Friday, September 5, 2008

Friday Morning Mish Mash

It's been some time since we've spent the morning mish mashing, but Your Mama has been sitting on a few items not worth expounding and pontificating on in our usual long winded manner.

1.
It appears that real estate developer and fabulously rich financier Leonard Ross has yanked his Beverly Hills mansion off the market. The children will recall that in August of 2007 Mister Ross listed his N. Beverly Drive compound amid a pile of publicity for a blistering (and record breaking) $165,000,000.

Although the high wattage listing agent from Westside Estate Agency reveals he toured 7 or 8 potential buyers around the 6.25 acre property, is anyone really surprised that none of the mega-money looky-loos whipped out their check books? Well, all due respect all around, but Your Mama sure ain't.

At the risk of sounding utterly without class–which we pretty much are–it is Your Mama's humble and utterly meaningless opinion that until some of those high profile property crazy Russian billionaires roll up into the Platinum Triangle with big and burning desires to make real estate gossip headlines, most of these upper eight and low nine figure trophy estates in Los Angeles will continue to languish on the market.

Bev Hills is bee-yoo-tee-full children, but it just ain't the Côte d'Azur where international jet setting moguls and magnates don't seem to mind dropping many tens of millions of dollars (or even a reported $730,000,000) on high maintenance mansions they'll barely use.

2.
In other Tom Brady real estate news...

Listen children, we know he's good lookin' and dates a smokin' hot mannequin from Brazil, but we just have a tough time getting excited about him and his real estate ways anymore. Not sure why that is, but it is. Anyhoo...

3.
The real estate news in Nashville this morning is that screamingly successful country music super star Kix Brooks (the mustachioed man with the big black cowboy hat of the gee-tar twanging duo Brooks and Dunn) and his wifey Barbara have spent $5,450,000 country music dollars on a new Nashville nest.

The Brooks' newly constructed contemporary crib with it's towering three story facade, complicated massing and barrel roof occupies a large sloped lot at the tail end of gated Bancroft Place, a street which many of the wide eyed children will recognize as the same as that where Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman lived after they were mare-reed. (Mister and Missus Urban have since sold the house on Bancroft Place.)

Five and a half million clams in New York or Los Angeles barely buys a starter mansion these days, but in Nashville it buys (approx.) 13,000 square feet of dee-luxiosity with 4 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms, a 3-story wood and steel staircase, 28-foot ceilings, a kick ass commercial grade kitchen, a wine cellar, and an infinity edged cee-ment pond with a 45-foot wide waterfall. The developers used reclaimed wood milled from a century-old tobacco warehouse for beams, floors and roof decking which Your Mama imagines warms the lofty interior spaces and gives the brand spanking new house a little patina from the get go.

4.
Property maven Nic Cage has put his 9 bedroom and 9 bathroom Bel Air mansion on the market.

Again.

This time, the 11,817 square foot Copa de Ora Road residence with it's Olympic length swimming pool and private thee-ay-ter carries an asking price of $29,999,000. Although that is without question a magnificent amount of moolah, it is considerably less than the $35,000,000 Mister Cage was asking for the place when it was last listed on the open market back in September of 2007.

The brick built behemoth was formerly owned by Rat Packer Dean Martin and dee-voonly camp crooner Tom Jones before Mister Cage scooped up the property in 1998 for an undisclosed amount of money.

5.
We hear through the Holmby Hills gossip grapevine that Jennufleck–or whatever dumb-ass amalgamated monikor all the gossip glossies call Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner–have bailed out of buying the humongous house on S. Mapleton Drive that they were rumored and reported to be buying.

The preggers pair have earned a bit of a reputation among real estate gossips and high end brokers for entering and later canceling escrows. Your Mama hears, but again we can not confirm, that the rumored to be real estate fickle couple backed out of buying at least five high priced properties including a not yet completed manse on Brentwood's N. Carmelina Avenue.

Interestingly and ironically, Your Mama has also heard that moving vans have been spotted outside the couple's current crib on N. Tigertail Road in Brentwood. So who knows what's what in their real estate world? Not Your Mama. What we do know is that the listing for the John Bersci re-designed S. Mapleton Drive mansion remains active on the MLS with an asking price of $27,500,000.

Rumor and gossip children, just rumor and gossip.

6.
Thanks to an early morning communique from Louis Lewy (and an earlier report by The Real Deal), Your Mama has learned that vegan electronica musician Moby has finally unloaded his quirky quadraplex penthouse at the fabled El Dorado building on New York City's Central Park West.

The diminutive downtown denizen purchased the four floor and four terrace tower residence a few years ago for a reported $4,500,000. After a few tweaks to the oddly many staired 2 bedroom and 2 bathroom unit and a wee bit of time living on the baby stroller saturated Upper West Side, Mister Moby decided he preferred life below 14th Street and re-listed the penthouse with a $7,500,000 asking price.

After a reported co-op board rejection and an offer of a $75,000 finders fee records show Mister Moby finally sold the uptown aerie for $6,700,000, far less than the original asking price, but far more than many thought he'd get.

Although we can not confirm the buyer's identity, Your Mama thinks the big money buyer is a non-celebrity design oriented gal about town who uses only first and middle initials on deeds and real estate documents and appears to have once purchased an apartment at the legendary Ansonia building from late night talk show titan Conan O'Brien. Sorry we can't be more specific children, but that's about all a quick search of the interweb turned up.

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