Dasmarka Real Estate

Listen, turtle doves, every now and then Your Mama gets some unintentionally incorrect information on the real estate doings of the rich and famous. The reality is this whole celebrity real estate thing is far from an exact science, which means sometimes we veer off course and make a mistake. Yesterday, we got it wrong. This is our correction.

Last week celebrity real estate gossip Richard Mineard reported in the Montecito Journal that one of the newest high profile property owners in the star studded seaside enclave of Montecito, CA is Hollywood hot shot Drew Barrymore. Shortly after Mister Mineard let Miss Barrymore's real estate cat out of the bag Your Mama heard from a Montecito local whom we'll call Bea Aman who provided Your Mama with listing information for a property that perfectly matched the description of the property in Mister Mineard's report: 3.5 acres, three story Mediterranean mansion, 6 bedrooms 5 bathrooms, first listed at $7,900,000 later lowered to $6,900,000. Based on the identical descriptions of Mister Mineard and listing information for the estate in question we went ahead and typed our fingers to the nubbins on a screed about the child star turned wild child turned movie making mogul and the house we thought she bought. But alas...

Yesterday we received a covert communique from Suzie Saysitaintso who whispered in Your Mama's big ol' ear that a local real estate insider told her that Mister Mineards over at the Montecito Journal got it wrong wrong wrong. Miz Saysitaintso went on to snitch that Miss Barrymore did not buy the Riggs-designed residence we thought she had but rather another house just spitting distance away.

We quickly got on the horn to our impeccably knowledgeable friend and informant Lucy Spillerguts–which, in hind sight is exactly what we should have done from the get-go–who confirmed the real estate 411 provided by Suzie Saysitaintso.

This means all that brouhaha about Miss Barrymore's new crib in Montecito over the last few days was nothing but a lot of celebrity real estate steam. The real deal on Miss Barrymore's Montecito estate is as follows.

In early June of 2010 a trust that Miss Spillerguts swears is connected to Miss Barrymore purchased a 2+ acre estate on a quiet lane in Montecito, CA. Listing information shows the purchased property was last listed with an asking price of $6,900,000 and the folks at Zillow show it was sold for $5,705,000. Listing information also shows the multi-winged Monterey Colonial style mansion has five bedrooms, 6 full and 2 half poopers, 3 fireplaces, an attached garage with 4 bays and a 2-car detached garage with guesthouse or–as preferred by our house gurl Svetlana who sometimes likes to sneak men into her room at night–staff quarters above.

A massive oak tree in the center of a large circular drive shades the discreet front entry that opens into wood-floored entrance hall with lemon chiffon colored walls that Your Mama hopes Miss Barrymore's nice, gay decorator will do something about. The hard wood floors continue into the formal living room made cozy and somewhat masculine with fireplace, pine colored paneled walls and built-in book cases. Listing photos for the 6,000-ish square foot traditional mansion shows a formal dining room with paned windows that reach down to the floor and a library with wood floors, fireplace, dark stained wood paneling and built-in bookshelves. It looks like the sort of room a bizness man or a young female showbiz mogul like Miss Barrymore might smoke a cigar.

A long glassed-in lanai with basket weave pattern brick floor runs along the back of the house and overlooks a wide terrace with protected views of the secluded grounds that include a vast and amorphous patch of grass, avocado and citrus trees, and a walking path that meanders through thick and lush landscaping. Much to Your Mama's surprise and chagrin, the gated grounds do not, it would appear, have either a swimming pool or a tennis court.

The master suite, according to listing information, has "considerable dressing and bath areas" and opens to an oak and sycamore shaded private garden. The remainder of the bedrooms, some of which are suitable for flexible use, are contained in a large guest wing.

Breezy and free-spirited Miss Barrymore's story is a Tinseltown turnaround tale of epic proportions to be sure. Born into the deep roots of an American acting dynasty, she started up her ladder of fame as an infant when she appeared in a dog food commercial. In the early 1980s an impossibly cute and precocious 7-year old Miss Barrymore nabbed the part of Gertie in E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, a film directed by her godfather Steven Spielberg that instantaneously rocketed Miss Barrymore to international super-stardom and has grossed nearly half a billion bucks since its release.

It wasn't long before a pre-teen Miss Barrymore began to make the very adult rounds at debauched (and fabulous) nightclubs like Studio 54 and, at just seven years old, hosted Saturday Night Live. By the barely pubescent age of 14, Miss Barrymore was a smoking, drinking and coke snorting machine that attempted suicide and had herself emancipated from her less than conventional parents. Her reckless but oddly endearing ways continued into her late teens and early twenties when Miss Barrymore posed nekkid in the pages of Interview and Playboy magazines, received a second Golden Globe nomination (Guncrazy) and, on national tee-vee, with her back to the cameras, stood up on David Letterman's desk, did a stripper jig and quickly flashed her bra-less chee-chees to the slack-jawed delight of the middle-aged comedian.

Only in her mid-30s and a ladee who defiantly paves her own roads with an infectious giggle and a toothy grin, Miss Barrymore has gone from rebellious teen aged tragedy to showbiz icon and entertainment industry tycoon. In the mid-2000s she was one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood. Her films have grossed more than $2,300,000,000 and she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She was named Ambassador Against Hunger for the United Nations in 2007, shills cosmetics for CoverGirl and owns Flower Films, an enormously successful production company she runs with long time pal and producing partner Nancy Juvonen, a fresh faced blondie who hitched her love wagon to comedian Jimmy Fallon in 2007. Flower Films has pushed out a number of notable and high earning movies including Donnie Darko, the Charlie's Angels film franchise, 50 First Dates, He's Just Not That Into You and, most recently, Whip It! Say what any one might about Miss Barrymore and her wild and wacky ways but the admirably ambitious beehawtcha has earned the bank to buy and sell most of Hollywood and the five and some million smackers she's dumped on a fixer-upper estate in hoity-toity Montecito ain't nuthin' but chump change for this Hollywood heavyweight.

Since April of 2002 Miss Barrymore has lived primarily on a private promontory in the celebrity choked hills above Hollywood. Records show she shelled out $4,350,000 for a palm-tree dotted compound with a 7,756 square foot multi-winged ranch house with 4 bedrooms and 6 poopers. Her nearly neighbors in Los Angeles include Jason Schwartzman, Hayden Panettiere, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Holland Taylor, Adam Brody and Sheryl Crow.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty

WHO: Lindsay Lohan
WHAT: A House in Venice
HOW MUCH: $7,100 per month
HOW BIG: 3,100 square feet, 4, bedrooms 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yes, children, we know we are unfashionably late to this fiesta but brace yourselves anyway because in the interest of keeping up with the celebrity real estate Joneses Your Mama must discuss tabloid queen Lindsay Lohan and her new rental residence in Venice, CA.

As the world knows, Miss Lohan was sprung from the Betty Ford Center this week were she spent a few court ordered months drying out, sobering up and–Your Mama hopes–getting her damn head screwed on straight. By all accounts and about a billion reports Miss Lohan and her unnaturally turgid kisser did not return to the excessively cluttered 2-bedroom apartment in a Hollywood hi-rise that she'd been renting the last year or so but rather to a glass fronted contemporary single family house in Venice last listed with an asking price of $7,100 per month.

With the kind assistance of Babbling Babette Your Mama managed to tease a listing out of the internets for Miss Lohan's new loft-like rental residence located just a few short blocks from the freaky and fab Venice Beach Boardwalk where–for better and worse–there are more leather skinned roller skaters bobbing and weaving along the beach than anywhere else in the world.

The nearly new 3-story house has an airy living room with double height ceiling, poured concrete floors, a forged steel fireplace and a wall of huge windows and folding glass panels that open to a small south-facing patio pressed hard up against the sidewalk at the front of the property. While this makes for dramatic displays of southern light, it's not exactly the best choice for a gal who might want a wee bit of privacy from the paps and the public. But, let's be honest chickens, poor Miss Lohan needs the paps right now to keep her name in the news and to help resurrect her once promising but now moribund career.

Listing information for Miss Lohan's beach digs show there are 4 bedrooms and 3.5 poopers spread throughout the approximately 3,100 square foot abode. A well equipped kitchen has mahogany cabinetry, mosaic tile back splash and a full compliment of high grade stainless steel appliances even though Your Mama imagines that Miss Lohan is unlikely to fix more than a fried up up in there. A floating staircase with mahogany treads climbs up to a mezzanine office area that overlooks the living room. The children will note that the staircase does not appear to have a handrail, a situation that could get pretty dicey if Miss Lohan, bless her heart, falls of the wagon.

While the front of the house offers little in the way of real privacy–or at least the sort of privacy a thinking person might quite understandably think a pap magnet like Miss Lohan would want in the days and months after leaving rehab for the 49th time–the property does provide a roof terrace with city and mountain views and private parking for two cars that will allow Miss Lohan to enter and exit the residence without fear of having her naughty bits photographed as she steps out of a car.

Remember those days, bunnies, when all those celebutantes and celebutards where running around town in micro-minis with no panties and having their fully waxed vajayjays photographed by the paps? Let's not, pretty please, have a resurgence of that lurid gossip glossy trend.

Anyhoodles poodles, from her new perch in Venice Miss Lohan will begin to piece together the shattered pieces of her life and career. This might not be so simple as there are a myriad of reports that indicate that Miss Lohan's new crib sits right up next to that of her former ladee-lover–that would be celebrity DJ Sam Ronson–with whom she has had a tumultuous (and tragicomic) on again/off again relationship. Miss Ronson was reportedly overheard saying that Miss Lohan moving in next door was not planned and that she was pissed about the situation. If those reports are accurate–and we have no idea whatsoever if they are–then little Miss Lohan is looking more and more like a lunatic ex-lover who can't let sleeping dogs lie, iffin you know what we mean.

In all sincerity Your Mama wishes Miss Lohan all the best in her new sobriety. In that spirit we're going to offer the wee lassie some free and unsolicited advice: Keep your skinny ass out of the clubs. The moment you step a high-heeled foot in Voyeur or Forty Deuce or whatever damn club where the young, drunk and famous are hanging about is the moment Your Mama knows you ain't serious about staying sober. Seriously, gurl, get it together because this just may be your last chance to hold on to whatever shred of dignity you might have left.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker–Marina del Rey

With hundreds of homes available on the market today how can you make sure yours is the next to sell? Selling a home in a down market takes more planning and preparation but with help from me plus a little know-how it’s still possible to get a great response with these quick tips:

Price Is Everything

Without a doubt, the most important consideration is to price the house right - especially if you want a quick sale. When the market was red-hot homes sold fast so it is easy to forget that historically homes are on the market an average of six months before selling. Be realistic and work with your agent to price right.

Staging & Updating

You only have a few moments to sell your home to a new buyer. Make sure your home looks its best by updating paint, making small repairs and taking the time to properly stage your home for online and in-person viewing.

Pre-Qualify

Window-shopping is a popular past-time even when it comes to real estate. One of the benefits of working with an agent is the ability to preserve your valuable time and only entertain serious offers from qualified potential buyers.

Offer Incentives

Get noticed by offering buyer incentives. Buyer incentives are a welcome addition to any deal and include things like gift cards, LCD televisions, Home warranty or new appliances. Find out what tops the local “wish list” when it comes to amenities then calculate the cost of offering an incentive. They are an easy and effective way to capture the attention of potential buyers in a crowded market.

If you are thinking about selling your home contact me.

I pull out all the stops to sell your home.

Lonnie Snyder

REALTOR ®

Keller Williams Realty Southeast Sound

Phone: 206-406-2710

Lonnie Snyder is a full time real estate agent and REALTOR® with Keller Williams Realty specializing in Residential Real Estate for buyers and sellers in Washington's Kent, Renton, Newcastle and South Bellevue.

CORRECTION (January 4, 2010): This is not, as it turns out, the house that Miss Barrymore bought in Montecito, CA. While we stand buy our impressions and opinions about the architecture and design of this house, it was not–we repeat–it was not purchased by Miss Barrymore. For information on the house she actually did buy, please see our correction here.

BUYER: not Drew Barrymore
LOCATION: Montecito, CA
PRICE: $6,900,000
SIZE: 11,026 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 5 full and 3 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen, hunnies, we do not recommend any body actually do it but a person can not swing a damn cat in the wealthy seaside enclave of Montecito, CA without knocking a rich, famous or rich and famous person upside the head. High society types and other people of monetary means have flocked to the scenic coastal community since the late 1800s when they came in search of winter sun, salty sea air, mesmerizing vistas of the Pacific Ocean, and a near perfect Mediterranean climate.

An incomplete accounting of the lengthy list of current property owners with notable names in the fancy-pants Montecito area include Beanie Babies billionaire Ty Warner, actor/comedian/commentator Dennis Miller who recently put twenty million clams worth of Montecito area real estate on the market and actor Rob Lowe who recently had his newly built 20-room manse in Montecito photographed for Architectural Digest. Long time residents of Montecito include cinematic near-diety Kirk Douglas, actress and scion to a multi-billion dollar French fortune Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Seinfeld, The New Adventures of Old Christine) and the singular and sensational gingy comedienne Carol Burnett while newer homeowners include former vice-president/global warming crusader Al Gore bought big digs in Montecito just prior to the announcement of his separation from wife Tipper in June of 2010. As far as Your Mama knows–and we don't know much of anything–the current and undisputed reigning Monarch of Montecito is media tycoon Oprah Winfrey. In 2002 the multi-billionaire spent more than forty million dollars to convince the owners of a 23,000 square foot mansion–that was not actually for sale–to part with their fully landscaped 40+ acre spread that La Winfrey now calls The Promised Land.

The star studded community's newest celebrity home owner is–according to Montecito Journal's resident celebrity gossip Richard Mineards–child star turned wild child turned movie making mogul Drew Barrymore. According to Mister Mineards, Miss Barrymore recently snatched up an historic and may-jer Mediterranean Montecito mansion first listed at $7,900,000 and last listed with an asking price of $6,900,000.

An informant we'll call Bea Aman kindly and generously provided Your Mama with listing information for Miss Barrymore's new crib in Montecito that reveals it was designed by renowned ladee architect Lutah Maria Riggs and built in 1937 for Baron and Baroness Maximilian von Romberg. In 1938, shortly after the house was completed, the polo playing, car racing and plane flying daredevil heir to a Massachusetts banking fortune met his Evil Kenievil in the Sky when his airplane went down in the North Shrewsbury River near Red Bank, NJ.

The Baroness, née Emily Hall of Butte, MT, went on to marry American industrialist Burton Tremaine, Sr. and together they amassed a vast collection of 20th-century contemporary art. Miz Tremaine was an early and avid collector of Andy Warhol and the Tremaine's much hailed collection included significant works by blue chip artists like Piet Mondrian, Mark Rothko and Jasper Johns. The couple, who lived in New York City and Connecticut, didn't just have a thing for art but also for architecture. In a addition to commissioning famed architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Buckminster Fuller and Philip Johnson to design a myriad of mostly un-built projects, in the mid1940s Mister and Missus Tremaine hired brilliant Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer to design an amorphous and ambitious but sadly unrealized beach house on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Montecito.

This was, of course, well after architect Lutah Maria Riggs designed a mansion in Montecito for the late Miz Tremaine, when was still the Baroness von Romberg. The von Romberg's Riggs designed residence sits on 3.5 acres in the heart of Montecito and property records show the multi-level and multi-winged mansion measures in at 11,026 square feet. Listing information indicates there are 6 bedrooms and 5 full and 3 half poopers. For what it's worth–and it ain't worth a thing–we count 2 primary bedrooms, 2 secondary staff/children's rooms, another two bedrooms behind the kitchen and garages perfect for the live-ins and a total of 6 full and 3 half poopers. Whatever the bedroom and pooper count, it seems like a lot of damn house for a single ladee.

A gated drive curves through lush, mature and somewhat disheveled landscape to a circular drive that wraps itself around a monumental oak tree and bends up to the imposing and somewhat forbidding front facade comprised mainly of forbidding solid masses and vast white planes. Wee glimpses of arched colonnades and the tippy-tops of a few palm trees that peep over a tall wall seductively hint at the eclectic and and somewhat eccentric interior spaces. A carved wood door, the only punctuation of the front facade, marks the entrance to the house. Or does it? The door actually opens into a shady loggia that leads to the actual front door and unfurls into a large courtyard with boxwood lined dining terrace.

The substantially scaled public rooms pinwheel off the entrance hall in a promiscuous but far from arbitrary manner. The capacious 750+ foot formal living room has hardwood floors laid on the diagonal, a bank of French doors to slide open to the rear terrace and a wood-burning fireplace, the first of five in the house. A banquet hall sized dining room has floor to ceiling windows, tight dentil moldings, and a perfectly framed view of a 40-foot long reflecting pool. The office/library offers a fireplace and a detailed wood beamed ceiling. French doors on one side of the room slide open to the entry loggia and on the opposite wall multi-paned glass panels slide back and open the room a second courtyard and swimming pool. A door to one side of the fireplace in the office/library opens into a secret built-in wet bar with an even more clandestine spiral staircase descends into a wine cellar and ascends to a tiny mezzanine level office space and on up into a walk-in closet in one of the two master suites on the second floor.

A room-sized passageway connects the entry hall to the living room and gives way to a second loggia that overlooks the swimming pool and leads to a perfectly private guest suite comprised of small entrance hall, private terliting and bathing facilities and a large bedroom that opens on two sides to terraced gardens surrounded by mature Oak and fragrant Eucalyptus trees.

There are, Your Mama suggests The Children note, two discreet powder poopers off the entrance hall. This means, of course, that male and female guests of a gala need not tinkle in the same terlit. A short hall leads back to the service and staff areas of the sprawling mansion where a butler's pantry larger than most people's kitchens holds all the linens, china and silverware. The fitted pantry connects the dining room to the kitchen where a short hallway extends to the dining courtyard at the front of the house and another stretches past the back stairs to the massive motor court on the side of the house. Six garage bays surround two sides of the motor court and a well-located half pooper in one of the garages is a savvy doo-hickey that keeps the landscaping personnel from traipsing through the house with dirty hand and muddy boots when they're seized with the urge to do their terlit bizness.

A attached apartment off the kitchen and behind the garages–comprised sitting/dining room, two generously proportioned bedrooms, shared split bath, laundry facilities, and a private walled courtyard–makes for unusually generous staff quarters that, sadly, most live-in household help can only fantasize about.

Above the kitchen and (staff) wing, on a mezzanine level midway between the first and second floors, two additional bedrooms and another shared split bath are suitable for either children or, for the really pampered, more live-in staff. The mezzanine also encompasses, a hallway that connects the wing to the main staircase, a bedroom-sized linen storage chamber and an even larger trunk room for storing all the various vacation valises, traveling cases and wig boxes that rich and famous types require when they go a visitin' abroad or, in the case of the very spoiled, across town.

Two masters suites located off the gigantic second floor hall landing each have a large bedroom with fireplace, over-sized private pooper and 20+ foot long dressing room. Both dressing rooms open to a shared sleeping porch for sweltering summer nights and both of the bedrooms have a staircase that leads to extremely private and even secret rooms.

A spiral staircase hidden in the back of a walk-in closet in one of the master bedrooms twists and turns down into the (aforementioned) secret wet bar in the office/libary and continues down to the wine cellar. It also leads up into a pair of small windowless rooms that Your Mama thinks would make for a terrific panic room and/or a place to hide jewels, cash and dead bodies. A winding staircase in the other master suite climbs into a tower where a sitting room with fireplace provides access to a large roof terrace. Floor plan information provided with the listing shows a bathroom on this level and the stairs continue up to a puzzling, unnecessary and whimsical tower mezzanine sitting/storage room.

Listing information suggests that the two master suites can be used in combination to form a particularly posh master suite with three sitting rooms plus a bedroom, three poopers, three fireplaces, a pair of dressing rooms, two terraces and one sleeping porch.

At first view the layout created by Miz Riggs–that would be the accomplished and smart ladee architect who designed the dwelling–feels eccentric, non-linear and disturbingly haphazard. A closer inspection reveals something far more rigorous, clever and, ultimately, architecturally persuasive with clear traffic patterns and conscious delineation of how the many rooms and wings work in harmony both together and separately. Not only is there ample space for a large family to occupy and fill every nook and cranny of the huge house but entire wings can be closed off and opened up as desired or needed by empty nesters. A snake like and still grand but very cozy crib perfect for a couple can be created by closing off everything but the second floor bedrooms, main staircase, entry hall, office/library, kitchen complex and hall that joins the kitchen with the rear entrance and motor court.

Your Mama can easily see why an effervescent, foot loose and fancy free woman like Miss Barrymore would find this particular mansion appealing. Like the house, Miss Barrymore can seem irregular and sometimes messy on the surface but a deeper and longer look reveals an astute, extremely successful, quirky but well organized businesswoman in full control of her sometimes be-boppy and air-brained public image. This house and Miss Barrymore are, in essence, two unconventional peas in a pod.

Since April of 2002 Miss Barrymore has lived primarily on a private promontory in the celebrity choked hills above Hollywood. Records show she shelled out $4,350,000 for a palm-tree dotted compound with a 7,756 square foot multi-winged ranch house with 4 bedrooms and 6 poopers. Her nearly neighbors in Los Angeles include Jason Schwartzman, Hayden Panettiere, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Holland Taylor, Adam Brody and Sheryl Crow.

Your Mama has always imagined that Miss Barrymore maintained a pied a terre in New York City but iffen we're being honest, and we always are, we'd admit that we have no specific knowledge of rumor or evidence that is the case. We just think it makes sense but we also think it makes better sense to make a cake from a box mix than scratch.

listing photos and floor plan: Village Properties Realtors

Among the dozen or so white glove co-operative apartment houses that rank among New York City's most expensive and hardest to gain access to, staid, stodgy and solid as a rock 834 Fifth Avenue is the cream of the real estate crop.

The somber and pedigreed pre-war dowager at 834 Fifth Avenue was designed by the much lauded and applauded architect Rosario Candela and erected in 1931 on the corner of East 64th Street directly across the street from the entrance to the Central Park Zoo. The understated and architecturally confident 16 story limestone clad building has a three story rusticated base, a garden courtyard, and just 24 sumptuous and spacious apartments–many of them doo-plexes–serviced by round the clock doormen, concierge and elevator operators.

The imposing building, occupied over the years by some of the hoitiest of New York's toitiest, is on par with other hideously expensive and oddly clannish apartment houses such as 4 E. 66th Street where young hedge hog Chase Coleman paid $36,500,000 to buy the former full floor residence of financially embattled super-socialite Veronica Hearst in July of 2008 and 998 Fifth Avenue where booze heir Matthew Bronfman paid $18,000,000 for former home of the dee-voon Anne Slater in late 2007 and where property mad oil and copper billionaire Len Blavatnik paid $27,500,000 for a fourth floor spread in January of 2007.

As with many of the priciest and aristocratic co-operative buildings in Manhattan, turnover at 834 Fifth Avenue tends towards painfully slow. Since 2005, there have been just three apartments on the open market and a total of six (recorded) sales. 834 Fifth Avenue, sugar beets, is not for the financially feint of heart or–since the building allows no financing of purchases–the cash strapped. If Your Mama busts out our bejeweled abacus and flicks the well worn beads around a bit we discover that the amount of money that changed hands at 834 in the last 5 or 6 years totals a bone shattering $161,644,500 with an average sale price of $26,940,000.

There were two (off-market) sales at 834 Fifth Avenue in 2010 and a third apartment–a high floor doo-plex apartment owned by 21-time Tony Award winning Broadway producer Harold Prince and his wife Judy–remains up for sale where it has lingered and languished since it was first heaved on to the (open) market in September of 2009 with an knee buckling and bank account busting asking price of $33,000,000.

By November of 2010 three chops had brought the asking price of Mister and Missus Prince's two-floor residence down to $24,900,000. Shortly thereafter the apartment was de-listed and ten days later, in late December of 2010, the 11-room doo-plex was re-listed with a new listing agent at the old $24,900,000 asking price.
Listing information and the floor plan (above) show the 11-room apartment, formerly owned by make-up maven Elizabeth Arden, measures (approximately) 4,750 square feet and includes 3 bedrooms and 3.5 poopers plus multi-level staff quarters that contain another two bedrooms and two poopers.

Some of the children may need a nerve pill to quell the shock and awe when they learn that no financing is allowed for purchased at 834 Fifth Avenue and the monthly maintenance for Mister and Missus Prince's fit-for-a-prince pad runs $16,442 per month. A few quick flicks of the beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that's a mood altering $197,304 per year.

Floor plan information included with listing shows the stately but not uncomfortably or ostentatiously vast high floor apartment has a much-desired-by-the-rich-and-famous private elevator vestibule. A less than optimal and paltry pair of rooms (plus a terrace) directly face Fifth Avenue and Central Park. On the lower floor the park facing room is a long and narrow solarium that opens to the west facing terrace and upstairs it's the corner master bedroom. The master pooper, it should be noted, also has a spectacular vista of the park from the terlit.

The bulk of the apartment runs down East 64th Street and at least a few of the rooms, we imagine, have oblique park views. The state of the art kitchen complex includes a big butler's pantry, a second, walk-in sized pantry and a small terrace for smoking a pre- and/or post-meal preparation doobie. Behind the kitchen and just off the service entry, staff quarters spread over three floors include one decent sized bedroom with a windowed private pooper on the lowest floor, a mezzanine level mechanical space, and on the second floor a second cell-sized bedroom, large laundry room and another pooper, also a window.

The second floor can be accessed either via the narrow back stair in the domestic staff area or by ascending the dramatic curving staircase in the entry. A powder pooper tucked discreetly under the stairs has not just one but two windows. Do the children see why this Mister Candela guy is the bees knees when it comes to thoughtful and elegant apartments?

The master bedroom sits immediately off the upper landing and has over sized windows that reach almost to the floor, a wall of closets plus a walk-in dressing room and the aforementioned park view private pooper. Each of the two secondary bedrooms, both situated down a long hall and well away from the master bedroom, has at least one walk-in closet and private terliting facilities.

Listing information indicates the sale includes three separate storage rooms.
In January of 2009, the heirs and attorneys (or whomever) for Missus Araxia M. Buckhantz–a cousin of eccentric Armenian born petroleum potentate Nubar Gulbenkian–listed her 13 room spread with an asking price of $30,000,000. The palatial simplex unit, according to listing information from that time, shows the apartment has 12-foot ceilings, three terraces, 4 fireplaces, a library paneled in 18th century George II pine and a 37-foot long living room with George III paneling.

The apartment was listed on the (open) market for less than one month before it was put into contract and in mid-March the sale was recorded for $29,000,000. Property records show the buyer was Loews movie theater heiress Laurie Tisch. Miz Tisch made recent real estate news in early December of 2010 when it was reported here, there and everywhere that celebrity house hunters Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick were interested in purchasing her clumsily laid out 8-bedroom doo-plex apartment at 88 Central Park West. The reports were denied. Make of that what you will.

The children will take note of several special tidbits about the Buckhantz/Tisch spread. First of all, observe that there are only two bedrooms in this $29,000,000 apartment and that both bedrooms face east to take advantage of the morning sun. This arrangement leaves more than 100-feet of park view frontage used to best advantage for the living room, solarium, library and formal dining room all of which have access to one of the apartment's two enviable terraces.

A bedroom sized pantry separates the dining room from the kitchen. Note, bunnies, that in addition to the bedroom-sized pantry that joins the formal dining room to the kitchen, Mister Candela also provided a convenient connection from the kitchen to the entrance gallery by way of a closet lined hallway. Behind the kitchen three unforgivably small staff rooms share one pooper and surround a "servant's hall" where, apparently, the domestics are supposed to eat dinner and watch tee-vee when they're not dusting knick-knacks and scrubbing terlits.

Two more items of significance that earn Mister Candela a standing ovation: Firstly, the floor plan master managed to locate every terliting and bathing facility in the apartment where they could have a window for ventilation. Even the staff crapper has a window and the powder pooper off the entrance gallery even has a multi-million dollar view of Central Park. Secondly, live in domestics around the world will appreciate that Mister Candela provided direct access to the servant's hall from the service elevator. This astute arrangement allows the maids and man servants to sneak out and sneak paramours into their private quarters for a little slap and tickle without the master(s) of the house being any the wiser.

One of the more recent transfers at 834 Fifth Avenue was in April of 2009 when Cuban born billionaire and Bill Clinton crony Paul Cejas and his wife Gertie put their fifth floor apartment on the (open) market with an asking price of $18,500,000. By September (2009) the asking price has sunk to $16,500,000 and in May of 2010 the rambling, 10-room apartment sold for $15,000,000 to a Swiss tycoon by the name of Maurice Amon whose fortune derives in great part from the sale of the ink used to print much of the world's bank notes.
Listing and floor plan information (above) shows the 10-room residence has a cute little octagonal foyer, an old-fashioned cloak room, living room sized entrance gallery and monthly maintenance charges of $10,335. The 28-foot long park facing formal living room has 11 and some foot ceilings, intricate dentil moldings and a wood burning marble fireplace. The adjacent mahogany paneled library has built-in bookshelves, a walk-in closet and a pooper with a park view. Original plans for this apartment available on the Avery Architectural Fine Arts Library show the current library was originally planned as the master bedroom which explains, perhaps, why current floor plan information shows a bee-day in large bathroom off the library.

The bedroom wing has a wide corridor lined with walk-in closets and each of the two east-facing bedrooms has a private pooper. A long butler's pantry with built-in breakfast banquette connects the public rooms to the kitchen–which is, we regret to inform, also the laundry room–and the three-room staff suite and pooper at the extreme rear of the property.

Other recent recorded sales in the building include several apartments that appear to have traded without ever appearing on the open market. In April of 2010, San Francisco based Levi Strauss heiress Miriam Haas laid out $12,500,000 to buy a petite penthouse apartment on the 15th floor from San Francisco based financial services bigwig Charles Schwab and his wife Helen.

In the spring of 2007 the trustees of the estate of long time resident Jeanette Solomon put her 8-room spread on the 9th floor of 834 Fifth Avenue on the market with an asking price of $16,500,000. A bidding war drove up the sale price to a staggering $27,700,000. The new owners: Charles and Helen Schwab.

Loida Lewis–the high-powered Filipino widda of African American billionaire bizness baron Reginald Lewis–hoisted her gigantic doo-plex apartment at 834 Fifth Avenue on the market in 2006 with an asking price of $45,000,000, a dumbfounding number later reduced to a still stunning $39,500,000. According to previous reports, the apartment has a 640-square foot living room that overlooks Central Park (as does the master bedroom), 7.5 poopers, 4 wood burning fireplaces and a "restaurant kitchen." Mister and Missus Lewis, it should be noted, were the first “people of color to own an apartment in a ‘Good Building’ on Fifth Avenue,” according to the writer Steven Gaines, author of real estate must reads The Sky's the Limit and Philistines at the Hedgerow.

Mister and Missus Lewis purchased their palatial pad at 834 Fifth Avenue in 1992 from automotive executive John Delorean who had acquired the apartment from Gregg Dodge Moran, a showgirl turned socialite who married into the Detroit Dodges and who reportedly paid just $225,000 for the apartment. Missus Dodge Moran, it may amuse the children to know, briefly owned the 23,000 square foot Dunnellen Hall in Greenwich, CT, the one-time estate of the Queen of Mean Leona Helmsley that was sold in 2010 for $35,000,000 to an unknown buyer.

Anyhoo, Missus Lewis unloaded her big ol' doo-plex at 834 in October of 2007. According to property records and previous reports, cell phone service honcho Mark Rachesky (Leap Wireless) and his wife Jill paid a milk curdling $33,444,500 for the apartment.

The biggest deal to ever go down at 834–and still one of the highest prices ever paid for a cooperative apartment in Manhattan–was in May of 2005 went media magnate Rupert Murdoch and his wife Wendi Deng shelled out an astonishing $44,000,000 for Laurance Rockefeller's 20-room triplex penthouse that reportedly has monthly maintenance charges of around $25,000 per month.

Other residents with recognizable names at 834 Fifth Avenue include (but are not limited to) a couple of heirs of the Johnson & Johnson fortune (that would be Christopher and his brother Robert "Woody" Johnson who live next door to each other), philanthropist, haute couture queen and high society doyenne Carroll McDaniel Portago Carey-Hughes Pistell Petrie who once lived on the 5th floor and now lives in Pauline Pitt designed digs on the 10th floor, Eugenie and John Radziwell (he's the son of Jackie Kennedy's sister Lee's onetime huzband Prince Stanislas Radziwell), mergers and acquisitions specialist Joe Roby and wifey Hilppa who bought their 15-room spread in 1997 for $12,000,000, famously fat living former "King of Wall Street" John Gutfreund and his very social wife Susan whose live primarily in a plush Parisian apartment they put up for sale in 2010 but still maintain an opulent Henri Samuel designed 16-room apartment at 834 Fifth Avenue that measures in at a hefty hefty hefty 12,000 square feet.

Also in residence at 834, Greek shipping tycoon George and Lita Livanos who own a low floor doo-plex and who also once owned a maisonette in the building where they housed their children and staff, Bing Crosby's son Harry who lives in a maisonette unit formerly owned by Richard and Honey Berlin, the parents of portly Andy Warhol superstar Brigid Berlin, and Judith and Alfred Taubman, shopping mall magnate and former head of Sotheby's who did 7 months in the pokey in 2002-3 for a price-fixing scheme between Sotheby's and rival auction house Christie's and who reportedly have an apartment filled with Modiglianis, Renoirs and Monets. Until recently billionaire biznessman Leslie Wexner (The Limited brands) and his wife Abigail owned a 16-room six-bedroom doo-plex once owned by Rupert Murdoch (who, as mentioned above, traded up for the titanic triplex penthouse in 2007), but a report from early December of 2010 in the New York Observer reveals that the doo-plex–shopped off market for $60,000,000 then dropped to $34,000,000–has been purchased by an unknown buyer.

photo (top): Property Shark
floor plans: Redfin

BUYER: Steven Seagal
LOCATION: Scottsdale, AZ
PRICE: $3,500,000
SIZE: 8,450 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Martial artist turned action film actor turned law enforcement officer turned reality show eccentric Steven Seagal is on a multi-state real estate merry go round.

Mister Seagal doesn't factor much into the Tinseltown two step anymore his Hollywood heyday being in the late 1980s and 90s when he shook his money maker as the good looking and manly hero of action films that include Hard to Kill, Under Seige, Under Seige 2: Dark Territory and The Glimmer Man. Time has not been kind to Mister Seagal's good looks or his his silver screen grape, which pretty much dried up into a raisin in the mid-1990s. During the early 2000s he released little more than a number of film failures that practically no one has ever heard of and went directly to DVD.

Perhaps due in part to the decline in his action film career Mister Seagal went to the police academy in the early 1990s and currently acts as a Reserve Deputy Chief of the sheriff's office in Jefferson Parish, LA. Naturally, in classic b-list actor fashion, Mister Seagal has a reality program that follows him around as he busts chops and criminals. He is said to own a home in Louisiana, which makes sense but, honestly chickens, we didn't find any (obvious) record that confirms that real estate rumor.

Most recently, along with Lou Ferrigno (The Hulk) and Peter Lupus (Mission Impossible), Mister Seagal joined the illegal immigration operations posse of armed volunteers under Arizona's attention seeking, highly controversial, cranky and extremely aggressive Maricopa County Sherrif Joe Arpaio, a man famous for making prisoners wear pink underwear and who has recently came up under the microscope of the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice and a Federal Grand Jury for alleged civil rights violations, abuse of power, and racial profiling.

Anyhoodles poodles, a few weeks ago the children may recall that Your Mama discussed Hollywood's second highest paid actress Reese Witherspoon who forked over $6,900,000 to purchase Mister Seagal's very private property in the Mandeville Canyon area of Los Angeles, CA.

Since 2005 Mister Seagal has owned a home just east of Memphis, TN in the tiny town of Eads that he purchased in October of 2005 for $1,500,000. As it turns out the 13+ acre spread in Eads with its brick-faced 5 bedroom and 4.5 pooper traditional (below) has been on the market since at least February of 2010 and is currently listed with an asking price of $1,999,000.
Word now comes slip sliding down the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that Mister Seagal and his fourth wife–ballroom dancer Erdenetuya Batsukh–have snatched up a contemporary residence on almost 12 acres in the Tonto National Forest near Phoenix, AZ, just north of Carefree. According to information provided on the sly to Your Mama by Sangita Snitcharoo Mister Seagal paid $3,500,000 for the 8,450 square foot modern mansion that sits high on a ridge above the Chiricahua Golf Course with long views over the rolling desert. Listing information indicates that the furnishings were available for purchase by separate agreement and Miss Snitcharoo told Your Mama that Mister and Fourth Missus Seagal did buy some of the furniture.

Listing information provided by Miss Snitcharoo shows that Mister Seagal's new desert digs have 4 bedrooms and 5 full and 2 half poopers. A guesthouse with family room and kitchenette provide extra over night space, which is a good thing since Mister Seagal has 7 children by four different woman so it's probably a real clusterfuck during the holidays.

The multi-level stone, glass and copper residence, built in 2001, has walls of butted and floor to ceiling glass panels that allow the dee-luxe if dated and somewhat hotel like interior spaces to visually merge with the spectacular views and the many private terraces that surround the house. The main terrace wraps around a negative edge swimming pool and spa that spills dramatically into the landscape.

The master bedroom has a walk in closet and a private pooper with jetted tub, a step-down shower with a private view of the gardens and a bee-day for scrubbing down the naughty bits after doing the dirty bizness. Other amenities and luxuries include a 3 car attached garage, and exercise room with sauna, three fireplaces, built in barbecue and a golf room located just off the driveway that is equipped with software and a screen that allows one to golf virtually at a myriad of courses around the world.

Property records indicate this is not the first time Mister Seagal has owned property in Arizona. In April of 2006 Mister Seagal sold a house in the 55 and up Leisure World community in Mesa. Presumably this house was occupied by one of Mister Seagal's relatives.

Property records show that in May of 2003 Mister Seagal picked up a huge amount of mostly undeveloped land in Montague, CA near the Oregon border. Your Mama's rudimentary and not necessarily accurate calculations on our bejeweled abacus shows that there are more than 25 parcels that combined measure in at about 6,352.8 acres. Who knows what his plans for this swathe of land might be.

There are also scads of reports that Mister Seagal owns a dude ranch in Colorado, but just like Prissy in Gone With the Wind don't know nuthin' 'bout birthin' no babies, Your Mama don't known nuthin' about any dude ranch in Coloraduh.

listing photos: Prudential Arizona Properties

You only have a few moments to sell your home to a new buyer. With hundreds of homes available on the market today how can you make sure yours is the next to sell? Staging, with the recent downturn in the economy and continued sluggishness in the real estate market; staging is more important than ever.

Here are the top reasons why home-staging matters, and how you can make it work for you:

A picture is worth a thousand words:Over 80% of home buyers begin their search online, so the first impression of your home might be the last. Make sure your home looks its best.

Visualize their space, not your place: Staging becomes even more important when buyers visit in person. Properly performed home staging is essential to allowing prospective buyers to visualize the home as “their space” rather than trying to see through your clutter and belongings. A home should be attractive yet neutral enough to allow buyers an opportunity to get a feel for how their own furniture and belonging would fit.

Browsers spend more time looking at pretty pictures: Not only are buyers searching online, but they tend to spend more time viewing attractive properties than those without pictures or with “ugly” photos. Use plenty of photos to showcase your home or property.

Staging does not have to cost a fortune to be effective, but does require experience for best results. If your thinking about selling your home please give me a call.

Lonnie Snyder

REALTOR ®

Keller Williams Realty Southeast Sound

Phone: 206-406-2710

Lonnie Snyder is a full time real estate agent and REALTOR® with Keller Williams Realty specializing in Residential Real Estate for buyers and sellers in Washington's Kent, Renton, Newcastle and South Bellevue.