Did Tom Cruise Buy a Mansion in Upstate New York or Didn't He?

Your Mama's inbox has done drowned this morning with piles and miles of queries about whether whackadoodle Tinseltowner Tom Cruise did or did not buy a $13.5 million mansion in Upstate New York where his New York City-based daughter Suri—so the story goes—can keep her pet pony, $30,000 miniature race car and $24,000 play house.

In all truth, we hadn't heard a damn thing about this alleged turn of celebrity real estate events and we're not sure exactly where the rumor originated. It may have been the I'm Not Obsessed blog that lit the fire yesterday but at least one major celebrity gossip site has subsequently reported that Mister Cruise did not buy said $13.5 million estate in Upstate New York.

So it goes in the murky underbrush of the celebrity real estate gossip game.

*Use some sense, chickens, Your Mama has no idea if Mister Cruise bought Suri Cruise any of those things; That's just a repeat of what some of the celebrity tabloids have previously reported. 

Kelsey Grammer Leases New House In Bev Hills

OWNER: Kelsey Grammer
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $30,000 per month
SIZE: 5,683 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Sometime in late April or early May 2012 four-time Emmy winning sitcom actor (Cheers, Frasier) and producer (Medium, Girlfriends) Kelsey Grammer dropped six and a half million big ones on a rather fetching 1926 Spanish Colonial Revival-style mini-mansion in the West Beverly Hills Flats. Remember that, children?

Then, a couple weeks ago, celebrity property gossips went gaga over the legal wrangle-tangle between Mister Grammer and his third ex-wife, Camille of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Although the Grammers were bitterly and expensively divorced in early 2011 they continue to own a 10,000-plus square foot faux-Tudor mansion in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles (CA) that they've been trying to unload since mid-2008. Court documents cited on TMZ in late November reveal the still-feuding couple—who only communicate through intermediaries—split the hefty $48,130 per month upkeep costs for the high maintenance spread.

The Grammers' plumly located, fully walled and double gated mini-estate in Holmby Hills—Connie Stevens's big ol' compound that's up for sale at almost eighteen million is just over the back wall and across the street—was originally listed at $19,900,000 and was recently re-listed at $15,995,000.

According to TMZ ex-Missus Grammer wants to sell the Holmby Hills house tout de suite. No doubt she's nuthin' but eager to get her already married and procreating ex-husband out of her painstakingly cared for blond mane. Mister Grammer, on the other hand, says he's short on cash since his most recent sitcom, Boss, belly flopped but good and in order to maximize his finances would like to move into the Holmby Hills house with his new, fourth wife and their new baby. That third ex-Missus Grammer might take umbrage with that scenario seems only, well, human.

Not only would third ex-Missus Grammer not want, Your Mama imagines, her ex-husband's new wife and their toddler child to live in a fancy house in Holmby Hills she once shared with Mister Grammer and their children it's not so far-fetched that she might bristle stiffly at footing half the bill for housing her ex-husband and his mistress turned fourth wife and their toddler child.

Anyhoodles poodles, we really can't say whether Mister and new-fourth-Missus Grammer did or did not move into the Holmby Hills house, because we just don't know. We have learned, however and thanks to an anonymous commenter, that Mister Grammer's newly acquired Spanish Colonial Revival  residence in the West Bev Hills Flats, designed by noted architect Ralph C. Flewelling, is up for lease for $30,000 per month.

Current lease listing information indicates the main house has five bedrooms with private bathrooms in 5,683 square feet plus a separate guest house with an addition bedroom and bathroom. The various public and private wings are organized around and access from a central double height entrance hall and an adjoining wood-beamed gallery with corner fireplace. There's a step-down living room with fireplace and exposed wood beam ceiling, a formal dining room, a den and a media/play room and a kitchen complex with over-sized utility room and separate butler's pantry with refrigerated wine storage.

A shallow covered porch with outdoor fireplace just off the formal living room gives way to a gravel and flagstone terrace that wraps around a heated swimming pool. There's a vine-draped poolside pergola for outdoor dining and and mature gardens that wrap around the house back of the house to a small square of jungle gym ready flat lawn, the aforementioned guesthouse and a detached three car garage.

As far as Your Mama knows, Mister and third ex-Missus Grammer still co-own an approximately 8,500 square foot ski chalet on 1.67 acres in Avon, CO that's currently listed at $6,995,000. Mister and fourth Missus Grammer still maintain a residence in Manhattan (West Chelsea) plus a rural spread in Upstate New York and third ex-Missus Grammer still owns and occupies a sprawling Malibu compound she once shared with Mister Grammer but put up for sale in August (2012) with a steep $17,900,000 price tag.

listing photos: Keller Williams Hollywood Hills

Connie Stevens Has Real Estate Problems: Part II

Earlier today Your Mama prattled aimlessly on about the compound-like Holmby Hills estate of actress/singer/skin care entrepreneur Connie Stevens that popped up on the open market last week to much fanfare, hoo-ha and ballyhoo with an almost eighteen million dollar asking price.

As was noted and partially parsed in late November by the National Enquirer, Miz Stevens has long maintained a rather prodigious portfolio of properties for both personal use and investment purposes on the east and the west coasts of the U.S., in between and south of the border.

In September 1988, according to transaction history on the archived Redfin listing, Miz Stevens paid $485,000 for a 3,085 square foot house on just over half an acre in the upper Coldwater Canyon area of the of Beverly Hills Post Office area, aka BHPO.* Miz Stevens listed the two stucture mini-compound in July 2012 with a $1,499,000. Just over three weeks later the price tag dropped dramatically and decisively to $899,000 and just about a month after that, in late September, the listing status was changed to "Pending," an indication a sale is imminent.

At least one property record data base we consulted shows at least two Notices of Default were recorded on the property, one in 2010 and the other in 2011. It appears, however, that Miz Stevens was able to stave off a lender seizure and auction of the walled, gated and—let's just be frank for a second—ass ugly fixer upper.

She may have averted foreclosure in the BHPO but Miz Stevens wasn't so lucky with a her 100 (or so) acre ranch in the Indian Springs enclave near Jackson Hole, WY that she reportedly picked up in 1993 for close to $10 million. She eventually custom built a large log cabin style mansion that, alas, was sold at auction in 2011 after she was unable—or unwilling—to maintain the hefty mortgage payments on the approximately $2.8 million in loans secured against the property.

The year before that, in March 2010, Miz Steven sold a quaint but frumpily "refreshed" 1925 bungalow (above) in Pasadena (CA) for $560,000. It appears, less expenses, she doubled her money on this one since several online resources indicate she bought the five bedroom and two bathroom house (with guest house) in early 1993 for $280,000.

The next month, June 2010, Miz Stevens dumped a dowdily decorated 2,479 square foot condo on the 54th floor of the full service Millenium Tower building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan (above) for a decidedly un-dowdy seven million bucks. Drab as the ho-hum day-core looks in listing photos the three bedroom and 3.5 bathroom apartment—on the same floor as the top floor of Howard Stern's multi-unit duplex aerie—does have three spine tingling exposures with lordly views over Central Park to the east and the Hudson River to the west.

A few months later Miz Stevens officially further lightened her real estate load when she offloaded a clearly renovated and nicely maintained two bedroom and three bathroom board and batten contemporary tucked into the tail end of a hook-shaped cul-de-sac in the Beverly Glen area of Beverly Hills Post Office (above). Property records and online listings show Miz Stevens paid $1,470,000 for the property in November 2005, first listed it in April 2009 and finally sold it in September 2010 for $1,060,000, a stomach churning $400,000-plus loss not counting the considerable carrying costs, upkeep expenses and real estate fees. Although there was a bit of thwarted foreclosure activity on the property in early 2011, records show Miz Stevens also and still owns the 4,182 square foot house immediately next door. There is some evidence online that Miz Stevens unsuccessfully attempted to sell larger BHPO residence way back in 2006 with an asking price of $2,349,000.

A little more peeking and poking around in various property record databases reveals to Your Mama that Miz Stevens continues to possess a couple of condos within gated developments in hot as Hades Palm Desert (CA) in California's Coachella Valley: one with 3,562 square feet situation at the Indian Ridge Country Club and the another a more middle-brow situation with 1,421 square feet at the nearby Silver Sands Racquet Club.

Miz Stevens also still owns a 5,170 square foot prototypically suburban macmansion in Las Vegas (NV) on .46 acres just inside the guarded gates of the upscale Ten Oaks development, about seven miles due east of The Strip. A little digging turned up evidence of some foreclosure activity on this property, but that icky issue seems to have been resolved in September 2011.

Your Mama has no idea if she still owns it or not, but a 1993 article in the Los Angeles Times reported that Miz Stevens had then just recently completed a decorative do over of a five bedroom beachfront getaway in Puerta Vallarta. That's Mexico, hunnies.

By our count Miz Stevens owned as many as 10 residences at one time. No doubt some were leased out for income and others maintained for personal use but imagine the financial burden of half a dozen or more homes, some of them rather high maintenance. Not wonder the septuagenarian Tinseltown icon and (former) cosmetic queen is still hoofing it: Miz Stevens made her directorial debut this year with the also self conceived, co-wrote and produced feature film Saving Grace B. Jones.

Some of Miz Stevens previous Showbiz gigs and accomplishments include a multi-year run on Hawaiian Eye in the late '50s and early 60s, the starring role on the short lived sitcom Wendy and Me and numerous theater and nightclub appearances not to mention a headline act in Las Vegas. Those in Your Mama's—ahem—advanced generation may (or may not) best remember Miz Stevens for her frothy haired appearances on least eight episodes of The Love Boat and/or for her several spins through the even more campy Fantasy Island.

It wasn't Showbiz, however, that earned Miz Steven all her once quite substantial—at least one online resource unscientifically pegged it as high as $50 million—and apparently somewhat diminished fortune. That lump of dough came in the 1990s after she developed and successfully mass marketed the Forever Spring skin care line on the Home Shopping Network. After sales plummeted from a high of $30 million to a low of $6 million, the home shopping juggernaut dropped Forever Spring. Such is the unforgiving and capricious way of capitalism, right? Anyhoo, we're not sure where the hair and skin care products are currently retailed but the full line—which includes a variety of scented lotions, potions, cosmetics and candles, at least one snow globe and for the men, fragranced shaving cream—is still available online.

It may or may not come as a relief to some of the children that an unidentified "close friend" told the National Enquirer in late November that although Miz Stevens feels the financial squeeze like so many other people in this still sluggish economy she's "certainly not broke." Well! Ahem. Harrumph! we should hope not. It's one thing for a rich person to get caught in a temporary cash crunch. These things happen. But, children, there's just no financial excuse for someone who earns tens of millions of dollars in a lifetime and to not have the good damn sense to bury five or ten million in a coffee can in the backyard just in case the economy tanks and/or they get stupid and blow through the bulk of their fortune.

*Properties in the Beverly Hills Post Office area maintain coveted 90210 zip codes but the less coveted public services (sanitation, education, police and fire protection etc) of the City of Los Angeles.

listing photos (BHPO, top): Westside Estate Agency
listing photo (Pasadena): Dwellings International Realty
listing photos and floor plan (New York City): Douglas Elliman
listing photos (BHPO, bottom): Beverly Glen Realty

Connie Stevens Has Property Problems, Part One (Plus a Little Holmby Hills Real Estate This and That)

SELLER: Connie Stevens
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $17,999,000
SIZE: 12,000 (or so) square feet (total), 7 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Looks like the sharp downturn in the economy a few years ago put a pecuniary pinch on on the pocketbook of Tinseltown icon turned skin care tycoon Connie Stevens
who—as first reported last week by the ever industrious kids at Curbed—listed her grandly proportioned celebrity-style estate in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles last week with an asking price of $17,999,000.

As it turns out her Holmby Hills spread isn't the only residence Miz Stevens currently has on the open market, recently sold or—woe is her—lost to the hungry and unforgiving maw of foreclosure. Before we get to all that complicated and ugly real estate business, however, let's start with the compound-like Holmby Hills estate that property records indicate Miz Stevens picked up way back in February 1974 for $350,000. No babies, Your Mama's early morning gin & tonic did not cause us to omit a zero; She actually paid $350,000 for nearly two acres in the geographic heart of one of Los Angeles' most exclusive and expensive neighborhoods.

A double-gated red brick circular drive cuts through a towering privacy hedge and bends tightly up to a hotel-like black and white striped awning over the front door of the stately main house, a 1939 white brick center hall Colonial designed by the revered architect Paul Williams. Current listing information shows there are seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms (including a two bedroom staff suite) in the main house that the Los Angeles County Tax Man's records indicate measures in at a considerable but hardly colossal 8,460 square feet.

In addition to the main house, additional living quarters includes two, two story one bedroom townhouse type guesthouses—one for each of her daughters, Joely and Tricia—a separate chauffeur's apartment and a two bathroom pool house.

As far as Your Mama knows no interior photos of the house have been released as part of the marketing for the mansion but listing information does reveal the main mansion contains a double-height foyer with a quintessentially Paul Williams "grand sweeping circular staircase," formal living and dining rooms, a library/study, a billiard room and a spacious open-plan family room that adjoins the eat-in kitchen. There are, as per listing information, a total of five fireplaces in the main house including one in the second floor master suite that also features a walk-in closet and dressing area.

The fully finished third floor attic contains home fitness room and dance studio, the fully finished basement level a wine cellar and there's also a separate recording studio and "on line studio," a room Your Mama imagines is equipped with all the necessary digital accoutrement for surfing the web.

The driveway extends up along the north side of the main mansion where passes under a porte cochere (on top of which is a terraces) and connects to the estate's extensive automobile parking and storage area that encompasses an attached three car garage plus car ports for up to eight more cars.

The expansive and mostly landscaped but un-fussily groomed grounds include a large flat lawns at the front and back, extensive rose gardens, numerous terraces including a trellis shaded one for shade seekers, an extra long Olympic length swimming pool, a tree-ringed gazebo and spa and a sunken lighted tennis court with viewing deck and what appears to Your Mama to be an enclosed viewing pavilion.

Miz Stevens's estate is surrounded by other equally and even more monumental estates owned by a long list of L.A. luminaries such as Top 40 radio honcho Kasey Kasem, who Your Mama hears quietly wants forty-two million clams for his 17 pooper property (above), and fashion designer Max Azria, who paid $16,000,000 for a 20,000-plus square foot behemoth with 22 bathrooms originally designed by architect Paul Williams and once owned by prolific novelist Sidney Sheldon.

Also in the hoity toity 'hood is the Playboy Mansion as well as the super-luxe spread owned by wealthy divorcée and former Dodger's owner/executive Jamie McCourt (above) who bought the posh property in happier times with ex-hubby Frank McCourt in 2004 from Babyface Edmunds for $21,2500,000 and recently spent God only knows how many millions more to install an partially subterranean indoor swimming pool complex where she swims laps every day. Back in March (2012) Your Mama heard from a well-connected acquaintance we'll call Heidi N. Holmbyhills that ex-Missus McCourt allows at least one of the Platinum Triangle's big name Realtors to discreetly shows the property with a $65 million price tag.

Not quite but almost directly across the street from Miz Stevens is the high-hedged and tree ringed backside of a 10,000-plus square foot faux-Tudor residence owned by bitterly divorced former couple Kelsey and Camille Grammer (above). The Grammers have on and off unsuccessfully endeavored to unload the property since mid-2008 when it popped up with a $19.9 million price tag. The house was just re-listed for the 979th time with an asking price of $15,995,000. The children may recall that Mister and third ex-Missus Grammer have had some recent legal wrangles over the house. So the story goes Camille wants to sell it fast and Kelsey wants to move his fourth wife and new baby into it. Oh, what a tangled real estate web some celebrities weave. But, we digress.

Also across the street and next door to the Grammer pad is a nearly two acre estate (above) originally built by gangster Bugsy Siegel for his wife and children, formerly owned by make-up mogul Max Factor and currently owned by three time Emmy winning super producer Bud Yorkin (What's Happening, All in the Family, Sanford and Son). Mister Yorkin first put the property up for sale in early 2010 with a wildly optimistic $49.5 million and currently has up for grabs with a gigantically reduced $22,900,000 price tag.

Also for sale in the immediate area is the almost three acre estate and low-slung contemporary of the late lawyer Arthur Crowley. The approximately 9,000 square foot single story sprawler was first hoisted on to the open market in early 2011 with a $23,000,000 asking price. Since then the property has been de- and re-listed at least three times and now has an asking price of $17,250,000.

Stay tuned for details and dish on some of the many other properties from California to New York City owned, loved, for sale, sold and/or lost by Miz Stevens.

listing photos: Keller Williams Beverly Hills 
listing photo (Kasem): Fortune Homes / Keller Williams Realty
overhead aerial image (McCourt):  Google
listing photo (Grammer): Coldwell Banker Previews International
listing photo (Yorkin): Westside Estate Agency
listing photo (Crowley): Coldwell Banker Previews International

Monday Mish Mash: Seal

According to the celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ, Heidi Klum's ex-husband and baby daddy Seal made a formal offer to purchase a newly constructed and very contemporary 5,500 square foot crib squeezed onto a 6,115 square foot triangular shaped lot in a swank but low-key area of L.A.'s affluent and celeb-friendly Brentwood community.

Listing information for the the walled and gated three level green home, listed at $6,000,000, shows there are four bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms, an open-concept living and dining area, two sleek kitchens with Euro appliances, a den and an office and a media room and fitness room in the basement.


Besides a couple of terraces with verdant tree-top views, outdoor space is limited to a good size deck and a strip of grass so narrow even Your Mama's long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, would have a tough time getting their play on.

In June 2011 the erstwhile couple sold their former Beverly Hills estate at a substantial loss for $7,000,000—they bought it in late 2005 for $7,600,000—and, as far as Your Mama knows, Miz Klum and their children remain ensconced in the 12,300 square foot mock-Med mansion in the upper reaches of Brentwood above Mandeville Canyon that they bought out of foreclosure for $14,200,000 back in late 2010.

listing photos: Engel & Völkers

Monday Mish Mash: Tom Cruise

In case y'all missed it, an unidentified blabbermouth told the busy celebrity gossip beavers at Radar Online that Tom Cruise "runs his household staff with absolute military precision and with the utmost attention paid to security."

So the story goes, the multi-wing mansion—located in Beverly Hills and not Bel Air as was suggested in the Radar Online report—is divided into defined zones and Mister Cruise's domestic employees are not allowed to enter areas of the house where they do not work. For example, the kitchen staff is forbidden from entering the bedroom wing(s) and vice versa.

The tattle tale went on to reveal that Mister Cruise employs personal valets for his mother and sisters as he did for third ex-Missus Holmes when they were still married and that he requires potential household staff "undergo rigorous testing at the Scientology Celebrity Center in Los Angeles" that includes emergency situation hypotheticals and a battery of math questions.

Listen children, no one thinks Tom Cruise is a bizarro bird who lives in a ridiculously insular and cosseted world more than Your Mama. But, let's get real, okay? He's an internationally renown superstar actor and we really can't poo-poo him for not wanting his scullery maids lurking around in his dressing room or for wanting his estate manager to know how to do basic math.

Mister Cruise and his now third ex-wife Katie Holmes purchased the gated and heavily fortified estate with its almost 11,000 square foot main residence back in April 2007 for $30,500,000 from Platinum Triangle super-Realtor Kurt Rappaport.

In other semi real estate related Tom Cruise news, at least one report out of the U.K. say six year old Suri Cruise will recieve several expensive Christmas gifts this year including a $24,000 Victorian-style play house, an iPad mini, a fur coat by Chloé and "a £6,000 children's version of a Mercedes-Benz car." We're not sure how the Daily Mail knows this, but there you have it...

aerial photo: Pacific Coast News

Monday Mish Mash: Nate Berkus

The New York Post reported over the weekend that nice-gay New York City-based interior decorator and former television host turned book writer turned home goods tycoon Nate Berkus has packed his designer bags and decamped for Tinseltown where—so the story goes—he bought a fancy Mercedes and snagged a house in the Hollywood Hills all in the same day.

The westward move was reportedly and at least partly motivated—so the story goes—by his budding romance with a fella named Jeremiah Brent, another nice-gay decorator best known by reality television watchers as the square jawed and gel haired former assistant of celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe.

As far as we know, Mister Berkus continues to own at least two apartments in lower Manhattan that include a one bedroom pied a terre on Downing Street—bought in 2006 for $550,000—and a much more substantial 3,000 square foot terraced duplex in a well-maintained 19th century walk-up building just off Fifth Avenue in the Greenwich Village that he bought in 2011 for $3,350,000, worked over but good with sleek glass and metal partitions, antique marble mantels and vintage Belgian hardware and then—natch—had photographed for the the high-gloss pages of the November 2012 issue of Architectural Digest.

Mister Berkus also still owns a nearly 4,000 square foot condo crib in Chicago (above) that he bought back in July 2003 for $1,500,000. Since the design dynamo put his no longer needed three bedroom and four bathroom spread in Chi-town up for sale in early 2011 for $2,650,000 there have been no fewer than five price reductions that have plummeted the price to its current $1,890,000.

listing photos (Chicago): Baird & Warner