Dasmarka Real Estate

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

BUYER: Demi Lovato
LOCATION: Sherman Oaks, CA
PRICE: $2,250,000
SIZE: 4,053 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: First there was the brouhaha that surrounded the break up of Disney darling Demi Lovato (Sonny With a Chance, Camp Rock, Disney 365) and squeaky clean tween heart throb Joe Jonas. Lovely reports quickly followed that announced that the two remain thick as thieves. Despite the bust up, much to the delight of their legions of freako-fans, they embarked on an international tour together, as friends. Next came all the glowing gossip glossy reports about what a nice young woman little Miss Lovato is, so nice that on (or around) her 18th birthday she bought her family a multi-million dollar house in suburban Los Angeles.

Then, little Miss Lovato's publicity worm turned. Last week, little Miss Lovato bailed out of her international tour with the Jonas Brothers and entered a rehab facility for–according to her spokespeople–emotional and physical issues that include cutting and some sort of eating disorder. As if that weren't awful enough, some college student in some Texas town nobody but Texans have ever heard of went public claiming he spent an evening with little Miss Lovato last year during which she cut and snorted lines of cocaine like a damn pro, leading some to speculate that little Miss Lovato's issues are more extensive than originally revealed by her people. Why this moe-ron in the T-X went to the press with this salacious information is beyond Your Mama, but it looks a little bit like someone attempting to grab their Warholian 15 minutes any desperate way they can. Whatever else is to be gained by his mouthing off?

The icing on little Miss Lovato's bad news cake, perhaps, are the rumors and fresh reports that prior to getting herself up in the rehab, 18-year old little Miss Lovato was dating 30-year old ack-tor Wilmer Valderrama, a grown man with a bit of a history dating troubled young starlet-types including currently in rehab Lindsay Lohan and faux-punk chick Avril Lavigne. Mister Valderrama's representative denies any romance with the barely legal little Miss Lovato, which we hope is true because Your Mama doubts Mister Valderrama would privately have much use for little Miss Lovato's public pledge of virginal chastity.

Anyhoo, as fascinatin' as little Miss Lovato's topsy-turvy life may be, let's get on back around to the real estate matter at hand, the house that little Miss Lovato so generously and recently purchased for her family. It certainly isn't news that little Miss Lovato bought a new crib–she's been yakking about it to the tabloids and gossip glossies for months–but thanks to those bizzy boys at Celebrity Address Aerial Your Mama has learned that little Miss Lovato's new digs, tucked into the foothills of Sherman Oaks, CA walking distance to the Galleria, cost the teenager a very grown up $2,250,000.

Listing information for the walled and gated 1928 Spanish style casa shows the 3-story main house measures 4,053 square feet. The 4 bedrooms and 4.5 poopers include a jr. master suite–that's a slightly larger than average sized bedroom with private facilities–and a proper master suite comprised of bedroom with fireplace, private pooper with separate soaking tub and glass enclosed steam shower, dual walk-in closets, kitchenette, and a small covered terrace that overlooks the back yard and has views across Sherman Oaks and the San Fernando Valley.

The formal living room has hardwood floors, a fireplace, arched window and a vaulted ceiling with exposed trusses. A tiled fountain in the slim front courtyard at the front of the house can be seen through the large arched window in the formal dining room. The breakfast room opens into the u-shaped kitchen with its overly-ordinary beige tile floors, white tile counter tops with decorative accents that (unfortunately) depict woven chains of leaves, and high grade stainless steel appliances that include a mac-daddy six burner Viking brand range with two ovens and a griddle for flipping flapjacks.

Other rooms in the main house include: A family room with built-in media center, very 1970s sunken wet bar, and kiva-style corner fireplace; An office suite with built-in desks and file cabinets; A cedar lined sauna that seats 4-6 people; And inside laundry facilities with laundry chute. Additional amenities include central vacuum, heat and air, plaster walls, intercom, security and sprinkler systems, low-flow terlits and built-in barbecue center.

The backyard, a somewhat haphazard tree shaded jumble of palm trees, birds of paradise, banana trees and other tropical jungle-like foliage, tumbles down from the terrace at the back of the house and includes a whole mess of tile and stone patios, tiered gardens, a grotto style heated swimming pool with waterfall and built in slide, a spa tucked down into some fake boulders, a couple patches of grass, and a sport court surrounded by a tacky chain link fence.

The detached 820 square foot guest cottage, which little Miss Lovato reportedly occupies or occupied before she got shipped of to the rehab, sits atop the 3-car garage and has private access via a back alley so little Miss Lovato–and perhaps Mister Valderrama iffin the rumors are true–can come and go as she pleases without her parents being all up in her bizness. The wee, tile-roofed residence has hardwood floors, a corner fireplace in the living room, a full kitchen with black and white tile counter tops and honey colored cabinetry, small dining area, laundry closet with stacked machines, separate bedroom and full bathroom with tile accents and a tacky green sink that Your Mama hopes Miss Lovato has the good decorative sense to rip out and replace with something less thematic.

Iffin little Miss Lovato's career gets stuck in professional molasses or hits the skids entirely, according to listing information, the guest house could provide a rental income of $2,400 per month. Now, children, Your Mama isn't sure exactly just what sort of person lays out $2,400 a month to rent a one bedroom guest cottage in Sherman damn Oaks, but apparently there are those who do just that.

Your Mama should not have to remind the children not to cat around this celebrity home or any other celebrity home because they don't need nobody up on their doorstep doing the doorbell ditch or trying to peep them as they pull out of their damn driveway. Especially this little Miss Lovato gurl who is going to need some time, peace and quiet to get her psychological things together when she gets out of the rehab. Okaaay?

Until moving to their new digs in Sherman Oaks, little Miss Lovato and her family leased a 6 bedrom and 6+ pooper Mediterranean style mini-mansion in the upscale Los Angeles community of Toluca Lake where just about every pre-teen and tweenage Disney star and their family currently live or have lived including Miley Cyrus, the Duff sisters, Ashley Tisdale, Zac Efron, and the Jonas Brothers.

listing photos: Keller Williams Studio City

BUYER: Dustin Lance Black
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,455,000
SIZE: 2,866 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Last night, while settin' on the sofa, minding our own bizness and trying to hear if our neighbors had returned from their cruise to the Cayman Islands, we received a thoughtful missive from the bizzy boys at Celebrity Address Aerial who kindly informed Your Mama that screenwriter/director/producer/LGBT rights activist Dustin Lance Black had done bought himself a bigger and better crib in Los Angeles, CA.

Mister Black, a reformed Mormon, writes and co-produces the hit series Big Love about a harried polygamist businessman with a Jesus complex, three complicated wives and too many troubled children to bother to count. In 2008, at the tender age of 34, he received an Academy Award for his original screenplay for the movie Milk, a film in which Your Mama's pal Falsetta Knockers had a wee part. Winning the little gold statuette catapulted the relatively unknown Mister Black to plum projects such as the Gus Van Sant directed film adaptation of Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and the original screenplay for the much anticipated Clint Eastwood directed biopic Hoover about J. Edgar Hoover, the low-down, conniving and cross-dressing Director of the FBI who will be portrayed by Leo DiCaprio.

If he wasn't already a household name among gossip glossy aficionados, he quickly became one in June of 2009 when naughty naughty naughty but newly reformed gossip blogger Perez Hilton posted lurid and explicit photographs of Mister Black engaged in unsafe intimate homosexual relations. Unlike some of these other tawdry beehawtchas in Hollywood who allow and profit from the distribution of their "private" sexual moments but whine about it at every chance they (publicly) can, Mister Black was authentically mortified at the breach of his bedroom door. Mister Black filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against a photo agency for the unlawful distribution of the pictures that he claims were illegally obtained. Honestly, we're not sure the current status of that legal matter.

Anyhoo, property records reveal that in October of 2004, on the heels of directing and producing the documentary My Life With Count Dracula and a number of episodes of the reality program Faking It, Mister Black shelled out $525,000 to purchase a petite 928 square foot house in the Hollywood Hills with just 2 bedrooms and 1 pooper. Records suggest the house still belongs to Mister Black and it does not currently appear on the open market. Now children, Your Mama does not know Mister Black–nor did we view the photos of him nekkid and doing dirty things with that boy–and we certainly don't know what his plans are for the old house but Your Mama advises the budding Hollywood player to keep it as an investment. If he takes some of the pay from his next well-paying job to pay off the mortgage, he'll have a tidy monthly income should his career fall into a bit of a sinker at some point in the future.

As his star grew, Mister Black's real estate britches have gotten a little bigger so a new house more commensurate with his increasing success was in order. Listing information and property records reveal that Mister Black must have really wanted his new nest because he paid $1,455,000 for a house listed at $1,389,000. This suggests there was at least one other interested party who made a solid offer.

The 1924 English Tudor style residence, at the quiet end of a very bizzy street sandwiched between Hollywood and the Sunset Strip, was recently taken down to the studs and given a full face-lift and makeover. Set behind high mature hedges, the two-story house measures 2,866 square feet and includes 4 bedrooms and 4.5 poopers. A detached garage at the tail end of a gated driveway at the rear of the property was converted to an unpermitted–meaning not exactly legal–1 bedroom and 1 pooper guesthouse/poolhouse/possible office space.

Sadly and although there is a lovely covered portico at the front of the house, Mister Black's new home lacks a proper entrance hall. Immediately upon opening the front door one is presented with the base of a straight staircase with a semi-circular landing. Unfortunately for Mister Black, the placement of the staircase–bottom steps that directly face the front door–is bad for the Feng Shui because it encourages all the money in the house to roll down the front stairs and out of the house. Your Mama recommends Mister Black get a qualified Feng Shui queen up in there quick to help him set out some mirrors, plants and chimes to balance things out, help keep the qi a-flowin' and the money from running right out the damn door.

The adequate but hardly large living room has hardwood floors the color of burnt sugar, a fireplace and a single a fat column that separates it from the formal dining room that opens through French doors to a pergola-shaded patio at the back of the house. The nearby, all-new eat-in kitchen, which has a stoopid tee-vee mounted up into the corner of the breakfast nook, opens to the same pergola-shaded patio as the dining room. Dark custom cabinetry with mottled flax and beige granite counter tops and high-grade stainless steel appliances ring the room and a gigantic rectangular work island in the center of the room has a homier but bacteria collecting butcher block counter top.

The burnt sugar colored hardwood floors seen throughout the first floor continue right on up the stairs to the second floor where the long and narrow master bedroom overlooks the backyard and has a damn flat screen tee-vee awkwardly affixed to the wall and a custom fitted walk-in closet. The attached bathroom has a spa tub, glass enclosed steam shower–with a built-in seat y'all with note–double vanity and a cute octagonal window that tilts open for airing out the facilities.

The aforementioned pergola shaded and tile floored terrace at the back of the house steps down to the small but decently sized for the city back yard. A long, gated driveway along the side of the house leads up to a large concrete parking pad and the aforementioned unpermitted guesthouse/poolhouse/potential office space. The opposite side of the yard has a small patch of grass and an itty-bitty square-shaped and heated plunge pool surrounded by a tile terrace. Your Mama's beady eyes to not espy an outdoor spa. That don't bother someone like Your Mama who equates spa tubs with being boiled alive in your own filth, but for almost a million five we can promise you the Dr. Cooter would require a privately situated spa tub in the back yard.

Your Mama can't imagine what it was about this house that caused Mister Black to pay $66,000 over the asking price when he could have chosen something a bit more privately situated where he wouldn't have to back his car out of the driveway onto a bizzy street. However, five minutes clacking around the interweb revealed to Your Mama that the real estate pickins are, in fact, pretty slim in the $1,250,000 to $1,500,000 range in the immediate vicinity where Mister Black bought his house, particularly if you want something move-in ready with nearly 3,000 square feet and a swimming pool. So maybe he didn't do so bad after all.

P.S. Now listen, carrot sticks, don't Your Mama nor nobody else want to hear any self-righteous real estate piss and vinegar about how for a million five in Nameyervillage, USA a body can buy a 10,000 square foot mansion on 20 acres. Hogwash! Iffin Mister Black had wanted a 10,000 square foot mansion on 20 acres in Nameyervillage, USA, he would have probably bought a damn house in Nameyervillage, USA. Okaaay?

listing photos: Keller Williams Realty Beverly Hills

SELLER: Renée Zelwegger
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $8,925,000
SIZE: 2 units that combined measure 5,000-ish square feet and include 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The list of unlucky in love leading ladees in Tinseltown who repeatedly ride and get tossed off the cruel merry-go-round of romance stretches for miles. The wee lassies, who all too frequently land hard (and publicly) on black top of fantasy and fairy tales include (but are far from limited to) Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jessica Simpson and, of course, the disturbingly sinewy former cheerleader and Oscar winning actress Renée Zellweger.

Among Miss Zellweger's dizzyingly long list of high profile and erstwhile paramours (and hook ups) we have actor Rory Cochrane, face-contorting comedian Jim Carrey to whom she was engaged, Matthew Perry, White Stripe Jack White, itty-bitty ten gallon hat wearing Kenny Chesney to whom she was married for about as long as it takes Your Mama to suck down half a pitcher of gin & tonics, former Beverly Hills 90210 stud Luke Perry, John Krasinki, music legend Paul McCartney, hotelier Andre Balazs, newsman Dan Abrams and, since sometime in June of 2009, scruffy-chinned easy-on-the-eyes actor Bradley Cooper, currently one of Hollywood's hotsiest totsies.

Squinty-eyed Miss Zellweger has long maintained a residence in New York City but recent reports reveal she's fixin' to put The Big Apple in her rear view mirror and heaved her pair of pretty apartments in a beautiful pre-war boo-teek townhouse building on East 82nd Street at the corner of Madison Avenue in New York City on the market with a combined asking price of $8,925,000. According to Miss Zellweger's paid spokesperson, she's opted to let go of her New York City digs because she plans to spend more time on the west coast, presumably with her man-friend Mister Cooper.
The larger of Miss Zellweger's Upper East Side cribs (above), currently listed at $6,975,000 with monthly maintenance and common charge of $2,611, was purchased in April of 2007. Property records show the apartment, a somewhat awkward combination of 3 smaller apartments, was purchased in two separate transactions that totaled $5,400,000. According to current listing information the larger unit measures around 3,750 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 3.5 windowless poopers.

The richly ornamented but oddly configured 2nd floor spread has 13-foot ceilings, original hardwood floors, two entrances, and an enfilade of rooms that front to back include a large living room with fireplace, a smaller library, another large living room that's likely to be be used as a dining room, and a 23+ foot long solarium that looks out and down on bizzy and loud Madison Avenue. A rabbit warren-like hallway weaves and winds from the secondary foyer, which opens into the second living room/dining room, past the master bedroom, through a corner of the windowless walk-in closet sized kitchen with its adjacent laundry room, and down and around to the two guest bedrooms, one of which is quite small and both of which have private poopers.

Just over a year after picking up the larger unit, Miss Zellweger dropped another hefty $2,800,000 to purchase the 1200-ish square foot one bedroom and one pooper apartment next door. It's not clear if Miss Zellweger planned to combine the apartments into one 5,000 square foot sprawler or if she just preferred having guest quarters completely separate from her private suite of rooms.
The elegantly proportioned and elaborately ornamented smaller apartment (above), listed at $1,950,000 with monthly maintenance and common charges of $1,100, includes a proper and generous foyer, a small but adequate city-sized kitchen with window, a hallway with closet and windowed pooper that properly separates the fireplaced boo-dwar from the more public spaces.

While listing information shows the larger apartment devoid of any furniture or day-core, the magnificently commodious 25+ foot by 24+ foot living room of the smaller unit with its fireplace flanked by built-in bookshelves and graceful bow-fronted bay window, is shown all done up and did over with putty colored walls, dazzling white dentil moldings and window frames, a hulking red tufted sofa with dainty turned feet, a pair of matching tufted armchairs, black and white framed photographs, an old victrola, a black baby grand piano–does Miss Thing actually play the damn pie-anna or is it just day-core designed to impress the guests?–and a pool table. That's right, a damn pool table.

A few quick flicks of the well worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that if Miss Zellweger's crack real estate agent manages to get full price offers on both apartments, she stands to lose a not inconsiderable $850,000+ on the sale of the smaller apartment and gain a substantial $1,575,000 on the larger. A few more bead flicks shows that Miss Z. stands to earn $725,000 (less the fat real estate fees) iffin she can get full price sales. But let's be honest chickens, that seems unlikely don't it?

It seems unlikely that Miss Zellweger will quit the East Coast entirely given that she owns a vintage farmhouse compound in Pomfret, CT she bought in 2004 for $1,320,000 as well as another vintage farmhouse in East Hampton, NY she picked up in April of 2003 for $2,300,000.

On the Left Coast, Miss Zellweger used to own a house in the Hollywood Hills she bought in March of 2000 for $1,875,000 from from Wallflowers lead singer Jakob Dylan, the son music icon Bob Dylan. She sold that a couple of years later and high-tailed it to a big house in Bel Air. She didn't care for the big house and the fat mortgage in Bel Air and less than a year after buying the celebrity-style estate, she flipped it back on the market and sold it in July of 2003 for $7,000,000 to Will & Grace alum Debra Messing.

She did not, as far as Your Mama knows, own another an abode in Los Angeles until early 2010 when real estate rumors ran rampant that Miss Zellweger and her man-friend actor Bradley Cooper scooped up a contemporary house in the Rustic Canyon area in Pacific Palisades for $4,700,000. It seems unlikely the pair would have purchased the pad together and it's unclear to Your Mama if Miss Zellweger bought the residence on her own or if perhaps Mister Cooper bought it all on his own. Maybe they're all entangled up in each other's financial bizness even though they've barely been dating a year and did buy it together. Stranger things have happened.

For his part, Mister Cooper (All About Steve, He's Just Not That Into You, New York, I Love You, The Hangover) owns of a wee bachelor pad in Venice, CA as well as a triplex townhouse in the Dogtown Station condo complex, also in Venice.

listing photos and floor plans: Corcoran

Listen puppies, Your Mama has Your Mama's Momma up in our house for the weekend and we got the Sister Cooter coming over for a dinner of roasted chicken and root vegetables so we're slim on time and energy. However, in an effort to keep your real estate appetites whetted we figured we'd toss up a little bit o' floor plan porn to get you through the Sunday afternoon blues.

We don't know who owns this 13-room triplex penthouse in New York City that sits atop a fine but second tier pre-war Park Avenue building. The building, erected in 1927, has an somewhat over-articulated facade with consistent fenestration, rope quoins and a fancy cornice all of which are somewhat marred by the myriad of air-conditioners sticking out of many of the windows. While this is far from unusual in even some of the best buildings in New York, it does take (more than) a little something away from the elegance of the exterior. Anyoo, the 14 story building, which has only about 35 apartments, offers full time doormen requires 50% cash down payment.

The triplex penthouse, listed at $18,500,000 with monthly fees of $11,387, includes a well conceived floor plan with 4 family bedrooms and 4.5 poopers. There are also, according to the floor plan, two cell-sized staff rooms tucked up behind the kitchen that share a single terliting and bathing facility.

The main floor has private elevator vestibule, a coupe of closets for guests' coats, a large but not over-eager foyer, formal living room with fireplace, dining room and a library/den where–a bit awkwardly–the powder pooper is located.

The services quarters consist of a butler's panty that connects the dining room to the kitchen, a reasonably sized eat-in affair, laundry facilities, the two aforementioned cell-sized staff rooms, and an office with attached pooper.

The upper level has four bedrooms, well separated for privacy. The two bedrooms that do not open to the thickly planted terrace share one terliting facility, a third has terrace access and a pooper of its own and the master bedroom includes a walk in closet and an adequate but hardly over-sized bathroom. The children will note that the apartment has what our friend Hot Chocolate calls PPP. That's Proper Pooper Placement. Each of the bathrooms–besides the one stranded in the center of the apartment in the downstairs office–has a window for proper ventilation. How much do we love that?

The octagonal, top floor solarium, accessed by a spiral staircase hidden behind a door on the second floor landing, has a kitchen(ette), 270-degree views and access to a gigantic roof terrace with dramatic views up and down Park Avenue.

We're not thrilled that access to the wrap terrace on the second level is only through the bedrooms, and we're less than pleased that the only way to get up into the tower room is via a far from elegant spiral staircase and, of course, our dear but demanding housegurl Svetlana would insist we combine the two punishingly small staff rooms into one room. We'd also prefer the powder pooper be located in a less intimate location but, c'est la vie.

It ain't perfect, puppies, but–while Your Mama wouldn't dream of living up on Park Avenue even if we could pay out eighteen million for a triplex–as far as these ol' pre-war Park Avenue penthouses go, it's pretty damn good.

Now, off we go to cut up a rutabaga and, since both Your Mama and Your Mama's Momma are both thirsty, mix up an ice cold pitcher of gin and tonics. We suggest you do the same.