UPDATE: Anderson Cooper

Okay lambs, yesterday Your Mama discussed and dissected the raging rumor racing through that gay streets of New York City that hunky and virtually hairless CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper had gone and bought himself a damn firehouse on West 3rd Street. Property records show that the old Fire Patrol House No. 2 was sold in early September of 2009 for $4,300,000.

Most of the rumors–including the ones repeated by Your Mama–have included some kind of speculation and scuttlebutt about Mister Cooper's possible plans to share the very butch four and some story building with man-friend Ben Maisani, a muscular piece of man candy who co-owns a down and duurr-tee East Village gay bar called Eastern Bloc.

Well chickens, today we received a covert communique from a ladee we'll call Lehteeseeuh Littlebird, a well connected informant who has provided Your Mama with juicy–and accurate–information in the past regarding the real estate doings of celebs. Lehteeseeuh, always so thoughtful and articulate, tweet, tweet, tweeted in Your Mama's ear that our Mister Cooper has in fact shown certain persons photos of the firehouse in question and declared his intention to sell his midtown penthouse apartment on West 38th Street and live in said firehouse downtown. Who Mister Cooper might live with, or not live with, remains a mystery which we imagine is just about how he likes it.

Take that for what you will children, but you should know that lovely Lehteeseeuh has never steered Your Mama down a dead end street nor given us any reason to doubt the veracity of her whispered words.

Rumor Has It, But...

There are rumors beginning to circulate that the world's most famous celebrity Scientologist Tom Cruise has coughed up a booty clenching $18,000,000 for a locally famous house in San Francisco's fearsomely foggy but dramatically gorgeous Sea Cliff neighborhood. It seems this bit of implausible property gossip got started early this morning when the fine folks at the fa-boo San Francisco centric Socketsite reported that one of their readers tipped them off to this bizarre bit of alleged celebrity real estate bizness.

Does Your Mama even need to tell the children we are all kinds of skeptical? Tom Cruise. San Francisco? We'll leave the snarky and sassy jabs and jokes for the children on this one. Don't misunderstand butter beans, Your Mama left our heart and some other things in San Francisco about a hundred years ago and we still love that city by the bay. But Tom Cruise browsing the aisles at Cliff's Variety on Castro? Pleeze.

Your Mama suspects the buyer is someone else entirely, someone with deep roots in San Francisco and the Bay Area. See if you can follow along chickens...

In March of 2000, Joan Waitt–the wife of tech tycoon Ted Waitt who founded a little company called Gateway–paid $13,100,000 for a mansion on swank Sea Cliff Avenue known as the Captain's House. Her intentions were to merge it with the property she owned next door thus creating an expansive and uber-expensive cliff top compound. Like so many real estate fickle rich people, Missus Tech Tycoon changed her damn mind and hoisted the brick built beast back on the market in 2003 with an asking price of $23,500,000 where is languished without a price reduction for three long, long, loooong years. Eight million smackers in renovations–which unfortunately included covering the original beautiful brick with beige stucco–and 7 years later the price tag jumped to $25,900,000. It was later dropped to $22,000,000.

Jump forward to September of 2009 when property records show the 9,436 square foot mansion with 5 bedrooms and 6 poopers was fie-nuh-lee sold for $18,000,000. If the reported numbers are correct, a few flicks of the beads on our bejeweled abacus shows Missus Tech Tycoon lost several million big ones between the purchase price, renovations and carrying costs.

Being powerful wary of this rather wacky real estate rumor that the buyer is Tom "Jumps On Oprah's Couches to Profess His Undying Love for Katie Holmes" Cruise, Your Mama had a long peep and a poke around the property records. We didn't find Tom or Kate's names, natch. What we did find is that the buyer is listed as Tawaraya, LLC. A few more minutes clicking and clacking on the keyboard of our trusty laptop and we discovered that Tawaraya is a super posh and searingly expensive, 300-year old ryokan–which is essentially a Japanese bed and breakfast sort of place–located in Kyoto. That's Japan, babies.

A few more minutes with our fingers flying and we figure out that this Tawaraya, LLC links back to Howson & Simon CPAs, a super exclusive booteek accounting firm in Walnut Creek, CA that–according to FinancialBrowsers.com–caters to "a small number of ultra high net worth individuals." One of those ultra high net worth individuals who lists Howson & Simon's address on SEC filings–dated March of 2008–that Your Mama dug up on the interweb is none other than billionaire biznessman Larry Ellison. We can't say with any authority that the buyer is Larry Ellison because we imagine there are at least several other wildly rich people in the Bay Area who use Howson & Simon's services who might be inclined to spend eighteen million smackers on a house. However, it sort of makes sense when considering that Mister Ellison is a prolific collector of posh properties and that his sprawling estate in Woodside, CA is, for all intents and purposes, all done up and worked over like a ryokan. Your Mama would not stake the lives of our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly on it but we would also not be at all surprised to learn that the buyer is not Tom Cruise but rather Larry Ellison.

Anyhoo, moving on and for anyone who might care, Sea Cliff is the same neighborhood that wonderfully wacky Sharon Stone called home when she was married to newspaperman Phil Bronstein and where the not so wonderfully wacky Robin Williams–sorry kids, Your Mama finds him a mite creepy–currently owns a mansion on El Camino Del Mar.

Lachlan Murdoch Sets Real Estate Record for 2009 in Sydney

BUYER: Lachlan Murdoch
LOCATION: Victoria Road, Bellevue Hill, Sydney, Australia
PRICE: $23,000,000 AUS
SIZE: 6 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: 'Le Manior' – Grand Georgian estate – Approx 4097 sqm of land with panoramic views. Under instructions from the Government of the French Republic. Occupying one of Bellevue Hill's most breathtaking parcels of land, this magnificent residence commands panoramic views from Sydney Harbour to the Pacific Ocean.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: All the celebrity real estate watchers Down Under are vibrating with excitement over the news that multi-media scion Lachlan Murdoch and his Aussie model/actress wifey Sarah O'Hare have splashed out a whopping $23,000,000 for a mansion in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. That's $20,895,960 US at today's rates according to our bejewled abacus.

The mansion, called Le Manoir, was sold at auction by the French Government who used the Bellevue Hill estate as their consulate. The chunky, Georgian style mansion occupies a flag lot that listing information states spans 4,097 square meters. A few clicks and clacks on our conversion contraption reveals that is just a hair over an acre for all us old fashioned types still not working on the metric system.

Since listing information nor any of the many previous reports sent to us by a number of the children Down Under reveal the actual size of the house, we're going to say that based on the scale and and extensive mill work displayed in the studio apartment sized reception hall, it's gigantic. Listing information does, however, indicate that there are 6 bedooms and 5 bathrooms and a powder pooper for the guests. Additionally there are several living and sitting rooms, 2 studies, a commercial sized kitchen, large laundry facilities, multiple store rooms and fireplaces and some of the most bee-yoo-tee-ful wood floors Your Mama has seen in a long time.

The grounds look a bit ratty and tatty to Your Mama's eagle eyeballs, but according to listing information there is a long driveway leading to a large motor court and three car garage, there are terraced gardens, flat lawns, sunny terraces with views of Sydney Harbour and the Pacific Ocean, a swimming pool and a sunken grass tennis court.

Some reports say that Mister and Missus Murdoch outbid surly Oscar winning actor Russell Crowe and his wifey Danielle Spencer as well as Nicole Kidman and her man-mate Keith Urban. However, one of Your Mama's Aussie children tells us that Miz Kidman's name is tossed into the press with just about every high priced and high profile sale in Sydney so take that information with a grain of salt.

This not the first time Mister Murdoch and Crowe's real estate lives have intersected. Mister Murdoch once owned a house called Berthong in super swank Elizabeth Bay that he sold for $9,200,000 AUS to none other than Mister Crowe who subsequently sold it for $12,000,000 AUS in order to move into a $14,000,000 AUS penthouse at Sydney's tongue twisting Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf. Oh the tangle real estate webs celebrities weave.

Mister Murdoch, who resigned his post at his father's media empire several years ago but retained a seat on the board, made property news stateside when he bought an entire building at 11 Spring Street in New York City which is now known as The Candle Building. Murdoch's plans were to convert the graffiti covered 19th-century carriage house into a gargantuan, seven story single family residence but his grandiose real estate plans were thwarted when his father sent him Down Under. Mister Murdoch sold the building in September of 2006 for $12,000,000 to a 20-something year old real estate heiress named Caroline Cummings who cleaned and restored the exterior architecture and chopped up the 12,128 square feet of interior space into three high style condominiums–a simplex and two triplexes–with heated floors in the bathrooms and white glass back splashes in the kitchens. In September of 2008, renovations complete, Miss Cummings listed the entire building with a get rich quick asking price of $39,800,000. A month later she listed the individual apartments. As time went by and no one bought the building or any of the condos, the asking prices were steadily reduced leaving the latest and perhaps last price tag for the entire building at $26,000,000. According to StreetEasy, the entire building went into contract on the 31st of October so good for Miss Cummings.

But we digress...Mister Murdoch's twenty three million dollar purchase price sets the record for the highest price paid for a private property in Australia in 2009. The previous record was set by media mogul and gambling magnate James Packer who laid out $18,000,000 AUS for a property in the Eastern Suburb of Vaucluse earlier in the year. Perhaps not surprisingly, Misters Murdoch and Packer are in business together. Birds of a feather and all that.