Monday, November 4, 2013

Monday Mash Up

Ever wonder what the inside of pixieish fashion designer (and season four Project Runway winner) Christian Siriano's New York City walk-up nest looks like? Well, kiddies, wonder no more.  (New York Times)

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Everybody knows by now that Madonna recently sold her Beverly Hills residence to a Wall Street tycoon but did y'all know that the buyer—at least according to Your Mama's well-connected informants—ever-so-briefly owned and recently sold Tyler Perry's former über-modern mansion at the tippy-top of the Bird Streets 'hood? As was quipped by real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak: "From Madea's house to Madonna's"

In other Madonna-related real estate news, the middle-aged Material Girl is full steam ahead with the custom-construction of an 8 bedroom mansion in Da Hamptons. (New York Post)

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New York City real estate honcho Howard Lorber—he's the chairman of the sprawling Douglas Elliman real estate brokerage—listed his seven-bedroom mansion in Southampton with an asking price of $18.5 million. Meanwhile, his real estate broker son, Michael, who appeared for one season on Million Dollar Listing (New York) recently unloaded his own sixth-floor condo-crib at the Grand Beekman building in Midtown Manhattan for an (as yet) undisclosed amount. The apartment had been listed for $2.79 million. (The Real Deal)

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Two-time Oscar-nominated Tinseltowner Mark Wahlberg recently completed construction on a 30,000 square foot faux-chateau in the guard-gated Beverly Park community that, despite its home theater, wine cellar and double-height paneled library, its architect, mega-mansion specialist Richard Landry, described as '"a good traditional family house with no craziness to it.'" No offense, but beotch, pleeze. (The Hollywood Reporter)

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Conservative pundit and blogger Matt Drudge of the eponymous and popular Drudge Report sold house on Rivo Alto Island in Miami Beach for $1.575 million a FedEx executive. Mister Drudge owns a nearly 10-acre, two-parcel spread about 35 miles from South Beach. (exMiami via The Real Deal)

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The asking price of Casa de Shenandoah, Las Vegas crooner Wayne Newton's former Sin City ranch, was dramatically slashed from its original and wildly optimistic $70 million to a still sky-high $48 million. (Realtor.com)

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High-tech billionaire Elon Musk—he's the co-founder of Tesla Motors and Pay Pal—paid $6.75 million for a fixer-upper ranch house perched above the Bel Air Country Club in Los Angeles. The house was once the long-time home of two-time Oscar-nominated actor Gene Wilder and happens to be right across the street from the much more grand 20,000+ square foot mansion Mister Musk purchased earlier this year for $17,000,000. (Trulia Luxe Living)

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A large estate in L.A.'s rustically swank Mandeville Canyon that was leased by Gwyneth Paltrow in 2009 and later rented by media tycoon Peter Chernin while his Santa Monica residence was being remodeled recently and quietly sold for $12.9 million. The buyers, swears Yolanda Yakketyyak, are hedge fund founder Sean Fahey and wife Robin Luce. Mister Fahey and Miz Luce are well known to L.A.-oriented architecture buffs and real estate-o-philes as the couple who, in 2010, paid $6.2 million for the avant-garde Bart Prince-designed Lever/Morgenthaler House in Malibu that they hoped to raze and replace with much more conventional mock-Med mini-mansion. (After much protestation and petition signing by a number of high-profile Malibu residents the Fahey-Luces decided to remodel the house to better suit the needs of their family.) Anyways...

The seller of the Mandeville Canyon estate, we've been told by several sources, was Seattle-based billionaire John McCaw, Jr. who purchased the 5.3-ish acre, horse-friendly spread and its 1930s Monterey Colonial mansion in 2003 for, according to Our Fairy Godmother in Bel Air, about $16 million. Mister McCaw Jr. had the estate on and off the market since at least the summer of 2008 at a variety of prices that went as high as $28.5 million but, in the end, took a punishing $3+ million loss, not counting carrying costs, upkeep, improvements and real estate fees. Yolanda also swears that she has it on "unimpeachable top-notch authority" that the couple plan to "bulldoze the old beotch" and build anew.

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And, finally, just for shits and giggles, The Telegraph takes a fun look at the declining desirability of The Bishops Avenue, a storied, mile-long street in North London lined with largely unoccupied mega-mansions owned by a long-list of (nouveau riche) international billionaires with insatiable taste for excessive residential luxuries.