order.

It wasn't long after that ugly incident all the gossip glossies and celebrity-based blogs reported K.K. was so freaked out by the whole thing that she wanted to move from her current residence in Bev Hills to a nearby guard-gated community that would provide her with an extra layer of security in addition to her body guard(s).

Well, dontcha know butter beans, according to an often in the know source (and the peeps The Daily Mail who beat us to the punch), that's just what K.K. did. The entertainment industry global superstar and entrepreneur—who does not, as far as Your Mama can tell, sing, dance, act or have any other showbiz-y talent besides near-shameless self promotion—(allegedly) leased a 6,775, square foot mock-Med meets Asian-infused Craftsman-style mansion in the celebrity-filled and guard-gated Mulholland Estates community. Some of the other high profile residents/homeowners in the 'hood include Vanna White, Judith Light, and rock 'n roller Slash who pushed his 11,000 square foot Mediterranean manse on the market as a pocket listing in mid-2011 with a $9.5 million price tag, since cut to $9.1 million.

Although it's absolutely a luxury development where the tree-lined streets are lined with multi-million dollar (mc)mansions, some of the children will surely see Mulholland Estates as a somewhat curious choice for someone concerned about their security since the community has over the years been a bit of a hotbed of crime: Paris Hilton's high-glam house was burgled by the infamous Bling Ring in 2008 and in 2010 some guy showed up on her doorstep with a knife; Besides all the illegal activities that surely took place inside his house Charlie Sheen has had not just one but two Mercedes Benz stolen right out from his damn driveway and run off a cliff in to a nearby ravine.


Anyhoo, listing information for the house in question Your Mama managed to tease up out of the interweb shows the 4 bedroom and 6 bathroom mansion K.K. (allegedly/reportedly may have) leased in the Mulholland Estates community was built in 2003 and last on the open market as a fully-furnished rental with a hefty hefty hefty $40,000 per month price tag. We can't say for sure if K.K. rented this house but our research did turn up evidence the nearly half acre, Balinese resort-inspired spread, owned by a brainy businesswoman/philanthropist/heiress to a billion dollar-plus biomedical fortune, was also available for purchase an asking price of $10,950,000.

Interior spaces (shown above) include an intimately-scaled foyer that bursts dramatically into a double-height entrance hall with celeb-style curved staircase and stunning Lagos Azul limestone flooring that continues into the formal living room. The cocktail-party friendly living room, divided into two section by a pair of columns, has a fireplace, several sets of Craftsman-style glass doors that open to lushly landscaped gardens, and a grand piano just in case K.K. wants to tinkle the ivories.

Another pair of columns stand between the entrance hall and formal dining room where there's more blue limestone underfoot, another fireplace and over-sized windows with backyard and swimming pool view. The limestone carries on in the chef-friendly, eat-in kitchen complete with sizable center island, snack counter, a full complement of high-grade stainless steel appliances, and custom Shaker-style mahogany cabinetry topped by bull-nosed granite counter tops.

The floor material switches to wide-plank wood in an adjacent family room spacious enough to accommodate a pool table and a seating area oriented towards a paneled wall with fireplace surrounded by five—that's right 5—flat screen televisions, one big one in the middle with two smaller ones stacked on either side. Wide, Craftsman-style glass doors on two walls open the room (with its mostly beige, black and burnt orange day-core) to foliage ringed patios and terraces.

If the lavish-living K.K. really did rent this residence she no doubt fell head over Jimmy Choos for the sprawling master suite privately situated at the back of the house where it takes advantage of canyon and city views through huge windows and glass doors. A chunky and very contemporary three-sided concrete-faced fireplace separates a private sitting room (with Juliet balcony) from the bedroom area where there's a small, built-in shelving and entertainment center tucked into the corner next to the fireplace with wall-mounted flat screen tee-vee for watching Jimmy Kimmel, Chelsea Handler, Saturday Night Live and/or more lusty and lurid fare.

The over-sized attached master bathroom has stone flooring (that we can only hope has radiant heat), two sinks and vanities, a concrete-lined and glass-enclosed steam shower with long concrete bench, and an oval-shaped stone soaking tub set into an elevated deck in front of a full wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. A pair of custom-fitted, boutique style walk in closet/dressing rooms surely appealed to a clotheshorse like K.K. who does not, it seems to Your Mama from what we see in all the tabs and gossip glossies, leave the house for any reason whatsoever without the laborious and expensive efforts of a wardrobe stylist, hair doer and make-up gal. All the image effort seems positively reedonkulous to Your Mama who can't be bothered to put on a proper pair of shoes most days, but we get it. When yer a reality tee-vee lightening rod of controversy like K.K. is you always always always gotta look on point for the public who will gleefully shred a publicity seeking beehawtch for showing up at at the CVS in Calabasas or proto-suburban Sherman Oaks looking the least bit janky.

The lower level of the house opens out to a variety of patios and entertainment areas that include a curtained and vine-draped pergola lounge area that flows out to a second lounge area under the stars. At the other end of house a dining area nestled into a crook of the house has built-in bench seating, and a Palapa-shaded outdoor kitchen/barbecue center has bar seating. A sensuously curved sunbathing terrace snacks along the rim of a black-bottomed swimming pool and wood bridge spans a narrow arm of the pool to an elevated terrace with sunken spa set into a ring of palm trees from where night time hot tubbers can see down the house-dotted canyon and across the sparkly carpet of lights of the pancake-flat San Fernando Valley.

As it turns out, way back in early February after it was reported K.K. might want to move house, the leggy lady at Trulia suggested K.K. might want to consider this very house.

For the record, Your Mama has no direct knowledge of K.K. looking at or moving in to this house and, it should be noted, she recently tweeted the following:

So funny I was reading some magazine that showed pics of my new home...home is nice, but never seen it before! LOL who makes this stuff up?

Make of that what you will.

aerial photo (at top): Pacific Coast News
listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Beverly Hills South

From the Archives: Emma Roberts

BUYER: Emma Roberts
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,250,000
SIZE: 2,142 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yesterday Your Mama discussed a Los Angeles, CA post-modern perched on a ridge above Laurel Canyon and recently purchased by rock star and reality tee-vee judge Steven Tyler. Today we fish into our previously un-discussed celebrity real estate archive and come up with a modestly sized contemporary a few, short but twisted blocks away from Mister Tyler's new nest scooped up way back in December 2010 by up-and-coming young actress and Showbiz scion Emma Roberts.

A little nepotism never hurts in Hollywood and Miss Roberts, the 21-year old daughter of actor Eric Roberts and niece of Tinseltown royal Julia Roberts, got her big break as a teenager in 2004 when she landed the starring role as a high school art nerd in the very popular (and long ago canceled) teen-oriented sitcom Unfabulous, a program Your Mama had never before heard of until today. The well-connected lass went on to do a bunch of coming of age movies Your Mama ain't never heard of (Wild Child, Lymelife) and most recently she's dabbled in a growing list of rom-coms and dram-coms like the syrupy Valentine's Day and other silver screen gems we've never heard of like The Art of Getting By and Celeste and Jesse Forever.

for better or worse, Your Mama, more likely to read a gossip glossy than pay good money to see a romantic comedy our too-cynical and too-fat ass will most assuredly not appreciate, is far more familiar with Miss Roberts' date mates than we are her professional achievements. While still in her teens she was romantically squired by English actor/model Alex Pettyfer who hastily tattooed Miss Roberts' name on his wrist and just weeks ago rather ludicrously stripped down on Ellen Degeneres' daytime talk show while a bunch of lusty women and a few gays hooted, hollered and shrieked like there was no tomorrow. Miss Roberts, apropos of nothing real estate related, was widely reported to have recently split up with pouty-mouthed blond Chord Overstreet from Glee who Miss Roberts had long treated, so the salacious story goes, like her boy-bitch.

Sometime in 2010 and for reasons unknown to Your Mama, young Miss Roberts, then not even old enough to drink legally in a barroom, decided it was high time to decamp her rented West Hollywood condo and buy a single family house. Presumably she looked at any number of properties but according to multiple reliable sources eventually settled on a modestly-sized (if not exactly inexpensive) residence tucked discreetly into a fairly non-descript cul-de-sac high in the hills above Laurel Canyon.

Property records reveal pretty Miss Roberts, almost as generously lipped and wide mouthed as her Auntie Julia, paid either $1,246,000 or $1,250,000 for the gut-renovated residence. Listing information shows the low-profile but highly stylized house was originally built in 1949 and completely re-designed from 2008-10 by low-key L.A. based interior designer A.J. Bernard who may be modern-minded in his approach to living situations but kicks it Old School and does not appear, as far as Your Mama can tell, to maintain a professional presence on the interweb. The designer does, we were assured by someone we know who would know, have a email address for anyone who might like to engage his decorative and design talents and services.

Anyhoodles poodles, the sharply articulated but warmly finished single-story residence measures in at 2,142 square feet and includes 2 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms in the main house with another bathroom in the attached, two-room guest house that extends off the back of the house.

Listing photos suggest the previous owner used the smaller of the two rooms in the guest house (bottom two photos at top) as a fitness room/yoga studio and the larger room, with a pair of wood-framed French doors and canyon view, as a music studio. The variegated, medium-dark wood floors in the guest house—reclaimed from an unnamed French chateau according to listing information—are even more decoratively delectable than the undeniably magnificent (and straight-up expensive) 12-inch wide plank French oak floors that run throughout the main house.

A solid wood door with stainless steel—or maybe nickel—hardware and accents opens into a fairly narrow corridor that connects primary living/dining/entertaining areas that include a living/family room with marble-topped wet bar, puzzle table with a pair of Nakashima (or Nakashima-like) chairs, and a complete wall of custom-built, floor-to-ceiling oak cabinets that house and hide (among other things) state-of-the art audio and visual equipment. Hinged pocket doors open to reveal a flat screen tee-vee and smartly slide back and disappear into the cabinetry. Wood-framed glass doors stretch along one entire wall fold back accordion-style to a slim terrace that steps off to a flat expanse of lawn perfect for piddling pooches and child-sized Slip 'n Slide but missing, as far Your Mama is concerned, a spa and/or a plunge-sized swimming pool.


The dining area of the eat-in kitchen, anchored and defined by a massive concrete fireplace with raised hearth and inset display niche instead of a mantel, has a built-in buffet and a single, very minimal (and completely appropriate) floating shelf for the uncluttered display of knickknacks, gewgaws, bagatelles and/or other hoozymagoozies and what-have-yous.

A center island with two-seat snack counter and unusual, in-line range top separate the dining area from the sleek but hardly sterile kitchen where custom oak cabinets hold a plethora of integrated Euro-style stainless steel appliances. The counter tops, according to listing information are book matched Calacatta gold and make Your Mama's skin go goose pimply with real estate envy. The children will note how Mister A.J. Bernard thoughfully thought of that household's animal occupants and designed the island's marble counter top to water fall dramatically over the edge and connect to a swank marble pad set into the floor for the dog or cats food and water bowl.

Each of the two bedrooms in the main house has access to a private and well-equipped and -conceived if not particularly huge bathing, ablution and evacuation facility. The guest bedroom—with but a sad, sliver of windows set above eye level—makes use of a standard-sized bathroom with Old-Timey honeybee tiles on the floor that, to be totally honest, feel a bit tense against the graphic linearity of the much more contemporary feeling (and lovely) custom-built oak vanity.

Like the living room the master bedroom, large enough for a separate sitting area with built-in floating bookshelves and various other niches, spills out to the backyard through a complete wall of folding floor-to-ceiling wood framed glass doors. The attached sky lit master bathroom has a marvelous Calacatta gold marble vanity and a curtain wall of frameless glass that separates the bathroom area from the over-sized steam shower with built-in marble bench.

The backyard may be far from huge but it is notably large and flat for a house in the Hollywood Hills and probably large and flat enough for Miss Roberts to install on small in-ground swimming pool were she so inclined.

Prior moving on up to the tippy-tops of Laurel Canyon Miss Roberts shacked up for a short time in the legendary Granville Towers building in West Hollywood, a 7-story, French Normandy confection once home to scads of other medium- and high- profile entertainment industry peeps like Nicole Scherzinger, Portia di Rossi, David Bowie, Rock Hudson, Mickey Rourke and Marilyn Monroe.

Not content, perhaps, with just a west coast abode, Miss Roberts was also spotted as recently as last September poking and peeking around for a pied a terre in New York City's tourist- and shopper-packed SoHo neighborhood. It's not clear to Your Mama if Miss Roberts was looking to lease or purchase a pad in the The Big Apple and, since we don't know a donkey from hand puppet, Your Mama has absolutely no idea if the second tier starlet leased or purchased a place in New York City.

aerial photo (top left): Pacific Coast News
listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Beverly Hills North

January Contracts Up

Today's papers cite that national sales figures have risen in January, pushing the index used for measuring the health of the market to 97.  The number used for a balanced market is 100, so we can see that things are not only getting better, but that they are approaching "normal".  We need to remember that what we had in the middle of the last decade would be considered abnormally good, so there shouldn't be expectations that we will return to that dynamic any time soon.  However, it is clear that there is pent-up demand out there, particularly from first-time buyers, and it is starting to seem likely that the momentum we are gaining will feed upon itself and lead to further upticks.

More spring weather, more home sales--what could be better??

Double Whammy: Steven Tyler (2)

BUYER: Steven Tyler
LOCATION: Kihei, HI
PRICE: $4,800,000
SIZE: 3,000 square feet (approx.), 2 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: As far as Your Mama knows we were the first to "report" the details of a property purchase in Los Angeles, CA by Aerosmith front man and American Idol judge Steven Tyler but we are far from the first property gossip to get around to going on about the $4.8 million ocean front hideaway on the Hawaiian island of Maui the sixty-something and still rocking rocker and long time lady-pal and soon-to-be-third wife Erin Brady scooped up in December 2011.

We're not sure which snitch is responsible for letting Mister Tyler's Hawaiian real estate cat out of the bag but it it appears it may have been the well-connected gals who pen the Private Properties column for The Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ and listing information provided to Your Mama by a kind soul shows the gated, pentagonal-shaped dwelling sits all by itself on a promontory of just over a quarter acre of ocean front property. The house measures about 3,000 square feet and contains a pair of bedrooms multimillion dollar ocean views and 3.5 bathrooms. Listing information also reveals Mister Tyler's and/or his people negotiated a serious as a heart attack 25-plus percent discount on the property purchase as the pristine beach pad was last listed at $6,495,000.

Wood-framed floor-to-ceiling glass panels on both floors slide back and completely open the traditional pole-built residence to the elements. When completely open, the redwood and ipe wood structure functions as a luxuriously appointed covered terrace with flagstone floors and a floor-to-ceiling (and costly to maintain) aquarium on the lower level. Breezy, open air sleeping porches on the second floor have vaulted, exposed wood beamed ceilings, wood floors and postcard perfect ocean views.

The kitchen area has exquisite, custom ipe cabinetry that (one hopes) tolerates the damp and salty seaside air and includes shiny black granite counter tops with long expanses of prep area, a 4-person snack/booze counter, and top-of-the-line, commercial-quality appliances. Marketing materials we saw do not show any of the 3.5 bathrooms but listing information does state there is "marble in the bathrooms" and we expect they are as spiffy and ship-shape as the kitchen.

The upper level bedroom open to a narrow balcony that runs around the residence and the lower level living/dining/kitchen area spills out to a lava rock-lined, black-bottomed infinity edged saline swimming pool and grassy terraces girdle by rugged lava rock walls and connected by steps carved into the lava rocks.

Although the house and grounds appear to be quite and pleasantly private, it also appears from Your Mama's research that there's a very small but very public beach/swimming area located just outside the gates of Mister Tyler's residence.

Mister Tyler and his soon-to-be new Missus were photographed by the paps in late December (2011) taking part in some of house blessing ceremony with leaf-crowned woman believed to be "a local religious official."

listing photos: Century 21 / All Islands

Double Whammy: Steven Tyler (1)

BUYER: Steven Tyler
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,325,000
SIZE: 3,100 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.25 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Late last week Your Mama dissed and discussed the just put up for sale Sherman Oaks (CA) mock-Med mini-mansion of former American Idol judge Paula Abdul. This week we're gonna start with a Celebrity Real Estate Double Whammy about a pair of recent real estate transactions by Aerosmith's scarftastic front man and current American Idol judge Steven Tyler.

Mister Tyler has been shaking his money maker in the Bizness of Show more than 40 years and he's the recipient of multiple Grammys, AMAs and MTV Music Awards. He's lived, much to the delight and intrigue of fans, the electric and punishing life of a rock star, not the new fangled sort of rock stardom of juice fasts and Buddha statues but the Old School kind of hardcore drugs and indiscriminate recreational sex. Nowadays, although still every bit the rock star with his somewhat androgynous maquillage and high maintenance hairdo, he comes across as an easy-going, kind, thoughtful and genuine man who walks pretty damn squarely in the sincere but sometimes loopy Loobeetawns of his A.I. predecessor Paula Abdul and who—bringing us back to topic—went on a bit of a real estate buying spree last year purchasing luxury abodes in both Hawaii and Los Angeles, CA.

Fashion writer and celebrity gossip Merle Ginsberg reported in early August 2011 in the Hollywood Reporter that an unidentified woman walked into the swank, star-studded Sunset Tower Hotel on the Sunset Strip and was overheard tattling to the desk clerk she needed to book a room for a month or two because—so the story goes—sixty-sumpin' year old rock star Steven Tyler and his long term gal pal-fiancée Erin Brady had toured her nearby house, which she (allegedly) explained had been on the market for some time, and offered to buy the house on the spot with everything in it and with all cash if she agreed to leave that night. Apparently (and allegedly), the lady agreed to those rather absurd terms.

Listen puppies, we are nobody compared to the well-regarded Miz Ginsberg and we do not question that she reported what she heard accurately, but it seems simply ludicrous to Your Mama that Mister Tyler would make that sort of demand of a person selling their home. We might expect that sort of real estate nonsense from one or another of the more demanding American Idol judges but not of the oddly, surprisingly and pleasantly down to earth-seeming Mister Tyler. Then again, what do we know about anything? Certainly nada-zilch-nil about Mister Tyler's allegedly stiff-armed negotiating tactics.

We also do not, natch, have any idea if that disturbing and sad story of celebrity entitlement is true or not but we do know from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial that in the last days of July (2011) the wide-mouthed and long-haired Demon of Screamin' did indeed acquire a house high above L.A.'s legendary Laurel Canyon. However—and make of this what y'all will—the property in question was not sold, according to the property records we peeped, by a woman but rather a man who owned the house since at least the late 1990s and over the years borrowed regularly and heavily against its equity. Twice in the mid- and late-Aughts, public records show, lenders initiated foreclosure proceedings. Finally, just in the nick of time, along came Mister Tyler (and soon-to-be-third Missus Tyler) who snatched up the 3-story, ridge-line residence as a short-sale in late July 2011 for $1,325,000.

Listing information shows the post-modern minded main house was built in 1987 and measures about 3,100 square feet with three bedrooms and a total of 2 full, 2 half and 1 quarter bathrooms. The house, with a front facade partially perforated by a rigid grid of pin-prickish windows, sits privately on a flattened promontory above Laurel Canyon with what can quite legitimately be called a thrilling, sweeping and, yes, jetliner view across Los Angeles from east of downtown to, on a clear day, the Pacific Ocean.

Laurel Canyon, music lovers and celebrity real estate watchers well know, is steeped and gilded in music and showbiz history and lore. The rugged ravines, steep hillsides and snaking ridges have a long history of residents that well qualify as music industry icons such as—to name a paltry few—the incomparable Joni Mitchell, deliciously irreverent and experimental Frank Zappa, hard-driving howler Cass Elliot, Beach Boys' Brian Wilson, super-groupie Pamela Des Barres, Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, and the Rolling Stones who in the 1970s shacked up en masse for a short spell in the same Appian Way house atop Laurel Canyon where Marilyn Manson lived and recorded in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Mister Tyler's new west coast abode sits, according to property records, three small but separate parcels. The usable portion of the land makes an flag-shape as its stretches back from the street with the main house perches on the hillside at the extreme ass-end of the property, well out of view of looky-loos, garbage men, and dog-walking nosy neighbors on the street.

A 4-car, electronically gated carport is about all that can be seen from the street. At the rear of the car port a short set of steps ascends to a door set into a windowless wall that forms the rear boundary of a detached structure of unknown purpose that is definitely not the main house and may (or may not be) a guest house, pool house, recording studio, home fitness center, potting shed and/or whatever.

Because the main house sits as far from the street as the geography and building restrictions allow, in order to get to the front door a person must not only walk the entire length of long carport and up the stairs to the entry gate but also traverse the property's primary outdoor entertainment area along a narrow brick walkway that parallels the entire length of the swimming pool.

This somewhat unusual set up with the black-bottom swimming pool set in tight proximity to the house, in what is effectively the front yard, probably works just fine once you're on the property. Howevuh hunties, Your Mama can assure the children that our imperious house gurl Svetlana and any number of our boozier and hence less stable friends would surely balk at having to schlep the long distance from the car port to the kitchen with hands full of cocktails and armfuls of groceries and cleaning supplies. No doubt ol' Sveta would insist we supply her with a golf cart or electric scooter to ease her burden. Imagine for a moment, if you will, attempting to make that walk at 3:30 am in a pair of cockamamie pony heels (and downright criminal multi-color hose) after three too many gin & tonics. Mister Tyler may be sober now but we still suggest he consider keeping a speedo-suited lifeguard on duty at all times just in case any of his less sober guests partake a tipple or two of something merry making and possibly illegal.

Anyhoo, details of the house are few, but listing information and marketing materials Your Mama dug up out of the interweb do show the living room has very blonde and lustrous hardwood floors, a fireplace, and a pair vast expanses of asymmetrically-paned windows that frame and cut up the otherwise unobstructed rock star view, at night a magnificent shimmering expanse of winking and twinkling lights. We know there are a lot of people who loathe Los Angeles for any number of (probably legitimate) reasons but, butter balls, even the haters have to acknowledge the night time view from Mister Tyler's living room above Laurel Canyon is—when weather and smog permit—nothing short of spectacular.

Your Mama hears through the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that Mister Tyler had leased a very contemporary residence near the one he just purchased (as seen in this May 2011 interview with Matt Lauer). In addition to his new house in Tinseltown and his new Hawaiian hideaway, which we'll get to in a minute or two, Mister Tyler's property portfolio also includes (but may not be limited to) a large, lake front house in Sunapee, NH and a high-walled and gated estate tucked into the tail end of a shared private drive in the upscale and scenic seaside town of Marshfield, MA, about 30 miles outside of Boston.

listing photos: Nelson Shelton & Associates

Let's Pause...

...for a wee gander a some serious SoCal architectural gorgeous, shall we?

The Schwimmer Residence, designed by innovative and experimental architect John Lautner and set into four desirable hillside acres high above Benedict Canyon in the 90210, was commissioned and built in 1982 by a Dr. Alden Schwimmer and his interior designer wife Nina.

Doctor and Missus Schwimmer sold the castle-inspired house—Lautner reportedly described it as a "horizontal castle"—in 1998 to former fashion designer Harriet Selling-Canepa who renovated and updated the house and, property records indicate, sold it off for an unknown amount of money in January 2009 to L.A.-based real estate executive Fred Droesch who currently has the eye-popping and iconic crib up for lease at $35,000 per month.

Situated well above the tree tops for picture perfect panoramic canyon and city views, the architecturally taut and nature-minded house hugs the hillside with its gentle curved shape, measures around 6,000 square feet, and contains, according to listing information, 4 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms.

The main living areas include a voluminous open-plan living/dining area with fab stone floor, two massive stone fireplaces, wood-framed glass doors that connect to cantilevered terrace and runs along the back of the house, and a soaring, high-drama, rib-like wood ceiling with curved rafters. A more intimately scaled den—also with soaring, high-drama, rib-like wood ceiling with curved rafters—has herringbone patterned wood floors, a second massive stone fireplace and built-in bookshelves and desk space.

A series of hollowed out turrets made of Bouquet Canyon Stone solidly anchor the cantilevered two-story structure and serve a variety of purposes. One is a wet bar, another is a pantry, a couple house bathrooms and storage spaces and the one in the master bedroom functions as a pee-in-your-pants perfect sky lit shower enclosure.

Certainly Miter Lautner's Schwimmer Residence hasn't been maintained as a time capsule or museum piece, a fact some architectural purists will surely point out and poo-poo. Any number of alterations (improvements and upgrades) and have been made such as in the very airy, center island kitchen outfitted with sleek wood cabinets we suspect may not be original to the house and high-grade appliances that include full-sized, side-by-side fridge and freezers that are most definitely not original to the house.

Alterations aside, we are in unrequited and deep real estate lust-love with this house. Although it seems utterly preposterous to anyone frugally inclined like Your Mama to spend $35,000 a month on rent even if you can well afford to spend $35,000 a month on rent, were Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter ever to be in the position to pay $35,000 a month to rent a house—and we don't expect to ever be—we would be powerfully tempted by this house.

Some of the larger nearby estates are now owned by the somewhat mysterious Igor Greensberg whose mega-mansion rivals those in Beverly Park in both size and opulence and Dr. Phil McGraw.who dropped $29,816,500 for his 16,000-plus square foot mansion around the corner in July 2010. At the bottom of The Schwimmer Residence's hair pin-like gated driveway is the famous (and sadly bulldozed) Falcon Lair, a stunning Spanish style residence built in the 1920s by silent film stud Rudy Valentino and owed for nearly 50 years by American heiress Doris Duke. And just down the hill a bit more is the property where Charles Manson's minions murdered a handful of people including Sharon Tate in 1969. That property is now owned by sitcom writer/producer Jeff Franklin (Laverne & Shirly, Full House).

The ever-industrious kids at Curbed toured The Schwimmer Residence last summer and posted a couple dozen drool worthy photos that show other parts of the house not shown here that include a red-carpeted spiral staircase, the most decadent and dee-voon laundry room Your Mama and our imperious house gurl Svetlana have ever seen, and a sensually serpentine entry lined with curvaceous Richard Serra-like Bouquet Canyon Stone walls.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty

UPDATE: Kristen Bell

A couple of weeks ago Your Mama discussed the secluded Studio City, CA residence of young actress Kristen Bell (House of Lies, Gossip Girl, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Veronica Mars) falling into the ugly maw of foreclosure.

Yesterday Miss Bell's former pad popped up on the open market as a bank owned property with an asking price of $1,995,000. A couple of quick clickety-clacks of the well-worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that's a significant $1,105,000 less than the $3,100,000 Miss Bell paid for the 2.6 acre spread in November 2006.

Current listing information shows the privately situated and somewhat bedraggled two-story house, built in 1969, measures 3,867 square feet and includes 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms plus a possibly unpermitted wing with an additional 2 bedrooms, study, 2.5 bathrooms, and a laundry closet.

listing photo: Parsi Group Realtors

Real Estate Tycoon Donald Abbey Lists Bradbury Behemoth With Beastly $78,000,000 Price Tag

SELLER: Donald Abbey
LOCATION: Bradbury, CA
PRICE: $78,800,000
SIZE: 47,182 square feet (total), 5 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The 90210—that's Beverly Hills butter beans—may get heaps of press and glory as one of Southern California's most expensive and exclusive communities but it's the much lesser known 91008 community of Bradbury where some of the country's most expensive properties are bought and sold.

Believe it or not my little ponies but itty-bitty Bradbury, nestled into the rolling foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains a bit east of Pasadena and surrounded by far less affluent communities that include Duarte, Monrovia, and Azusa, is consistently ranked by the fine folks at Forbes as among the most expensive zip codes in all of the U-nited States of America. Although we did not spot the 91008 among the top 50 most expensive zips in the list compiled by Forbes for 2011, in 2009 Bradbury came in at #4 with a median home price of $3,44,773 and in 2010 the zip code ranked in at the #1 spot in 2010 with a staggering median home price of  $4,276,462.

Earlier today, thanks to The Bradbury Barker Your Mama learned what is easily Bradbury's largest and most lavish estate, built over the last 8 years by a real estate tycoon named Donald Abbey, hit the market to screams of flabbergast and a crash of cymbals with an whopping $78,000,000 price tag. No, puppies, Your Mama did not drunkenly add an extra zero. Mister Abbey's palatial pile actually carries a price tag of more than seventy-eight million bucks.


Let's run this opulent beast by the numbers and otherwise let the listing photographs speak for themselves: somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 landscaped acres; a 600-foot long gated driveway and double circular drive; Three-story, approximately 32,000 square foot mega-mansion main house with two-story library, behemoth reception hall/ballroom with 40-foot ceiling and built-in bar, and a colossal kitchen with copper range and barrel vaulted ceiling (that is perhaps lined with copper sheeting).

Listing information shows there are five bedrooms including two titanic master suites in the main house, one completely swaddled in a rather disturbing green (or maybe it's blue) stained wood paneling and the other with a gargantuan rotunda ceiling with trompe l'oeil architectural detailing and hand-painted frescos.

Other features of Mister Abbey's great estate in Bradbury include a 2,000 bottle wine cellar; six fireplaces; 3D theater and poker lounge; 10 car garage, a cross-shaped infinity-edged swimming pool (that may or may not be meant to make some sort of religious statement) and party-sized 15-person spa; sprawling house with lavish lounge, fitness and spa facilities; guest house, tennis court, temperature controlled trout pond with two-story waterfall, and a subterranean firing range.

And, let's not forget, a jaw-dropping price tag of $78,800,000, a number that may or may not be realistic—we don't know—but certainly guarantees to set all the property gossips tongues a-waggin'.

For the full photographic monty, listing agent Bob Hurwitz at the Hurwitz James Company set up a virtual tour sure to delight and/or mortify anyone interested the real estate affliction known in Your Mama's circle as Real Estate Size Queenery.

listing photos: Hurwitz James Company

Oprah-owned Penthouse at Place 57 Up for Grabs

SELLER: Oprah Winfrey
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $7,900,000
SIZE: 2,530 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In January 2008 the juicy dish making its way down the New York City celebrity real estate gossip grapevine was that Oprah Winfrey's b.f.f. Gayle King—currently the co-anchor of CBS This Morning—coughed up a very considerable 7.1 million clams to acquire a glassy penthouse pad atop a sleek, newly built Midtown Manhattan tower called Place 57.

When all the deeds and documents were finally filed and recorded a few months later it was revealed by the New York Observer that the penthouse was more likely bought by Miz Winfrey and not Miz King. The evidence cited included that the names two of Miz Winfrey's known associates—accountant Lisa Gardina and Aspen-based attorney Gideon Kaufman—are listed in the purchase documents. However, in truth, Mister Kaufman's name also appears on the deeds and docs for Miz King's 10,000-plus square foot mansion in bucolic and baronial Greenwich, CT. More telling perhaps, as noted in the New York Observer and elsewhere, the Place 57 penthouse was purchased through a trust that seems to have been named after Miz Winfrey's beloved (but now deceased) cocker spaniel Sophie.

It was all very confusing, as these things sometimes are, but in spring 2011 Miz King invited the
cameras of decorator turned talk show hostess Nate Berkus for a somewhat limited tour of her New York City residence and the apartment shown is most certainly not the nearly all-glass penthouse pad on East 57th Street.

Anyhoodles poodles, late last night while grappling with a little insomnia Your Mama stumbled across the Oprah-owned penthouse at Place 57, now back on the market with an asking price of $7,900,000.

Current listing information shows the 36th floor spread has 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms, 2,530 square feet of glass-wrapped interior space, and an additional 750-ish square foot wrap-around terrace with pulse racing and knee-bucking city views. Listing information shows the monthly common charges and taxes come up to a hefty but hardly unheard of $4,958 per month, more money than most people earn in a month but a relative pittance for a woman of Miz Winfrey's extraordinary riches.

The apartment, blessed with lofty 12-foot high ceiling, opens into an unforgivably slender, chute-like entrance hall that explodes in to a scalene triangle shaped dining and living space where two long walls of floor-to-ceiling glass converge in a (melo)dramatic (and perhaps a wee bit ham-handed) manner to provide a gigantic, birds-eye view that stretches from the George Washington Bridge, over Central Park, west towards New Jersey and south to the glittering towers of Midtown.

A swinging door in the dining area swings open to a light, bright, modern and expensively equipped but somewhat petite kitchen finished with flat-fronted cabinetry (that may or may not be white oak), charcoal-colored counter tops of unknown material, and chunky center island that does not, we note with chagrin and surprise, have a built-in breakfast bar component.

Two guest/family bedrooms, one with private bathroom the other with access to a hall bath as per the floor plan included with current listing information, occupy the northeast wing of the aerie. A short corridor behind the kitchen and off the entrance hall has a stacked washer/dryer closet and connects to the relatively petite master suite occupies that the southeast wing and includes three walk-in closets (two with windows), a spa-style pooper with jetted tub, separate shower and cubby for the terlit and bee-day.

The unfurnished penthouse gleams with newness and looks to Your Mama's admittedly tired and boozy eyes like it's never been lived in. Of course, we don't know a pea hen from a microwave oven so we really haven't an iota if Miz Winfrey—or Miz King or anyone else for that matter—ever spent a single night up in the Place 57 penthouse. For all we know the all but undecorated penthouse was used for little more than cocktail parties. Listing information does reveal, however, the walnut floors are "brand new" and the "state-of-the-art" kitchen is "barely used," language that indicates Miz Winfrey (or somebody) did at least a little cooking up in that kitchen.

Two guest/family bedrooms, one with private bathroom the other with access to a hall bath as per the floor plan included with current listing information, occupy the northeast wing of the aerie and the relatively petite master suite occupies the southeast wing and includes three walk-in closets (two with windows), a spa-style pooper with jetted tub, separate shower and cubby for the terlit and bee-day.

The Place 57 tower, located between 2nd and 3rd Avenues in the no-man's land between Fifth Avenue and Sutton Place, has a Vincente Wolf-designed Baccarat Crystal Lobby, whatever that is, and offers residents white glove services that include 24-7 doorman and concierge services, a fully equipped fitness center, thematically designed children's playrooms, residents-only conference rooms, and a Baccarat Crystal Garden, whatever the decorative devil that is.

As mentioned earlier, Miz King owns a 10,000-plus square foot mansion in Greenwich, CT she unsuccessfully attempted to sell back in June 2008 when it was listed with a $7,450,000 price tag. Although we can't be certain, it does not appear that Miz King's krib in Connecticut is currently on the (open) market.

Miz Winfrey, as billionaires typically do, owns a number of other high priced and high maintenance properties that include (but are not necessarily limited to) a four-unit duplex at the Water Tower Place complex in downtown Chicago, a plantation-style mansion on the island of Maui in Hawaii, and a massive 23,000 square foot mansion on 42-manicured acres in supah-swank Montecito, CA she picked up in 2001 for a mind altering $50,000,000.

Miz Winfrey also owns a number of small (and not so small) homes and condos in places like Douglasville, GA, Franklin, TN, Merrillville, IN and Elmwood Park, IL all of which we presume were acquired for use by various family members and/or close personal friends.

In 2007 Miz Winfrey dropped $5,600,000 on a 4,607 square foot condominium with 2 bedrooms, 3 full and 2 half bathrooms, and 2 car parking in a particularly posh Beaux Arts-style building in Chicago's swanky Streeterville neighborhood. The former chat show superstar, media mogul and generous global do-gooder reportedly never moved into the apartment that she put up for sale for about 6 months in 2008 for $6,000,000 and put up for lease late last year (2011) at $15,000 per month. The 6th floor Lake Shore Drive apartment remains listed for lease at $15,000 per month.

listing photos and floor plan: Corcoran

Daphne Guinness At Home

Open Houses Rule

This weekend, despite being at one end or the other of just about every school system's vacation week, was a big one for open houses.  Some had as many as 25 people at them.  The market seems driven by first-time home buyers (proving that they are the one group that probably doesn't need an incentive to want to buy), who want to take advantage of low rates and low prices.  Of course, it is usually their parents who have to let them know how low rates are, since anyone under 35 wouldn't remember high ones.  (Conversely, my husband and I bought our first home in 1982 with an 18.75 % special low rate, that seemed OK to us, given that other mortgages were at 21%---it's all relative!).

Houses are starting to come onto the market at springtime pace, and buyers are out there to take advantage of the rates, the choices, and the weather.  Let's hope it keeps up at this rate!

Bacon and Sedgwick Snag West Coast Pied a Terre

BUYERS: Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,500,000
SIZE: 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We know we aren't the first property gossip to ride this particular bull at the celebrity real estate rodeo—that honor goes to a long-legged gal at Trulia—but we're giving a go around anyways...

Some of the many high profile people and celebrities who lost their proverbial shirts in the dirty terlit swirl that developed after the implosion of disgraced Wall Streeter Bernie Madoff's pernicious Ponzi scheme were long-married actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick.

Obviously Your Mama ain't privy to the exact amount of dough lost by Mister Bacon and Miz Sedgwick but it was significant enough that she described the pocketbook punishment in 2009 to the people at People as "painful." Miz Sedgwick went on to point out that many "lost a lot more" and acknowledged that despite their losses she and Mister Bacon "have a lot of things to be grateful for." That there, children, is some capital C Celebrity Class for y'all. The lady showed her fans the respect of honesty about her situation and humbly recognized she remains one of the financially and professionally fortunate.

Anyhoo, whatever pecuniary pinch they may have felt due to Old Man Madoff's Machiavellian monetary maneuvers seems to have been rectified as evidenced, perhaps, by the $2,500,000 the East Coast-based couple coughed up in early December (2011) to acquire a very contemporary pied-a-terre in Los Angeles, CA. Certainly the Showbiz veterans have together and separately spent a great deal of time in Los Angeles but this is, as far as Your Mama knows, the first residence Miz Sedgwick and/or Mister Bacon have owned in Tinseltown.

Records we peeped reveal the property, which cleaves a steep hillside and offers a direct view across a wide canyon to the south slope of Mount Hollywood and the gorgeous Griffith Park Observatory, was sold by Lia Vollack, a hard-charging music/film industry executive who showed up in January (2012) at a very respectable number 51 on the Billboard Power 100. Miz Vollack purchased the property, as per Property Shark, in March 2007 for $2,450,000.

Not all online listings for the property indicate the square footage of the two-and-some story hill climber but the Los Angeles County Tax Man puts it at 2,760 square feet, a figure that may or may not be accurate. Trulia shows the house has 2 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms while listing information on Redfin states the updated, upgraded and fully re-worked residence was originally built in 1957 and contains a total of 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms, a count we're pretty sure (but not certain) includes the lower level guest suite and separate flex-use space suitable for use as any number of things such as (but far from limited to) an office, gym, Zumba studio or model train making workshop.

A set of concrete steps climb from the street up the lushly landscaped hillside to the front door, an over-sized wood and glass thing that looks to Your Mama like it may have been inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright or some such person. The airy, light-filled lower level through entry has some sort of tile underfoot we suspect is limestone or some other luscious material and not some plain old ceramic stuff. A floating, geometrically-minded switchback staircase dramatically constructed with a glass, wood and steel framework and what may or may not be terrazzo treads connects to the main living/entertaining spaces on the upper level.

The open plan space has an architecturally warm palette of wood and stone and includes a step down "formal" living area with chunky stacked stone fireplace, expensive looking hardwood floors—teak? mahogany? ipe?—the run perpendicular to the wood slats on the high pitched ceiling, and two walls of floor-to-ceiling wood-framed glass sliders that provide tree top, canyon and Griffith Park Observatory views.

For better or worse, a grid of pot lights stand in stead of a proper chandelier or pendant fixture in the terrazzo-floored "formal" dining area that's open to the well-equipped kitchen over a boxcar-sized center work island with breakfast bar. The adjoining family room/den has built-in bookcases along one entire wall and on another a row wood-framed sliders that lead to a terrace tucked into the hillside with built-in barbecue center behind which a cantilevered staircase winds up to a brilliant roof deck with panty-dropping view across the canyon to the Griffith Park Observatory.

The master bedroom itself, in which the previous owner quite curiously installed deep periwinkle wall-to-wall carpeting, isn't particularly large but does includes a variety of choice amenities such as a sky light or two, a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows that slide open to a balance beam-slim balcony with canyon and Griffith Park Observatory views and, as per listing information, his and her closets and bathrooms.

A little known addendum to Your Mama's Big Book of Decorating Do's and Don'ts offers the children additional anecdotal guidance on the mercurial art of harmonious and stylish living. Suggestion 1 says, of course, "A well-stocked booze cabinet is a person's best defense against loneliness and isolation since even the least self-destructive hooch hound will drive ten or maybe even 12 miles out of his or her way for a few free drinks."

Suggestion 7 reads, "Everyone needs their own private Idaho to store their undergarments and outer fashions. If (and always when) space allows, cohabitating couples, those married before God and government and otherwise, ought not share closet space or dresser drawers." Your Mama—who is all but slovenly—and the Dr. Cooter—who is decidedly not—would surely be divorced by now iffin we had to share closets. But we digress.

Both the "formal" living and dining areas open through wide expanses of windows to the adult-oriented outdoor areas that include a small, free-form swimming pool, raised spa set into flagstone terracing and, at the front of the property, a lounging deck eclipsed by a dead-on view of—you got it—the Griffith Park Observatory.

Property records and other online databases show Miz Sedgwick and Mister Bacon also maintain a couple of homes on the east coast that include a roughly 40-acre rural spread in Sharon, CT it appears they scooped up in the late 1990s as well as a sprawling high-floor co-operative apartment in a particularly stunning Beaux Arts building built in 1906 and situated directly across the street from Central Park.

listing photos: The Agency via Trulia

Another Showbiz Divorce Another Mansion Sold

SELLERS: Patricia Arquette and Thomas Jane
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,775,000
SIZE: 6,082 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: While out and about we happened to run into a little birdie acquaintance the other day—let's call him Ben Theredonethat—who asked Your Mama if we'd heard about how Emmy-winning actress Patricia Arquette and her handsome ex-husband—that would be beau-hunky actor Thomas Jane, the chisel-chinned, hairy-chested and fine-fannied star of Hung—had quietly sold their historic mansion in Los Angeles' hoity-toity Hancock Park 'hood.

We had not heard a word, not a one and, after a momentary pause to harness what little dignity we have, screamed, "Spill it!"

Naturally, just as soon as Your Mama pulled our big BMW into the garage we took to the interweb and quickly sorted out the facts of the matter and, just as Ben Theredonethat tattled, Mister Jane and Miz Arquette did indeed sell their former family home in Hancock Park in early January 2012 for $2,775,000. The buyer, as per property records, was producer Fenton Bailey, one of the World of Wonder gentlemen responsible for television and silver screen fare such as (but not limited to) the budding Million Dollar Listing franchise, the catty yet heartwarming RuPaul's Drag Race, the sensitively done documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and all those Tori (Spelling) & Dean (McDermott) reality programs.

We know just about nil about Mister Jane except that he's not afraid to appear birthday suit nekkid and/or very realistically act out The Sex on the tee-vee but we do know that despite (and perhaps because of) their decidedly non-traditional upbringing Miz Arquette and all four of her siblings have gone on to Show Business notoriety of varying degrees and types. There's actor sister Rosanna Arquette (Suddenly Seeking Susan, Pulp Fiction franchise, The L Word), actor/producer brother David Arquette (Scream franchise, Eight Legged Freaks, Jake and the Never Land Pirates), dragster turned tranny actress sister Alexis Arquette, née Robert (Friends, Californication, The Surreal Life), and the lesser- but hardly un-known actor Richmond Arquette (Dirt, Se7en, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).

Like her red carpet walking brothers and sisters, Miz Arquette has toiled in Tinseltown for decades, in her case since the mid-1980s. She is best known, perhaps, for her Emmy-winning turn as the tee-vee version of real-life (and self-described) psychic medium Allison Dubois on the long-running but now-canceled supernatural drama Medium.

Reality television watchers may recall that the real life Allison Dubois appeared on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills last year and acted a damn fool. No disrespect, Dolly Dubois, but even you have to admit you didn't come off looking like an innocent kitten what with your sinister grin, dire predictions, and that creepy vapor cigarette thing you kept puffing on. This year, according to her resume on the Internet Movie Data Base, Miz Arquette will soon be seen on the silver screen in Girl in Progress with Eva Mendes and A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III with Charlie Sheen, Jason Schwarzman and Bill Murray. But we digress.

On January 2003, just a month or so before she gave birth to a baby with now ex-husband Thomas Jane and more than three years before they were married—those free-loving Hollyweirdos—Miz Arquette and Mister Jane paid two and a quarter million clams for a sizable and heavily ornamented 1929 Mediterranean mansion on a corner lot with with long side frontage on one of the busier thoroughfares in Hancock Park.

We know some of you zip code smarty pants and parvenus are going to get all jiggy with real estate indignation and flabbergast about why it is anyone really rich would choose to live in Hancock Park where the crime rates are higher than in the Platinum Triangle. Well, that's just fine. Go on witcher bad selves. The fact is Hancock Park—not every corner of it but certainly most of it—has always been and remains an upscale neighborhood with postcard-perfect tree-lined streets lined with stately homes owned by a slew of rich and famous folks who include former Friend David Schwimmer, sit-com superstar Patricia Heaton, French clothing tycoon Christian Audigier, newly out of the closet actor Matt Bomer, Emmy-winning producer John Wells, Oscar winner Kathy Bates, celebrity gossip Janet Charlton and, arguably, the celebrity king and queen of Hancock Park Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas. And that, puppies, doesn't even scratch the surface of the long list of past residents who include the likes of Nat King Cole and Howard Hughes.

Anyhoo, Miz Arquette and Mister Jane, who were officially divorced in 2010, first listed their former family home in June 2011 with an asking price of $3,399,000. By November the price had dipped to $2,900,000 where it remained until Mister Bailey came along and scooped it up, according to the busy beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus, for almost 20% less than it was originally priced.

Listing information shows the hulky and bulky house—dubbed in marketing materials as the romantic-sounding Villa Catalunya—sits on almost one-third an acre and measures a man-sized 6,082 square feet with 4 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms. Wide steps at the front of the vine-encrusted mansion lead to what listing information somewhat generously describes as "Gaudiesque."

Inside the arched, carved wood front door guests and the Dominos pizza delivery dude alike will no doubt be more than impressed with the voluminous and ornate, double height entry hall that reminds Your Mama more than a little of the legendary Limelight nightclub in New York City, now—horrors upon horrors—a kind of boo-teeq shopping mall. Having produced both the 1998 documentary Party Monster: The Shockumentary and the 2003 film Party Monster about club kid and Limelight employee turned drug addled murderer Michael Alig it seems almost inconceivable Mister Bailey didn't also make that visual connection but, of course, Your Mama don't know nuthin' about birthin' babies or, certainly, what goes on in Mister Bailey's brain.

The dizzying but ab-baf star burst pattern encaustic tiles under foot continue up the celeb-worthy center staircase to a wrap-around gallery girdled by a wrought iron banister where taffy-twisted Solomonic columns hold up a heavy-duty, hand-stenciled wood ceiling. We have no idea if Mister Bailey plans to host parties here but iffin he does, we might suggest at least once he replace the antique light fixture over the stairs with a great big sparkly disco ball so that everyone can swoop and swirl down that stunning staircase and have their own, private dancing queen moment.

The cocktail mixer-friendly step-down formal living room just off the entrance hall (above, top left) has gleaming variegated peg and groove wood floors, a monolithic wood-burning fireplace flanked by several pairs of arched (and probably original) stained glass windows, a classic Fortuny light fixture, and a full wall of built-in wood bookcases with carved pilasters and glass-fronted doors.

A wide opening in the built-in bookshelves connects to a library/den/media room (above, top right) where there's another Fortuny light fixture, a delectable and high hand painted wood-beamed ceiling, another bank of arched stained glass windows, and a pair of arched book cases on either side of a mysterious inset at the far end of the room. Listing photographs show the room equipped with projection equipment and a wide screen that scrolls down from the ceiling, hopefully at the easy press of a remote control button lest there always need to be a pesky foot stool at hand.

Across the entry hall opposite the formal living room, a properly baronial formal dining room (above, bottom left) is wrapped with three-quarter height wood paneling and has yet another Fortuny light fixture, partly parqueted wood floors, and extravagant hand-painted moldings and ceiling details. A double-wide, built-in carved wood buffet helps with food service and china and tchotchke storage. Undoubtedly the dining room set seen in listing photographs does not remain in situ since Miz Arquette sold to Mister Bailey, but the children will note that some nice-gay or lady decorator had the good sense to go the matchy-matchy route with the massive library-style dining room table with Solomonic column legs that echo the aforementioned spiral columns used around the second floor gallery in the entrance hall.

At the rear of the residence the compactly arranged if hardly small service areas include a large and well-maintained but heart wrenchingly banal eat-in kitchen with inlaid limestone tile floor, (too-)traditional raised-panel cabinetry (that may or may not be mahogany), perfectly ordinary white tile counter tops and back splashes, an L-shaped center island with snack counter, and a small adjoining breakfast area. The appliances are all probably top notch and la-di-dah but we suspect (and hope) Mister Bailey will replace all of this nonsense with something more appropriate, interesting, and hideously expensive.

The service wing also includes laundry facilities and a good-sized staff bedroom with private pooper done head to toe in vintage (and probably original) pixilated pink and jet black tilework.

Miz Arquette and/or Mister Jane could not, it seems, fit enough Fortuny light fixtures into their home and upstairs a small sitting room/office has a fourth Fortuny light fixture. Each of the upstairs guest/family bedrooms have an over-sized bathroom with eye-popping vintage (and probably original) tile work. One bathroom (above, bottom right) is an old-timey turqwahze and lemon yellow heaven while the other is turned out a little less vibrantly in sea foam green and fleshy-beige (above, bottom left). 

The expansive, multi-room master bedroom occupies the entire ass end of the upper second floor and looks to Your Mama like the sort of place the priest of a wealthy parish or a robber baron might like to live. More carved wood Solomonic columns divide an entry vestibule from a partly paneled sitting room with fireplace and built-in book cases. Beyond the sitting room, the bedroom area has a heavily articulated and painted coffered ceiling, and a row of stained glass windows on two walls, one of which, we have it on good authority, depicts Jesus Christ.

Imagine now, children, attempting to engage in non-procreational carnal relations with your loved one—or whomever—with a life-sized, stained glass Jesus Christ giving you the stare down. No thank you, hunties. Anyways, the attached master bathroom, with a curving wall of stained glass windows, looks like it was (at least partly) "updated" about the same time as the kitchen and, as far as we're concerned, could use a re-do to restore it back to its original glory. The highlight of the master suite is not, believe it or not, the stained glass Jesus but rather a pair of secret panels over and next to the fireplace in the sitting room that pop open to reveal a flat screen tee-vee and and an adjacent walk-in closet/dressing room.

A covered porch tucked into the base of the u-shaped rear of the residence provides a perfect, shady spot to spend an afternoon nibbling on leftover egg fu yung, sipping an ice cold gin & tonic or two (or three), and catching up on all the latest political brouhaha and celebrity snitchery on your favorite websites and blogs. The two arms of the u-shaped rear of the residence form a courtyard almost entirely devoted to an essentially rectangular swimming pool. On one side a long and deep covered porch has honeycomb-shaped Mexican paver tiles and on ground and a back wall tiled half way up with magnificent and fiery tiles. On the other side of the cement pond concrete pavers of various sizes are set into a grassy patch that wraps around the back of the house where there's a lounging/dining terrace and built-in barbecue center with sink and under-counter refrigerator. A limestone (or some other kind of stone) wall with fountain drops water into a semi-circular spa.

A covered porch connects through a locked doorway to a electronically gated motor court and detached three bay garage all of which is very nice but we just have an issue with houses oriented in such a way that all but ensure the owner never come through the front door but instead requires they shuffle across the back yard and get into the house through the service areas. Especially in a house like this were coming through the front door is an experience worth repeating over and over and over again.

Mister Bailey has long owned a charming 4 bedroom and 3 bathroom residence just above Hollywood he bought in 1994 for $480,000 and put on the market late last year with an asking price of $1,649,000. The price tag for the historic 1921 Arts and Crafts bungalow has since dropped to $1,459,000.

listing photos: Photos for Homes for Nourmand & Asssociates / Beverly Hills