David Geffen: Beach Hog

BUYER: David Geffen
SELLER: Peter Morton
LOCATION: Pacific Coast Highway
PRICE: $9,800,000
SIZE: 1,473 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama is a little late to the rodeo on this one, but since it involves a couple of big name property mavens in Malee-boo with biggest of bucks to trade properties as freely and easily as a couple of cock-eyed queens trading shade in a busted up bar in Birmingham, we figured we'd weigh in with some sass and salt.

The players are billionaire media mogul David Geffen and Hard Rock Café co-founder Peter Morton. Both gentleman currently own and occupy large Carbon Beach compounds comprised of multiple lots–two lots for Morton and four big ones for Geffen. Both also own several other properties in and around Malee-boo not to mention they live just a few hundred feet from each other as the crow flies...big bad Geffen in Bev Hills and Mister Morton in the Holmby Hills.

Anyhoo, back in March 1996 Mister Geffen bought an itty bitty 1,473 square foot oceanfront house with 45 feet fronting Carbon Beach for $1,230,000. He sold the two bedroom house in July of 1998 for an undisclosed price to a man named Richard Lovett, who happens to be the president of the ubiquitous and powerful artist management company Creative Artists Agency.

Time warp to February of 2007 when Mister Morton purchased the above mentioned property for a $10,500,000. Presumably Mister Morton leased the place out or maybe his son Harry, famous for founding the LA based Pink Taco restaurant chain and dating a pre-rehabbed Lindsay Lohan, shacked up there over the summer of 2007. Who knows? Who cares.

What is important here is that in early 2008 Mister Geffen agreed to purchase the teeny tiny two bedroom house for $9,800,000, which our bejeweled abacus tells us is $700,000 less than Mister Morton paid for the property just one year ago.

Your Mama is hard pressed to believe the house has lost $700,000 in value in the last year particularly given that the Malee-boo market hasn't exactly gone cold or stale in the midst of the mortgage meltdown sweeping other less desirable locales. So, our little pea brain says there might be more than meets our myopic eyeballs. It couldn't be that Mister Morton was just feeling charitable and decided to give the billionaire a big break, could it? Maybe Mister Morton is looking to show a large loss on his taxes? Could this parcel be part of some larger transaction between Mister Geffen and Mister Morton? Will Mister Geffen go on a buying spree in order to give Oracle founder and may-jor Malee-boo land owner Larry Ellison a run for his real estate money?

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

The house is reportedly leased and Your Mama checked with a few of our better connected sources along the Pacific Coast Highway and from what we hear, the tenant is not, unfortunately for the celeb obsessed children, famous.