Nic Cage Has Another Newport Beach House on the Block

SELLER: Nic Cage
LOCATION: 24th Street, Newport Beach, CA
PRICE: $995,000
SIZE: 1,500 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Beautifully remodeled beach house close to the pier, restaurants and Ferry to Balboa...all the fun the penninsula has to offer. High vaulted ceilings, Granite kitchen with maple cabinetry, all the best appliances. Central heating and air conditioning, beautifully tiled bathrooms, attached to each of the three bedrooms. Bamboo and tile flooring throughout, fireplace in living room, ceiling fans, inside laundry, double payned windows, recessed lighting. Two car attached garage with a space behind to park as well. Covered front porch with privacy, private side patio, built in and attached stained glass and beautiful mosaic tiles and big paddle ceilings fans. Interesting and creative design makes this a fun and creative beach house to spend your leisure time.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We know children, Your Mama can barely stand another damn story about Nic Cage and his real estate drama either, but there are a couple of tidbits about the cash strapped Oscar winning actor that we need to get off our desk.

As it turns out, when when Mister Cage sold his Newport Beach bay front mansion in late 2007 for a whopping $35,000,000, that was not the only piece of property he owned in the area. According to property records and recent reports from behind the Orange Curtain, in December of 2006 Mister Cage forked over $1,700,000 for a 1,500 square foot cottage located just steps from the beach on Newport Beach's 24th Street. By all accounts, including that of the all knowing Lucy Spillerguts, the 3 bedroom and 3 pooper property was purchased for and occupied by Mister Cage's very recently deceased father, former literature professor August Coppola.

Like all of Mister Cage other many properties, this one was also put up for sale in an effort to cut his financial losses. The property was officially listed for sale in early July, 2009 with an asking price of $1,895,000. Lo-ward children, what was Mister Cage and/or his bizness manager Samuel Levin thinking when they priced all these dozen or more properties Mister Cage bought at the peak of the market for more then he paid even though the bottom fell out of the real estate market? Seriously, that was just asinine.

Anyhoo, a couple of weeks after hitting the market the price tag dropped to $1,695,000. One month month later it was chopped to $1,495,000 and six weeks after that, in mid-November, it plummeted to $995,000. Days later the property was taken off the market only to be put back on the very next day at $995,000. A quick flicks of the well worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows the current asking price is just 59% of what Mister Cage paid for the place.

According to listing information, the renovated cottage has vaulted ceilings, bamboo and tile floors, a fireplace in the living room, a well equipped kitchen with granite counter tops, and big paddle ceiling fans. Each and every room has been painted with a variety of colors that do not go together. Your Mama is loathe to speak ill of the day-core of the dead–especially the recently departed–so we will refrain from blathering endlessly about the unholy and upsetting paint combination of lemon and grass green in the bedroom or the completely bizarro window frame in the office/bedroom that is half red and half blue. Your Mama has never seen that done before and, quite frankly, we hope never to see it again. Fortunately that is just some paint, nothing a shirtless painter whose also a beach volleyball player can't have fixed in a jiffy.

Out back there is a two car garage plus an additional parking space which is really quite nice in this part of Newport Beach where people will get all kinds of nasty with you over a parking spot withing easy walking distance to the beach. A cozy, covered front porch runs the width of the front of the house and is separated from the sidewalk by the most unusual–and disturbing–swinging doors that Your Mama has ever seen tacked on to a house that was not a damn saloon.

Your Mama is not overly familiar with the real estate market in this neck of the southern California woods so we don't have any expertise to offer about the current asking price. However, we do know that the closer you get to the water in California, the more expensive the land. Given that this house sits just five skinny houses from the sand, it's worth way more than it would be if it were picked up Wizard of Oz style and dropped down in Kansas or some other landlocked location. Whatever it's worth, it's clearly not anywhere near what Mister Cage paid.

In other Nic Cage real estate news, his two-condo combo crib on the 48th floor of the Olympic Tower in New York City digs which had been listed for for a combined asking price of $9,750,000. According to the dee-voon listing aggregating site Street Easy (and the New York Post), the two Fifth Avenue units were sold for a grand total of...drum roll please...$7,500,000. Records show that Mister Cage paid $6,500,000 for both of the units in 2005 so, at least in this case, he's turned a profit on the transaction.

The detail that Your Mama finds interesting that wasn't mentioned in the New York Post's Gimme Shelter column today is that the limited liability company listed as the new owner of both of Cage's New York City condos happens to own five other units in the building as well, two on the 46th floor and three on the 47th floor. Based on the apartment numbers of all the units, it's unclear to Your Mama if they can be combined into one gigantic, 7 unit triplex.

Little by little and mostly with painfully enormous financial losses, Mister Cage is getting his properties sold...or sold at auction in foreclosure proceedings. As far as we know, both of his historic New Orleans mansions were taken in foreclosure and he's managed to off-load his Bavarian schloss, a townhouse in Bath (UK), his Manhattan pied-a-terre. It has been reported he's sold or in the process of selling the club-shaped Midford Castle in the UK and his primary residence on Copa de Oro road in the swanky Bel Air section of Los Angeles, last listed at $17,500,000, is currently in contract. We've heard from knowledgeable folks who dabble in the high end of the market in the better zip codes of Los Angeles that the deal is for just under $15,000,000. But don't anyone go quoting that like it's some kind of gospel because it's an entirely unsubstantiated rumor that slipped down the real estate gossip grapevine and into Your Mama's inbox. It appears that, like everyone else, we're going to have to wait until the deal closes to find out the 411.

That only leaves a private island in the Bahamas, a Paradise Island house, 27-acre estate in Middletown, RI that has a 24,667 square foot mansion, a large tract of land in the mountains above Malee-boo, and an ass-uglee mansion in Las Vegas. Did we miss one or two?

As the world now know, Mister Cage has filed a $20,000,00 lawsuit against his former bizness manager Samuel Levin claiming his money man led him down a path to financial ruin. Mister Levin has, of course, filed a counter suit claiming that Mister Cage created his own financial quagmire with his profligate ways and needed to bring in at least $30,000,000 a year to maintain his excessive lifestyle. Mister Levin's suit maintains that in 2007 alone Mister Cage bought 22 cars–including 9 Rolls Royces–12 pieces of expensive jewelry, 47 pieces of art and spent $33,000,000 on real estate purchases. And those are just the big money buys. Imagine how much was frittered away on smaller and less expensive items.

Now that we've once again–for the 100,000th time it seems–spent the afternoon wallowing in Mister Cage's real estate miseries, we're going to go make us a tall pitcher of gin and tonics and sit out on the back deck looking at the trees trying to think of pretty things.