Kate Hudson Buys House Next Door

BUYER: Kate Hudson (and Matt Bellamy)
LOCATION: Pacific Palisades, CA
PRICE: $5,300,000
SIZE: 7,014 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Several months ago Your Mama heard from a well-placed source we'll call Lucinda Liquidluncher who nonchalantly dropped the celebrity real estate nugget that currently preggers serial monogamist Kate Hudson and her whip-skinny British rock star baby daddy/fiancée Matt Bellamy–lead singer of Muse–were on the hunt for exceptionally expensive houses on the West Side of Los Angeles. We're talking serious mansions, my pretties, mansions in the $15-20,000,000 range. Real damn big-shitter stuff.

It was not long after that when rumors and reports ran up into our inbox that the romantically fickle Oscar-nominated actress and her Muse musician man-friend bought a four-million pound property in London and eyeballed a vintage Spanish mansion in the Los Feliz area, a world away from from their target area of the west side. We have no idea if Miss Hudson and Mister Bellamy bought a house in London or not but we do know that the soon-to-be parents' real estate trail quickly went all cotton mouth on Your Mama until yesterday when we happened upon documentation that indicates Miss Hudson splashed out $5,300,000 to purchase the 1935 Tudor Revival style pile immediately next door to her long-time residence in the insouciant but exceptionally posh and deceptively staid ocean side enclave of Pacific Palisades.

Despite her search in some of the other top-end zip codes on the west side it seems Miss Hudson couldn't escape the sentimental and familial tug of Pacific Palisades where she has not only lived in the same traditional style house since 2003 but also spent at least some of her childhood. Her magnificent mother Goldie Hawn and still-hunky step-daddy Kurt Russell are long-time residents of the quiet community and, in fact, according to The Movieland Directory, Miz Hawn and Mister Russell once owned the very house that Miss Hudson now (and again) calls home.

Miss Hudson did not, however, inherit or buy the house from her famous parents. They sold the house–we're not actually sure when–and eventually it came to be owned by screenwriter Barbara Gallagher who was also the long-time gal pal and baby momma of now-deceased (and gay) clothing designer Perry Ellis. Miss Hudson purchased the house from Miss Gallagher in December of 2003 for $5,400,000. When you're young, ridiculously rich and feeling nostalgic you can do things like that, spend more than five million bucks to buy your childhood home.

As for Miz Hawn and Mister Russell, at the latter end of the summer of 2004 they paid $4,124,591 for a 5,000-ish square foot house directly across the street from the 12,860 square foot pile they sold later in November of the same year for $12,000,000 to comedian Adam Sandler.

The property recently purchased by Miss Hudson–and presumably Mister Bellamy although we haven't any idea whatsoever of the details of what his financial involvement is or is not–was built in 1935 by an heir to a lumber fortune and was owned and expanded in the late 1980s and early 1990s by showbiz executive Brad Grey and his now ex-spouse Jill. Listing information shows the L-shaped house currently contains five bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in 7,014 square feet.

A double-gated drive arches around to a small but prairie-like motor court dominated by a front-facing three-car garage. The front door is tucked into a corner of the dignified brick and stone that wraps round the main floor and supports a half-timbered second floor and that steeply pitched gabled roof. While the rear of the house maintains a correct sort of quirkiness, the front façade emits not just an air of architectural authenticity but also suffers from, regrettably, the posture of a semi-suburban mcmansion.

Inside the updated residence retains original features such as a generously proportioned formal living room with fireplace, an oak-paneled dining room and mahogany-paneled library with built-in book cases, fireplace and vaulted ceiling. The fully re-worked and commodious kitchen, re-did by the seller, has all the bells and whistles that ought to be expected in a five million dollar mansion including a Mercedes-sized center island, commercial-grade appliances, butler's pantry, breakfast area and lounge that opens through French doors to a terrace that overlooks the backyard. There's not really much in the kitchen that floats Your Mama's decorative boat; It's just not our style. But it's the ominous pot rack over the center island that really has us grabbing for the gin because it looks to Your Mama's paranoia like that thing has a sinister ache in its inanimate soul to drop a copper pot or two on to the soft skull of an unsuspecting minimum wage domestic worker.

Although not original to the house a voluminous space above the expanded garage now includes a family room with vaulted ceiling and built-in entertainment cabinet, a guest bedroom, not one but two bathrooms, a loft and workout room with mirrored walls and toxin-eradicating sauna.

A wide stone patio, part of which is covered by a pergola structure, runs the length of the back of the house, has a tree-top view over the surrounding neighborhood and steps down to a small flat patch of grass hardly big enough for a celebrity child-sized jungle gym. A white picket fence and a row of tightly-planted prickly white-rose bushes surrounds the swimming pool and raised spa. Little kiddies who like to play house will adore the people-sized play house that has a wee front yard of its own.

We don't know a microwave from a moron so Your Mama really can't say what Miss Hudson and Mister Bellamy's plans are for these two adjacent properties. Perhaps they'll leave the structures separate but marry them via the landscaping. Could be they'll convert one of the large residences to an guest/entertainment pavilion with sound-proofed recording facilities. Or maybe they're hire a really smart and expensive architect to figure out a way to combine the two large houses into one super-sized celebrity-style mansion. Or perhaps, just a thought not a prediction, they'll opt to tear one of the houses down to make way for expanded grounds that could easily accommodate a lighted tennis court, guest house, recording studio and/or staff quarters. Miss Hudson is well-known among the celebrity for her annual Halloween bash so the extra space could also be utilized for additional off-street party parking with enough space to spare for a party tent to be erected at will and as needed.

We shall see, puppies, we shall see. Maybe one day Miss Hudson will invite curious little ol' Your Mama to her next Halloween party and then we'll know just what she's done with the place. Just a suggestion.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty / Beverly Hills

Glee's Ryan Murphy Snatches One Up in Malibu

BUYER: Ryan Murphy
SELLER: Charlize Theron and Stuart Townsend
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $6,562,500
SIZE: 2,095 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It seems television and movie writer/producer/director Ryan Murphy is starting to make a real estate habit of buying the historic homes of Oscar winning actresses.

Much to the chagrin of some righty-tighties Mister Murphy, a former journalist, has created some of the gayest and most homoerotic programs ever to air on the tee-vee (Glee, Nip/Tuck and Popular) as well as several screenplays that include the Julia Roberts vehicle Eat Pray Love and the movie adaption of Augusten Burroughs' high-larious and disturbing memoir Running With Scissors, which, all due respect, was a much better book than movie.

Your Mama has for weeks been getting dribs and drabs about Mister Murphy's recent real estate doings and just yesterday finally received the hard core confirmation and specific information we sought for from our wonderfully helpful informant Lucy Spillerguts. Yesterday, while discussing the real estate matters of an different actor and his supermodel wife, ol' Lucy whispered in our celebrity real estate craving ear that Mister Murphy just bought Oscar winning actress Charlize Theron's Malibu, CA beach house.

The last few years have been exceptionally lucrative for forty-something year old Mister Murphy and his shooting star has enabled him to purchase a ticket on Mr. Toad's Celebrity Real Estate Wild Ride. In May of 2001 Mister Murphy bought a Carl Maston-designed house discreetly tucked up in the hills behind the perennially fab Chateau Marmont Hotel. It's not known what he paid but based on our research Your Mama believes it was somewhere around two million bigguns. His real estate foot first became itchy in May 2008 when he first put his contemporary crib on the block with an asking price of $4,195,000. Finally, nearly three long year's later according to property records, Mister Murphy sold the wood, glass and concrete residence in early April 2011 for $2,775,000.

In September of 2010, more than six months before he sold his white elephant in the hills, Mister Murphy possessed the financial chutzpah to splash out $10,000,000 to acquire a fully restored, updated and upgraded Ralph Flewelling-designed Colonial Revival-style mansion in Beverly Hills, CA. The 8,434 square foot mansion, originally built in 1927, contains 7 bedroom and 9 bathrooms and was sold by Oscar-winning actress Diane Keaton (Annie Hall, Marvin's room, Something's Gotta Give), a well-known flipper of high-end architecturally significant houses in southern California.

With his in-town residence taken care of, Mister Murphy soon went a-shopping for a house in Malibu. Mister Murphy eventually settled on the petite but pricey beach front house of Academy Award winner and Christian Dior stink water spokes model Charlize Theron (North Country, Monster, The Italian Job). Records (and Redfin) show the property was purchased for the complicated price of $6,562,500.

Miss Theron purchased her ocean front residence in late 2001 for $2,200,000. About 18 months later she added the name of her then man-friend–far less successful Irish-born actor Stuart Townsend (Queen of the Damned, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen)–to the deed.

In early 2010, on the still-warm heels of their bust up, Miss Theron and Mister Townsend put their ocean front getaway on the rental market at $30,000 per month. Towards the end of the year the erstwhile lovebirds of nine or so years officially put their modestly-scaled but still quite expensive beach house on the open market with an asking price of $7,500,000. In late March 2011, just before Mister Murphy swooped in and scooped the place up for $6,562,500, the asking price was dropped to $6,995,000.

Listing information shows the house was originally built in 1930 and measures just 2,095 square feet. That's practically a doll house compared to the steroidal real estate standards of the super rich today but–at least as far Your Mama is concerned–plenty big enough for a beach getaway just 25 or so miles from Miss Theron's primary Los Angeles residence in the the star-choked Outpost Estates neighborhood and just 17 or 18 miles from Mister Murphy's mansion in Bev Hills.

A tight two-car garage–where the washer and dryer are located–faces often traffic-clogged Pacific Coast Highway. An alarmed key-lock gate opens into a narrow walled courtyard that runs along the house and wraps around to the ocean side deck that hovers over the sand and includes fire pit, hot tub and shade-making structure with vibrant and magnificent tangerine-colored fabric panels that can be opened or closed depending on the amount of direct sun desired.

The house contains 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. One of the bedrooms has a private entrance from the courtyard near the front gate and the cozy second-floor master bedroom has a vaulted ceiling, hardwood floors, wood-burning fireplace, built-in book shelves and a sparkling view of the ocean. The attached bathroom features double sinks, soaking tub in front of ocean view window and a glass-enclosed shower.

Glammy jewel tone colors and luscious tactile fabrics infuse the charming and otherwise unpretentiously-scaled beach shack with Hollywood a-lister goes to the the Bu style. The main living spaces include a water-side living room with stone fireplace and bay window with built-in banquette seating, a supermodel slim dining room with built-in banquette seating, a petite but well-equipped u-shaped kitchen with open shelving and and a glassed-in loggia-lounge where sliding glass doors integrate the interior areas with the party-sized deck that overlooks the sand and sea.

A number of nearby homes are owned (and sometimes occupied) by famous folks including itty-bitty and very busy actor Stephen Dorff who owns the boxy contemporary next door and comedian and celebrity poon hound David Spade whose spread is margarita mix (and/or condom) borrowing distance. A short stroll down the sand is Tinseltown widow Candy Spelling's two-parcel seaside pad and a bit further along is the Shabby Chic glitzorama that is Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne's long-unwanted Malibu residence they've have up for lease and/or on the market for about as long as Your Mama has had teeth.

Your Mama wonders, children: Are his two L.A. houses that combined cost him more than $16,000,000–plus a hillside house in Laguna Beach (CA) with panoramic coastal view–enough satiate Mister Murphy's real estate appetite or will he continue to snap up prime properties in other celebrity magnets like, say, Aspen and New York City? Maybe something in the Hamptons? Nothing screams entertainment industry success and real estate excess more than houses in Malibu and the Hamptons, right?

listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Beverly Hills North

Cheech Marin Lists Second Malibu Residence

SELLER: Richard "Cheech" Marin
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $5,995,000
SIZE: 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Since sometime in the mid-1990s pothead actor and comedian turned respected and prolific art collector Richard Marin and his second wife Patti Heid began to buy up contiguous parcels on the now very hoity-toity Encinal Bluffs in the northern reaches of Malibu, CA. Some of their nearby neighbors now include Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie although it seems that peripatetic pair and their always-expanding brood rarely visit their lonely ocean front home in Malibu anymore.

Mister Marin is perhaps best known among those over the age of 40 as Cheech of the doobie-smoking duo Cheech and Chong. Mister Marin all but put his professional bong away after 8 Cheech and Chong films but he's been a busy beaver ever since with dozens of television and film appearances and roles (Judging Amy, Nash Bridges), a couple of children's records and a number of hugely successful animated film productions such as The Lion King and Cars. He also has a line of hot sauces that bear his name and mug. That's right, hot sauces.

As popular as Cheech may have been, Mister Marin's largest contribution to the world may not be that he tacitly taught millions of of teenagers how to roll a joint and smoke weed from a bong but rather he may well be best remembered as a committed, prolific and respected collector of Latin American artwork. Mister Marin's collection includes works by well known artists like Mexico's Diego Rivera as well pieces by a laundry list of other Latino and Latina art makers such as Carlos Almaraz, George Yepes, Patssi Valdez, Leo Limón, Margaret Garcia. Mister Marin's extensive collection–portions of which have toured not just once but twice–is not limited exclusively to Latin American artists. He has at least one word painting by American über-artist–and former Malibu resident–Ed Ruscha that hangs in a guest bedrooms. Imagine for a moment, children, having a collection so thick that you can hang a famous Ruscha painting in the damn guest room.

Anyhoo, as best as Your Mama can surmise and sort out from the property records, the Marin's Malibu compound eventually grew to include four (and possibly five) contiguous parcels that stretch from the Pacific Coast Highway to the steep bluff that tumbles down to the sand and surf. Altogether there are three residences, one that backs up to the highway, another directly on the ocean and a third in between. The center property appears to have been originally acquired in October of 1996. Mister and Second Missus Marin wound up in the court of dee-vorce sometime in the early to mid 2000s and in early 2011 ownership of that centrally-located piece of the Marin compound puzzle was transferred directly to Second Missus Marin.

Way back in the celebrity real estate Dark Ages of March 2007, not long after Your Mama started the wee engine to our little blog enterprise, we discussed Mister Marin's highway-side residence, a Craftsman-Tudor style mini-mansion then listed on the open market with an asking price of $3,595,000. The house, built in 1979, had been purchased–it appears to Your Mama based on the documents we looked at–along with an adjacent vacant parcel in September of 1998 for $1,585,000. At the time of our first discussion, the adjacent vacant parcel was also for sale separately with an asking price of $1,695,000.

Since then the 4 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom house has been on and off the market several times. The property, according to records, remains in Mister Marin's property portfolio and is now listed with a significantly slashed asking price of $1,999,950. The adjacent vacant parcel also remains in Mister Marin's list of real estate assets and–in truth, butter beans–Your Mama has no idea if it is still available for purchase and if so at what price.

Yesterday we received a thoughtful missive from The Rolling Stone who pointed our celebrity real estate nose back out to Malibu where Mister Marin has listed the ocean front mini-compound within a compound portion of his spread with an asking price of $5,9995,000.

It not entirely clear from available online property records when Mister Marin acquired to ocean front jewel in his property crown in Malibu. However, own it he does, at least until someone comes along and pays him a fair number of millions for the hippy-dippy mini-compound that
listing information shows includes a main house with three bedrooms and a guest house with fitness room with three more sleeping chambers. A detached music room–Third and Current Missus Marin Natasha Rubin is a pianist–completes the scene. Altogether, according to listing information, there are 6.5 bathrooms split between the various structures.
The living room, while large and in possession of a staggering ocean view, seems pleasantly prosaic in comparison to much of the property's architectural melodrama and fantastical hard scaping. Rich hardwood floors provide gravity for the vaulted and beamed ceiling and at one end a brick fireplace anchors the room and at the other two banks of sliding and French doors that converge and allow the eye soar nearly unimpeded out towards the humbling view.

The ocean view dining room, tucked into a windowed bay with beamed wood ceiling and a phenomenal chandelier that looks like a suit of chain mail dripping with amber-colored glass tulips. The dining room opens into the galley-style kitchen that features floors of a notably different sort of wood than in the other areas of the main floor, slab granite counter tops, unimpressive but adequate appliances–they are asking six mil here after all–and honey-colored cabinetry with very crunchy-granola bas-relief detailing. At the far end of the kitchen a quaint but tight built-in breakfast banquette tucked into a doghouse-shaped extrusion has windows on three sides and a vaulted, beamed and sky-lit ceiling.

The high-drama cathedral-like master bedroom features vaulted double height ceiling, exposed wood beams, hardwood floors, a wacky fireplace that looks like an over-scaled piece of ancient pottery. A shallow but extra-wide a bay window lined with floral stained glass offers an ocean view, built in banquette with storage drawers for pulling on hose and lacing up sneakers. While most of the large but far from over-sized master bathroom is an out-dated hot mess that could cause a migraine if we looked at the listing photo too long there are three features Your Mama wishes to acknowledge: the skylight (always good for proper pooper ventilation), the weird but brilliant little collection of mushroom-shaped table lamps and the curvaceous all-tile sunken soaking tub. All of those things are good in their own special way. Everything else? A real damn decorative peeper punishment.

Listing information calls the estate "Carmel in Malibu" and it does sort of remind Your Mama of the ocean-side, wind-swept and cliff-top extravaganza that is Carmel (CA). Listing information also labels the multiple structures as"Craftsman" in style and maybe this is a kind of upscale Summer of Love-inspired Craftsman-ish type dwelling. However, everywhere Your Mama looks we see whimsical but deadly serious homage to the great Spanish surrealist architect Antoni Gaudí. There are droopy bent-wood window frames that look like something out of a Dalí painting, some of the tile work in the master bathroom has a random ripple that makes it appear to be slowly melting. Stacked stones and bricks arch, warp and ribbon around a table with swirling brick pedestal to create an Alice in Wonderland-like built-in dining banquette and pizza oven while brick and stone retaining walls on the terraced bluff pucker and buckle with an oddly elegant, mesmerizing and sensual sense of decay.

Lush and haphazard but well-tended gardens weave their way around the various structures and include tree shaded lawns that roll and slope towards the bluff and a raised stone dining and lounging terrace on the edge of the bluff where the property's multi-million dollar view is at its best most expensive. Pathways and staircases lined with undulating stone and brick walls meander down the bluff to the 120 linear feet of sandy beach frontage. The manner in which the bluff was hard- and landscaped reminds Your Mama of a trip we once took to España with our bawdy but cultured pal Falsetta Knockers. One afternoon while whittling away a spectacular week in Barcelona we hopped in our rented Euro-hoopdie and drove out to the flamboyant Gaudí-designed Parc Güell. As far as Your Mama is concerned there are few parks cum tourist attractions that match the unfettered and yet well-considered exuberance of Parc Güell where awe-inspiring architectural whimsy happily wallows in a happy and fanciful marriage to genius engineering.

But we digress....In addition to his real estate holdings in Malibu, it's been reported in the past that Mister Marin owns a substantial home in the snazzy Sea Cliff area of San Francisco, CA, which makes an odd counter-cultural sort of sense. He and the current Missus Marin were, reportedly, married at said home in 2009. However, despite a few minutes poking around property records we don't find any evidence of Mister Marin owning a home in The City By the Bay. We did find an address to a cliff top mansion on at least one digital document at which we peeped, but further investigation shows that Mister Marian does not currently nor does it appear he ever owned that particular house. If any of the Bueller's want to chime in on and clarify the matter, please do.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker Previews International / Malibu