Dennis Quaid Lists Montana Ranch and Puts Los Angeles Compound in Escrow

SELLER: Dennis Quaid
LOCATION: Emigrant, MT
PRICE: $14,000,000
SIZE: (approximately 418 acres) 5,300 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms (main house)

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Children, please forgive Your Mama our tardiness to this particular party. We are, regrettably, still nursing and moving molasses-like through one of those perfectly pesky 72 hour hangovers brought on in epic fashion by the rather prodigious amounts of gin (and et cetera) we imbibed and partook during our 6-day stay with boozy b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau up in the City by the Bay. Y'all know how the vacay cliché goes; Sometimes a person arrives home from one vacation in dire need of another to recuperate.

Anyhoodles poodles, today we're going to ruminate on the recent real estate activities of much in-demand movie star Dennis Quaid who not only has a Los Angeles, CA compound listed for sale at $10,000,000–more on that later–but also recently pushed his rustically luxurious camp in rural Montana on the market with a $14,000,000 price tag.

In a stroke of delightful celebrity real estate kismet, Mister Quaid stars in the current and probably un-wise remake of Footloose with model/actress Andie MacDowell who Your Mama discussed yesterday due her heaving and ho-ing her towering neo-Tudor near Asheville, NC on the market with an asking price of $4,500,000.

We're not exactly sure when ex-Mister Meg Ryan, now married to real estate agent third wife Kimberly (Buffington) Quaid, purchased the first piece of his rural Montana real estate pie. One reports says it was about 25 years ago, the Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial show it as April 1995, and a peep and a poke around the property records suggests to Your Mama it might have been in the late 1980s. Whatever the case, the ruggedly handsome Mister Quaid has for quite some time held a sizable foothold in Montana's picturesque Paradise Valley area near the itty-bitty communities of Emigrant and Pray, about 15 or 20 miles north of Yellowstone National Park.

Mister Quaid reportedly purchased a portion of his approximately 418-acre scenic spread from film and television character actor Warren Oates (Gunsmoke, In the Heat of the Night, The Wild Bunch). Additional acquisitions were made from from talented but often combative Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia). Mister Quaid and his current wife were married in an intimate and low-key sunset ceremony on the property in July 2004.

Listing information and other reports show the main house at the Quaid's Montana compound, a rambling bi-winged stone- and log-built residence, was built in 2000, measures 5,315 square feet with 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms and a soaring 8-sided rotunda entry constructed of stacked stone and lined with French doors and door ways that lead to the various areas of the house.

Generous interior living spaces include a cavernous living room with massive stone fireplace, vaulted ceiling with narrow wood beams, partially paneled walls, a bank of floor-to-ceiling French doors and windows, and wonderfully worn wide-plank wood floors salvaged from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Although the lightly but smartly decorated room has a de rigueur flat screen tee-vee mounted awkwardly to the wall, the somewhat spare and airy space conjures up for Your Mama cozy and stimulating cable tee-vee free evenings occupied with conversation, billiards, backgammon, books, and old-timey sing-a-longs 'round a slightly out of tune piano.

The dee-vine reclaimed wood floors continue in to the window-lined dining room where an oak picnic-type trestle table and benches came from a nearby cabin formerly owned and occupied by Mister Peckinpah and now owned by Mister Quaid. A stone doorway connects to the capacious kitchen complete with colossal stone fireplace, over-sized center island, double-height ceiling with exposed beams, and high-grade commercial-style appliances. Yes, children, we too see the nefarious and dreaded restaurant-sized pot rack that drips with heavy pots and pans that look to Your Mama like they ache (and aim) to unexpectedly drop heavily down on the hands of an unsuspecting eater or drinker who dares to scoot up to the snack counter below.

A stone-walled and wood-ceilinged family room has a long row of French doors for that provide view of and access to the surrounding wilderness that pushes up against the house. A casual dining area in the wood-floored family room is set apart with a flag stone inset and a sitting area with day-dreamy view of the dramatic mountains is done up with a mixy-matchy hodge-podge of wicker furniture lined with a successfully mixy-matchy collection of cushions and pillows. Notice, children, the deft hand of the decorator who smartly restrained and unified the color palette of the upholstered pieces, a little trick o' the eye that tones down the potential cacophony created with the use of variously patterned fabrics.

The insanely delicious antique wide-plank wood floors extend into the master suite where the walls are log-constructed, the ceiling is vaulted, and the bed was bought from–somewhat oddly and as per Architectural Digest–actress Sandra Bullock. Anyhoo, French doors join the bedroom to a big bathroom where a vintage trough sink with three spigots was custom-fitted in to a built-in cabinetry topped by a thick slab of wood. The rustic looking but hardly rustic bathroom also includes a free-standing soaking tub set into a window-wrapped bay where the windows actually dip far enough towards the floor to allow a bather to ponder the all but untamed surrounding pastures, forests and mountains.
In addition to the casual and cozy main house, the Quaid compound also includes four guest cottages that range from bunk-housey to rather luxurious (some shown above). There are also, as per marketing materials, a ranch manager's residence and, natch, horse facilities that Mister Quaid told Architectural Digest in 2005 are situated far enough from the main house to keep any equine odor from infecting the air space in and around it.

Many of the rooms open to various patios, decks and terraces, one of which has a built-in barbecue for summertime grillin' and chillin'. Cherry red Adirondack chairs placed around the decks and terraces pop against the bucolically evocative scenery. The secluded recreational ranch encompasses, as per listing information, two miles of creek frontage, two ponds, historic gold mines, horseback riding trails, and a private planetarium where Mister Quaid, an apparent astrology buff, can see the stars.
Back in Los Angeles Mister and Missus Quaid own a luxurious farmette in the affluent and semi-rural-seeming Mandeville Canyon area between the upscale communities of Brentwood and Pacific Palisades. In March 2011 they hoisted the 1.96-acre horse-friendly estate in the Mandeville Canyon area of Los Angeles on the market with an asking price of $16,900,000. By September the price had tumbled to $10,000,000 and this week, as per Redfin, the privately situated property was put in escrow.

Listing information shows the property contains an 8,400 square foot faux-French Country-style main house with 8 bedrooms and 8.5 bathrooms plus a 2 bedroom and 1 bathroom staff suite over the garage converted to a home fitness facility. A separate guest house and studio measures 2,158 square feet, according to listing information, and includes a living/dining room, full kitchen, den/office with fireplace and built-in bookshelves, and at least one bedroom and bathroom. For the property's hooved residents there is a small barn, corral and a private trail that connects directly to equine-friendly Will Rogers State Historic Park.

Mister and Missus Quaid, who reportedly want to swap their Montana ranch for a house in Hawaii, live primarily in Austin, TX where property records and other online real estate resources show they paid $5,312,500 for an 11,103 square foot lake front mansion with 6 bedrooms, 7 full and 4 half bathrooms that was at one time listed with a very substantially higher asking price of $12,500,000.

listing photos (Emigrant): Glacier Sotheby's International Realty
listing photos (Los Angeles): Westside Estate Agency

Your Mama Hears...

...That a sadly disheveled and endangered of being destroyed Richard Neutra-designed pile in Beverly Hills, CA known as the Kronish House was saved from the wrecking ball by a last minute purchase by an as yet unnamed buyer who coughed up $12,800,000 for the property.

Actually we didn't hear about the sale of the much neglected mid-century modern, we read about it in the Wall Street Journal and on Curbed, who faithfully followed and thoroughly reported on the Kronish House's real estate saga that grabbed the attentions of architectural historians and enthusiasts over the last few weeks and months, particularly those folks who care about such things in Los Angeles.

The Wall Street Journal did not name or even hint at the identity of the new owner who purchased the property through a trust but did quote listing agent Susan Smith from Hilton & Hyland who stated (via email), "The new owner is going to preserve the house and this will take about two years...It will be a private home." While that surely is a relief to preservationist it's still not clear if the owner will restore the house to original architectural purity or if it will be sharp-tailored and custom-fitted to a modern-day lifestyle.

Yesterday, the ever-intrepid folks at Curbed guessed with odds of 3:1 that the Neutra-loving new owner might be Michael LeFetra, a well-known amongst Los Angeles' real estate freaks and aficionados as a prolific buyer, restorer and flipper of architecturally significant homes in need of TLC. Actress and historic house lover and restorer Diane Keaton came in with odds of 7:1, next door neighbor Madonna was given odds of 18:1, and architecture and design buff Brad Pitt came in near the bottom of the list with odds of 20:1.

Natch, soon as we digested the speculation on Curbed we snatched up our bedazzled and bedraggled princess phone to touch base with a few of our informants who purvey property in the Platinum Triangle.

We quickly heard back from a long time informant–let's call her Anita Tellsomebody–who has on several previous occasions has provided spot on Platinum Triangle real estate rumor confirmations. According to Miss Tellsomebody, the buyer of the Kronish House is...drum roll please...Stavros Niarchos.

Mister Niarchos is an heir to a great Greek shipping fortune but he is perhaps best known by tabloid blog and gossip glossy readers of one of the two young Greek shipping heirs Paris Hilton got busy with back in the mid-Naughts when Miss Hilton could not tie her shoe, braid her hair or flash her vajayjay without the paparazzi taking 4,000 photos.

Listing information for the property shows low-slung single story residence was built in 1954, sits on a flat 1.99 acre flag lot, and currently measures 6,891 square feet with 6 bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms. Full walls of floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors throughout the residence allow the interior spaces to spill out to and merge seamlessly with the tile terraces and courtyards that surround the house.

The buyer's identity, shielded behind a trust, has not yet been confirmed by anyone willing to go on the record. That means, sugar beets, we're just passing along a little high-toned real estate rumor and gossip today, okay?

listing photos: Curbed

News from Tulsa

I just got back yesterday from meeting with The Leadership Council, a group of large independent brokers from around the country.  This time we met at Chenowth & Cohen in Tulsa, where growth is high and unemployment is low.  Tulsa turns out to be almost in the exact center of the country geographically, both north to south and east to west, so it is home to a lot of company distribution and service centers, as well as energy companies and others.  It is just approaching the million mark in population. People are moving from all different parts of the US, and many that I met had come from Texas. Boy, does it seem different from New Haven in those regards!

Tulsa has about two and a half months of housing inventory.  Prices are rising, and units are growing.  Like us, they have problems with mortgages and closing times, and sales are not easy.  However, it's really about jobs.  If people have jobs, and employees are moving into the region to work, then it's obviously easier to sell your home and buy another one, because there is a steady supply of buyers being created.  In addtion, the West has ranches and open land all around, making it much simpler and cheaper for builders to add new product. 

The real estate business has some characteristics in common all over, but there are some differences.  They have centralized showing, so agents make one call to arrange all the properties for a buyer to see.  They also have lots of listings where contact is through the owner, which seems odd to us.  States with title companies owned by real estate companies are more real estate agent driven than lawyer driven.  Towns and cities are farther apart, and many agents I met worked an hour or more from home.  There seemed to be more concentration--one agent I met with had 159 listings!  Advertising has left newspapers in many places, and you don't see the big Sunday ad sections.  Everything is done on line, or directly by real estate companies. 

Other practices were similar to ours, including the work ethic of agents, the changes brought by technology, and the complications of lending and governmental regulations.  It's always refreshing to see both the old and the new, and to step out of the regular daily grind and view it from a distance.

Model/Actress Andie MacDowell Lists Country Club Crib in North Carolina

SELLER: Andie MacDowell
LOCATION: Asheville, NC
PRICE: $4,500,000
SIZE: 10,872 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama is finally back home but plum tuckered out and on our last nerve from nearly a week dragging around San Francisco after our busy as a beaver and punishingly boozy b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau during a week of weather uncharacteristically reminiscent of Hot and Hades Los Angeles.

The apparently indefatigable and more often than not drunk Miss Trambeau scampered us around to here, there, and everywhere including the almost completely gentrified Valencia Street corridor for the LitCrawl, a high-brow-ish literary event that might better be named Booze and Books Night. We ate cheap Chinese food and downed buckets of beer on Clement Street with Miss Anne and her new man and we immensely enjoyed a Proseco-fueled dinner in SoMa with Falsetta Knockers and her husband Herr Wordsmith. We ogled at all the butt-ass nekkid gays who strut boldly around the Castro–yes, puppies, we're talking about people going about their errands and making the bar rounds naked as the day they were born–and we came home with a new tattoo on our right arm that we only barely recall having done. We are, in short, exhausted. None the less we push on, pedal to the medal with gas tank on fumes.

Most of the time–and sometimes too often–Your Mama blathers on about high-priced homes owned by famous folks in star studded places like Los Angeles and New York City. Iffin we're lucky we might get a nugget in London or Nashville. It isn't often, then, we get to work over a ritzy residence in a decidedly un-celebrity-like locale such as Asheville, NC. (That's North Carolina butter beans.) Today, in an effort to spread our celebrity real estate wings a bit, we piggy-back on the peeps over at Zillow to (dis and) discuss the elegant if a tad dowdy Ashville, NC mansion that pushing sixty and still stunning model and actress Andie MacDowell recently heaved on the market with a very celebrity-like asking price of $4,500,000.

First let Your Mama remind the older children of and educate the younger children as to the what's-what for our Miz MacDowell. Born into an affluent and educated family in South Carolina, Miz MacDowell had bigger dreams, it seems, than debutante balls and NASCAR races. She saved her pennies and high-tailed it to New York City in the early 1980s where she became a top model, mostly print, who worked with top photographers.

It wasn't long before she went into acting, a rarely successful professional move for models. Her big (but ultimately bittersweet) break came with a part in the 1984 movie Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Alas, in the final cut her lines were dubbed by none other than Her Tinseltown Majesty Glenn Close because at that time Miz MacDowell's pleasantly genteel but rather pronounced southern accent was deemed rather too pronounced for the silver screen. Incidentally, that movie was adapted from the Edgar Rice Burroughs books by Oscar-winning screenwriter Robert Towne whose mansion in Pacific Palisades, CA was just put on the market for $14,000,000 and discussed just yesterday by Your Mama.

Miz MacDowell's salad days in the Big Business of Show came in the late-1980s and ran into the mid-1990s with starring roles in cinematic successes such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Short Cuts, Groundhog Day, and Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Since then she has appeared in a very long list of lackluster films and tee-vee movies that include Riding the Bus With My Sister, The Six Wives of Henry LeFay, and the unfortunate recent remake of Footloose. Miz MacDowell continues to model, mostly for cosmetic companies.

Anyhoo, property records indicate Miz MacDowell purchased her property in the upscale Biltmore Forest community outside Ashville back in June 1998. She paid $790,000 for two vacant and adjacent parcels in the woodsy enclave that total 1.89 acres and overlook the 7th fairway of the hoity-toity Biltmore Forest Country Club. The subsequently built residence, a fanciful top-heavy stone and pebble dash Tudor crossed with an Arts and Crafts-y cottage, looks to Your Mama like the sort of place the witch in the Grimm brother's Hansel and Gretel would live if she were a wealthy southern divorcée with a Mercedes and a handsome golf pro on speed dial.

Listing information for Miz MacDowell's très trad 4-floor mansion shows it measures 10,872 square feet–property records show 10,425 square feet–and contains a total of 6 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms, 6 fireplaces plus an antique English stove, whatever that is, and a 10-zone heating and cooling system.

A (possibly mahogany) wood and stained glass door with architecturally appropriate and vintage-looking hardware opens to a sizable but warmly decorated foyer with dark wood floors–also possibly mahogany–a vaulted ceiling with exposed wood beams, and walls covered in paper printed with a complicated but subtly colored pattern. It's all a little antique-oriented and Sophisticated Grandma for Your Mama but it's certainly tasteful and properly dignified.

The interior spaces include a conservatory lined on three sides with tall and narrow arched windows and a formal dining room with leaded-glass windows and painted paneling that extends 3/4 of the way up the wall towards the carved moldings and detailed ceiling. The primary living and entertaining space seems to be an informal dining nook and capacious great room with lustrous wood floors, wood burning fireplace, double-height vaulted and beamed ceiling, heavy carved wood architectural details, and a staircase that winds and climbs its way to the second floor living areas. A wide-screen television was cleverly tucked under the stairs and hidden behind wood panels that disappear into the cabinetry when fully opened. The adjoining informal dining area has double-height ceilings and walls lined with a graphic grid of rectangular windows and thick moldings.

The formal dining room connects through a large butler's pantry to the even larger, well-equipped eat-in kitchen that includes a large center island, snack counter, breakfast area, and high ceiling crisscrossed by heavy wood beams. This is the very picture of the sort of traditionally done cooker that neither Your Mama nor the Dr. Cooter would ever want to have installed in our own home but that does not stop us from having a romance with the double-wide commercial-style range and the elegantly rustic jade-colored Arts and Crafts tile back splash behind it.

A second floor family gathering room hangs over the great room and offers a decorative brick fireplace and built in book and display shelves tucked into a pointed arch beneath the staircase. Listing photos show the room is furnished with little more than a fancy-looking pool table. We can only hope someone in the MacDowell family likes to shoot the pool otherwise that big ol' thing is just an expensive and useless hunk of wood and felt whose sole purpose is to fill up otherwise useless square footage.

The master suite, wrapped in dark wood trimming and molding and lined with a mossy-green and bone-colored wallpaper, includes a shallow brick and tile-faced fireplace and a sizable separate sitting room with high-pitched ceiling. The attached bathroom has a masculine edge trimmed with ecclesiastically-inclined architectural details. Custom wood paneling adds an strong whiff of manliness to the space that has double sinks and a soaking tub for two that sits in front of a gigantic window with forest view. On either side of the tub are two etched glass panels, one opens into the shower stall and the other to the crapper cubby. Some of the children may be disturbed to notice, as does Your Mama, the carved wood structures into which the shower and terlit cubicle are fitted bear a too-striking resemblance to a Catholic confessional.

A study/library on the third floor has a fireplace and wildly pitched and multi-peaked ceiling and the lowest level of the house contains a family room filled with fringed-upholstered furniture that opens through French doors to sunken terrace.

Listing information for Miz MacDowell's digs in Asheville indicate in addition to the 10,000-plus square foot of interior spaces there is also 1,977 square feet of terraces, porches and balconies with views of the surrounding forests, over the manicured fairway and towards the rolling mountains in the distance. Your Mama would rather live in a trailor park than have mansion that backs up to a golf course–there's just something we find dreadful and entirely undesirable about golf courses–but this part of North Carolina has undeniably spectacular scenery that explodes into a riot of rusts, oranges and yellows in the dramatic leaf peeping fall season.

Your Mama can only guess at Miz MacDowell's reason(s) for wanting to sell her 10,000-plus square foot Tudor. Perhaps now that her three children are all now young adults and (presumably) off living elsewhere the mansion has just become too big for the mistress? Could be, but then again, maybe not.

In March 2008 property records reveal that Miz MacDowell paid $995,000 for a 4,939 square foot residence in Fletcher, NC with 4 bedrooms and 4 full and 2 half bathrooms. Of course, we don't know a bolt hole from a hole in the wall and as such Your Mama has zero idea if this property was purchased for private use by Miz MacDowell or for some other purpose.

Back in 2002 (or maybe 2003), Miz MacDowell was still married to her magnificently named second husband Rhett DeCamp Hartzog and property records indicate that a corporate entity linked directly to her (and then their) address in Ashville purchased more than 2,500 acres of rugged and remote ranch property in Huson, MT. Your Mama again freely admits we have no notion whatsoever if Miz MacDowell has any sort of ownership or involvement with this property. We only know that deeds and documents we peeped show the address for the corporate entity and owner as Miz MacDowell's mansion in Asheville.

Now then, on that wishy-washy note, we're off for a nip o' gin and a nap. We suggest y'all do the same.

listing photos: Preferred Properties of Asheville

Screenwriter Robert Towne Lists Posh Pac Pal Pad

SELLER: Robert Towne
LOCATION: Pacific Palisades, CA
PRICE: $14,000,000
SIZE: 10,000 square feet, 8 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Although few outside the film and television industry may recognize his name, screenwriter Robert Towne is a living legend in Tinseltown who recently put his Pacific Palisades, CA compound on the market with an asking price of $14,000,000.

While his (somewhat more recent writing gigs have revolved around money-minting Tom Cruise block blusters like Mission Impossible (I and II) and Days of Thunder, Mister Towne is (and should be) better known for his contributions to 1960s and 70s cinematic tour de forces such as Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, Personal Best, The Last Detail, Shampoo, and the utterly sublime Roman Polanski-directed Chinatown for which he received a much-deserved Academy Award.

Property records reveal Mister Towne and his current and second wife Luisa purchased their Pacific Palisades mansion in March 1987 for $2,495,000. The Los Angeles County Tax Man shows the stately English Country Tudor-style mansion was originally built in 1926 and measures 5,536 square feet with 6 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms while listing information indicates there's about 10,000 square feet with 8 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms, a discrepancy in numbers probably due (at least in part) to the addition of a full and detached guest house with flagstone-floored poolside living area plus two bedrooms suites that–presumably–each have a private facility for ablutions and etc.

The corner property, high-hedged for privacy, encompasses .68 landscaped acres dotted with mature specimen trees and includes a brick-paved gated motor court, broad lawns, river rock lined planting beds and extensive rose and spice gardens.

The dignified and almost dour exterior of the brick-built pile is defined by many-gabled and high-peaked roof lines, half-timber detailing, original leaded glass windows and French doors, and a tri-spired chimney stack that towers over the front entrance.

All those builders and architects who design and erect homes with cavernous double-height entry halls could learn a little something or two from the manner in which the foyer of Mister Towne's abode was fashioned. While there is a soaring double-height section above the staircase that wraps around the room, the space immediately inside the front door has a lower ceiling that allows for a more intimate and graceful entree into what is unquestionably a grand residence. Walking into those hangar-sized entrance halls in all those horrid faux-Tuscan mcmansions the sprout up like expensive warts all around southern California is like being slapped in the face with a heavy-handed sort of grandeur that is heavily disconcerting and, quite frankly, downright unpleasant.

Anyhoo, the elegantly-scaled formal living room has well-patinated hardwood floors, a heavy-beamed wood ceiling, fireplace with massive rock chimney breast and numerous many-paned leaded glass windows and doors that generously connect the room to the gardens the surround the house. The formal dining room is wrapped in paneling with a not entirely lovely green wash and the family room offers a vaulted and wood-beamed ceiling, an over-sized river rock-faced fireplace and a collection cushioned armchairs made of woven wicker (or maybe it's rattan). The kitchen is not mentioned or pictured in listing information but we're going to assume–which we probably shouldn't because, as they say, assuming makes ignorant asses of both you and Your Mama–that based on the occupants' ages and the somewhat musty-fusty day-core the kitchen and service areas are well-equipped if not state-of-the art.

The rather large and detached pool house/guest house contains a three car garage (plus the above mentioned guest suites) and sits at a right angle to the main house. A narrow open-air passage way and a basketball court-sized brick terrace joins the two structures. The terrace steps down to the sunken spa and lap-lane swimming pool almost completely bounded by high hedges, thick foliage and mature shade trees.

The Towne compound sits smack in the heart of the same ritzy 'hood in Pacific Palisades known as The Riviera where other high profile residents include goofball comedian Adam Sandler, aged and increasingly curmudgeonly comedian Bill Cosby, still sexy 60-something year old Goldie Hawn and her man-hunk Kurt Russell, über director Steven Spielberg and his actress wife Kate Capshaw, and outspoken lefty-lib Oscar-winning actress turned highly opinionated chat show hostess Whoopi Goldberg.

Mister Towne's property occupies a prominent place on the very same narrow street where deceased director Sydney Pollack's Wallace Neff-designed mansion recently sold for $7,694,000 and where The Simpsons' creator Dan Castellaneta recently sold a Gerard Colcord-designed residence to The Simpsons' voice actor Hank Azaria for $5,500,000. Actress and singer–or, perhaps, "actress" and "singer"–Pia Zadora listed her 9,268 square foot mansion just around the corner in May 2010 for $10,000,000 and sold it, as per the peeps at Redfin, at a steep discount in July 2011 for $4,912,000.

listing photos: The Partners Trust / Beverly Hills

Matthew Perry Rides the Real Estate Roller Coaster...Again

SELLER: Matthew Perry
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $5,695,000
SIZE: 4,100 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: After he listed his condo crib at the celebrity stacked Sierra Tower's complex in West Hollywood, dropped a hefty $8,650,000 on a supah-sleek and newly rehabbed residence high above the Sunset Strip, and then listed his very contemporary crib in Malibu with a $13,500,000 price tag Your Mama knew it was only a matter of time before sitcom star Matthew Perry (Friends, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Mr. Sunshine) heaved his primary residence–a boxy modern in the star-studded Outpost Estates neighborhood of Los Angeles–on the open market. Today, buttons, is the day.

Thanks to a kindly tipster we'll call Henry Headsup we've learned that Mister Perry has put his crisply modern ridge-top residence in the Outpost Estates on the market with an asking price of $5,695,000.

Property records show Mister Perry purchased the glassy pad back in March 2008, right about the time the bottom officially fell out of real estate markets around the country, for $4,475,000.

Current listing information reveals the gated two-story residence, located on a .34 acre parcel near the tail end of a quiet cul-de-sac, contains 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms in about 4,100 square feet of airy and very contemporary interior space. Listing information indicates the house was originally built in 1955 and our research indicates it was remodeled sometime in the mid-Noughts by Los Angeles-based architect Scott Carty.

At the front there's a quite tight gated motor court and two-car garage with frosted glass-paneled door. The open plan interior spaces include a glass-walled living room with fireplace, city view and a lot of beige upholstered sofas and a dining area with round table that tightly seats six. the dining area spills right into a smallish sitting/family room area with wall-mounted flat screen tee-vee and built-in cabinetry that in turn opens into the sleek, sky-lit center-island kitchen complete with both dark wood and ecru-colored laminated cabinetry and snow white counter tops that Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter know from personal experience are a pain in the backside for our house gurl Svetlana to keep looking sanitary.

Like all big-living television and movie stars, Mister Perry's soon to be former residence in the Hollywood Hills includes a media room with wide-screen tee-vee, hidden audio-visual equipment and a quartet of black leather seats with built-in drink holders.

Mister Perry's sexy second floor bachelor-babe boo-dwar has two walls of floor-to-ceiling glass panels that slide open to a partially covered city view terrace, and a sybaritic wood-accented bathroom with double sinks, soaking tub, separate shower space and a terlit cubby hidden behind a frosted glass panel door.

The backyard wraps around the rear of the residence and includes dining and entertainment terraces, a plunge-sized swimming pool, raised spa, outdoor fireplace, wee patch of very green grass, oblique city views and unobstructed views across Runyon Canyon where hikers and dog walkers–we also know from personal experience–can themselves peer across the wide canyon into Mister Perry's backyard.

listing photos: The Partners Trust / Beverly Hills

Ex-Missus Paul McCartney Heather Mills Lists Country Crib

SELLER: Heather Mills
LOCATION: Robertsbridge, East Suffolk, UK
SIZE: 10,550 square feet, 8 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms (plus additional guest/staff quarters)
PRICE: £3,900,000

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: While whittling away a punishing hangover during the weekend, Your Mama received a covert communique from a lovely British gal we'll call Wanda Flowers who clued us in to the listing for a stately country estate in the historic village of Robertsbridge in East Sussex–that's in England, lads and lassies–owned by Heather Mills, uni-legged activist and ex-wife of Paul McCartney.

Miz Mills' Edwardian country mansion is currently listed with an asking price of £3,900,000, and amount that Your Mama's currency conversion contraption shows translates to $6,168,280 at today's rates.

Miz Mills, a former model who lost one of her legs after she was struck in 1993 by a motorcycle riding police officer in London, married Mister McCartney in June 2002, made a baby named Beatrice the following fall, separated in 2006 and reportedly received a £24,300,000 settlement (plus £35,000 per year for child care and education expenses) when she divorced her Beatle in the spring of 2008.

Earlier reports, which indicate the estate can be leased at a rate of £7,995 per month, state property in Robertsbridge was acquired by Miz Mills in 2007 after she split but before she divorced Mister McCartney. Robertsbridge, located about 55 miles southeast of London, is the Medieval village known (or at least promoted) as the home of modern cricket, a highly-charged ball and bat game Your Mama has never managed to properly figure out partly due to our aversion to those bulky and awkward and entirely unsexy padded leg pads the players wear

Online listing information provided by Miss Flower shows the Miz Mill's bucolic property encompasses 14.9 acres, some of which is woodland and some of which in landscaped in that charming, rough around the edges sort of way for which the English are so well known. The dignified but approachable-looking three-floor residence contains a total internal interior area of around 10,500 square feet according to listing information and includes 8 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms plus an attached guest/staff cottage with an additional bedroom and bathroom.

Listing information we peeped does not include any photographs of the interior but plenty of the exterior that show a meandering, multi-winged brick-built pile with crisp and contrasty sky-blue multi-paned window frames.

Photographs of the exterior show the house hugs a motor court where elevated planters and a carved stone pediment mark the front entry. Floor plans included with marking materials shows a reception hall with adjoining powder pooper that opens directly into the banquet hall-sized and fireplaced dining room. A 30-foot long drawing room with towering bay window and a nearly 22-foot long library complete the public wing of the residence.

Less formal family quarters include a commodious (if not capacious) eat-in kitchen, a bedroom-sized walk-in pantry, sitting/family room, and a play room that opens to a terrace tucked into the rear of the house.

Front and back stairs lead up to the second level–the first floor in UK real estate-speak–where there are four principal family bedrooms each with private facility. One bedroom offers an adjoining dressing room or nursery and the master suite contains a royal-sized bedroom, generous fitted dressing room and a two-room bathroom with wet room. Two smaller bedrooms on the second floor share an over-scaled bathroom that stretches more than 23 feet long and almost 8 feet wide.

The discreet rear stairs climb up to the the third floor where two more bedrooms–one rather too narrow–flank a games room and share a bathroom that by comparison to all the other bathrooms is downright squeezy.

An two-floor attached guest or staff suite–listing information charmingly calls it a bijou cottage–contains a sitting room, fully-equipped kitchen with dining area, a divided bathroom, and one bedroom. Squirreled away off the rear stairway that connects the family/service wing of the lower level with the bedrooms on the second floor is a "secret room" with sloped ceiling divided by a chimney stack.

Attached at a perpendicular angle to the main portion of the house are a two-car garages, a "carriage room" capable of housing a third car, two-stall stable with adjoining tack room and a workshop/garden storage space. Additional space above the garage offers a large room with balcony, smaller room with attached half bathroom and storage space.

The land plan included with marketing materials for ex-Missus McCartney's country spread shows the estate grounds include a detached two-car garage, large swathes of woodlands, two paddocks for the ponies (one large one small), a sand arena, grass tennis court and a greenhouse over by the swimming pool situated far enough from the house (and a terlit) as to encourage swimmers and waders to do their business behind a nearby tree.

In addition to snatching up this house post-separation, shortly after her divorce Miz Mills went on a bit of a real estate buying spree. In August 2008 she dropped $4,900,000 on an 1,853 square foot condo at one of the green glass Richard Meier-designed towers that line up alone the West Side Highway in lower Manhattan. Property records show she sold the 2 bedroom and 2-bathroom full-floor aerie (above)–all did up and done over in a contrasting palette of white and red–in mid-February 2011 for $5,000,000.

Sometime in late 2008 ex-Missus McCartney splashed out around £2,350,000–around four million dollars at 2008 rates–for an approximately 2,600 square foot apartment in the uppity Allingham Court complex on The Bishop's Avenue in the far northern reaches of London. By September 2009 Miz Mills had a caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle and flipped the 3 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom condo-crib back on the market with a substantially increased asking price of $3,750,000. It appears from our brief and unscientific research on the interweb that the condo remains listed but with an even higher asking price of £4,150,000.

What's not clear to Your Mama is why Miz Mills in a heated mood to divest herself of her pricey properties but we imagine the lightening of her real estate load will lead to some speculation as to her financial circumstances. Just to be clear, Your Mama has no notions whatsoever of the heft and power (or lack thereof) of her bank accounts and we make no assumptions about such things based on her recent real estate activities.

listing photos and floor plan (Robertsbridge): Country Property Group, Goudhurst
listing photos and floor plan (New York City): Prudential Douglas Elliman via Street Easy