Tyler Perry Trading Up Outside Atlanta

SELLER: Tyler Perry
LOCATION: Cedar Grove Road, Fairburn, GA
PRICE: $3,695,000
SIZE: 17,252 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: ...An unbelievable foyer with marble floors, two vast sitting areas, a floating mahogany staircase, leading to an exquisite grand salon, all with dramatic ceilings over 20 feet high. The gourmet kitchen features a two story ceiling with a double sided fireplace. The spacious family room has dramatic French doors leading to the pool and terrace. The master bedroom is 4,000 sq. ft. of total luxury...

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: No matter how you slice it, dice it, bend it or turn it inside out, Tyler Perry is a real estate size queen. Thanks to an informant we'll call Georgia Peach, Your Mama has learned that the cross dressing actor/writer/director of scorchingly successful plays, films and boob-toob programs (House of Payne, The Family That Prays, Why Did I Get Married and all those Madea movies just to name a few) has recently listed Avec Chateau–his gigantic Fairburn, GA mansion–with an asking price of $3,695,000.

Property records we accessed indicate Mister Perry purchased the unimproved parcel in April of 2001 for just $62,661 and proceeded to build a massive monument to his success and money. A 2004 article in Ebony magazine quotes Mister Perry on his big ol' house in Fairburn saying, "I wanted this house to be vast. I wanted to make a statement, not in any grand or boastful way, but to let people know what God can do when you believe." Queen, pleeze. If anyone were to ask Your Mama–and of course no one did– it's just ass-inine for Mister Perry to classify his desire for a hotel sized house as a glorification of God. Do you think Jesus lived in a damn mansion with more rooms than disciples? Come on now.

Anyhoo, located on rural Cedar Grove Road (sometimes knows as Highway damn 70), the 17,252 square foot behemoth of indeterminate architectural pedigree sits on an 11.4 acre parcel surrounded by much more modest homes. Listing information indicates the sprawling "L" shaped mansion includes 6 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms including a 4,000 square foot master suite that features a sizable sitting room, a giant bedroom in which the bed sits, natch, up on a pedestal two steps up from the inlaid wood floor, and dual custom fitted closets overlooking the elaborately fitted master bathroom. Listen puppies, Your Mama don't begrudge Mister Perry his screaming success and we allow that people with fat bank accounts are free to live any which way their mountains of money will buy. However, Your Mama can't help but think there's something, well, vulgar about having a master suite which measures more than twice the size of the average American home. Do any of the children really think Jesus, a man who hung around with thieves and prostitutes, would have had a 4,000 square foot bedroom?

Other lavishly decorated rooms–where were reportedly done up and did over by Mister Perry hisself–include a double height foyer with a swerving, dizzy making mahogany staircase and a large sculpture of a horse that for some reason appears to be leaning against the wall. A ballroom sized "grand salon" has 20+ foot ceilings and a chandelier about as big as the Hyundai his housekeeper drives to work and additional sitting and entertaining rooms include another double height room with a quartet of brown tufted leather chairs and sofas and yet another double height room with scarlet colored walls, beige carpeting and floor to ceiling windows flanking one of the homes seven wood burning fireplaces. A person could take down the Tioga State Forest burning up wood in all them hot boxes.

A double height paneled library accommodates another large chandelier and a vertigo inducing spiral staircase leading to a gallery lined with book shelves. The dining room sports vermilion colored walls and yet another colossal crystal chandelier while the double height gore-may kitchen has been painted the brightest of yellows which, quite frankly, makes for an unharmonious aesthetic marriage with the mahogany cabinetry, taupe colored marble floors and black granite counter tops.

A home gym lined with floor to ceiling mirrors ensures Mister Perry can watch himself work out from all angles, and a home thee-ayter with eight red velvet seats and crimson colored walls has quite naturally been installed. Presumably this is where Mister Perry runs and re-runs his bank account filling films in which he plays the argumentative and gun-toting matriarch Madea.

The walled and gated grounds include a long driveway leading to a large circular motor court with, you got it, a fountain in the middle. The back side of Avec Chateau includes a vast terrace with both a fireplace and a fire pit, not one but two prayer gardens, a man-made waterfall, tennis court, several small ponds, a three tier outdoor amphitheater for impromptu performances, a circular spa and a negative edge swimming pool that spills down into yet another water feature.

Both Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter go apoplectic just thinking about the yearly heating and cooling costs of a house like this. All those double height rooms ensure the heating and cooling systems are working over time all the time and the immense lawns and landscaping guarantee a team of mowers, trimmers and weeders be on the property several times a week. We know, some of you sassy children are gonna say a person who can afford a house like this does not worry about the running costs, but we do not want to hear it because, judgement or not, we think this is simply too much house and property for one man.

But Mister Perry, being the real estate size queen that he is, clearly thinks differently because he's reportedly packing his chandeliers and moving to an even more monumentally sized mansion off Paces Ferry Road in the suburbs of Atlanta that is sited on 17 acres overlooking the Chatahootchie River and is reported to measure in excess of 30,000 square feet. Dayum! Keep in mind children, Mister Tyler lives all by his lonesome. Could there be anything more depressing and lonely than rattling around a 30,000 square foot suburban mansion? Alone? No, we don't think so either but we're sure any discomfort Mister Tyler might feel is offset by his belief that his new mega-mansion, like his old mega-mansion, is a paean to the power of God. Whatever.

Mister Perry, who was once called the most bankable actor in Hollywood by Business Week magazine, does not just confine his God glorifying real estate to Atlanta and also owns a few premium properties in Los Angeles including a newly built and aggressively modern residence at the top of Blue Jay Way for which he reportedly paid $9,600,000. Also in his portfolio of prodigious properties is a 22-acre tract of land in the hills above Beverly where he once planned to build a 22,000 square foot Tuscan style monster mansion but for reasons unknown to Your Mama scuttled the project soon after the foundation had been laid. That property was previously on the market for $15,000,000 but seems to have disappeared from the MLS.