Weekend This and Thats...

As far as we know, the property gossip lady at the L.A. Times was the first to reveal that sassy and sexy Scissor Sisters lead singer Jake Shears and his long-time man-friend, film maker Chris Moukarbel (Me @ The Zoo), dropped $1,920,000 for the Ulm House, a Streamline Moderne-style residence—sometimes attributed to architect Milton Black and other time to designer/builder William Kesling and built in 1937 in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles (CA). Listing details indicate the 2,309 square foot has a total of four bedrooms and four bathrooms on three levels of hillside living space with a curving glass-block wall, an illuminated magnasite stairway, and "dazzling city views."

listing photo: Sotheby's International Realty

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After unsuccessfully attempting to rent it out at $8,500 per month boy bander (turned satellite radio dj) Lance Bass listed his one bedroom and two bathroom condo-crib in New York City's Chelsea nabe with an asking price of $2.2. million. Mister Bass, who recently became engaged to his L.A.-based boyfriend according to the kids at Curbedpicked up the 1,300 square foot pad in the spring of 2010 for $1,495,000. Some of the notable amenities and creature comforts of the 10th floor apartment include almost a dozen closets plus loads of additional built-in storage, a windowless office with built-in Murphy bed for over-night guests, at least two flat-screen television flush-mounted into custom cabinetry.

The building, which couldn't be more convenient to the very same Whole Foods where Your Mama and The Dr. Cooter shopped when we lived in the Big Apple, is home to a number of other high-profile peeps who include Kyle MacLachlan and Tom Cruise's third ex-wife, Katie Holmes, and their fashionista toddler, Suri.

Our brief and entirely unscientific research shows Mister Bass has previously owned homes in Orlando (FL), Nashville (TN), and Los Angeles (CA), and currently maintains a home in his home state of Mississippi.

listing photos and floor plan: Corcoran

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Countess Luann de Lesseps of The Real Housewives of New York City recently busted up with Jacques Azoulay, her French man-friend of three years, and, according to the kids at Curbed, has once again jumped on the real estate merry-go-round and (re-)listed her 2.2 acre spread in Bridgehampton, NY with an asking price of $9,999,000. (The manners-obsessed reality star and royal-by-marriage attempted to sell the estate in 2009 for $9.5 million.).

Current listing details show the 6,500 square foot cedar-shingled farmhouse has living and dining rooms—check the Warholian portrait of the Countess in the dining room, a well-equipped country kitchen, separate den, six bedrooms—including a main floor master suite with dual baths, sauna, and direct access through French doors to the backyard, 7.5 bathrooms, and at least three fireplaces. Outdoor entertainments include spacious terraces, vast lawns, a swimming pool with adjacent, self-contained pool/guest house, a three-car detached garage, and, in the front yard, a sunken tennis court.

listing photos: Brown Harris Stevens

End of Week Pick Up Sticks: Brad Grey


SELLER: Brad and Cassandra Grey
LOCATION: Los Angeles (Bel Air), CA
PRICE: $27,500,000
SIZE: 10,616 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Paramount chieftain and all-around Showbiz power player Brad Grey and his second wife, Cassandra, have listed their stately white-brick Georgian-Colonial mansion in L.A.'s tony Bel Air area on the open market for $27,500,000.

Mister Grey acquired the house in the wake of his split and subsequent divorce from his first wife, Bonnie, in an off-market deal a bit more than four years ago for $22,000,000. The Hollywood honcho's top producing real estate broker told the property gossip gals at the Wall Street Journal that his client made several modifications and upgrades to the house including landscape refreshment, dining room renovation, sitting room addition on the second floor, and professional projection equipment installation in the formal living room so the glammed-up salon can do double duty as a de riguer screening room.

Current listing details show the 10,600+ square foot mansion was originally designed by L.A.-based mansion specialist Richard Manion and built in 2006 on 1.1 gated acres enclosed by electronic drive gates, high stucco walls, and and and even taller row of trees and privacy hedges.

Main floor living and entertaining spaces include: a double height foyer guaranteed to impress guests and pizza delivery people, roomy; sophisticated, cocktail and dinner party accommodating formal living and dining rooms; a cozy paneled office/library; a family room dominated by a gigantic, U-shaped sectional sofa; and, finally, an all-white kitchen with stainless steel appliances and an industrial-sized pot rack that looms over the super-sized center work island.

In addition to the master suite that's complete, according to digital marketing materials, with dual closets and bathrooms, there are three bedroom suites on the second floor clustered around a sitting room, perhaps the above mentioned one he added. One bedroom and one bathroom staff quarters, probably wedged tightly behind the kitchen near the laundry facilities and garage, bring the bedroom total to five.

Other features of note include three fireplaces, a fitness room plus a separate Pilates studio with private bathroom, a three car attached garage with off-street parking for a dozen or so more cars, and a state-of-the-art security system equipped with closed-circuit surveillance cameras.

Being in the prime East Gate section of Bel Air Mister Grey's estate is surrounded by a whole lotta L.A.-based money and power. Next door on one side is the Gothic Tudor mansion once owned by Nic Cage and on the other side is the almost four acre fully landscaped estate Beny Alagem who started Packard Bell and currently owns the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Across the street, funnily enough, are Rick and Kathy Hilton—that would be Paris's parents and the heirs to the Hilton Hotel fortune. Next door to the Hilton's is the home of music industry executive Jerry Moss and few doors down (and across the street) is Mi Patria, the nearly 9,000 square foot hacienda-style mansion another music industry executive, Freddy de Mann, sold to H. Ross Perot Jr. earlier this year for $18,000,000. Just around the bend one way is Michael Eisner's long-time estate while just around the corner in another direction is the newly re-worked estate of Terry Semel whose across the street neighbor is (charity-oriented lady-who-lunches) Alexandra Dwek who bought her big house in 2011 from Giannulli Mossimo and Laurie Laughlin for $16,600,000.

So the reportage goes, Mister Grey and his younger, fashion-oriented second missus have decided to custom build a brand spanking new contemporary residence designed by Napa Valley-based architect Howard Backen on a mostly flat and superbly located 2.3 acre parcel in the heart of the Holmby Hills 'hood that Mister Grey purchased in late 2010 for $18.5 million and where the couple hosted their glitzy, star-studded nuptials in the spring of 2011. The property, directly across the street from the former Walt Disney estate that private investor and Houston Dynamo co-owner Gabriel Brener has made available as an off-market listing with a hair-straightening $90 million price tag, once had a elegant and beautifully proportioned if somewhat shabbily maintained hacienda-style Monterey Colonial on the property that once owned by Frank Sinatra. Alas, after failing to flip the fixer-upper in 2011, when he put it up for sale for $23,500,000, Mister Gray opted to raze the 8,613 square foot red brick residence* and then—once again in vain—tried to sell the newly vacant parcel for $20,000,000.

Mister and Missus Grey also own a 3,000 square foot, full-floor spread in the tower section of the perfectly swellegant (if a mite stuffy) Carlyle hotel and residences in New York City that they bought almost three years ago for $15,500,000.**

*For better or worse, depending on your point of view, the house was not protected under any historical statute or designation.

**The provided floor plan for Mister and Missus Grey's New York City pied-a-terre was retrieved from still available digital listings as it was organized at the time of their 2011 acquisition. For all Your Mama knows, they've radically rearranged the layout. 

listing photos: Everett Fenton Gidley for Westside Estate Agency

End of Week Pick Up Sticks: Mitzi Gaynor

SELLER: Mitzi Gaynor
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $5,495,000
SIZE: 4,167 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5.75 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama knows that some of the children, especially the young ones, are hissing and spitting, "Mitzi, who? Gay, what?" But, hunties, iffin you don't know who Mitzi is, well, we suggest you crack open your encyclopedia of Hollywood history and look her up because anyone who knows anything at all about the history of Hollywood knows that Mitzi Gaynor is a goddamn Tinseltown legend who, we first learned from the gossip juggernaut TMZ, has put her long-time residence on a tree-lined street in the Flats of Beverly Hills (CA) up for sale with a $5,495,000 million asking price.

Miz Gaynor, an honest-to-goodness triple threat performer with a definite and smoldering yet demure and approachable carnality, starred in a slew of silver screen musicals in the 1950s and early '60s. She hoofed in with Bing Crosby in Anything Goes, she held her own against Marilyn Monroe in There's No Business Like Show Business, and she stuck it in South Pacific opposite the suave Italian actor Rossano Brazzi. Starting in the late sixties and throughout most of the 1970s Miz Gayner starred in highly rated annual musical specials (see below video) and she was a frequent and popular performer on Hollywood awards shows. And, ladies and gentlemen, this lady killed it in Las Vegas spectaculars long before anyone in the lower 48 had even heard of Céline D-whatshername from Canada. Miz Gaynor was, in her day, the shit and she deserves the respect due a Hollywood veteran of her stature. Okay?

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We're not quite sure when Miz Gaynor, now in her 80s, and her late husband/manager Jack Bean bought the house but we know it ages ago. They probably paid pennies for it compared to its current price tag and good for them. Listing details show the two-story Spanish style casa was built in 1929 and has five bedrooms and 5.75 bathrooms* in 4,167 square feet of dated but carefully maintained interior space that, as per listing description, "captures the glamour of Hollywood's Golden Age."

Many of the homes original details survive, such as the groin-vaulted entry loggia, Spanish tile and Parquet de Versailles style wood flooring, beamed ceiling in the living room (that's regrettably been painted white), leaded glass sky lights, and casement windows and French doors.

Public and entertaining spaces include a center hall entry with wrought iron railed staircase, generously proportioned formal living and dining rooms—the former with a black marble fireplace, and a sun room in which a row of over-sized arched windows lead out to a red-brick dining terrace that's shaded by a blue and white striped awning and over looks the backyard and swimming pool.

Although dated and fairly utilitarian with bull-nosed granite counter tops and ho-hum raised panel cabinetry, the kitchen is reasonably sized with a small center work island, a high-end commercial-style six-burner range, and an adjacent butler's pantry lined with glass-fronted upper cabinets. The nearby breakfast room is an exquisite—if Old School—jewel box with honey-toned Venetian plaster walls, original casement windows, a built-in buffet with leaded glass details, and a decadent antique crystal chandelier.

Listing details indicate there are two guest/family bedrooms up stairs plus the super-sized master suite that encompasses a bedroom chamber and adjoining sitting room, a Juliet balcony that overlooks the backyard, and a closet-lined dressing room as well as a roomy walk-in closet chock-full of Miz Gaynor's (probably Bob Mackie-designed) cocktail gowns. The master bathroom was left un-described and un-photographed in all of the digital listings Your Mama perused. Make of that what you will.

A fourth potential bedroom/library with private bathroom is located on the main floor. Your Mama recklessly assumes that's the room in which the same graphic striped fabric was applied to the walls, the roll-armed divan, the (uncomfortable looking patio-like) chair cushions and the curtains. It was also stuck to at least three of the four walls in the attached bathroom. This sort of day-core just isn't done anymore so, as far as Your Mama is concerned, it's a marvelous little decorative time capsule. Like many of these older homes that lined the painstakingly manicured streets in the Flats of Beverly Hills, there's a staff bedroom and bathroom tucked back into the service area behind the kitchen.

We have not one single piece of intel as to her future real estate plans but if Your Mama were the wagering type—and we're not—we'd put a few pennies on Miz Gayner downsizes to a two or three bedroom condo in one of the full-service luxury towers that line the Wilshire Corridor near Westwood and Century City.

listing photos: Wish Sotheby's International Realty

End of Week Pick Up Sticks: Judge Judy

Famously forceful, cantankerous, and occasionally hostile television judge Judy Sheindlin continues to shake up her impressive residential real estate portfolio. In May (2013) she and her husband, Jerry—a former television judge himsef, sold their five-room pied-a-terre at the super-snooty Sherry Netherland on New York City's Fifth Avenue for $8.5 million to a high-cultured Philadelphia-based couple, dollar store pioneer Bernard Spain and his sophisticated, social, and always meticulously maquillaged wife, Joan.

At almost the exact same time in May (2013) that the Judges Sheindlin dumped their digs at the Sherry in New York City, the $45 million dollar a year earner laid out $10.7 million for a five bedroom condo-crib the size of suburban macmansion in the heart of Beverly Hills at the swish Montage Beverly Hills, the same luxury hotel and condo complex where Oprah Winfrey (allegedly) owns a $14 million part-time residence.

Now comes word via the property obsessed peeps at The Real Deal that the 14-time Daytime Emmy nominee—always a Showbiz bridesmaid never a bride—and her hubby shelled out $8,500,000 for a spacious duplex penthouse atop a full-service co-operative building designed by the inestimable architect Rosario Candela and built in 1929 in Midtown Manhattan's sleepy and still pretty damn swanky if not terribly fashionable Sutton Place nabe.

Digital listing details, which include a delectable floor plan, show the two-floor aerie has four bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, two wood-burning fireplaces, a roomy living room with three exposures, a wood-paneled library, a formal dining room, and a colossal center island kitchen with a temperature controlled walk-in wine cellar that can accommodate 900 bottles of booze. A private terrace wraps entirely around the upper level living spaces. Monthly maintenance charges ring up to $7,363 but the proudly churlish yet wildly popular lady judge (reportedly) earns $123,000 per day so, you know, she could probably dig up seven grand every month in the seats of her private jet.

This is not, as it turns out, the first time Judge Judy and Mister Judge Judy have owned an apartment in the Sutton Place area. Three years ago, according to property records we peeped, they quietly sold a three bedroom and 4.5 bathroom duplex penthouse with two terraces in a luxury post-war tower on Sutton Place South. Miz Sheindlin and her husband, Jerry, also own a swanky condo in Naples, FL, and a baronial estate they had custom built in high-nosed Greenwich, CT. We've read they keep a place in Wyoming but, honestly butter beans, we don't know a thing about that.

listing photos and floor plan: Stribling

Aussie Actor Paul Hogan Sells Malibu Spread Aussie Actor Chris Hemsworth

SELLER: Paul Hogan and Linda Kozlowski
BUYER: Chris Hemsworth and Elsa Pataky
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $4,800,000
SIZE: 6,382 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: While his younger brother, Liam, grapples with tabloid readers' rabid obsession with his newly called off engagement to twerking and tongue-showing Showbiz rabble-rouser Miley Cyrus, beefcake-y action flick actor Chris Hemsworth and his model/actress wife Elsa Pataky have quietly acquired a mini-compound in the celebrity-filled Point Dume area of Malibu (CA) for $4,800,000.*

Thirty-year old Mister Hemsworth—six-foot-four with a tussled, Fabio-like blond mane and the pumped body of a gym-going superhero—and multi-lingual Miz Pataky purchased the approximately one acre spread from Crocodile Dundee star Paul Hogan and his Julliard-trained former actress wife, Linda Kozlowski. The Hogan-Kozlowskis purchased the property in July 2012 for $3.8 million, shortly after they settled confidentially with the Australian tax authorities who claimed they and Mister Hogan's former manager owed more than $150 million in back taxes. Yikes! During their brief ownership the couple made a number of mostly cosmetic but no-doubt viciously costly alterations to the house—i.e. they painted a bunch and did over the master bathroom, which had already had its interiors completely redone in a modern manner by the people they bought it from. Seven months later they caught a case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle and flipped it back on the market with an sking price of $5,250,000.

Listing information from the time of the transaction show the existing, three-story residence, all but hidden behind secured gates and a towering wall of hedges, was built in 1992 in a Victorian-style that hides and belies open, airy, and decidedly contemporary interiors.

Normally Your Mama is all about a radical mix of old and new and high and low. We love a sleek, nearly minimal decor in a wedding cake-y Parisian hôtel particulier and we can really get behind a little bit of Louis or maybe a glammy Paul Kelly statement piece in a slightly shabby tenement apartment on the Lower East Side. Your Mama loves us a Nakashima table in an all-stainless steel kitchen and we j'adore disgustingly expensive French bed linens on an air mattress. (Well, we don't really care for all stainless steel kitchens, but y'all get the idea.) Howevuh, hunties, this house doesn't successfully create a particularly taut or cohesive juxtaposition between the disparate architecture and interior motifs as much as it seems to suffer from a split personality disorder. Sure, the Victorian exterior—an questionable choice for a beach house in Malibu to begin with—was pared down and modernized with an all-white paint job and there are some Victorian-esque details inside such as half-paneled walls in some of the public rooms on the main floor but, somehow, this unexpected mix-and-match between the modern and the Victorian lacks any real harmony. It just feels jarring, in this case, to walk up to a Victorian and walk into a contemporary. Plus, the curvaceous white-brick wall at the entry seems a bit more Colonial than Victorian but who are we to criticize? Anyhoo...

Spendy and downright stunning wide plank white oak floors run throughout the not exactly open concept but certainly interconnected main floor living spaces that include a "formal" living room with fireplace and a small adjoining vestibule tucked behind the staircase that connects to a trellis-shaded brick terrace that runs along the backside of the house. Pocket doors divide the living room from the formal dining room where Mister and Missus Hogan—and or their team of stager/decorators—covered the walls in an a steely and sophisticated greenish-gray that makes Your Mama wish we had a dining room painted a steely and sophisticated greenish-gray.

Things veer towards the dramatic in the center island eat-in kitchen where the cabinetry and steeply peaked double-height vaulted ceiling appear to be painted with the same steely and sophisticated greenish-gray hue as was splashed on the walls in the dining room. Listing photos show an inlaid marble floor, thick slab butcher block counter tops, open shelving for convenient access and display of daily-use tableware, and a farmhouse-y white porcelain apron sink. The top-grade appliances include a double-wide range (and hood) imported from France that Your Mama can assure the children likely cost more than the car y'alls cleaning lady drives. In a compact breakfast area there's a tiny corner fireplace and transom-topped glass doors that slide open to a red brick dining terrace. A glass-railed staircase angles up to a glass-railed study loft with built-in desk and cabinetry that overlooks the kitchen. There's another garret-office one more floor above although, to be honest, we're not exactly show how one accesses it.

Nearby the kitchen there's a sunny and spacious den/family room with two bay windows, one perfectly suited to accommodate a round table for casual meals or—heaven forfend—a poker table. One long wall is anchored by an unadorned, over-sized firebox that's flanked by floating shelves for displaying shells, rocks, and driftwood gathered up during misty morning beach walks. More sliding glass doors lead from the den/family room out to the aforementioned trellised red brick terrace that overlooks the down-sloping, terraced backyard.

Much to Your Mama's surprise (and chagrin), the property does not have—or, at least, did not have at the time of Mister and Missus Hemsworths' purchase—a swimming pool. There are, in fact, two good-sized flat sections of lawn in the terraced backyard that appear well-suited to a swimming pool, spa, and lounge area, particularly the lower lawn area. Call Your Mama an uptight old fart—and we've been called way worse, buttercups—but for 4.8 million clams Your Mama doesn't really care to go through the protracted and attention requiring hassle—not to mention expense—of designing, obtaining proper approvals and permits, and enduring construction set backs to install a brand new swimming pool, spa and lounge area. But, of course, lads and lassies, our whining is beyond moot since neither are Your Mama and The Dr. Cooter in in the market for a $4.8 million dollar house in Malibu (or anywhere else) and the lack of a cement pond was not—uh, duh—a deal breaker for Mister Hemsworth and Miz Pataky.

The second floor master suite is complete, according to digital marketing materials, with fireplace, separate sitting/dressing area, two fitted walk-in closets, and a private veranda with distant over-the-tree-tops view of the Pacific. The decent-sized but hardly gargantuan attached bathroom is freshly redone with double sinks set into a long floating cabinet, egg-shaped free-standing soaking tub, and a separate glassed-in shower enclosure. Listing details indicate there are additional three guest/family bedrooms with en suite facilities and a "bonus bedroom," whatever that is.

A spindly staircase that starts in the center entry hall entry winds tightly up through an open, light-soaked volume all the way to the third floor where a wood-floored lounge area sits below a many-peaked vaulted ceiling.

In addition to the handful of bedrooms and half dozen bathrooms in the main house, the compound-type—ahem—estate has a separate (but attached) and fully self-contained, two-story guest house outfitted in a similarly modern manner as the main house. Both the living room and the combo kitchen/dining room have wood floors and sliding glass doors that open to a private terrace and the bedroom is nestled, A-frame cabin-like into the steep pitch of the roof on the upper level.

In addition to a gated motor court (and attached three car garage) at the front of the house just outside the kitchen and service areas of the main house, a long, gated drive runs from the street to the extreme rear of the triangular-shaped lot where there's a detached three-car garage with a pretty damn dumpy attached studio-style guest/staff room with sad and disturbing flesh-colored tile floors, a tiny higgledly-piggledy kitchenette, and a private bathroom of unknown quality or condition.**

Your Mama has not even a whisper of a clue as to whether Mister Hemsworth and/or Miz Pataky own any additional property in Los Angeles, Spain, Australia, and/or the U.K. where they were spotted earlier this year with their infant baby popping in to a real estate brokerage in London's natty Knotting Hill. That doesn't mean they don't. Maybe they're secret real estate ballers with property portfolio that would make most millionaires squirm with envy. (We doubt it, but it's possible, right?) . We also aren't completely sure what's become of the Hogan-Kozlowskis although good-ol' Yolanda did turn up some circumstantial and entirely unsubstantiated evidence they might have purchased a much more expensive home in the Mandeville Canyon area. Might we said. Did you hear that? Might.

*Technically, the property was purchased, as per property records, in mid-June (2013) via a trust that obscures the identity of the owner but guns-always-blazing real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak swears on her impeccably maintained 1984 Jaguar XJS that the buyer is Australian-born Chris Hemsworth and his Spanish wife, Elsa Pataky.

**Imagine for a minute, children, how that conversation went down with whatever previous homeowner was responsible for the most recent remodel of the house and whatever household help they put up in that separate and clearly not equal staff suite down by the garage. "Oh, middle-aged Guyanese au pair, we know you've spent 23 hours a day the last 12 years raising our children and teaching them French but we just do not currently have the resources to remodel the massive main house, overhaul the sizable guest house, and do over your little lean-to down by the garage. But, seriously, like, you know, we really do think of you as part of the family, right? So we'll try to get to that next year. Okay, hun? Great. Right. Okay...Well, I better get going or I'm going to be late to yoga. " 

listing photos: The Levin Group

Your Mama Hears...

...from Platinum Triangle real estate mover and shaker Heidi Hearsay that 53-year old televised talent contest mega-mogul and soon-to-be first-time daddy Simon Cowell has furtively floated one of his several Beverly Hills (CA) residences as an off-market listing with a puffy but probably not unrealistic $20,000,000 price tag.*

Sassy, sharp-tongued, super-rich and famously moobish Mister Cowell—Ouch! Did we say that out loud?—acquired the Hal Leavitt-designed mid-century modern mini-mansion in October 2011 from AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips** for $15,500,000. A few quick clicks and clacks on Your Mama's beloved bejeweled abacus reveals Mister Cowell is angling for a hefty, multi-million dollar windfall—minus any improvement expenses and carrying costs, of course—should some deep pocketed buyer step up and cough up anywhere near the (alleged) asking price.

Listing details and other reports from the time of Mister Cowell's much-discussed-by-property-gossips addition to his residential real estate portfolio show the U-shaped multi-level mansion was built in 1966 and sits on a mostly flat, .65 acre parcel with head-spinning views that sweep across a large swathe of the mostly flat L.A. basin. In addition to Misters Cowell and Phillips, the home's Hollywood-y pedigree includes long-time lovers and life partners Ross Hunter and Jacques Mapes, the former an Oscar-nominated movie producer (Airport, Pillow Talk) and the latter an accomplished set director turned producer.

We're not sure what, if any, improvements and/or alterations Mister Cowell made to the double-gated property but listing details from the time of his purchase show the 7,265 square foot residential edifice had two bedroom suites plus two additional bedrooms and a total of six bathrooms. Other features noted in online marketing materials from the time of the sale include a digital screening room, indoor and outdoor fireplaces, a built-in outdoor barbecue, and a plunge-sized swimming pool set beneath a muscular concrete superstructure and a delicate satellite-style chandelier.

As far as Your Mama can tell from our thorough perusal of property records Mister Cowell owns at least two other houses in Beverly Hills. In March 2006 the globe-trotting Showbizzer paid Candy Spelling's (alleged) former man-pal Mark Nathanson $5.7 million for a 5,500+ square foot residence at the tail end of a short cul-de-sac in the the so-called Bird Streets area above the Sunset Strip. Two years earlier, in September 2004, Mister Cowell dropped $8,000,000 for a roomy, approximately 10,000 square foot mansion (above, left) in the so-called "Flats" of Beverly Hills that he spent years and God only knows how many millions to expand and transform in to a crisp and contemporary residence wrapped in a stripped down Colonial architectural skin. Mister Cowell also owns a substantial residence in London's hoity-toity Holland Park area (above, right).

*If Mister Cowell's (alleged) asking price seems a mite high to any of the upper end real estate cynics out there, remember, puppies, that in December 2009, Oakley sunglasses tycoon Jim Jannard shelled out $19,900,000 for an iconic, crab-shaped mid-century modern located just a few doors down from Mister Cowell's plance that he razed to make way for a bigger and more newly fangled abode. And let's not forget that just a few months ago Burt Sugarman and Mary Hart sold their dated but well-maintained 11,000 square foot spread—also just a couple doors down from Mister Cowell's house—for $27,000,000 to a well-connected and (obviously) sick-rich Saudi sheikh. A twenty million clam hang tag for a whisper listing in a much-coveted and proven pricey locale doesn't sound so high now, does it, children?

**Property records show Randy Phillips purchased the property in February 2004 for $4.63 million. A quick bit of rudimentary arithmetic reveals the sometimes temperamental and real estate gods favored the music industry mogul who—the lucky duck—well more than tripled his money in seven years.

listing photos (Beverly Hills, Trousdale Estates): Sotheby's International Realty
street photo (Beverly Hills, Flats): Wikimapia
street photo (London, Holland Park): Google

Tuesday Tidbits

Facebook founder and multi-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg has embarked on a multi-million dollar renovation of the San Francisco house he and his missus, Priscilla, purchased last year for about $10 million. City records show they plan to add a $60,000 greenhouse, a $65,000 kitchen and a $720,000 addition of of first floor office, media room, mud room, laundry room, wine room, wet bar, and half bathroom. (SF Gate)

photo: Google

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The conglomerate who bought Wayne Newton's 36-acre Las Vegas ranch Casa de Shenandoah—20% of which is actually owned by by Mister Newton himself—and valiantly attempted to turn it into a Graceland-type theme park/shrine has gone belly up, thrown in the towel and listed the proudly garish estate for $70 million. In addition to a main mansion, the property has seven other residences, stabling for dozens horses, garaging for 16 cars plus a car museum, a gaming room, an F28 jet and terminal, a petting zoo. (Redfin, Curbed)

listing photos: Synergy Sotheby's International Realty

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After spending $26.5 million on a 13-acre hilltop estate with a stunning John Saladino-designed villa in Montecito (CA), perpetual property shufflers Ellen Degeneres and wife Portia de Rossi have finally sold their picturesque equestrian-oriented compound in Thousand Oaks for $10,850,000. (L.A. Times)

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Oscar-winning film and television screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno, United States of Tara) has a gated mid-century raised-ranch in the at the top of L.A.'s Laurel Canyon that she'd like to sell for $1,299,000. Oh, and she's got a 19-foot Airstream (with tiger-striped curtains, above right) parked in the front drive that can be had for the right price, too. (Trulia Luxe Living)

listing photos: Teles Properties

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After first being listed with a grotesquely optimistic $125,000,000 price tag, the late fashion designer Gianni Versace's Casa Casuarina—a screaming statement in unapologetically garish quasi-residential opulence in the heart of Miami Beach's busy and loud South Beach district—has at long last been sold at auction for $41,500,000. The new owners of the Ocean Drive mansion are the Nakash family who own the Jordache designer jeans brand.

Fun fact: According to the kids at Curbed Miami, Eric Trump was present to bid on the property for his father, Donald. (For lots more juicy photos of the property go here.) (Curbed Miami)

photo (top): Curbed Miami
listing photos (bottom, left and right): via Forbes

Courtney Cox Lists A. Quincy Jones House

SELLER: Courtney Cox and David Arquette
LOCATION: Bevelry Hills, CA
PRICE: $19,500,000
SIZE: 5,500 square feet (approx.), 5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to an eagle eyed informant we'll henceforth call Diane Todish it's come to Your Mama's attention that sitcom star and producer Courtney Cox (Friends, Cougar Town) and her quirky actor ex-husband David Arquette have, as anticipated by real estate gossips around the globe, finally listed their former family residence in the terrifically trendy and spectacularly spendy Trousdale Estates area of Beverly Hills (CA) on the open market with a $19,500,000 price tag.*

Property records (and other online resources) show the long ago split but only recently divorced Cox-Arquettes purchased the trophy property in happier marital days, in June 2004, for $5,450,000. They had the A. Quincy Jones-designed single-story sprawler worked over in 2006—with a reconfiguration of the bedroom wing and other alterations—by Cory Buckner, a talented, L.A.-based lady architect who quite literally wrote the to-date definitive book on A. Quincy Jones.

Current listing information (and other online resources) shows the approximately 5,500 square foot house has four bedrooms plus a staff bedroom, a total of 5.5 bathrooms, a bi-level ling room with a free-standing fireplace, vast expanses of floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors throughout, and a detached office area. Listing details go on to indicate the property spans .83 almost-all-level acres with panoramic city views, gated off-street parking for up to six cars, and an honest-to-goodness pee-in-your-God-damn-pants perfect circular swimming pool.

We're not sure how their real estate assets got divvied up in their divorce but at the time they split Mister Arquette and Miz Cox also owned a walled, gated and heavily fortified two-ish acre ocean front compound on the bluffs in Malibu that they bought in early 2007 for $17,150,000, had overhauled by architect Michael Kovac and interior designer Trip Haenisch, and photographed for the July/August, 2011, issue of Elle Decor. In September 2011, Miz Cox, through the same trust that owns the Bev Hills and Malibu properties, paid $2,050,000 for a two bedroom and three bathroom condo crib on a high floor at the celeb-saturated Sierra Towers building in West Hollywood.

*Several of Your Mama's well-connected and better informed informants deep inside the celebrity real estate milieu have previously snitched that the house was being shopped for quite some time without success as a pocket listing.

listing photos: Hilton & Hyland

Your Mama Hears...

...from the chit-chatty and always reliable celebrity real estate mover and shaker Patty Propertyseller that semi-reclusive Twilight superstar Robert Pattinson has quietly but officially floated his pedigreed residence in Los Angeles's Los Feliz area as an off-market listing with a $6,750,000 asking price.*

The children will recall that Mister Pattinson, now four months or so past his painfully protracted and tabloid-documented break up with his fame-hating co-star Kristen Stewart, acquired the property just over two years ago, in late August 2011, for $6,275,000 according to property records.

The Spanish Colonial-style house, all but hidden from the street behind high walls and dense foliage, has three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms, according to Patty Propertyseller, in just over 4,000 square feet. The 1.45 acre estate has a bifurcated flag stone motor court at the front and an extensive outdoor living space at the back that gives way to a steeply up-sloping and ludicrously high-maintenance terraced gardens at the back that include several shaded terraces, a tangle of winding stairways, a free-form swimming pool, and, for impromptu concerts (or whatever), an amphitheatre.

The Stiles O. Clements-designed house** was built in the early 1920s for an insurance executive and has a long history of Hollywood-y owners. British actor Tim Curry bought the property in 1993 for $650,000, gave it a thorough fix-up and had it photographed for the November 1998 issue of Architectural Digest. Mister Curry, who told Los Angeles magazine in 2000 that the gardens required a full-time gardener plus a garden consultant on retainer, sold the house in July 2000 for exactly $3,000,000 to a non-celebrity who quickly flipped it at a significant loss for $2.6 million to actor Noah Wylie of E.R. fame and fortune. A few short years later Mister Wylie sold the house for $3.325 million to three-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson (Hugo, The Aviator, JFK) who flipped it less than two years later to a Australian-born movie director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, Monster-in-Law, 21) who held on to it until the fall of 2011 when he was sold to Mister Pattinson. Would any of the children like to take bets on whether the property will be acquired by yet another Tinseltown mover and shaker?

Some of the other homes in the immediate vicinity are owned by Emmy-winning writer/producer Jenji Kohan (Weeds, Orange Is the New Black), sit-com star and outspoken Scientologist Kirstie Alley (Cheers, Fat Actress) and the rock star Flea, a.k.a. Michael Balzary of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The children may recall that, according to numerous sources with whom Your Mama is acquired and who tend to know these sorts of things, Mister Pattinson decamped some time ago to much less sublime rented macmansion in a guard-gated and celebrity-friendly community off Mulholland Drive in the mountains between Beverly Hills and Studio City.

Word to the wise: Any of you Twihards who think it might be cute to roll by Mister Pattinson's pad in your Hondas and Hyundais should know that even though object of your obsessive fascination moved out some time ago you can be assured the property remains secured by a Fort Knox-like security system and (probably) a team of vigilant armed guards who would rather remove your liver with their bare hands than allow you to stand in the street to gawk like dopes and scream like tween-aged—or, worse, middle-aged—Mimis.

*This turn of celebrity real estate events didn't come as much of a surprise to this particular property gossip who heard word last week from another informant that one of L.A.'s' most prolific and successful property stagers was brought in to gussy the place up.

**Stiles O. Clements designed both the Mayan and El Capitan theaters in Los Angeles as well as the swim-gym at Beverly Hills High School and, coincidentally, a 1915 English Tudor mansion on 2.5 acres in Pasadena (CA) that was used as the location for a prom in the first Twilight movie and traded hands last December (2012) for $5.8 million.

exterior and aerial images: Google

Keira Knightley Lists East London Love Nest

SELLER: Keira Knightley (and James Righton)
LOCATION: London, U.K.
PRICE: £3,000,000
SIZE: 3,223 square feet, 3-4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Even though (in)famously pouty-faced Oscar-nominated English actress Keira Knightley and her music making new husband James Righton of the indie rock Nu-Rave band Klaxon only settled in to a compact, Georgian-style townhouse in an historic, celebrity-jammed enclave in East London's rapidly gentrifying yet still rough and tumble Spitalfields* area a bit more than a year ago they're already selling up, we first learned from London-based celebrity property snitch Harry Hound, and listed their East London love nest with an asking price of £3,000,000. (That's U.S. $4,759,680 at today's rates according to our trusty currency conversion contraption.)

We're not quite sure when exactly the young, rich, and arty-farty couple purchased the property or how much moolah they they coughed up for it but there are scads of reports from May 2012 that suggest she—or maybe they—shelled out around £2,400,000 for the 18th-century Huguenot-built house that has a rusticated base painted the color of burgundy wine. (That's 3,807,740 U.S. clams at today's rates according to our trusty currency conversion contraption.) The seller, according to Harry Hound and numerous reports from the spring of 2012, was  Samantha Morton, another (two-time) Oscar-nominated British actress (In America, Sweet and Lowdown, John Carter).

The floor plans included with current digital marketing materials show the 3,229 square foot art- an book-filled corner townhouse has four floors above ground and two more below. There are, by Your Mama's rudimentary interpretation of the floor plan, two street entrances and two entrance halls, at least four living rooms, 3.5 bathrooms, and three dedicated bedrooms plus a possible fourth bedroom that adjoins the master bedroom on the uppermost level.

The main center hall entrance and stair hall on the ground level connects to petite but pleasantly snug front and rear living room spaces, both with possibly functional and possibly not functional fireplaces. The rear living room has a full wall of cacophonous, mis-matched windows and French doors that open to a narrow exterior corridor that zig-zags back to a small, unkempt-looking private patio. A pint-sized study with built-in bookcases and a possibly functional fireplaces, a second entrance hall, and a windowless half bathroom complete the ground floor.

Upstairs, in the "formal" reception room just off the central stair hall, Miz Knightley and Mister Righton have installed a haphazard and homey sort of day-core that pairs traditional roll-armed English armchairs in mixy-matchy striped and floral upholstery with an au courant Moroccan area rug and a classic, mid-century modern coffee table by Isamu Noguchi. There's yet another fireplace (that may or may not be functional) and several over-sized six-over-six sash windows with an up close and personal view of the architecturally pastiched, early 18th-century Christ Church.

A narrow but expensively equipped galley-style kitchen—the children will note the massive, commercial-style range—has cornflower blue wood cabinetry, butcher block counter tops, and yet another fireplace that may or may not be functional. The kitchen passes through to the dining room that's fitted with what appear on the floor plan to be built-in cupboards.

The smaller of the two guest/family bedrooms on the third floor—the Brits call it the second floor—has direct access to a wee, windowless bathroom and the larger of the two bedrooms has large windows with more Christ Church views and makes use of a much bigger, windowed bathroom that opens off the stair landing and is fitted built-in linen cabinets and toiletry cupboards.

There's a possibility for a third guest/family bedroom on the top floor but, given that access to the master bedroom appears to be through the room, Your Mama feels strongly it would make a much better fitness area, yoga studio or dressing room/closet than a bedroom. The master suite, we're afraid, combines the bedroom and bathroom in to one, 30-foot long loft-like space and one must pass inconveniently through the bathroom area to get to the the bedroom area. Your Mama spotted fireplaces—or at least mantels—in the bedroom space and in the lounge area of the bathroom that includes a single pedestal sink and a claw-footed soaking tub in full view of the bedroom area. Frankly we prefer a bit more privacy for abluting and flossing but mercifully the toilet is encompassed in its own quite tiny cubicle.

Back downstairs, there's a spacious basement level lounge with built-in storage and book shelves that flank a fireplace-like arch into which are stacked a couple of Moroccan poufs. The floor plan also shows a wet bar—or maybe it's a slop sink, and a utility room where Your Mama and our house girl Svetlana both hope there's a washer and dryer. One floor down from there, in the old coal storage space, the floor plan shows a 30-foot long but only 9'4" wide screening room.

Mister and Missus Knightly-Righton's East London residence sits smack in the center of a densely packed and fashionably chic enclave just around the corner from the artsy and fully gentrified Spitalfields Market and just off Brick Lane where there are more itty-bitty and reasonably priced curry restaurants than in all of Bangladesh. Artists and other bohemian types have flooded into the Spitalfields area over the last 10 or 15 years and the tiny knot of streets where the house in question is located has attracted a surprising number of rich and famous folks over the years. Novelist Jeanette Winterson lives in the vicinity as does über-artist/entrepreneur Tracey Emin as well as the collaborative art world duo known simply as Gilbert & George. The Pet Shop Boys' Chris Lowe recently unloaded his house a few doors down from the one Miz Knightley has up for grabs—it was last listed at £2,600,000—and film director Joe Wright** and his Grammy-nominated sitarist wife Anoushka Shankar, the daughter of the late Ravi Shankar and the half-sister of nine-time Grammy winning singer/songwriter Norah Jones, recently sold their Grade II listed Georgian style townhouse to Welsh singer/actor Jonathan Pryce for $4,100,000.

We know little to nil about the semi-rural hilltop spread near Mazon in the Provence region on the South of France that Miz Knightley (and/or her family) reportedly owns and where, so the stories go, she and Mister Righton hosted their wedding party in May (2013) and were feted by high profile peeps like Sienna Miller and Karl Lagerfeld. The 20-acre estate is said to have an eight bedroom stone farmhouse, vineyards, and olive groves.

*Spitalfields was where most if not all of the presumed victims of late 19th-century mass murderer Jack the Ripper resided, although most were murdered in the adjacent Whitechapel district.

**Mister Joe Wright's period piece films Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, and Anna Karenina all starred—you got it—Keira Knightley.

listing photos and floor plan: Davey Stone

Did Julia Roberts List Her Secluded Hawaiian Hideaway and Buy Another?

SELLER: Julia Roberts and Danny Moder
LOCATION: Hanalei, Kauai, HI
PRICE: $17,000,000
SIZE: 1,807 square feet, 4bedrooms, 3 bathrooms (total)

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It recently came to Your Mama's attention by way of The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial that semi-reclusive Oscar-winning actress Julia Roberts and her budding cinematographer husband, Danny Moder, own not just one but two multi-million dollar ocean front hideaways superbly located near heavenly Hanalei Bay on the North Shore of the achingly scenic and relatively unspoiled Hawaiian island of Kauai.

As it turns out, butter beans, one of the two ocean front estates that Your Mama understands to be owned by Miz Roberts and Mister Moder, happens on the market with an asking price of $17,000,000.*

And, children, it's gorgeous. In fact, it's pretty much exactly what Your Mama and The Dr. Cooter would buy iffin we had seventeen million extra dollars to spend on a relatively remote Hawaiian hideaway where, according to someone with whom Your Mama is acquainted who is intimately acquainted with the very strip of beach to which the Roberts-Moder property rubs up against, the swimming situation along the beach behind the house is far from idea due to the excessively rocky shoreline. "Attempting a swim in front of Ms. Robert's beach shack on the North Shore of Kauai ain't for sissies," We were informed. "If you want to swim along that part of the coastline you make a left at Pierce Brosnan's place and don't stop until you get to Ben Stiller scowling on a chaise outside his breathtaking beach front contemporary." There you have if from a wealthy Hollywood haole who frequents this particular corner of paradise. Anyhoo...

Property records for the estate are a mite convoluted but, as best as Your Mama can tell, in June 2009 Miz Roberts and Mister Moder coughed up somewhere in the neighborhood of ten million clams for the undeniably luxurious but low-key spread that spans three contiguous parcels that total 8.92 secluded acres and claims more than 400 feet of ocean frontage with, according to current listing details, "Seasonal swimming, surfing, windsurfing, and snorkeling." The recently re-habbed main residence has three bedrooms and two bathrooms in, according to property records, just over 1,800 square feet. A separate cottage near the head of the long driveway has another bedroom and bathroom for guests or caretakers.

At the heart of the low-slung Hawaiian-style ranch house is a roomy, open-concept great room with wide plank wood floors, a vaulted ceiling lined with heavy-duty wood beams, and clerestory windows. One the ocean side of the house a ribbon of windows provide a sweeping view of the beach and pounding surf. The children may or may not have noticed the well-conceived and executed wooden louvers below the windows that, Your Mama imagines, are used to increase or decrease the air flow as needed to keep the house cool on hot days.

On the opposite wall from the ocean view windows are a long row of wood-framed glass doors that fold back and expose the great room to a spacious screened porch that overlooks vast and verdant lawns that give way to dense tropical thickets and inspiring views of Mt. Makana and the unspoiled Limahuli Valley. Listing photos show there's some sort of portable, half-trashy blow-up plunge pool situation out on the back lawn where there's also, rather charmingly, a swing hung from the branch of a mature shade tree. We know it's not fair and we'll probably get called all kinds of snobby for saying so but even though we'd most certainly roll our eyes and scoff with superiority and disdain at a blow up pool on the back lawn of a suburban tract house in Peoria somehow it's charming and pleasantly humble when the same blow up pool sits on the back lawn of a stunningly redone residence in Kauai that only the financially elite can even afford to imagine owning.

As those who do it know, families and other groups of people who vacation in private homes, either rented or owned, often spend a great deal of time preparing and eating food. Trust Your Mama when we tell you, that's just what happens. Three days in to the vacay and everyone is like, "Can we pleeze go to a damn restaurant? I'm so tired of cooking and washing dishes I could spit urine." So, addressing that issue the designer(s) who handled the recent overhaul of the home—that would be Greg Warner of Walker-Warner Architects in San Francisco according to marketing materials—smartly installed a commodious, expensively equipped, and centrally located country-style kitchen with white porcelain apron sink, open shelves for daily dishes, a thick slab of butcher block on the super-sized work island that doubles as a snack bar, and top-quality appliances tucked discreetly behind the bead board cabinetry that someone had the chutzpah to paint a particularly fetching shade of tomato. Behind the kitchen, our own house girl Svetlana noticed with an angry kind of envy, there's a well-designed mud porch/laundry room with more tomato red cabinetry and a double-wide sliding louvered door that, when open, allows the laundress of the house to have a $17 million view of the ocean while folding up bathing suits and underthings.

A small sitting room furnished with a generous sectional seating lounge provides a buffer zone between the hustle-bustle of the main living space and the serenity and coziness of the master suite. A central walk-in closet that can be passed on either side separates the compact but adequate bedroom from the bathroom where there's a custom wood vanity, a free-standing soaking tub set in front of over-sized windows with moist, green mountain and garden views, and, for reasons we can't fathom, a pair of pea green Moroccan poufs. Maybe that's where the $200/hour house-calling manicurist sits when she comes to do an in-tub mani-pedi for the lady of the house?

Anyways, according to celebrity real estate scuttlebutt on the island and circumstantial evidence in various property record data bases and other online resources it appears that in November 2011 Miz Roberts and Mister Moder very well might have spent $13,375,000 to acquire a well-known and Hawaii historic, 3-ish acre beach front property on postcard perfect Hanalei Bay where the the shore is sandy rather than rocky and hence perfect for bare-footed shore strolling and surf frolicking.

The vintage estate has a sizable main house with an open plan main living area that opens on the beach side to a covered porch, six bedrooms and three bathrooms plus and outdoor shower. A separate detached but fully self-contained cottage has another beach view covered porch, an open plan living area, one bedroom, and one bathroom. The property was—and, oddly enough, still appears to be—available as a un-fussy but hardly inexpensive rental, $1,500 per night for the main house and either $350 per night for the cottage.

Kauai quietly attracts a slew of celebrities and other well-heeled Tinseltowners, often over and around the winter holidays. Most rent but a few of the high profile people who own luxury island getaways on the North Shore of Kauai include the aforementioned Ben Stiller and Pierce Brosnan as well as Honolulu-born Bette Midler, music industry mogul Irving Azoff, producer John Wells, and María del Roasario Mercedes Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza, a hip-poppin' and coochi-cooing ball of fire otherwise known as Charo.

Your Mama's brief and entirely unscientific research on the internets reveals that in addition to their substantial residential real estate holdings in Hawaii Miz Roberts and Mister Moder maintain a number of other private residences. There's the custom-built bluff-top estate in Malibu, a ranch about 10 miles north of Taos, NM, and several apartments in a dignified boutique building in the Gramercy Park area of New York City plus a penthouse pad in a full-service post-war building in the heart of Greenwich Village that she picked up in mid-2010 for $3,895,000. In 2010, presumably for use by staff or family, Miz Roberts and Mister Moder paid $1,332,300 for a fully updated and upgraded 1920s Spanish bungalow with two bedrooms and two bathrooms just a couple short blocks from the center of downtown Pacific Palisades and, until August 2010 when she sold it for $3,000,000, the couple maintained a gated micro-compound just off Abbott Kinney in in the city's increasingly pricey yet proudly gritty hipster-swarmed beach community of Venice.

*In the interest of full disclosure Your Mama would like the children (and etc.) to note that we have not been able to directly link Julia Roberts or Danny Moder to the property in question. What we have is a whole lotta circumstantial evidence. Several sources have told Your Mama that the Roberts-Moder family maintains not one but two residence on Kauai and one doesn't have to scour the internet for long before picking up snippets of gossip and rumor that say so. Also notable is that, technically, the property in question is owned by a vaguely named trust that links back to the same Beverly Hills office of an accountant long known by celebrity property gossips like Your Mama to be associated with Miz Roberts as the rest of her many residential properties. Make of the circumstantial evidence what you will. Let's be honest, though. Even if it's not Roberts' house, it's worth a gander anyways, don't you think?

listing photos: Hawaii Life

Cotton T-Shirt King James Perse Snags Another

SELLER: Stefan Lessard
BUYER: James Perse
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $6,690,000
SIZE: 7,000 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama, followed by a number of our property gossip compadres, had to eat celebrity real estate crow in mid-February (2013) when we erroneously reported that money-minting musician Dave Matthews of his eponymous Dave Matthews Band had quietly dropped $6,575,000 for a recently re-did domicile in the celeb-saturated Point Dume area of Malibu, CA, that was described in listing information from the time of the purchase as a "European Country Home."

Within days of our digital discussion we heard from a paid representative of Mister Matthews who was appreciatively friendly but absolutely emphatic that her client did not buy the house in question and does not, in fact, own any property in Malibu or even in California. We added a note that stated such and we moved on.

Then, about a week or so ago, while—'tis true—Your Mama was shacked up in a tent the size of a downtown Manhattan studio apartment in Sister Woman's backyard, we received a covert communique from deliciously relentless real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak who snitched that she's quite certain—totally positive, she said—that the 1.78 acre estate in question was acquired by Mister Matthews' long-time bass player Stefan Lessard and his second wife, Jaclyn Burton. The seller was Maura Kaplan, the designer daughter of late actor Leslie Nielsen.

Mister Lessard, 39, has played bass in the wildly successful Dave Matthews Band since he was a wee lad of sixteen, which means he's plenty rich enough to buy a six and some million dollar house in Malibu. However, Mister and/or Missus was almost immediately stricken with buyer's remorse or caught a severe case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle or something because the couple quietly flipped the 7,000 square foot house in an off-market deal in early July (2013) for, according to property records, $6,690,000. The buyer, snitched Yolanda, is luxury cotton t-shirt king James Perse and his wife Brandi Briskman, a Beverly Hills -bred brunette who is sometimes described on the interweb as an interior decorator.

As it turns out, we also learned from Yolanda, the Lessard's unwanted white elephant isn't the only residential property in Malibu owned by Mister and Missus Perse. In fact, it's not even the most expensive house they own in the Point Dume area. In late 2010 the casually chic couple surreptitiously spent $16,000,000 to acquire an organically modern wood and glass pavilion on 1.28 plum acres with ocean views and direct, deeded access to a sensationally scenic private beach. Your Mama's research shows Mister and Missus Perse purchased the beach house from former Surfing magazine editor and X-Files creator Chris Carter and their nearest neighbor is none other that Miz Malibu Herself, Barbra Streisand, who presides over a sprawling, multi-acre, multi-residence bluff-top compound that includes an rustic water mill with a working wooden water wheel. Anyhoo...

Until recently Mister Perse owned a sleek and low-slung one bedroom and 1.5 bathroom abode in a much desired location above the Sunset Street that he had designed by the talented folk at Standard and first listed in 2009 with a sky-high $4,995,000 price tag. After a long slog at the real estate rodeo and a significant price drop to $3,750,000 in 2011, the property finally sold in April of this year (2013) in an off-market deal for $3,550,000. The buyer, as per property records and Yolanda Yakketyyak, was L.A.-based artist, writer and luxury eye wear entrepreneur Alex Israel who, incidentally, just sold his high-floor two bedroom and two bathroom condo-crib along the Wilshire Corridor for $875,000.

listing photos (Malibu, top): Prudential Malibu Realty
listing photos (Malibu, middle): Coldwell Banker
listing photos (Sunset Strip, bottom): Hilton & Hyland