Sunday, February 20, 2011

Weekend Wrap Up

1.
Calling all Russian oligarchs and Middle Eastern potentates: If you desire for privacy and are willing to spend £195,000,000 to buy it one of y'all bajillionaires might want to consider the purchase of the Li Galli Islands, of a trio of dramatically rocky outcroppings off the coast of Positano. That's Italy, chickens. The largest of the islands contains three villas and a restored tower with an approximate combined square footage of 27,000, 12 bedrooms, three salt-water plunge pools, two 27-foot tenders, a private damn grotto and a desalinization damn plant.

According to Your Mama's currency conversion contraption, the £195,000,000 asking price translates to a shocking and heart stopping $316,840,000US, at today's rates. If that price seems a tad high for the three islands, keep in mind that the sky-high price also includes Villa tre Ville, the former estate of iconic Italian film director Franco Zefferelli that offers another 30,000+ square feet of interior space, 16,000+ square feet of terraces, 19 bedroom suites, three swimming pools, two kitchens, and one helipad.

Jeezis H. Christ.

2.
Booze heir Matthew Bronfman has caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle. He paid $28,500,000 for 40-foot wide townhouse mansion on New York City's East 69th Street in 2008. He gutted the place and moved to London. Now he's heaved the house back on the market with a price tag of $27,250,000. A few clickety-clacks of the over-worked beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that best case scenario Mister Bronfman will take a $1,250,000 slam to his bank account not counting the fat real estate fees that could easily add up to $750,000 or more.

The house was formerly owned by Jim Henson the man responsible for The Muppets.

3.
Would it surprise some folks to learn that the highest sale recorded in the Multiple Listing Service for Los Angeles in 2010 was $19,500,000 for a 6 bedroom and 8 bathroom single-story contemporary in Beverly Hills?

4.
In 2008, after a lucrative dee-vorce, Heather Mills–the one-legged ex-wife of Sir Paul McCartney–paid around five million bucks for an 1,800 square foot condo in one of the Richard Meier-designed green glass towers cleaved to West Side Highway in New York City. Turns out she doesn't spend much time in New York and is reported to be in contract to sell the unused pied a terre to a New York financier for a price "similar" to what she paid. Blah, blah, blah.

5.
While we do need a damn nerve pill just to ponder the audacity required for a biznessman–in this case Indian multi-billionaire Mukesh Ambani–to spend a rumored and reported billion bucks to build a 27-story tower for use as a single family home. A. Single. Family. Home. Did y'all hear Your Mama? Twenty seven floors for one damn family. Despite our futile outrage, like all the other real estate sickos Your Mama is, well, curious what it looks like in there.

You are too, aren't you. Well, now you can have an all too brief glimpse into the private single family residence that includes such necessities as an airplane hangar-sized ballroom with a ceiling that literally drips with crystal and an "entourage room" where security guards and personal assistants can wait around and twiddle their thumbs while their lords and ladies booze it up in the ballroom.

But the ballroom, buttercups, is only the amuse bouche of billionaire-style immoderation at the Ambani's home. Other luxuries of the tower house include a 50-seat movie theater and an entire floor devoted to health and fitness that includes a gym, dance studio, yoga room, swimming pool and spa.

But, hunnies, the extravagance that made Your Mama pee a little in our pants in both horror and amazement–an horrific amazement, if you will–is the "ice room." The ice room is where the Ambanis and their guests can escape the crushing Mumbai heat in a chilled chamber where it's gently snowing. Snowing. Inside. In Mumbai. Kind of makes a person need a gin & tonic at nine damn thirty in the morning, don't it?

6.
After combing the city with current female-friend Cameron Diaz on his arm, professional baseballer and lady-killer Alex Rodriguez has finally purchased a new pad on a high-floor of the twin-towered Rushmore, a newly-constructed and architecturally-vapid building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Reports say the well-paid New York Yankee splashed out between five-and-a-half and six million big ones for a 5 bedroom spread with Hudson River views.

Mister Rodriquez currently occupies a $30,000 per month rental at the hyper-pricey 15 Central Park West building and Your Mama heard through the New York City celebrity real estate grapevine that in addition to an apartment in the city, the slugger was scoping out country cribs in the same neck of Westchester County where high-profile peeps like Martha Stewart, Ralph Lauren and Michael Douglas own bucolic estates.

7.
Their dee-vorce may be final but Real Housewives of Beverly Hills villain Camille Grammer–that would be Kelsey Grammer's third ex-wife and baby momma–isn't sure about the fate of some of the couple's many residences, specifically the erstwhile couple's little used Hamptons hideaway that includes an 8,000 square foot residence, a Har-tru tennis court, home theater, heated swimming pool, spa and pool house.

In March of 2008, before the Grammer's marriage went pa-fizzle and puh-fffffttt, they tried to sell their gated and privately situated 1.7 acre Bridgehampton estate for $16,100,000, a big number that was lowered to $13,900,000 the following year. But alas, the discount didn't bring a buyer prepared to sign and the house remains in, it seems, in post-dee-vorce limbo.

As far as we know Third ex-Missus Grammer remains in residence at the former couple's compound in the guard gated Serra Retreat in Malibu and Mister Grammer is holed up in some too-expensive rental in Manhattan with his new, much younger and soon to be fourth wife.

8.
Tech tycoon and notorious trophy property collector Larry Ellison paid a mouth-drying $42,900,000 to purchase Porcupine Creek, a sprawling 249-acre estate in Rancho Mirage, CA estate that comes complete with an 18,400 square foot mansion, eight guest houses, fitness center, amphitheater, swimming pool complex that rivals those of most country clubs and–buckle up for this one folks–its own private 18-hole golf course and clubhouse.

Mister Ellison–a self-made man who earned the bulk of his multi-billion dollar fortune from founding the Oracle hardware and software empire–owns a number of other high profile residences including a Japanese-themed compound in Woodside, CA, a 39-room cottage in Newport, RI called Beechwood and more prime property in Malibu that we can be bothered to count.

9.
Listen children, Your Mama can not bear to watch more than about 1.5 minutes of televised figure skating competitions BUT we loves us some of that whisper thin ice prancer Johnny Weir who gleefully thumbs his nose at the figure skating establishment with an outspoken 'tude and flamboyant and feathery costumes of the sort normally worn by the lady skaters.

Twenty-six year old Miss Weir, a world champion and Olympian who has been living in New Jersey with his fey b.f.f. roommate, recently decided to decamp to Manhattan where he reportedly shelled out $1,100,000 for an 826 square foot one-bedroom crib on a high floor of the Twenty9th Park Madison building just above Madison Square Park, located in a lackluster 'hood that's neither Murray Hill nor the Flatiron District. Young Johnny's big move to The Big Apple will be documented by cameras for the second season of his reality program Be Good Johnny Weir.

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