Your Mama Hears...

...from two trusted and well connected sources deep inside the Platinum Triangle real estate game that there's a big deal—and we mean BIG—about to go down in Malibu.

According to both Cinnamon Stick and Little Boy Blue, bespectacled billionaire money manager Howard Marks and his very social and philanthropic wife Nancy are thisclose to inking a record-breaking deal to sell their monumental ocean front compound for somewhere in the neighborhood of $75,000,000.*

The bulk of the triple-gated and heavily fortified 10-ish acre estate was formerly owned by Verna Harrah, the wildly wealthy widow of casino kingpin Bill Harrah, who sold it in late 1999 for $27,000,000 to Herbalife founder Mark Hughes who died in the house just about six months later. In June 2001 the executors of Mister Hughes's estate sold the palatial pad to Mister and Missus Marks for $31,000,000.

The following year, in October 2002, according to property records, Mister and Missus Marks shelled out another $4,600,000 for a neighboring property that now includes a separate gated residence for guests or staff and a full-sized tennis court with viewing pavilion. It was on this approximately 2.5 acre property, incidentally, that way back in July 2000 Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston held their wedding reception in a giant, bluff-side tent.

Anyhoo, Mister and Missus Marks spent years and God only knows how many millions on a soup-to-nuts renovation of the entire estate but, at the time of their purchase, the imposing Italianate villa measured in at 19,340 square feet with a total of 8 bedrooms and 13 bathrooms including a vast master suite with sitting room, private office, exercise room, and three room-sized walk-in closets.

The estate now includes a long, baronial tree-lined driveway, a charity circuit-sized motor court, a second rear motor court with garage access, a spacious bluff side swimming pool and several outbuildings of undetermined—or at least unknown—utility.

Some of the Marks' nearest neighbors in the Bu include mustachioed actor Sam Elliot and television super-producer Marcy Carsey. Just down the beach a bit is the house Ellen Degeneres bought from Brad Pitt in December 2011 for $12,000,000 and flipped six or so months lather for $13,000,000.

Folks who follow the upper end real estate market are well acquainted with the over-flowing property portfolio of Mister and Missus Marks. In Los Angeles, in addition to their Malibu manse, they own a 1.9 acre estate in a leafy and low-key but very posh street in the Brentwood area that they picked up in July 1996 for $7,963,570 from real estate tycoon Robert F. Maguire III.

In May 2007 they coughed up $18,875,000 for a full-floor spread atop the Ritz-Carlton hotel on Central Park South in New York City that they had worked over by architect Oscar Shamamian and Oval Office decorator Michael Smith. In July (2012) the two bedroom and four bathroom aerie popped up on the open market with a $50,000,000 price tag.

Their decision to sell at the Ritz-Carlton surely had something to do with their record breaking and publicity generating $52,500,000 purchase of Courtney Sale Ross's epic 30-room duplex at 740 Park Avenue in May 2012.

In October 2010 the high hoggers paid ad man turned television personality Donny Deutsch a staggering $30,184,000 for a pair of adjacent parcels in East Hampton, NY, one of which is ocean front and together total (approx.) 3.3 acres.

We've also been told by someone who tends to know these sorts of things that for at least the last six or seven years Mister and Missus Marks have maintained a very large, very expensive and very fancy 19th century flat in the central London's natty, naboby and punishingly expensive Belgravia district that they also had over-hauled by Michael Smith.

P.S. We also have vague intel that there's an even bigger deal in the works up north in the Bay Area. More on this to come as we have more to gossip about.

*Neither of our sources know—or would reveal—the alleged buyer of the baronial estate perched atop the rugged Encinal Bluffs but iffin any of the children might like to enlighten Your Mama we'll be sure to keep your identity on the down low. 

aerial image: Google

End of Week Bits and Pieces: Rihanna

BUYER: Rihanna
LOCATION: Pacific Palisades, CA
PRICE: $12,000,000
SIZE: 11,000 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We know every other celebrity property gossip already discussed it days ago but in case any of y'all somehow missed it, Rihanna (allegedly) dropped $12,000,000 on a gated, privately situated and aggressively contemporary mansion in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles.

Property records do not yet reflect a transfer of ownership so we can't confirm or deny the reports of Riri's purchase. Could be she wrote a check for the whole amount. Or could it be she simply rented the the property? In addition to being for sale the seven bedroom and 9 bathroom residential beast was, until recently, also listed for lease at an astounding $70,000 per month?

There's probably little more we can add to the discussion so rather than get all bitchy at length about the bizarre scalloped roof line, the prominent entrance pavilion that looks like a damn Best Buy, the redonkulously cliché sweetheart staircase in the foyer, the chocolate brown crocodile embossed leather wall covering in the powder pooper, the curvaceous wood panels in the hotel-lobby like living room, the 11 (or more) gas fireplaces and/or the mint green counter tops in the otherwise dark green laundry room we're just gonna let y'll peruse the pictures and make your own assessments and judgements.

One, two, three...Go!

listing photos: Rodeo Realty and Nelson Shelton & Associates

End of Week Bits and Pieces: Elviria

BUYER: Mistress of the Dark
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $925,000
SIZE: (approx.) 2,005 square feet total with 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms

First came word that Jessica Simpson (allegedly) made an offer to buy the not very scary Hidden Hills mansion of rock-n-roll's Prince of Darkness—that would be Ozzy Osbourne—and now comes word via the long legged blond at Trulia Luxe Living that the equally macabre monikered Mistress of the Dark—a.k.a. Elvira, née Cassandra Peterson—recently paid $925,000 for a light filled Spanish bungalow on a charming tree-lined street just a couple blocks from L.A.'s shoppy-shoppy boutique- and eatery-lined Larchmont Boulevard.

Listing information from the time of the purchase shows the completely upgraded and restored 1923 casa measures in at a modest 1,605 square feet with just two bedrooms and two bathrooms. An additional (approx.) 400 square foot detached space—once a two-car garage—offers additional living/working quarters plus a third bathroom.

There's a fireplace, over-sized multi-paned windows and a barrel vaulted ceiling in the living room. The medium brown hardwood floors extend into the French door-lined dining room and on into the renovated, eat-in "country" kitchen with bead board accented cabinetry, beige tile counter tops that look to be some sort of stone or faux-stone material, and good grade stainless steel appliances.

Apparently, almost a million bucks doesn't buy an already installed swimming pool in that neck of Tinseltown but listing photographs do indicate the front and back yards are both well planted with mature gardens. A chevron pattern red brick terrace just outside the detached bonus space is separated from the flagstone terrace off the back of the house by a wall and fountain that hopefully takes the edge off unwanted noise form the neighbors as well as the soft but ever-present thrum of traffic.

As noted by the Trulia gal, Miz Peterson once owned a 3,7,56 square foot house on a gated street in the Los Feliz are of Los Angeles that actor Giovanni Ribisi recently bought for $2,950,000. She also once owned the adjacent Briarcliff Manor property, an historic Craftsman that she sold in 1994 to Brad Pitt. The approximately 5,600 square foot house is still owned by Mister Pitt and is, in fact, the centerpiece of the multi-structure compound he's since created with the subsequent purchase and incorporation of a handful of adjoining properties.

More recently, in April 2009, Miz Peterson—out of her ghoulish maquillage, jet black fright wig and skin tight cleavage exposing witch's dress a pretty if and well-preserved if somewhat unassuming  ginger haired 61 year old—sold a surprisingly traditional house in the Silver Lake area for $1,626,000. That was, according to our calculations, $127,000 more than the $1,499,000 asking price but only $72,000 more than the $1,698,000 she paid for the place just over two years earlier.

listing photos: Patrick Goeglein

Jana Kramer Sells Nashville Bacherlorette Pad

SELLER: Jana Kramer
LOCATION: Nashville, TN
PRICE: $367,000
SIZE: 2,230 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Word on the celebrity real estate street down in Nashville is that after only six or so months of courting, country music up and comers Jana Kramer and Brantely Gilbert have taken the property plunge and purchased a house where they live together in unmarried bliss.

Well, children, we don't know a damn thing about where the Kramer-Gilberts play house now but our entirely unscientific research online turned up evidence that Miss Kramer recently sold her East Nashville bachelorette pad for, according to online documentation, $367,000.

Thirty year old Miss Kramer is probably best known by t.v. watchers for her former role on One Tree Hill and tabloid readers for her one month marriage in 2009 to Christina Applegate's ex-husband, the much older model turned actor/writer/producer Johnathan Schaech (That Thing That You Do, Models Inc.). In all honesty, neither Your Mama nor The Doctor Cooter had previously heard of Mister Gilbert but a few minutes batting around on the interweb tells us he's a bearded and tatted-up country rock singer-songwriter type who opened for country music superstar Toby Keith's Live in Overdrive tour this year.

Property records indicate Miss Kramer acquired the house, located in the heart of the historic Lockeland Springs 'hood just just over the Cumberland River a couple miles east of downtown Nashville, in October 2010 for $317,000.

We're not sure who was responsible for the make over—could be Miss Kramer, could be a previous owner—but listing information from the time of the most recent sale shows the completely renovated, 2,230 square foot clapboard-sided 1925 country cottage was done up and did over with a classic white picket fence, a deep and neighborly front porch and an Old Timey wooden porch swing.

The front door opens directly into the living room that spans the full width of the house and has soaring pitched and vaulted ceilings, hardwood flooring installed at a 45-degree angle and an awkwardly situated off-center stacked stone fireplace. 

The hardwood floors extend back through a wide corridor to a lipstick red walled dining area that connects over a nipple height breakfast bar to a remodeled but very ho-hum kitchen with olive green painted cabinetry, budget-minded black appliances, mottled grey counter tops of unknown material and—inexplicably and regrettably—a peachy-beige mottled tile floor.

Listing information indicates there are a total of three bedrooms and three bathrooms plus a multi-purpose loft area that overlooks the living room. There are two master suites, according to listing information, one upstairs with a Home Depot grade private bathroom and the other downstairs. The third bedroom makes use of a hall bathroom.

The back of the house doesn't exactly open itself wide to the outdoors but there are a couple of doors that connect to a raised back deck that overlooks the petite and barely landscaped, low-maintenance backyard. At the rear of the property an electronically-controlled driveway gates, accessible by way of an alley, allows for private, secure and direct automobile access to the partially subterranean basement level single car garage. 

If Mister Gilbert currently owns or owned a home in the Nashville area Your Mama has yet to figure it out.

listing photos: Re/Max Carriage House

PSY Scoops Up a Condo in an L.A. High Rise

BUYER: PSY (nee Park Jae-sang)
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,249,000
SIZE: 2,776 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ reported today that budding music industry zeitgeist PSY—née Park Jae-sang (박재상, 朴載相)—paid $1.25 million in cold hard cash* for a two bedroom and 2.5 bathroom condo located on a very pedestrian lower floor of The Blair House, an exclusive, 29-story luxury high-rise building "near Beverly Hills."

For those of the children who may have somehow missed the pop cultural boat, PSY is a the South Korean-born bad boy K-pop** poster child who shot to international super stardom earlier this year with his catchy, high camp and high energy Gangnam Style music video that's been viewed almost a billion times on the You Tube.

PSY plans to give his new 2,776 square foot condo crib a face lift, according to TMZ, even thought listing information Your Mama dug up online shows that at the time of purchase in early November (2012) the condo was already done up in a slightly douched-out Gangnam Style with grey wall-to-wall carpeting in the main living areas, a gas fireplace surrounded by glammy mirrored panels, a small private terrace, a marble tile floored dining room and an angular eat-in kitchen with hardware-free flat-fronted cabinetry and high grade if out-dated appliances.

The master bedroom opens through a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows to a rather anorexic terrace with a trafficky view but does have a walk-in closet and an attached bathroom with marble topped double vanity and separate shower and jetted tub. The unit conveniently contains its own laundry room with full sized washer and dryer.

A foliage lined circular drive curves up to the building's well attended lobby that, well, to be honest, reeks of a little more late-1980s brass-trimmed glamour than we really feel comfortable with. The condo's $2,141 per month home owners dues help pay for the building's many amenities that include door man and concierge services, on-site valet parking, well maintained landscaped grounds, banquet facilities, a gym area with sauna, an outdoor salt water swimming pool and spa plus—a rarity among the luxury residential towers that line Wilshire Boulevard corridor between Westwood and Beverly Hills—a lighted and sunken tennis court.

For the record, the condo in question—the one shown in listing photos above—was purchased by someone with a Korean sounding name that Your Mama can not link directly to PSY. We have no reason to doubt our celebrity real estate compatriots at TMZ—heaven knows they snag a lot of intel about celebrity related property transactions—but for now this remains for Your Mama an unconfirmed rumor.
*Property records reveal the actual sale price for the condo in question was $1,249,000 and, for the record, the condo—the one shown in listing photos above—was purchased by someone with a Korean sounding name that Your Mama can not link directly to PSY. We have no reason to doubt our celebrity real estate compatriots at TMZ—heaven knows they snag a lot of intel about celebrity related property transactions—but for now this remains for Your Mama an unconfirmed rumor. 

**K-pop, in case y'all don't already know, is a genre of of music that Your Mama might describe as largely formulaic and stupidly over-polished but crazily popular and auditorily addictive bubble gum pop music produced at an alarmingly fast pace in South Korea. The New Yorker recently published an excellent primer on the globally emerging genre.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker

Ricky Martin Is An Uptown Daddy

BUYER: Ricky Martin
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $5,900,000
SIZE:3,147 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Once upon a celebrity real estate time booty-shaking Puerto Rican pop star/entertainer Ricky Martin owned sleek, 65th floor pied-a-terre at the twin-towered Time Warner Center in Midtown Manhattan that he bought in 2004 for just about $6.8 million and sold at an enviable multi-million dollar profit in 2006 for $9,750,000.

The following year (2007) Mister Martin hauled his real estate vida loca downtown to the then and still quite haute-ish Herzog & de Meuron-designed 40 Bond building where any number of celebrity property gossips—including Your Mama—reported he (allegedly) coughed up somewhere in the neighborhood of $7,000,000 for a low floor apartment with three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.*

Incidentally and as a slight aside, the fancy-pants 40 Bond building in the NoHo (North of Houston) nabe, is where fashion designer Calvin Klein was reported earlier today in the New York Post to have signed a short term lease on a $25,000 per month two bedroom spread. Seventy year old Mister Klein—who can not be at all happy about the possibly pending publication of a probably embarrassing tell-all book by his blabber mouthed 21-year old former lover Nick Gruber—has sought temporary refuge at 40 Bond from  his far more grand West Village triplex penthouse after hurricane Sandy compromised and/or destroyed the building's basement level services.

Anyhoo, sometime last year Mister Martin and his long-time man-friend Carlos Gonzalez Abella packed up his/their toddler-age boy twins and shook their bon bons all the way back uptown to the full service Lucida building on East 85th Street where he/they leased a seventh floor quadruple exposure sprawler with five bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms, an 800 square foot corner living room, an eat-in kitchen and a last listed monthly rent of $32,500. For the record, the apartment has been back up for lease since mid-November (2012) with a notably higher $37,500 monthly rent price. 

Today comes word slips down the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine via the NewYork Post that Mister Martin has opted to own a piece of The Big Apple with the $5,900,000 purchase of a sun drenched and (essentially) south facing two-unit combination condo crib in a contemporary—some might say rather bland—10-story Peter Marino-designed building that faces Gracie Mansion and the playgrounds, open fields and dog run at Carl Shurz Park.

The eight-room apartment, according to listing information, measures in at 3,147 square feet with generous 10 foot ceilings and over-sized floor-to-ceiling windows. The floor plan included with marketing materials shows there's a proper foyer in which to greet guests and the Chinese food delivery man and a double-wide—if otherwise architecturally featureless—living/dining room with Old Timey pre-war style parquet floors. There's also a pequeño eat-in kitchen, a small (windowed) mud room off the service entrance and a fairly narrow study/den all done up in listing photos as a children's playroom.

There are, according to listing information, a total of four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms including two small(ish) guest/family bedrooms with private bathrooms. A pair of master bedrooms, at opposite ends of the apartment, both have multiple closets and attached windowless bathrooms slathered in top quality beige travertine tile.

The monthly common charges and taxes for the apartment Mister Martin (allegedly) bought total $4,729, according to listing information. The 100-plus unit building's extensive, residents only amenities include a state of the art fitness center, squash court, Pilates room, yoga studio, 40 seat screening room, golf simulator, library, arcade room and children's playrooms.

As it turns out Mister Martin has been on a bit of a real estate tear the last eight or nine months. Since at least mid-2007 he's repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempted to dump a walled and gated bay front mansion in Miami Beach (FL) that he bought in May 2005 for ten million dollars. At one point the 7 bedroom and 8 full and two half bathroom spread (above) was listed for $16,900,000. The asking price inexplicably climbed to $19.5 million in 2008. Alas, property records show Mister Martin had to accept a much, much lower offer when, according to property records, he finally sold the unwanted waterfront estate in April of this year (2012) for $10,600,000 to a clearly well-compensated Long Island-based computer retail executive named Richard Leeds.

In April 2007, just about the time he listed his above mentioned bay front mansion in Miami Beach, Mister Martin coughed up a star-style $16,250,000 for a nearly 10,000 square foot ocean front mansion about 10 miles to the north in sleepy but swank Golden Beach. By December of that year he'd caught a classic case of The Celebrity Real Estae Fickle and hoisted the five bedroom and seven bathroom house (above) back on the open market with a sky-high asking price of $22,500,000. Property records reveal Mister Martin's original asking price was wildly optimistic because he finally, at long last, sold the gated property last month for $12,800,000. A few quick clickety-clacks of the well-worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that's almost ten million less than he wanted and, even worse, a spectacular $3,450,000 less than he paid for the place five and some years ago. Ouch!

As far as Your Mama knows, Mister Martin continues to own a substantial residence in Dorado, Puerto Rico—where the American Rockefellers once owned a vacation compound—as well as, so the celebrity real estate rumors go, a casa in Madrid and a private island hideaway in Rio de Janeiro.

*In all honesty, children, Your Mama does not find much if any evidence that Señor Bon Bon bought an apartment at 40 Bond. Could be that he did and we just can't suss it out or could be that he rented in the building.

listing photos and floor plan (New York City, top): Corcoran
listing photos (Miami Beach): EWM Realtors International
listing photos (Golden Beach): Zillow

Rumor Has It...

...that bubble gum pop singer turned maybe-preggers again apparel mogul Jessica Simpson and her former professional pig skinner man-friend/baby daddy Eric Johnson have made a formal offer to purchase a spacious estate inside the guarded gates of the upscale equestrian community of Hidden Hills, CA that's currently owned by rock-n-roll royals Ozzie and Sharon Osbourne who had the entire place worked over by the forever swooning and swanning Martyn Lawrence Bullard from Million Dollar Decorators, photographed for Architectural Digest, and, until mid-October (2012), had on the open market with a $13.5 million dollar price tag.*

Property records and previous reports reveal Mister and Missus Prince of Darkness paid $12,388,500 for the nearly 11,000 square foot mansion that has a total of six bedrooms and ten terlits spread among six full and four half bathrooms. There's also his and her offices and narrow staircase lined with framed gold and platinum records that leads down to a private recording and rehearsal studio.

Avid celebrity property watchers may recall that Mister and Missus Osbourne took their glammed up but unwanted spread in Hidden Hills after a property line dispute erupted with the neighboring communities home owner's association. Unable to sell the property until the dispute is—or was—settled, the Osbourne's opted to lease the property at a rip-roaring rate of $50,000 per month. We can't confirm or deny whether Mister and Missus Osbourne actually leased the house to anyone but it does not, as far as we can find, currently appear as a rental on the open market.

Sometime in late 2011or early 2012 the Osbournes decamped horsey Hidden Hills for a Martyn Lawrence Bullard decorated two bedroom pied a terre on the 18th floor of the celeb-stacked Sierra Towers building in bustling West Hollywood before they leased a fully updated 1928 Spanish hacienda-style residence in the flats of Beverly Hills from one of the Platinum Triangle's most successful Real Estates.

Miz Simpson, Mister Johnson and Babymakesthree currently shack up—an unidentified source tattled to Life & Style**—in the glitzed-up Shabby Chic-ly done domicile in the upper Beverly Hills Post Office area that Miz Simpson bought more than five years ago, post-divorce from what's-his-face Nick Lachey for $5,275,000. The house sits right up next door to a country English mock-Tudor (or something) until recently owned by Kimora Lee Simpson and just around this corner or that bend in the road are privately situated luxury residences owns by a slew of Showbiz types who include but are not limited to Cameron Diaz, Guy Oseary, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, Ziggy Marley and Tom Freston.

*This rumor of alleged formal offer was first reported in the print edition of the Life & Style celebrity gossip magazine and, as of this very minute, we're unable to locate a digital version of the story. If one surfaces—and we are made aware of it—we'll happily link on over to said story as the primary source for this as yet unconfirmed celebrity real estate rumor.

**Ibid.