Double Whammy (1): Amanda Peet Sells House

SELLER: Amanda Peet and David Benioff
LOCATION: Angelo View Drive, Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $2,300,000 (sale)
SIZE: 2,432 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Enter through the front doors to find a sunken living room with a stone fire place, walls of glass and head-on downtown city views. This prime cul-de-sac location offers the perfect one story modern with a pool overlooking oak trees. Chef's kitchen with all top of the line appliances, a full bar area that services the living room and cozy den. Large master suite with great walk in closet.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Since the real estate bizness often slows down to a trickle, and even grinds to a halt for many over the December holidays, Your Mama plans to pepper our discussions over the next week or two with some older celebrity real estate deals, including this Double Whammy for ack-triss Amanda Peet and her screenwriter huzband David Benioff that went down back in February of 2007.

Now listen folks, Your Mama does not want all you super successful brokers writing, calling and commenting that it's a fallacy that that bizness slows down at the end of December because you sealed a $10,000,000 deal over egg nog on Christmas damn Eve. We know all about holiday deals. However, most folks are not eager to sign on the real estate dotted line while their attorney is in Snowmass and their banker is in Switzerland shushing down a foreign slope.

So the average brokers, those who do not typically write offers or negotiate deals the last few weeks of December, simply drink themselves silly over the holidays and wait for the New Year to begin when people once again become serious about buying, selling and making deals. Besides, let's be honest, who wants to look at a house with an elaborate creche on the front lawn and all that moronic Christmas tchachke covering every flat surface?

Anyhoo, let's get back to the Angelo View Drive house way up in the Bev Hills Post Office that Miz Peet and Mister Benioff recently traded in for a bigger, better and more family friendly house in the Hollywood Hills.

Property records reveal that Mister Benioff purchased the 2,432 square foot, 2 bedroom and 2.5 bathroom house in May of 1999 for $850,000. Your Mama wondered where young Mister Benioff might have had the financial wherewithal to purchase a home in this price range when he was just in his late twenties and did not yet have any credits in the film and/or television industry. Well, a little research on the IMDB tells us that Mister Benioff (birth name Friedman) has a very rich father who happens to be pals with our dear leader President Bush. Now, Your Mama does not know shit about whether Mister Benioff's father had anything to do with this purchase, we're just saying it don't hurt to have a daddy with a fat bank account, does it? Since buying this house, Mister Benioff has gone on to a respectable and well paying career writing movies including 25th Hour, Troy, and the soon to be released The Kite Runner, a gripping and soo-blimely written book Your Mama only hopes Mister Benioff did justice.

Your Mama has to confess to a little something about this Peet gurl. We know she's a pretty and bonified celebrity and she owns a resume a mile long with scads of film and television credits. But seriously kids, Your Mama could not pick her out of a crowd if our next gin and tonic depended on it. We certainly don't mean any disrespect to Miz Peet, we really don't. But hunny, we just cain't put a face to your name without googling you first.

We digress. The single story contemporary house with it's sunken living room and kidney shaped swimming pool please Your Mama quite a bit. Yes children, we recognize that the interiors would have benefited greatly from the deft and savvy hand of a nice gay decorator, and like many of you, Your Mama thinks a mammoth and nicely worn Oriental rug with a complicated pattern and a red and black color base would look smart in the living room. We're also furrow browed over that pair of faux-looking Wassily chairs in the living room. None the less, there's nothing particularly offensive about what we're looking at...it just needs some editing and punching up.

Onto the exterior where Your Mama is fine with the somewhat brutal 1980s-ish rectilinear modern rear elevations. We're calm if not thrilled with the with the dark window frames and we can tolerate the smooth grey concrete surrounding the pool as long as it's kept in impeccable condition. We are however, somewhat unnerved by the front facade which not only looks like a crappy house in Palm Springs, but the inexcusably banal landscaping surely has the neighbors in a snit. We're also puzzled and somewhat upset by those louver things that have been affixed to the front of the house. Are these for texture? Do they provide a kind of privacy screening for windows behind them? Whatever the case, we're certain a good architect (and probably a nice gay decorator worth his Prada shooz) could come up with a better solution if given two minutes and ten dollars.

But don't let our sass and snark fool you. Your Mama actually likes this house, we just thinks it needs some tightening of the screws to bring out it's full potential as a living space.

The former Peet/Benioff house may only be in the Bev Hills post office children, but it's at least in good real estate company sitting just a few doors down from one of the many mansions owned by media magnate Rupert Murdoch, around the corner from wacky Jim Goldstein's shockingly futuristic Lautner designed tour de force, and is also spitting distance from the Davies Drive house perky nippled and ladee loving Ricky Martin sold in May of 2006 for $15,000,000. Yes children, as an aside, Your Mama has recently heard from several well connected sources who have been all up in Ricky's bizness, and they swear on their mamas that metrosexual Mister Martin is indeed a boob man. We're sure some of you have something to say about that.

But we digress yet again. Interestingly, the Angelo View Drive house appears to have been flipped by the folks who purchased the house from the Benioff/Peets in March of 2007 for $2,300,000. Records on file with the county show another sale in May of 2007 for $2,660,026. Not sure if that's because of buyer's remorse or if some real estate devil simply made a quick six figure return on their investment. Hmm. Anyone? What Your Mama really wants to know is what kind of fool pays $360,000 more for a house that sold previously just two month earlier? Honestly.

Next up, Your Mama performs a double whammy with information and photos of the Hollywood Hills house where Miz Peet and Mister Benioff have recently set up house with their new baby.