Dasmarka Real Estate

BUYER: Chelsea Handler
LOCATION: Los Angeles (Bel Air), CA
PRICE: $5,942,500
SIZE: 5,572 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A month or so ago Your Mama did the celebrity real estate dishes on one of our favorite funny femmes, Chelsea Handler. At that time, the gravel voiced wise cracker and hussy was living up in a leased terra-cotta colored contemporary in a particularly posh section of the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, CA.

Her stay in Brentwood was temporary because as everyone who follows Miss Handler's tweets (or twits or twats or whatever they're called) already knows the sharp and sometimes deliciously mean comedienne purchased a home of her own, just in time to put a Thanksgiving turkey in the deep fryer, light the Menorah and snatch up a ceiling-scraping Christmas tree for the living room.

Thanks to an information bone from a well-connected spy in Beverly Hills, a lovely gal whom we'll call Juanita Whispersthedirt, we've recently learned that Miss Handler picked up a perfectly private walled and gated celebrity-style contemporary tucked into a steep hillside in the uppity Bel Air area of Los Angeles.

Before we delve down into some of the real estate details, Your Mama wants to let the children know we are not going to engage in much diss and/or discussion of the seller's bending-towards-Art-Deco day-core seen in the listing photographs. Presumably and hopefully Miss Handler will hire a nice, gay decorator to get up in her new crib and work out some of the architectural quirks and decorative kinks like all those damn orchid plants and the horrific peachy-colored flower patterned wallpaper in the master pooper that made Your Mama vomit in our mouth a little when we first saw it.

Your Mama scared up some listing information and property records for Miss Handler's new house that reveal she splashed out the considerable sum of $5,942,500 for a completely rebuilt residence that measures 5,572 square feet with a total of 6 bedrooms and 7 poopers.

An electronically controlled gate opens from a quiet cul-de-sac to a swooping driveway that rises to a tight motor court and 3-car carport/garage. Once through the front door, the interior spaces meander along at a variety of angles that match the topography of the lot and include, according to listing information and marketing materials, a dining room with treetop views and a large living room with fireplace, travertine (or some other stone) flooring, and expansive walls of glass. The nearby kitchen has gleaming and glossy white cabinetry, matte black counter tops, a pantry, Viking brand appliances, tree top views through a wide window over the sink–a feature our wool gathering house keeper Svetlana would appreciate–a lighted soffit that runs around the room's ceiling, and a Volkswagen-sized skylight directly above the large work island and breakfast counter.

One of the two family rooms, a den with fireplace and flat screen tee-vee mounted above it, opens directly and awkwardly off the dining room but does have two dynamite glass panels that slide into the walls and merge the room with the backyard. A second, larger and icky peach colored family room is fitted with yet another wall mounted flat scree tee-vee and more glass panels that disappear in the walls to create a porch-like environment. An adjacent room, a room unfortunately not entirely closed off from the family room, is chock-full of the various and sundry body torture contraptions designed to keep a person slim and taut and that Your Mama avoids like they're dipped in the Hantavirus and rolled in Anthrax.

Naturally, the star-friendly residence has all the new-fangled bells and whistles modern-day famous and rich people require including custom lighting and sound systems, a camera equipped security system and a panic room with built-in safe where Miss Handler can stash her stash.

The backyard, privately situated between the house and a seriously steep and grassy hillside that looks like it's going to be awfully difficult for Miss Handler's little nugget Chewy to mow, has a heated 50-foot long swimming pool with attached raised spa, a couple of small terraces for sun loungers, an outdoor fireplace flanked by ass-bashing built in concrete benches, a built in barbecue center fully equipped with Viking brand appliances and, natch, a flat screen tee-vee mounted to the side of the damn house so iffin anyone who might be frolicking in the pool has a burning urge to watch the Judge Judy Show, they can.

What the property does not have are stables, which means Miss Handler will have to adopt out the small horse that Jay Leno gave her as a housewarming present in late July. Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter promise we will buy Miss Handler a more appropriate house warming and holiday gift just as soon as she invites us to sit cross-legged in front of her Christmas tree while her barefoot lesbian house-ladee serves coffee and fruit cake.

Back in November of 2008, when Miss Handler was still shtupping and living in sin with her boss Ted Harbert at E!, the couple paid $3,700,000 for a penthouse pad with panoramic Pacific Ocean views at the Azzurra complex in Marina del Rey, CA. Sometime in early 2010–or in late 2009 depending on who you ask or what you read–Miz Handler and Mister Harbert's relationship swirled down the terlit of love.

Not long after splitting with her boss, horny Miz Handler hooked up briefly with a rather studly and well-formed Canadian animal handler and television star named Dave Salmoni and she may or may not currently be gettin' bizzy with rich, rich, rich and bullet hole riddled rapper 50 Cent.

Property records, via Property Shark, show that in May of 2010 Mister Harbert bought out Miz Handler's share of their 3,319 square foot former love nest penthouse in Marina del Rey for $1,147,000.

As an aside, the listing agent for the property Miss Handler just purchased was none other than über-broker Mauricio Umansky, both celebutante Paris Hilton's uncle and the handsome huzband of Kyle Richards who some of the children will know as the raven haired ladee on the The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills who is about to rip Kelsey Grammer's insufferably narcissistic ex-wife Camille a new asshole. This poor Camille person, all fake boobs, blond weave and self-helpy self-righteousness, had the guts and gall to get up on the national tee-vee and whine about how difficult and exhausting it is to be a mother and wife when you have 6 homes, 4 nannies for 2 elementary school aged children, a couple of personal assistants, and a house manager or two not to mention a shapely male tennis pro with whom she flirts like she's a dog in heat. Bitch, pleeze. Do not even go there, gurl. Listen to Your Mama here Camille because we are about to offer you some free and sage advice: Nobody, and we mean no body at all, wants to hear about your silly, rich ladee trophy wife problems. We suggest you just clam up that over-Botoxed mug of yours and try to enjoy your last few minutes of fame as the former wife and baby momma of a shockingly rich and tired ol' sitcom star. We can understand how you would want to be known as more than just Kelsey Grammer's (ex)wife but you are not doing yourself any favors, ladee, by acting a damn fool on the tee-vee and invoking Kelsey's Grammer's name every 47 damn seconds. Okay? Get it together now. Seriously.

Anyhoo, from Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's humble house in the Hollywood Hills to her newly acquired mansion in the hills of Bel Air, we wish Miss Handler happy holidays and a happy new house.

listing photos: Hilton & Hyland

OWNER: Nicole Kidman
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $45,000 per month
SIZE: 3,785 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: For many years, Academy Award winning actress Nicole Kidman leased posh pied a terres in lower Manhattan. She lived for a bit in the London Terrace complex in Chelsea where Your Mama would see her lookin' all steely eyed and slim. She also spent some time in a SoHo penthouse then owned by Boris Becker now owned by Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos and she shacked up in the SoHo doo-plex penthouse that her then lover Lenny Kravitz recently sold to Grammy queen Alicia Keys and her baby-daddy Swizz Beatz.

Now buckle up your safety belts, bunnies, because this is gonna blow your ever-luvin' minds: Even though ex-Missus Tom Cruise laid out oceans cash all over downtown Manhattan on high-priced rentals, she actually owned–and continues to own– a large and lavish apartment in one of the three green glass Richard Meier designed towers along the West Side Highway in the Far West Village.

Imagine for a moment, chickens, having the financial freedom to spend many millions on a pied a terre only to decide, "Meh, I don't like this place so much after all" and then go out and rent someone other famous person's gigantic and uncommonly expensive apartment. Lawrd, puppies, who does that?

Nicole Kidman, that's who.

Anyhoo, Miz Kidman is making waves on The Real Deal real estate website because–better get your check books, gurls–she's put her glassy crib in the Far West Village up for lease for a bone chilling $45,000 per month.

Miz Kidman snatched up the high-floor condo on the bizzy, bizzy, bizzy West Side Highway back in 2003 when The Meier Triplets were brand spanking new and creating an architectural stir in New York City and beyond. Unfortunately, Your Mama doesn't know exactly what Miz Kidman paid for the place, but we understand from previous reports it was around 8,000,000 U.S. clams and that the apartment was purchased in the name of her little sister Antonia Hawley. Since Miss Kidman only occupied the apartment for a short time–or if at all–it's quite possible the sleek residence was at some point occupied by the little sister. However, all us real estate gossips seem to think that whomever it was that put their panties away in the custom fitted closets, the posh pad was paid for by Big Sister Kidman.

Listing information shows the apartment, wrapped on three sides in floor to ceiling glass, has 3 bedrooms and 3.5 poopers including a master suite with sitting area, Midtown Manhattan view, custom fitted closets. The en-suite marble and walnut facilities include a double vanity, steam shower, egg-shaped soaking tub, and a floor to ceiling interior window so a person could, in theory, sit in a vat of hot water with their own filth and at the same time look clean through the living room and see the Hudson River and the Hoboken skyline.

The living room stretches the full width of the building and has a small south-facing balcony which due to the traffic is probably a little loud to be peaceful. A dee-luxe cooker was tucked quietly around the corner where the counter tops are both marble and walnut and the appliances among the most expensive money can buy.

Like all successful and extravagantly wealthy actors homes should be, Miz Kidman's condo is smart wired to remotely operate the audio, visual and lighting systems plus control the sunshades that scroll down at the touch of a button. The blue of the Hudson River acts as a vibrant and shimmering color counterpoint to the severely restricted palette of the interior day-core, all crisp white, seal gray, luscious chocolate browns and a little black here and there to ground things a bit. Despite its fishbowl nature, it's really quite magnificent, both livable and bordering on sterile at the same time and that, buttons, is not an easy decorative combo to pull off.

The person who coughs up the cash to rent the residence will find themselves surrounded by big name neighbors including Alexis Stewart–that's Martha's daughter–who has a ginormous triplex in the complex, Calvin Klein who owns a penthouse doo-plex, hotelier Ian Schrager, celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and Aussie actor Hugh Jackman who only bought his 11,000 square foot triplex earlier this year for the ungodly sum of $21,000,000.

Miz Kidman and her man-mate Keith Urban own homes all over the world including (but not limited to) a penthouse pad in Sydney and a 100+ acre spread a couple hours outside Sydney, a mansion in Nashville, TN, and a contemporary crib in a star-studded section of Beverly Hills (Post Office). The Kidman-Urbans recently acquired a ten million dollar doo-plex in a much ballyhooed newly completed Annabelle Selldorf designed West Chelsea building with so-called sky garages accessed by an industrial lift that raises cars to private parking bays located on the same floor as the apartment to which it is deeded.

listing photos: Halstead

SELLER: Daria 'Dasha' Zhukova
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $16,500,000
SIZE:9,691 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 8.5 bathrooms

UPDATE: Since this discussion Your Mama received a missive from a representative of Miss Zhukova who informed us the property is, "most definitely not for sale." For the record, the real estate aggregating website Redfin shows the property was listed on the 15th of November and quickly de-listed on the 17th of November. You got that, butter beans? She says it's not for sale so it's not for sale.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In September of 2008, one of the largest estates in The Bird Street area of Los Angeles above the Sunset Strip came on the market with an über optimistic asking price of $29,000,000. By August of the following year the price tags and plummeted to $21,900,000.

Then along comes the a gal named Dasha Zhukova, the Russian born American bred daughter of a wealthy oil tycoon and arms dealer and the twenty-something year old ladee-friend of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. In December of 2009 Miss Zhukova pushed out Mister Abramovich's sixth shorty and just a month later, according property records and previous reports, she signed on the deed's dotted and paid $19,500,000 for the 9,691 square foot mansion.

Since Miss Zhukova lives primarily in London and Moscow–and on whichever of Mister Abramovich's many mega-yachts–the humongous house high in the hills above LaLa Land was purchased as a pied a terre where she could stay when visiting her mother or–since she owns and oversees a pioneering contemporary art gallery in Moscow and was until recently the Editor-In-Chief of the fashion/art/culture publication Pop magazine–look at art or whatever it is she does in Los Angeles.

Anyhoo, Miss Zhukova grew bored–or something–with her pied a terre in Tinseltown and flipped her huge house in The Bird Streets above the Sunset Strip back on the market with an asking price of $16,500,000.

No, puppies, Your Mama's flying fingers did make not a mistake. Miss Zhukova actually listed the Los Angeles mansion she bought only 11 months ago ago for $3,000,000 less than she paid for the place. That's a hair curling loss but when your father and man-friend combined are worth more than the GDP of any number of sub-Saharan countries, it probably stings a little less.

Now, how many times have we told the children how fickle rich and/or famous people are when it comes to their real estate? So capricious they'll take a multi-million dollar loss on a house they just don't want anymore. Harumph.

photo: Bing

Let's begin the new week with a little unsubstantiated celebrity real estate rumor and gossip, shall we?

In less than five years the newly minted, meat dress wearing new Madonna of pop music Lady Gaga has gone from scraping up pennies off the sidewalk to pay for a shitty one room tenement apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to being one of the highest paid entertainers on the planet with a rushing river of money that flows into her coffers and allows her the financial fortitude at 24 years old to buy or lease lavish homes in some of the most affluent and expensive zip codes across the damn country.

For the last six or 8 months Lady Gaga, who wears clever and outlandish look-at-me-look-at-me outfits in her everyday life but bristles when people give her the sartorial stink eye, has been making serious real estate headlines from coast to coast. As bizzy as beehatcha is–and she is like a damn dervish she's got so many things to do–she somehow had time to house hunt from Los Angeles to the Hamptons all summer long.

First word slipped and slid down to Your Mama off the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that recently ridiculously rich Lady Gaga–née Stefani Germanotta–was considering the purchase of a recently rehabbed estate in Beverly Hills, CA with a price tag of $16,500,000. Previous to Miss Gaga's (alleged) interest, Your Mama had heard from an impeccable source that Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, who already own a house in the star-studded 'hood, were interested in but did not purchase the property.

In a respectable and sensible financial maneuver, instead of dropped boo-coo bucks to buy a house, Lady Gaga opted instead to lease a 6 bedroom and 8 pooper mansion in the hills of Bel Air at around $25,000 per month. Interestingly, and probably not coincidentally, the mansion Miss Gaga leased in Bel Air is owned by the same young music bizness dude who owns the lavish Beverly Hills estate that she (and Nicole and Keith) declined to buy.

By mid-July the scuttlebutt and stories about Lady Gaga house hunting in the hoity-toity Hamptoons become deafening. There were all sorts of reports that Miss Gaga was working with this real estate brokerage and other stories about her working with that real estate agent. Fast and furious came all the blogs and tabs with reports that Miss Gaga was interested in a $26,000,000 house in Sagaponack. Although her people denied all the real estate speculation, even more stories landed that claimed Miss Gaga had already leased a house in the Hamptons for the summer season. It would seem that if Miss Gaga was indeed in residence in the Hamptoons she'd be easy to pick out at Loaves & Fishes in Sagaponack, a towering bouffant haired lady in a bubble wrap pant suit and treacherously tall horse hoof-like shooz surrounded by a bunch of tan Mercedes driving ladees in Pucci sarongs and pudgy hedge hogs in crisp polo shirts.

Even though her manager–or somebody who makes millions off her professional efforts–gave her a vintage convertible Rolls Royce to pilot around town, Lady Gaga didn't much care for LaLa Land. Before long, the capricious young superstar returned to New York City where the little minx has kept the lady at the Gimme Shelter column in the New York Post bizzy as a beaver reporting on all the twenty and $25,000 per month downtown apartments that Lady Gaga has toured.

Often decked out in one of her casual, pants-free daytime outfits, Miss Gaga reportedly went for a look-see at a 4,000 square foot doo-plex at 1 Morton Square with monthly rent of $25,000; Prior to that she toured a 2,858 square foot doo-plex penthouse in SoHo with a 1,200 square foot of private terraces and a $21,000 per month price tag. According to the tabs and gossip glossies, the celebrity-style (magnet) SoHo penthouse was also peeped by Meg Ryan, Baz Luhrmann, and comedian Lewis Black.

In August it was revealed that Lady Gaga toured a 3,468 square foot crib in the SoHo Mews building listed at $9,975,000. The 4-bedroom penthouse pad has 1,591 square feet of wraparound terrace with a hot tub. Now chickens, we can understand why Miss Germanotta might want a terrace but we need a damn gin & tonic in order to get our pea-sized mind around her doing anything as pedestrian as sitting in a silly hot tub. We know Miss Gaga puts her pants on one leg at a time and gets drunk on cheap booze at baseball games like ordinary people, but we draw the line at a Miss Missy Hoohoo tucking into a chain mail one-piece bathing suit and bobbing around a hot tub.

As late at mid-October Lady Gaga was, according to the Gimme Shelter ladee, still hunting for a home and toured a slick and stylish 4,000 square foot penthouse pad listed with an asking price of $14,995,000 at the Winka Dubbeldam designed V33 building in TriBeCa. The sleek and almost painfully au courant doo-plex has 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, 5 fireplaces, 1 private parking space, nearly 3,500 square feet of terraces and an 8-foot by 16-foot infinity pool. That's right, an infinity edge pool right in the middle of Manhattan.

In late September, WWD–that's the fashion holy book Women's Wear Daily–reported that Lady Gaga was in the final stages of a property purchase on the sleepy but über-upscale island of Martha's Vineyard where other famous home owners include Larry David, David Letterman, and Carly Simon. True or not True? Bueller? Bueller? If Your Mama needed a drink to imagine Miss Gaga submerged in a hot tub it requires an additional nerve pill to picture her gallivanting around the Martha's damn Vineyard in a bathing suit made of Christmas tinsel and butterflies and strutting down the shore in a pair Alexander McQueen's spectacular tootsie punishing Armadillo shoes.

About the same time the real estate rumors swirled about her snatching up a house on Martha's Vineyard, even more scuttlebutt came in on the Lady Gaga real estate gossip train about how she wanted to buy a castle in England or maybe Scotland. Some reports even said that Miss Germanotta got the idea of an estate in the U.K. from Madonna although Your Mama suspects middle-aged Madge secretly hates young and nubile Miss Gaga.

Anyhoo, that brings us up to last week when Your Mama received a covert communique from one of our international spies that Lady Gaga's house hunt has indeed gone international. If fact, word on the Scottish real estate street is that the button pushing performer has bit the bullet and signed contracts to purchase the massive and historic Yester House estate in Scotland, in the village of Gifford about 20 or so miles outside the fine city of Edinburgh.
Yester House has been for sale since August of 2008 when it was listed at £15,000,000, that's 24,165,300 American dollars at today's rates according to Your Mama's currency conversion contraption. The asking price for the 300-acre estate was later hacked to £12,000,000 ($19,332,200 at today's rates) and subsequent to that slashed to £8,000,000 ($12,888,200 at today's rates). The newest price, according to earlier reports, includes 285 of the estate's nearly 600 acres and all the contents of the house.

According to our American living in Scotland, a member of the household staff at Yester House told him that a "contract has been signed for a sale to Lady Gaga." Your Mama makes no claims of veracity for that statement. Real estate rumors are exactly that, puppies, rumors. Maybe Miss Gaga is buying Yester House and maybe she is not. Okay? At this point we have no confirmation and we are not aware of any previous reporting of the (alleged) purchase.

Yester House (above), owned since the 1970s by Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti who died in 2007 and now owned by by his family, was built between 1699 and 1728. The 17th-century mega-mansion measures an elephantine 34,585 square feet with more than 60 rooms, 35 or more fireplaces, 5 reception rooms including two drawings rooms and a formal dining room with not just one but two fireplaces, a print room (whatever that is), business room, flower arranging room, 3 kitchens, more staircases than Your Mama can count, second floor music room and a basement level billiard room with two fireplaces.

Six principal bedrooms surround the 1,300 square foot ballroom on the second floor, each with private pooper and two with large private dressing rooms. Eight additional bedrooms on the third floor share two bathrooms, and a self-contained staff suite located in a separate wing has 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. Your Mama counts 3 additional full bathrooms and 3 more half poopers sprinkled throughout the middle school-sized house.

A rabbit warren-like 20+ room service complex on the basement level includes a wine cellar or two, gun room, laundry facilities, butler's pantry, the original kitchen and adjacent scullery, walk in larder, dairy room (perhaps for milking cows and making cheese?), a garden room, a 400+ square foot room for the head housekeeper and a dozen various workshops, cellars and storage rooms.

While it's embarrassingly over-sized for a 20-something single gal like Lady Gaga, it's also rather perfect. Just imagine Lady Gaga here, alone at Yester House on some stormy Scotish night as she slowly and dramatically drags from room to dimly lit room in a floor length dress fashioned from whispers, fingernail cuttings and jagged shards of broken mirrors and mutters random snippets poems by Rilke and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It works, right?

Whether Miss Gaga buys Yester House or some other house in Scotland or another overly expensive mansion somewhere else, Your Mama will keep our fat and tired fingers crossed that she'll have the chutzpah to purchase a proper and hair curling architectural confection that holds up to and reinforces her image as an out-sized, over-blown, grossly but enigmatically self-conscious, absurdly eccentric and appropriately cryptic pop music super star.

listing photos (Yester House): Knight Frank

1.
Your Mama knows almost nobody wants to know this, but the sale of financially battered and beleaguered actor Nic Cage's Bel Air mansion is finally complete. The deal is done, the deed is singed and this story is finally reached its conclusion. As far as we know from Billy Blabbedit, the Gerard Colcord designed mansion, formerly owned by both Dean Martin and Tom Jones, sold for $10,500,000. That's a lot of money by any standard but just a sliver of the whopping $35,000,000 Mister Cage and his real estate people thought the house was worth with it first come on the market in 2007.

2.
Earlier in the week Your Mama discussed the sprawling New York City apartment of Marie Claire Fashion Director and often exasperated Project Runway judge Nina Garcia and her financier huzband David Conrod.

Miz Garcia has baby number two in her belly, which may or may not have something to do with the with child couple's decision to move house. In the event Miz Garcia and Mister Conrod might want to save themselves some money by not moving Your Mama re-worked the floor plan of the apartment to accommodate him, her, baby #1 and baby #2.

One of the children, Stolidog, spent some time giving the floor plan a once over too and thoughtfully sent us another option for switching things up. See whatch'all think.

3.
The fine folks over at Curbed used Your Mama's little online endeavor to create a long (but "non-exhaustive") list of celebrity owned estate names such as Casa di Pace (Ryan Seacrest), Avec Chateau (one of Tyler Perry's many over-sized mansions), The Promised Land (Oprah Winfrey), Chartwell (the old Beverly Hillibillies mansion owned by media mogul Jerry Perenchio, and Red Barn, the Snedens Landing estate owned by Mikail Baryshnikov that he recently hoisted on the market with an asking price of $4,000,000.

4.
Jimmy Fallon, the former Saturday Night Live cast member turned late night tee-vee talk show house, and his wife Nancy Juvonen–otherwise known as Drew Barrymore's producing partner–forked over $1,350,000 for a third apartment at 34 Gramercy Park East, the oldest co-operative building in New York City. It's unknown– but it seems likely–that Mister Fallon and Miz Juvonen will doo-plex there current two-unit crib with the new 2 bedroom apartment they purchased upstairs.

5.
Somehow, in a haze of booze and sleepless nights, Your Mama missed this one. Did y'all know that Ricki Lake's Malibu beach rental house located just west of Topanga Beach burned to the damn ground a couple of months ago?

Lucky for Miz Lake, the entire family including the dog escaped unharmed. Not so lucky for Miz Lake is that she told police and fire people that the likely cause of the fire was a couch that went up in flames when she was trying to refuel a nearby portable heater. Also lucky for Miz Lake, she still owns a big house in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles that she bought from Courtney Cox in 2002 for $2,200,000.

6.
How many times has Your Mama told the children that rich and famous folks are fickle when it comes to their real estate. Fickle. Fickle. FICKLE. Six months or so ago, after whining to the press about how "shallow" Los Angeles is, Lisa Marie Presley packed up her horsey house in Hidden Hills, CA and decamped from the English countryside along with her huzband Michael Lockwood, their two year old twin daughters Harper and Finley, her 21-year old model daughter Riley and 18 year old son Benjamin from a previous betrothal.

There are many reports that say that Miz Presley shelled out eight or ten million pounds to purchase Coe Hall, an historic and huge house in Rotherford, East Sussex. However, Your Mama's spies–who had a peep and a poke around the property records–say that no transfer records were filed which indicates Miz Presley leased rather than bought the estate, some of which dates to the 15th-century and includes 11 bedrooms, 9 reception rooms, 9 poopers, a cinema, a state of the art sound system, swimming pool complex with hot tub, tennis court, parterre gardens, paddocks, and a private lake.

Coe Hall had been on the sales market for quite some time but it was also, prior to Miz Presley moving in, listed at £15,000 per month so iffin in fact Miz Presley leased the property we expect she paid around that amount. Shortly after moving into Coe Hall, there were salacious reports about Miz Presley requiring her domestic staff sign confidentiality contracts that forbid them from telling anyone, including their spouses, where they worked. We have no idea if that's true or not but we do know that Coe Hall is just down the road a piece from the Britain's Scientology headquarters at Saint Hill Manor in East Grinstead.

Some of the updated and upgraded country house dates to the 15th-century and includes 11 bedrooms, 9 reception rooms, 9 poopers, movie theater, a state of the art sound system, swimming pool complex with hot tub, tennis court, parterre gardens, paddocks, and a private lake.

Turns out, bless her little heart, The Princess of Rock 'n Roll (allegedly) hates living in the English countryside and if she hasn't already soon plans to high-tailed it back to the United States.

Unfortunately for Miz Presley, she can't just move back to her house in Hidden Hills. That's because she's had it up for sale with an asking price of $6,995,000 and according to listing information, it's in contract. She still owns the much smaller and less swank 4 bedroom and 3 pooper house next door–where where her ex-huzband and baby daddy Danny Keough lived–but since it remains on the market with an asking price of $1,995,000 it would seem she's not headed back there. Maybe she's shacking up with Momma Presley in Beverly Hills? Maybe she's moving to Nashville. Maybe it's all big fat wrong rumor and she's staying in the U.K. at Coe Hall. Who knows?

OWNERS: Charlize Theron and Stuart Townsend
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $30,000 / month
SIZE: 2,095 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama recently came across the listing for an ocean front house in Malibu, CA available to lease with a steep but not unheard of for Malibu asking price of $30,000 per month. It was late, Your Mama was tired and full of gin. The house looked familiar but we just couldn't focus our fuzzy mind to figure out just which famous person owns the house.

Exasperated with our failing memory, we took to the interweb where we discovered the ugly on the outside pretty on the inside residence belongs to Charlize Theron and her not nearly as successful former boy-beau, actor Stuart Townsend. The wonderfully unafraid to look 12 kinds of ugly for a part Miss Theron is not only a statuesque and uncommonly beautiful Academy Award winning actress (Monster, North Country, The Italian Job, The Cider House Rules) she is, as it turns out, a bit of a budding real estate mogul; She owns no fewer than 6 homes and condos in the Los Angeles area, a couple of which she owns with her ex-man-friend Mister Stuart.

In late 2009, after 8 or 9 years of messin' around, Miss Theron and Mister Townsend called it quits. Like the blizzard of other a-list Tinseltown actresses who will remain nameless but frequently rebound from long-term romance and marriage shockingly quickly, Miss Theron has done moved on too. It's reported the blond turned brunette is now gettin' with the much more macho but not any more successful actor Eric Thal who appeared Law & Order: Criminal Intent from 2001 through 2006. Since then, according to his Internet Movie Database resume, he's worked very little in the showbiz.

Since earning her Oscar, South African born Miss Theron has appeared in a bunch of films Your Mama ain't never heard of like Battle in Seattle and The Burning Plain. She's currently producing and starring in the Diablo Cody written/Jason Reitman directed Young Adult and it's rumored she'll be shaking her money maker as The Wicked Queen opposite Johnny Depp in the not yet filming Snow White and the Huntsman.

Lucky Miss Theron doesn't even need to make a damn movie to bring in boo-coo bucks and keep her bills paid up and on time. No siree, children. Thanks to her smoldering good looks and outrageous success, Miss Theron reportedly rakes in two million clams a year for endorsing Christian Dior's J'Adore terlit water and another $2,500,000 a year for her endorsement contract with Swiss made Raymond Weil watches

According to property records, Miss Theron purchased her first home in Los Angeles in June of 1998 when she shelled out $1,650,000 for a 5,005 square foot walled and gated Mediterranean style mansion in the star-studded Outpost Estates neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills. Some time ago, one of Your Mama's many real estate spies whispered in out ear that Miss Theron had embarked on a major renovation of the property that may or may not be completed by now.

Some of Miss Theron's neighbors in the Outpost Estates include homes owned by Gore Vidal, Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy, and Orlando Bloom. Until recently Scarlett Johansson owned a house on the same street as Miss Theron until she sold it at a gut churning $3,000,000 loss.

In April of 2000, Miss Theron bought a modest 1925 Spanish charmer in West Hollywood for $519,000. The hedged and gated 1,539 square foot house, located walking distance to the Beverly Center, has just 2 bedrooms and 1 pooper according to the Los Angeles County tax man.

Perhaps paid for with monies earned on her über successful pair of 2003 films (The Italian Job, Monster), Miss Theron and her man-friend Mister Townsend bought themselves a beach bungalow in The Bu. Records reveal that in January of 2003 the erstwhile couple laid out $3,495,000 to purchase an oceanfront home on La Costa Beach from actor Steven Weber.

Current listing information for the house, available to let for a not insubstantial thirty grand a month, reveals the white stucco and red tile roof residence measures 2,095 square feet and includes a total of 3 bedrooms and 3.5 poopers. One of the bedrooms has a private entrance, which Your Mama thinks is just dee-voonly perfect for overnight guests like our practically feral b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau who, when she comes for a visit, has the troubling tendency to drag any ol' cat home with her at night. This way, her "friends"–about whom she always tells Your Mama just need to come in to use the terlit–wouldn't have to traipse through our living room on the way to Fiona's "terlit."

Anyhoo, like most houses in Malibu, Miss Theron and Mister Stuart's beach bungalow sits on a tight lot cheek to jowl with the neighboring properties. The house, the oldest house on La Costa Beach according to listing information, has charcoal colored slate flooring throughout the lower level that includes a cozy living room with fireplace and an ocean view window seat and a lanai–or sun porch or whatever–wrapped on three sides with wood-framed floor to ceiling glass panels that slide open to the seaside deck.

The day-core, a colorful and inviting hodge-podge of high and low, inexpensive and expensive, appeals to Your Mama because it actually looks like the (beach) residence of an actual person. A rich, actual person, but a real person none the less rather than looking like it was all done up by a nice, gay decorator.

Maximum use was squeezed out of the narrow dining room room with it's built in bench seating with olive green cushions and tough wearing canvas throw cushions for extra comfort. Miss Theron and Mister Stuart, clearly no slave to any specific or restrictive decorative dialect, suspended a funky chandelier over the extra-long and rustic and long farmhouse table and hung a couple dozen over-sized antique skeleton keys on the wall for visual interest in the manner of artwork.

The kitchen has poured concrete cabinets and counter tops, glossy black doors on the lower cabinets, open shelving up top, a a sexy six-burner Viking range. Your Mama can get down with Miss Theron and Mister Stuart's too cluttered counter tops because all that cockamamie crap on the counter actually gives the place a homey lived in look that we find seductive. However, we're deeply saddened and decoratively disheartened to see that Miss Theron and Mister Stuart hung a dangerous looking pot rack hanging directly over the sink. We can only hope that this crime of kitchen day-core hasn't been repeated in all of Miss Theron's many residences.

The small but adequately sized ocean view master bedroom upstairs has honey-colored hardwood floors, a fireplace with a minimalist concrete surround, a wall-mounted boob-toob, and a private pooper with sea foam blue tile work and a soaking tub for two set into a bay window through which the ocean can be seen. The simply furnished bedroom has a custom built white tufted headboard surrounded by built in shelves filled with actual books for a change, a Jute rug, a credenza we would d.i.e. for, and canvas colored curtains that slide over the beachy matchstick blinds

The hardworking backyard deck, far more contemporary than the exterior of the house–we keep thinking that the carpets don't match the drapes– wraps around the back of the house with steps down to the sand and shore includes a sunken hot tub, built-in bench seating for sunset watching, a ping-pong table, fire-pit, sunbathing loungers, and a simple structure that hold strips of bright orange fabric panels that can be opened or closed depending on how Miss Theron and/or Mister Stuart wish to create or eliminate shade.

Other tidbits and morsels at the unassuming beach house include a drop down tee-vee, sound system security cameras, a walled front courtyard and single car garage, and a cute little space under the deck to hang beach toys.

The year after buying her beach house with Mister Townsend, in July of 2004, Miss Theron forked over an even-steven $3,000,000 for a 2,764 square foot house privately situated down a long private drive off of the famed and fabulous Mulholland Drive. A brief examination of the property records and Your Mama is somewhat certain that Mister Stuart has no direct ownership of this 3 bedrooms and 3 pooper property. Perhaps this is where Miss Theron's mother lives? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

In December of 2005, Miss Theron bought a second house on the very same West Hollywood street where she bought a wee nest in April of 2000. This time Miss Theron layed out $1,843,000 for a 2,019 square foot Spanish style casa with 4 bedrooms and 3 poopers.

The most perplexing and seemingly irrational real estate choice Miss Theron has made was in September of 2007 when she scooped up a 2,350 square foot penthouse doo-plex at the celebrity friendly Broadway Hollywood building smack in the heart of Hollywood. Other famous condo owners in the building include Jason Statham, Danny Masterson and 30-year old Wilmer Valderrama who may or may not have been dating 18-year old Disney darling Demi Lovato before she got herself up in the rehab facility recently.

Property records show the Miss Theron paid a rather stunning $2,760,500 for the lofty-like corner condo that has 2 bedrooms, 2 poopers, a living room surrounded by windows and views up and down Hollywood Boulevard, two small terraces on the first floor and a larger terrace on the second floor with an outdoor fireplace and private access to the building's residents only rooftop swimming pool.

At the same time Miss Theron was signing the deed's dotted line for her penthouse doo-plex, Mister Townsend–who was at that time still her one and only–paid $1,255,000 for the open plan (and single level) 1 bedroom and 1 pooper penthouse loft-condo next door. The "L" shaped unit has a trio of French doors that open to a north facing terrace that connects to one of the terraces off Miss Theron's condo pied a terre. Perhaps now that Mister Townsend got put out of Miss Theron's Sugar Momma Land, this is where he's shacking up? Could be. Maybe not. We don't know.

Your Mama has no idea if Miss Theron and Mister Townsend proceeded to spend additional funds to remodel and combine the two units and we can't even imagine why Miss Theron and Mister Stuart would spend a nearly four million dollars combined to buy up a couple of condos located less than 2.5 miles from their Outpost Estates mansion at all. However, if we've said it twice we've said it more times than we can count that: Who are we to understand the wacky real estate ways of the rich and famous?

listing photos: Coldwell Banker Previews

SELLER: Nina Garcia and David Conrod
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $8,500,000
SIZE: 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Our friend and informant Hot Chocolate regularly sends Your Mama links to posh properties in New York City that catch her fancy. Recently, our Miss Chocolate sent over the 411 on a sprawling two-unit combination apartment on East 66th Street that just hit the market with a fat asking price of $8,500,000. A little peep and poke around the property records revealed to Your Mama that the well-groomed if somewhat awkwardly laid out pre-war residence belongs to financier David Conrod–a Managing Director at the hoity-toity Guggenheim Partners–and his far more famous wife, fashion journalist turned reality tee-vee star Nina Garcia.

Lanvin loving Miz Garcia, born in Barranquilla, Colombia and educated in Boston, Paris and New York City, is the privileged daughter of a globe trotting shipping tycoon father and a fashion maven mother who, according to a recent profile of Miz Garcia in the New York Times, pranced about in Pucci and Céline.

Miz Garcia got into the glamour bizness in the late 1980s when she worked it as a publicity gurl for the Perry Ellis label, during the reign of glad rag wünderkind Marc Jacobs. She quickly moved on to fashion journalism. Miz Garcia started out as the low gal on the sartorial publication totem pole at the now defunct Mirabella. She later moved over to the more fashion forward Elle where she successfully navigated the treacherous internal politicking and became the powerful Fashion Director in the year 2000. Amid a lot of in-fighting, name-calling and spit-balling, Miz Garcia was unceremoniously ousted from Elle in April of 2008. She was very quickly–and quite wisely–scooped up by the people at the venerable Marie Claire, where she currently plies her trade and industry knowledge as the Fashion Director.

Miz Garcia is, of course, best known as the eye rolling, tough talking and tawny skinned judge on Project Runway, a gal with a meticulously tussled mane of highlighted hair who dishes out smart but often snippy and astringently brusque criticism of the clothes concocted by the show's melodramatic melange of contestants. She is, to use a cliché fashion-ism, fabulous, far more entertaining even than that other eye rolling, tough talking and tawny skinned judge on Project Runway Michael Kors.

Property records show that in November of 2005 the currently preggers with her second child Miz Garcia and her man-mate Mister Conrod forked over $3,700,000 for the larger of the two units that make up their combination co-op. In June of 2006 they snatched up the smaller adjacent apartment for $1,221,900. A few quick flicks of the well worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that the well-heeled couple's total outlay for the not yet combined units came to $4,921,900. Presumably they spent a lot more moolah to merge the two cribs into one commodious apartment with a couple of ungainly and unfortunate floor plan moments. More on that later.

The building, an exuberantly ornate and intricate architectural combination of Elizabethan and Flemish Gothic details, was built in 1906 and lords over a very bizzy but exceedingly stylish corner of Madison Avenue, one of the most well-known and insanely expensive retail strips in all of the world. Miz Garcia, a clotheshorse with a clean lined and frivolity-free fashion sense, need only step out her doorman building to be surrounded by the chic big ticket boo-teeks of Oscar De La Renta, Giorgio Armani, Nicole Miller, Emmanuel Ungaro, Valentino, BCBG Max Azria, Isaac Mizrahi, Chanel, Hervé Léger–breathe, breathe, breathe–La Perla Dolce & Gabbana, and Jill Sander plus the high-priced jewelers Fred Leighton, Bulgari, and Cartier. And that, puppies, is just within a two-block walk of Miz Garcia's fancy front door.

According to listing information, the building's board requires a hefty but hardly unusual 50% down payment and the 4 bedroom and 3.5 pooper apartment carries monthly maintenance and common charges of $4,080. While thoroughly modernized with state of the art amenities and open plan public spaces, the pre-war pad retains much of its historical interest and architectural magic such as the magnificent and tall 12 over 12 double hung windows that exacerbate the height of the already lofty 11.5-foot ceilings.

A private hall leads to the front door that opens into a long entry vestibule with two windows that look into the building's courtyard. Opposite the front door the entry vestibule gives way to an over-sized corner living room with hardwood floors and fireplace. It appears to Your Mama that the original living room was combined with an adjacent room to create a 24-foot wide and 29-foot long prairie-like space with an impressive row of five south-facing picture windows.

Dee-voon double pocket doors separate the generously proportioned formal dining room from both the living room and entrance hall. The sparse barely there day-core, the bare bulb over the table, and the fixtures in the ceiling that light the unadorned walls do not–we can promise the children–suggest that Miz Garcia does not have the good sense to hang some artwork and a too-expensive show stopping chandelier in the dining room. Au contraire mon frères. These things indicate to Your Mama that the snazzy Conrod-Garcia clan have already packed up their fancy chandeliers, good artworks and other dynamite decorative doo-dads and decamped for elsewhere. where we do not know.

Your Mama has not an iota if Miz Garcia plans to keep the ten straight backed antique chairs covered in emerald green velvet that surround the clean-lined contemporary dining room table, but iffin she opts to not we're hoping she'll donate all ten of those mouth watering chairs to Your Mama's Private Fund for Our Future Dining Room Day-core.

The Garcia-Conrod kitchen may be on the wee side but it's well equipped with top-of-the-line appliances and boasts an itty-bitty breakfast room. A hallway, where a stacked washer/dryer has been stuck up into a closet, extends back from the kitchen where a guest room with built-in cabinetry and a puny closet shares a three-quarter pooper with a small staff room that has no closet at all.

Your Mama is all good with the layout of the more public areas of the house, but things get klutzy when it comes to the private quarters that open off the wide corridor that snakes awkwardly west from the living room to the semi-circular library where four gigantic windows look south down Madison and west down East 66th Street towards Central Park just one block away. Unfortunately because the Conrod-Garcia apartment sits on a low floor, the views from the library are obstructed and marred by criss-crossing wires and traffic lights.

Things get really ugly between the living room and the library where a clunky cluster of rooms includes a well-placed powder pooper, a bedroom with walk-in closet that shares tight terliting facilities with the library and, much or our perplex and dismay, a divided master suite is comprised of a bedroom and custom-fitted walk-in closet on one side of the hallway and a second custom-fitted walk in closet and dee-luxe pooper on the other. This means that when Miz Garcia wakes in the middle of the night and needs to relieve herself, she must exit her bedroom with its elegant seal gray silk wall to wall carpeting, cross the corridor where she could be seen by her children and/or her staff, and pass through a custom fitted walk-in closet in order to get to the damn terlit. Oh, hell no. For eight and some million clams Your Mama refuses to have to cross a public hallway in order to do our bizness. No way, no how.

Listen chickens, Your Mama is well aware that for many rich and famous folks getting a new bambino often means buying a new crib. However and because Your Mama lurvs us some Nina Garcia, we're going to try and save missy-hoo-hoo a little bit of money by giving he mid-section of her combined unit co-operative a bit of a re-org (shown below) so that it makes more sense and so that Miz Garcia would not have to move iffin she didn't really want to move...although we suspect she really wants to move otherwise she'd just, well, do a remodel.

The first thing Your Mama would do is to restore the wall between the original living room and what was originally a bedroom or possibly a library. While it erases some of drama of the existing airplane hangar sized living room, the new living room remains impress the guests long at 29 feet and provides a smaller less formal room where the Garcia-Conrod kiddies can watch Barney or the Teletubbies or whatever other damn fool thing today's toddlers watch on the tee-vee.

Your Mama would not mess with the dining room, kitchen, breakfast room, and laundry closet. They are all perfectly acceptable, even for a very large apartment. Even though they share a single pooper we'd not bother to reconfigure the guest room and staff room either. Chances are that Miz Garcia does not have a live-in domestic–so few modern people do–and iffin she does she ought to just do the right damn thing and turn over both the staff room and the guest room to him or her. How can one really justify making the minimum wage gurl live up in less than 75 square feet when the rest of the family lives so large, you know?

Anyhoo, we'd also leave the powder pooper alone but convert what's currently marked on the floor plan as the master bath to a smaller, but still dee-luxe hall bathroom to be shared by the two family bedrooms carved out of the space presently occupied by the master bedroom, the attached walk-in closet and a portion of the second bedroom.

The newly formed master suite would then be pushed down to a more secluded and cohesive location at the far end of the apartment where the current semi-circular library and existing tiny terlit room become the actual master bedroom. What remains of the existing second bedroom would be fashioned into a large pooper and the existing walk-in closet–formerly located across the hall from the master bedroom but now located within the confines of the master suite–would be enlarged.

The result would be a 3 bedroom and 2.5 pooper residence with additional guest room, staff room and pooper behind the kitchen. This new configuration would allow for private bedrooms for both of the young Garcia-Conrod children, a lavish bath with separate tub, shower and terlit cubicle and one quite large if not huge custom fitted walk-in closet where Miz Garcia hang her clothing, like all good fashion people, in a color coordinated manner.

photo (exterior): Property Shark
listing photos and floor plan: Corcoran