Madoff's Modern Montauk House Hits the Market

All the news wires are burning this morning that swindler Bernie Madoff's ocean front house in Montauk, NY is, finally, about to officially hit the market sometime this week.

At just 3,014 square feet, Bernie and Ruth's 4 bedroom and 3 pooper weekend getaway on Old Montak Highway is modest by Hamptons standards. The house sits down a long driveway and includes a living room with 20-foot high vaulted ceilings and a pebble stone fireplace, a master bedroom with a private ocean view terrace, a winding hardwood staircase, and wide covered porches for whittling away late summer afternoons with a pile of gossip glossies and a pitcher of gin and tonics. Famous nearby neighbors include Robert DeNiro who has an ocean front house just a couple hundred yards east, Ralph Lauren who has a massive, multi-parcel ocean front spread a bit farther down the beach and nice, gay decorator Vicente Wolf whose fab house is right next door. Too bad Ruthie and Bernie didn't engage Miss Wolf to do their place up. As an extra added bonus, the Madoff is property is just 1.5 (or so) miles east of Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's favorite clam shack in the Hamptons where we've gorged ourselves on delicious, fried seafood more times than we care to count.

A deputy U.S. Marshal named Roland Ubaldo told AP reporters that the day-core is "simple, stylish, but it is understated." Whatever it is, the Madoff house also has a lot of seriously bad and scary juju that will take an experienced psychic house cleaner, a high-priestess of the voodoo, a ghost buster, and an inferno of sage burning to clear out.

According to all reports, some of Bernie and Ruth's personal possessions–which no longer belong to them thanks to everything they ever owned being seized by court order–are still in the house including boxes of dishes and towels, a rocking chair, some sad leather couches and an old exercise bike we imagine Ruthie used to maintain her wisp thin figure.

According to an AP report, the feds are hoping to squeeze around seven million clams out of a buyer. For the sake of all the people who lost money in Madoff's sick financial folly, we hope the feds get $10M, but honestly chickens, even seven seems a mite optimistic in the currently over-crowded and slow moving real estate market on the East End of Long Island. According to soo-blime real estate listing aggregator StreetEasy, there are already several ocean front properties in Montauk for sale including a 4 bedroom and 3 pooper number on 2.5 acres with 200 feet of ocean frontage listed at $8,900,000 and another 1.4 acre seaside property listed at $7,750,000 that includes a 4,000 square foot, rustic and dated 5 bedroom and 4 terlit main house as well as a guest cottage which appears only to have a half pooper.

Watch a video tour of the Madoff house here and see a nice cache of photos here.

Next up, their Palm Beach hideaway and their Manhattan penthouse apartment. Let the games begin.

photo: AP/Robert Mecca via Huffington Post

Miss Lohan Is On The Move

Whether one wants to or not, everyone who reads the tabs, blogs and gossip glossies knows by now that struggling actress and leggings "designer" Lindsay Lohan's house in the Beachwood Canyon section of Los Angeles was burglarized last week. It's been widely speculated and reported that the robbery may have been carried out out by someone familiar with the ins, outs and contents of Miss Lohan's leased El Contento Drive digs. Of course Your Mama don't know nuthin' from a bucket of worms, but from the looks of the surveillance video released by the LAPD we'd say it certainly looks like an inside job because the trio of intruders perpetrated the crime don't look the least bit nervous busting in to the home of one of the most watched famous persons in all of Los Angeles.

It was widely reported that after discovering the break-in Miss Lohan called her apparently no longer estranged daddy Michael who in turn called the LAPD to report the break in. Of course, we don't know who called the po-po regarding the incident but according to neighborhood gossip Beatrice Bizzybody in the aftermath of the robbery Miss Lohan's publicity seeking padre–whose new friends include mid-life crisis having father of eight John Gosselin and the badly be-wigged Kim Zolciak from The Real Housewives of Atlanta–showed up to direct the paparazzi traffic and help little Miss Lindsay grab up some of her belongings and move her skinny butt to temporary digs at the swank and celebrity friendly Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood. However, according to Beatrice Bizzybody, Miss Lohan took a break from a hard day of sunbathing in order to schlep over to the scene of the crime today in order to supervise the packing up and moving of whatever crap the burglars did not take (see lower photo).

Where Miss Lohan will live next is a bit of a mystery as perhaps it should be. However, iffin she were to ask Your Mama, which of course she won't, we would recommend that the little ladee leave the mean streets of Los Angeles and shack up in an unlikely and paparazzi free place like Portland, OR. It ain't gonna happen, not in a million years, and we're probably going to get hate mail from people in Portland for trying to pawn the drama magnet off the them. The point is, behawtcha does not have to live in Los Angeles. While no one deserves to get robbed, ever, it is our humble and utterly meaningless opinion that La Lohan stays in L.A. because on some level she gets off on all the attention and would not know who she is or what to do with herself without it. Ugh, we digress into armchair analysis...

In other Lindsay Lohan related real estate news, we've now heard from several Beachwood Canyon residents, including Beatrice Bizzybody who clearly keeps her finger on the pulse of all things Beachwood Canyon, that Miss Lohan's on again-off again lesbian ladee friend Sam Ronson's house on N. Beachwood Canyon Drive is available for lease.

Miss Ronson had been leasing the house and after all the loud screaming and fighting that often emanated from the house and constant bother of the paparazzi that regularly blocked street, we can imagine that every neighbors (not to mention the property owner) are cracking open the bubbly in celebration that Tinseltown's biggest lesbian drama queens have moved on to inflict their melodramatic infamy on some other neighborhood.

lower photo: Beatrice Bizzybody

Sandra Bullock Buys in The Big Easy

BUYER: Sandra Bullock and Jesse James
LOCATION: Coliseum Street, New Orleans, LA
PRICE: $2,250,000
SIZE: 6,615 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: ...Ornately carved marble mantels, carved columns, large plaster medallions, antique shadow molding thru first flr liv area. Grand entry foyer, 41 x 13 w/ wd flring featuring alternating pecan & sycamore, lg doorways lead to parlor, ballroom & dining rm, all w/ 14' ceilings. Unfinished 3rd flr an additional 1935 sq. ft. w/ 10 ft. ceil.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Just in case y'all did not know, Saturday was the 4th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the powerful storm that devastated the Gulf states and visited a special sort of meteorological hell on the frisky and frolicsome city of New Orleans, LA. In remembrance of the tragic losses and in honor of all the hard and good work being done to rebuild and revitalize the City That Care Forgot, Your Mama thought it might be fun to discuss an historic and ornate mansion in the gorgeous Garden District recently snatched up by a couple of big hearted Tinseltown types who have quietly committed much time and major resources to the rebuilding of The Big Easy. No puppies, we are not going to discuss Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's mansion on Governor Nicholls Street. We've been there, done that, and, quite frankly, we are a little worn out by their constant real estate whirlwind. Nor are we going to chit-chat about prolific property collector Nic Cage who we are also tired of yakking about and who currently has two houses in New Orleans listed for sale.

Thanks to a well informed, Yat accented local gentleman we'll call Benji Buttons, Your Mama has learned that romantic comedy queen Sandra Bullock and her heavily tattooed, chopper doctoring huzband Jesse James recently snatched up a N'awlins nest. Property records show that Mister and Missus James actually closed on their Garden District digs in June of 2009 when they forked over $2,250,000 for what is alternately and interchangeably called the Koch-Mays House, The Swiss Chalet House, and/or Freret's Folly.

According to previous reports Your Mama dug up on the interweb and listing information kindly supplied by Benji Buttons, we ascertained that the Coliseum Street mansion was built in 1876 by architect William Freret for James Eustis, a U.S. Senator and Ambassador to France. The fanciful exterior of the three story Gothic-Victorian residence (is that such a thing?) is all intricate iron work, elaborate fretwork and pointy gables that have been topped with lethal-looking, spear like ornaments. The interiors measure 6,174 square feet (or approximately 6,615 square feet depending where on the listing one looks). At the time of the sale, the day-core of the 5 bedroom and 4.5 pooper mansion was all did up in what our dear Mister Buttons called, and we quote, "like some kind of homo-rococo hot mess," even though the sellers were not, in fact, homosexuals. Mister Buttons also told us that he thinks but can not confirm that the heavily gilded interiors had been worked over by noted New Orleans antiques dealer/interior decorator Buzz Harper who, and again we quote from Mister Buttons, "is an honors graduate of the Gone With the Wind school of plantation decor." Nothing like hitting the nail on the head and getting right to the meat of the matter, is there?

Anyhoo, listing information shows that after crossing the covered front porch, Mister and Missus James' new historic house is entered through an undeniably grand and Tara-esque foyer that stretches 41' from front to back and features a magnificent and shimmering floor of alternating strips of pecan and sycamore woods. The main floor includes a parlor and ballroom, a banquet sized dining room with fussy drapery and champagne-colored damask wallpaper, a den with deep, Burgundy wine colored walls, and a modestly-sized, 16' x 12' kitchen all with large, glittery crystal chandeliers, monumental 14' ceilings, imposing, antique shadow moldings, and more fireplaces with carved marble mantels than Your Mama cares to count. Okay, the kitchen does not have a sparkly chandelier, but it might as well.

The second floor houses the bedrooms including the master with the most luridly complicated wallpaper Your Mama has ever had the misfortune of eyeballing and the third floor measures 1,935 square feet of unfinished space with multiple windows and 10' peaked ceilings. The grounds of the sprawling and well shielded corner property include elegant gardens, a large lawn perfect for rousing games of sazerac-fueled croquet tournaments, a large swimming pool surrounded by commodious terraces and a motor court that will park 3+ cars or, more likely, a dozen or so of Mister James' tricked out choppers.

A peep and a poke into property records shows that in addition to their N'awlins mansion Miz Bullock and Mister James own a substantial number of dee-luxe properties between them. Their holdings include (but are not limited to) the following: A large house and a slew of other residential and commercial properties in Austin, TX; An ocean front house on S. Pacific Avenue in Sunset Beach, CA (that's just south of Long Beach children), a house on Marmont Avenue that Miz Bullock bought in 2001 for $1,485,000 and that happens to be next door to Cameron Diaz's digs; A townhouse on Sullivan Street in lower Manhattan which records show Miz Bullock scooped up in February of 2000 for $3,350,000; An ocean front spread in Tybee Island, GA walking distance from a house owned by John Cougar Mellencamp that records show she picked up in June of 2001 for $1,495,000. We've also read many times that Miz Bullock owns a home in or around Jackson, WY but, honestly chickens, we could not find (or did not look hard enough for) any current property records of that property.