Roma Downey: Touched by a Real Estate Angel

OWNER: Roma Downey
LOCATION: Malibu Colony Road, Malibu, CA
PRICE: $100,000 per month (Summer 2008)
SIZE: 3,829 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: The charm of this beach front Malibu Colony home pulls at your heartstrings. The casual yet elegant decor of this fully furnished five-bedroom home provides for beach living at its best. Pamper yourself in the spacious master suite with two sitting areas and a large master bath. Your family or guests can enjoy the privacy of the separate bedrooms and baths and adjoining sitting areas for conversations, games or TV. Spend cozy evening in front of the fireplace in the living room or master bedroom. Invite friends to spend the weekend an you can all enjoy the pool, built-in barbecue and wide sandy beach.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It may only be mid-February, but according to Mister Braden Keil in his recent Gimme Shelter column in the NY Post, well to do New Yorkers are already getting into bidding wars and cat fights over prime summer rental properties in the Hamptons. So, whether you live on the East Coast or the Left Coast, now is clearly the time to ring your ritzy real estate agent, pull out your checkbook, and jump in your Mercedes E-class with the heated seats and head to the Hamptons or the shores of Malee-boo to lock up your summer rental before you get axed out by some cash carrying 26 year old hedge fund honcho or before Mary Kate and Ashley beat you to the lease on that cute cottage on Carbon or Las Costa.

We know some of you rich people have bizzy schedules jetting here and there, so today Your Mama would like to help out with a lovely and expensive summer rental option in Malee-boo. If you are both a summer renter and a star fucker, then Your Mama thinks this ocean front summeer rental in the guard gated celebrity enclave of the Malibu Colony just might be the perfect choice. Not only will you be body surfing and sunbathing next to folks like Jim Carrey, Ted Dansen, Brian Grazer, billionaire Jerrold Perenchio, and that rough looking Pam Anderson ladee–whom Your Mama frets about considerably–you'll be writing out your rent checks to actress Roma Downey, who most of you will recall as the white ladee from the thankfully canceled namby-pamby Touched By An Angel program on the boob tube. Although this program clearly made Miz Downey bucket loads of money and her co-star, the indomitable Della Reese, was as campy as a drag queen in a krazy wig, Your Mama is just not down with that sort of religious dogma disguised a television show. So no offense and all due respect to Missus Downey and Reese, but Your Mama does not want to be touched by any television angels so we're quite happy that show no longer clutters up our channels.

Anyhoo, Miz Downey is currently married to her fourth huzband, the screamingly successful and filthy rich reality television producer Mark Burnett (Survivor, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, The Apprentice and more), and when they're in Malee-boo they shack up in a commodious ocean front estate Mister Burnett purchased in 2005 from big wig producer and serial house flipper Sandy Gallin for more than $25,000,000. So, obviously Miz Downey has no use for her 3,829 square foot beach digs in the uber-exclusive Malibu Colony. So it might as well make some money for her, right? Thanks to an informant we'll call Mister Malibu, Your Mama has learned that Miz Downey has put her Colony digs out for lease at $100,000 per month for the summer season ($60,000 per month winter short term and $45,000 month year round).

Property records show that Miz Downey purchased the 5 bedroom and 4.5 bathroom quasi-Mediterranean house back in October 1997 when she was still earning the big bucks on Touched By An Angel and was married to her third husband, producer/director David Anspaugh. Listing information for the property indicates that in addition to the white sofa stuffed living room, the galley kitchen and the four family/guest bedrooms, the three story getaway features a mammoth ocean view master bedroom with two sitting areas, a fireplace, a large bathroom, a sleeping area and a private balcony overlooking the roiling surf.

Miz Downey's property happens to be one of the few ocean side houses in the Colony with a swimming pool, a super dee-luxe amenity in any house that sits on the sand just a few feet from the Pacific Ocean. While it would certainly not be required that Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter have a heated pool in our ocean front rental, it's a nice feature if you can afford it because the Pacific Ocean can be shockingly cold even on the hottest of summer days. Listen here puppies, We do not want to hear any lip from you people who desire to claim the Pacific ain't freezing cold...Your Mama grew up on the beach in California and we know exactly what happens to the ladees' and the mens' naughty bits during a dip in the bracing waters of the Pacific Ocean.

The interior day-core of Miz Downey's former digs are far too Shabby Chic for our personal preference and the kitchen is a wee too plain and 1980s for our taste, but the property none the less does look like the cozy kind of place one could comfortably pad around in nothing but a pair of sunglasses moving from one slip covered sofa to the next with a book by David Foster Wallace or an unauthorized biography of the ever so fascinating Elizabeth Taylor.

So, while Your Mama would never allow our nice gay decorator to do up our beach house in the High Pottery Barn style, let's be honest children, it's a rental that the tenants are prolly going to tear the place up. And, due to it's extreme exclusivity, many decorating crimes can be forgiven in an ocean front rental in the Malibu Colony. If you can afford it, you just do like Project Runway's Tim Gunn says and, "Make it work" until you can afford an ocean front getaway of your own to renovate and decorate as you see fit.

It appears that both Miz Downey and Mister Burnett were touched by real estate angels because in addition to this property in the Colony and the above mentioned estate the couple share on the cliffs above Paradise Cove, property records indicate that Mister Burnett owns another ocean front house on Malibu Road. We should all be so lucky as to own $50,000,000 in prime ocean front Malee-boo real estate, right?