Dasmarka Real Estate

SELLER: Peter and Marion Madoff
LOCATION: Palm Beach, FL
PRICE: $6,500,000
SIZE: 5,473 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The family of imprisoned former financier Bernie Madoff has been much in the news the last few weeks. On December 11th, exactly two years to the day of Daddy Madoff's arrest, his eldest son Mark hung himself with a dog's leash in his downtown New York City loft while his youngest child slumbered unknowingly in a nearby room. Word now comes slip sliding down the real estate gossip grapevine that Marion Madoff, the wife of Bernie's baby brother Peter, has put the couple's posh Palm Beach, FL pad up for sale with an asking price of $6,500,000.

Big, bad Bernie Madoff is, of course, serving a 150-year sentence in the slammer for his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands and left many destitute. A June 2010 article in New York Magazine about Bernie Madoff's life in prison reported that–are you sitting down for this one, ducklings–the Ponzi putz "boasts of his fraud" and said his only crime was to take money from people who were already wealthy, greedy and wanted more." He even doles out financial advice to the other inmates who include a mob boss or two and at least one international spy. Gawd. You're a real big macho man about the prison yard now, aren't you Mister Madoff? Impoverished wife, dead son, family members under criminal investigation and you're clinging to your delusional B.M.O.C. self-image? It's just pathetic.

Anyhoodles poodles, Mister Peter Madoff worked for his big brother Bernie since 1965 and at the time the shit went down in late 2008 he was employed as a senior managing director on the legal side of Madoff Securities. Yes, bunnies, there was actually a large and profitable arm of Bernie Boy's enterprise that was on the up and up. Mister Peter Madoff remains the subject of a criminal investigation in regards to some $200 million of Bernie Boy's ill-gotten gains that relatives (allegedly) received and this intense scrutiny by the Feds may or may not have anything to do with the real estate matter at hand.

Property records reveal that Mister and Missus Peter Madoff purchased their Palm Beach mini-estate in May of 2001 for $3,752,000. Based on the property records available, it does not appear to Your Mama that any mortgage was secured by the property at the time of the purchase. On the 8th of November in 2006 Mister Peter Madoff quitclaimed the Palm Beach property over to his wife Marion. This means, technically, legally, only Missus Marion Madoff is selling the Palm Beach property, Mister Peter Madoff having abdicated any ownership in 2006. Interestingly, but probably not surprisingly, at least some of the title and property records for Peter and Marion Madoff's mansion in Palm Beach link back the old Madoff offices at 885 Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.

Listing information for the Peter Madoff's Palm Beach residence shows the single story mansard roofed manse comes in at 5,473 square feet while the Palm Beach Tax Man shows a considerably more sizable 7,373 square feet. Both listing and property records show 5 bedrooms and 4.5 poopers including a master suite that overlooks the gardens and contains dual terliting and bathing facilities.

A circular drive cuts twice through the row of tall trees trimmed topiary-style into fat lollipop-like cylinders and a second driveway stretches from the street back to a small motor court and three-car garage topped by additional living quarters of unspecified and unknown utility.

Interior spaces include an intimately-scaled paneled library with built-in bookshelves and a gleaming gold and honey-colored formal living room with dark wood accent pieces, simple but heavy moldings and a wood burning fireplace. The formal dining room is large enough to hold two six-top tables and a smaller adjacent room that overlooks the .48 acre grounds has yet another table for six. The crisp all-white kitchen looks recently redone with snow-white Shaker-style lower cabinets, glass-fronted uppers, very lightly-veined marble counter tops, de rigueur high-grade stainless steel appliances and a trio of wood and metal stools pulled up to an island breakfast counter.

A tented patio with natural fiber wall coverings and chunky dark wicker furniture spills out to a symmetrically stylish if rigidly landscaped side yard with more trees painstakingly trimmed topiary-style into lollipop shapes. The largest outdoor space is contained in a large courtyard bounded on two sides by the house and the other two sides by very high and meticulously squared hedges. A pergola that drips with what looks to Your Mama like gold-colored dahlias sits next to a long rectangular swimming pool sunk precisely on axis with the symmetrical facade of the house. A row of fountains that run up each side of the swimming pool look like there's a dozen minimum-wage men buried beneath the lawn who shoot out unending arches of urine into the air.

Lest anyone worry that ol' Petey Madoff and his Missus Marion might go homeless once they sell their winter hideaway in Palm Beach, y'all can relax. A peep and poke through public property records reveals that he and the Missus retain joint ownership of a significant spread in Old Westbury, NY, a hoity-toity community home to some of Long Island's most lavish estates and blue-blooded families not to mention mob daughter Victoria Gotti and her trio of hell-cat sons.
Property records show that in March of 1988 the Peter Madoffs forked over $2,000,000 for a 2.012 acre estate that backs up on two sides to the Glen Oaks Club. The Suffolk County Tax Man's records show a 14-room multi-winged mansion built in 1935 that measures 7,992 square feet with 5 bedrooms and 4.5 poopers. About 1.5 years later, in November of 1990, the Peter Madoff's laid out another $2,500,000 for an adjacent 2.014 acre parcel. As best as we can tell, no mortgage was taken on the property at the time it was purchased. Public tax records show the Mister and Missus Peter Madoff 2010 tax bill came to a combined $64,845 and two damn cents.

listing photos (top): Sotheby's International Realty
aerial photo (bottom): Bing

SELLER: Henry Paulson
LOCATION: Washington, D.C.
PRICE: $3,250,000
SIZE: 2,260 square feet, 3 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yesterday Your Mama discussed a fairly ordinary but still expensive home in Hawaii, the same state–not the same house–where President Obama, his handsome family and a coterie of Secret Service Agents spent holed up over the December holidays. Today we hop on our broom and high tail it right back to Washington, D.C. where former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and Bailout Baron Henry "Hank" Paulson recently took it in the real estate kiester.

Yes, we know we have arrived unfashionably late to the fête about Mister Paulson's recent real estate travails, it having already been discussed on Curbed, Bloomberg, Huffington Post, and etc., but we just can't resist a good story.

Mister Hank Paulson–a man whose name ought to be known to every tax-paying American–spent a few years in the early 1970s working in Washington. First he hoofed it at the Pentagon and then he punched the clock as an assistant to naughty boy John Ehrlichman, one of then-President Richard Nixon's right arm men and a key player in the Watergate scandal that sent him to the pokey for a year an a half on convictions of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury. In 1974 Mister Paulson left government service and hired into the Chicago office of the frightfully powerful investment banking concern Goldman Sachs. He rose through the ranks, and in the late 1990s he'd clawed his way to the tippy-top spot of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) a vaunted position that earned him mountains of moolah.

In 2006 then-President George W. Bush tapped Mister Paulson to replace John Snow as the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. Mister Paulson agreed and walked back into the belly of the political beast. Some may say that a man with Mister Paulson's experience and connections in the international financial markets is precisely what made him an ideal candidate for the job. Others might hiss that Mister Paulson's deep ties to Goldman Sachs was a little like letting a fox loose in the hen house. Not long after Mister Paulson took the Treasury Department reins Wall Street and sub-prime mortgage markets (and so forth) went into a major melt down. The world learned of complex financial instruments like credit default swaps that helped to hobble the banking industry and bring the entire U.S. economy to its knees.

Mister Paulson, as the Treasury Secretary, was given the task to spearhead the inevitable and controversial government bailout of Wall Street and the various banking and insurance conglomerates whose spreadsheets were spontaneously bursting into flames. In the fall of 2008 with the economy in free-fall Mister Paulson and Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve and arguably the real leader of the Free World, used (roughly) 700 billion taxpayer bucks to buy up bad debt incurred by the labyrinthine shenanigans of private financial institutions. Some argue this was a good thing and some staunchly declare this was a great thing. Some were adamant that these banks and other big businesses like GM were too big to fail; while others felt in the pit of their stomach it was little more than a cash grab engineered to funnel vast sums of public money into private hands. Whatever one thinks, the whole matter was 14 kinds of ugly, seven types of perplexing and 147 sorts of flabbergasting that left Your Mama's insides all tore up from a steady diet almost entirely comprised of copious amounts of gin, tonic, lime wedges and nerve pills.

Mister Paulson and his long-time wife Wendy have a net worth frequently and usually reported to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $700,000,000. Their astonishing wealth makes the house they recently sold in Washington, D.C. seem modest for a man of his means, particularly compared to the real estate excess they can quite easily afford iffin they wanted.

Property records show that in August of 2010, just a month after being sworn in as Treasury Secretary, Mister and Missus Paulson paid $4,300,000 for their former residence located in a leafy neighborhood not so far from the Washington National Cathedral and walking distance to the embassies of Belgium, Norway, Finland, Azerbaijan and Iraq.

Now that he's left his post as Treasury Secretary Mister and Missus Paulson no longer require a residence in the nation's capital, or at least not this residence in D.C. According to Redfin, in April of 2010 the Paulsons put their 2,260 square foot house on the market with an asking price of $4,600,000. In September the price plummeted to $4,150,000 and just a few days before Christmas the Paulson pad sold for $3,250,000.

If Your Mama makes a few quick flicks of the well-worn beads of our bejeweled abacus we figure that Mister and Missus Paulson lost $1,050,000 on the sale of their house, not counting the fat real estate fees they coughed up that easily ran them another hundred or hundred and fifty grand. Your Mama would bet our long-bodied bitches Linda and Beverly and our mean ol' pussy Sugar that there aren't more than seven people who feel even a hint of icky for Mister Paulson's million-plus-dollar real estate loss.

Anyhoo, there does not appear to be a garage on the property. That would make the tight, walled motorcourt at the front of the house the only off-street parking available for residents and guests, a situation that could become a real annoying situation during inclement weather episodes like the recent blizzards that pummeled the East Coast.

The house stands a full three stories at the back but the front façade presents as a petite vine-covered cottage done in an architectural style Your Mama might (probably incorrectly) label as Flemishy-French Provençal. The surprisingly spacious entry is on the middle level and the main living spaces contained on the lower (and lowest) level of the residence. Your Mama suggests you keep an eye on that orange folded-leather chair sitting mysteriously in the entrance hall.

One wing of the L-shaped living room, a formal but not uptight area, has four severe but comfortable-looking blood-red leather chairs that form a conversational half-circle in front of a wall of windows that open to reveal a terrace that extends from the back of the house. While we are having an unexpected love affair with the red chairs we're completely freaked out–and not in a good way–about that mini Shaker-style chair on the floor. On the one hand it's far to big to belong in a doll house and yet it's way too small even for a person like Chelsea Handler's little nugget Chuy. A trestle table/desk, the children will note, has a single folded-leather armchair just like the one in the upstairs entrance hall pulled up to it.

The other, more cozy and casual wing of the living room has a full wall of floor-to-ceiling cabinets and bookshelves stacked and lined with actual books. A carved stone fireplace flanked by tall and thin windows anchors the room where the matching solid beige upholstery used on all the furniture stands in sophisticated juxtaposition to the multicolored complexity of the rug. What we don't see in here is a boob-toob, which means these Paulson people probably read the damn books up in them there bookshelves instead of just pretending they've read them.

The formal dining room sits a few steps up from the living room and has maple floors, a too-low, narrow-beamed ceiling and two more folded-leather armchairs like one in the entrance hall. We're not sure if the Paulsons had some sort of seating object fetish or if these chairs were simply moved from room to room by the photographer.

Much to Your Mama's alarm listing photos show two more of those damned folded-leather chairs in breakfast room that bridges the gap between the dining room and the galley-style gore-may kitchen and spills out to a sunken stone terrace where a fountain full of geraniums is set into a retaining wall and where a custom arched canopy keeps direct overhead sun dappled and falling leaves from wafting into the cold gazpacho. Behind the kitchen a small room with attached pooper and separate entrance works as staff room or, as marked on the floor plan, an exercise room.

A bedroom just off the entrance hall on the middle floor has a lovely view of the trees out the window and an attached half bath. That's great for brushing the chompers and taking a pee pee but whomever gets stuck with that bedroom who might need or want to bathe in a more complete manner than a spit bath, they'll need to barge into the nearby master bathroom, schlep down a flight of stairs and through the kitchen to the shower in the exercise/staff room, or they'll have to haul their hineys up a flight to the upper level where they'll still have to pass through a bedroom and/or an office to get to a damn bathing facility. There is a school of thought that says one ought not make guests too comfortable lest they come too often and stay too long; depriving overnight guests of a convenient shower is one sure way to make sure they're not eager to return anytime soon.

The middle-floor master suite has a long entrance hall off of which are a bedroom with window-wrapped sitting area sectioned off by some pretty serious tan curtains with hidden tracks in the ceiling, There's a wall of bookshelves stuffed with books and at least one more of those ubiquitous orange folded-leather chairs that seem to have bred like rats from the one we first saw in the listing photo of the front entrance hall. At the far end of the hall a bedroom-sized dressing room has full-height built-in cabinets to hide all the clothes and a dressing table that looks like it might be covered in a wonderfully tactile suede with a dead-straight row of brass rivets that run along the two long sides. The master pooper, according to the floor plan provided with marketing materials, shows a double sink set-up fashioned from a chunky antique wood cabinet. There are rustic rough-hewn antique wood beams, a separate shower and soaking tub and, perhaps best of all, a cubby with both a terlit for the dirty bizness and a bidet for washing the naughty bits.

The upper level of the home, accessed by way of a dizzying s-curve stairway, sits tucked up into the eaves with a Jack-n-Jill bath between two (bed)rooms. The smaller room, a tight space outfitted with two twin beds set perpendicular to each other, has wallpaper that appears to be–but very well may not be–a misguided tone-on-tone feint leopard pattern. The narrow room looks a bit claustrophobic to Your Mama, a matter made worse by the sloped ceilings that look like they can hardly wait to bonk some heads. Again, the school of hospitality that suggests guests be kept a tad uncomfortable comes to mind.

Listing photos suggest that the Paulsons set up the second bedroom on the upper level as a home office. This more generously-scaled room has a built-in desk and cabinetry and opens through three sets of wood-paneled French doors to a treetop-level terrace. Just imagine, teardrops, the import of the sorts of decisions in regards to the global economy that were made in this very room as Mister Paulson sat in his Aeron chair and stared out into the thick forest that rings the rear of the property.

Patios and terraces tucked up and into the hillside surround the residence, but the bulk of the exterior living space manifests as a large curving terrace that extends off the back of the house and connects the intellectual poise of the home's comfy but refined interior spaces with the unbridled wilds of the rustling trees that encircle the terrace.

Until October of 2006 Mister and Missus Paulson maintained a 50th-floor spread at Millenium Tower, the same mixed-use structure where past and previous residents include wacky-actress-turned-tycoon Connie Stevens, talk show host Regis Philbin who hurts like tinfoil on a filling to Your Mama, and Oscar-nominated actor Alan Alda who has won six Emmys and been nominated for dozens more. The building's most notorious resident just might be satellite radio shock-jock Howard Stern who reportedly owns several adjacent apartments over a couple of floors that combined measure in at around 8,400 square feet. The Paulson's condo sold for $7,995,000 to a former Goldman Sachs underling of Mister Paulson's who now works for Morgan Stanley.

Property records indicate that Mister and Missus Paulson have owned and maintained a 5+ acre estate outside Chicago, IL in Barrington since at least 1987 and in 2002 the records reveal the couple snatched up a 5,079 square foot house with 5 bedrooms and 4.5 poopers in Summit County, CO, near the swank ski resort Vail.

Of course Your Mama don't know a collateralized debt obligation from walnut so we can not say with any certainty a damn thing about where Mister and Missus Paulson plan to live out their wildly wealthy semi-retirement, but property records we dug up on the interweb show that in March of 2010 they coughed up $1,450,000 to purchase a 2,354 square foot condo in a newly-built full-service apartment tower in the East Loop area of Chicago that includes 3 bedrooms, 2.5 poopers, floor-to-ceiling windows, two balconies, custom window shades and an integrated surround sound system. The apartment has panoramic views of Lake Michigan, Millenium Park, the Frank Gehry-designed Pritzker Pavilion and Anish Kapoor's sleek and amorphous sculpture The Bean, the latter two alone being utterly dazzling and heroic enough to justify a trip to Windy City.

listing photos: Washington Fine Properties

SELLER: Daniel Dae Kim
LOCATION: Honolulu, HI
PRICE: $2,430,000
SIZE: 3,354 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Do the recent real estate doings of actor Daniel Dae Kim reveal something about the fate of the recent and ree-donk-ulous redux of Hawaii Five-O. Maybe, maybe not. Of course, Your Mama don't know a doorknob from a drainpipe about the current iteration of Hawaii Five-O, but thanks to Lei'lani Lets'usknow we've learned that just before Christmas (2010) Mister Kim and his wifey Mia flipped a housey-house in Honolulu, HI they bought just six short months earlier back on the market with an asking price of $2,430,000.

Hawaiian press reports also reveal that Mister Kim recently sold his stake in the Honolulu outpost of the franchised burger joint, The Counter. Co-inky-dink? Or is Mister Kim in the process of lightening his property portfolio and other investments in the Aloha State in anticipation of packing up his grass skirts and moving stateside? Make of all that what y'all will.

Although most of the world knew not a thing of Mister Kim until 2004 when he showed up on the recently wrapped-up cult hit Lost, he's a stage-trained actor who has worked the highways and byways of Hollywood since the mid-1990s when he got started with small parts in programs like Beverly Hills 90210, Seinfeld, Ally McBeal, Party of Five and All-American Girl, the high-stericial comedienne Margaret Cho's short-lived and dumbed-down sit-com about the most unfunny Korean family ever known to mankind.

In the late 1990s he landed a lead role on some program we've never heard of called Crusade and in the early 2000s Mister Kim secured a recurring role in Angel, one of the first of too many movies and boob-toob about vampires. Oh, lowerd hunnies, Your Mama will have to drive a damn stake through our own heart iffin we have to hear about, read about or heaven for fend watch another stoo-pid thing about vampires. Word to the Hollywood wise: The vampire trend has done played itself out and any more money you sink into the development any more copy-cat tee-vee shows or movies about hot-bodied bloodsuckers is akin to tossing money down the terlit. Trust, darlin', trust. Done. Kaput. Fini. Okay?

Anyhoodles poodles, he filled the few years between Angel and Lost with recurring roles on Miss Match, Star Trek: Enterprise, ER and 24. Currently the Korean-born and American-bred Mister Kim shakes his money-maker as Chin Ho Kelly on the silly and unnecessary reprise of Hawaii Five-O with Golden Globe-nominated Tinseltown scion Scott Caan.

Apropos of nuthin'to do with this discussion on Mister Kim's Hawaiian real estate doings, we ran across a mug shot of Mister Kim from 2007 when he was arrested on a DUI charge. Now, sweet potatoes, as awful and unwise as it is to drink and then operate a vehicle and it is indeed a terrible thing to do, just ask that poor Lindsay Lohan gurl if it's worth it to booze it up and drive it is arguably equally a crime to run around with a man-bouffant like this tonsorial hot mess Mister Kim sported on the day he got pulled over by the po-po. Oh, child, no. Please, no.

We digress yet again. Property records show that in June of 2010 Mister and Missus Kim shelled out $2,211,250 for a single-story residence on a short cul-de-sac just a block or two from the beach in the upscale Honolulu 'hood of Kahala, on the quiet east side of the long dormant Diamond Head volcano that dominates and defines the skyline in Honolulu. Thankfully, the neighborhood sits well away from the scantily-clad chaos of tourist-jammed Waikiki on the west side of Diamond Head, where vacationers–many of whom, like Your Mama, should not be seen in public in any sort of state of undress–fry themselves in the sun like they are a saltwater-bloated chicken breast.

Listing information for the residence, which clearly states that the home is "celebrity owned," shows it was built in 1948, is "partially renovated" by architect Peter Vincent and measures 3,354 square feet with a total of 5 bedrooms and 2.5 tropical poopers. It's not known nor does it really matter if Mister and Missus Kim ever occupied the nondescript residence or even if they ever planned to occupy the house. But based on the listing photos, which show no signs of life, including shelves devoid of books or other personal effects, we'd put our money on The Great Real Estate Roulette Wheel's Red Number 23 that the house is staged by Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota and that the Kim clan does not currently reside in this house. More on that later.

The residence has a rather mousy kind of curb appeal with a small front yard, a front-facing two-car carport and a shallow porch too narrow, it appears to our boozy eyes, to even set a little bamboo chair. The house does not stand on ceremony or architectural formality and as such the front door opens directly into a long, featureless living room. About the only thing worth a mention in the entry/living room is the ochre-colored (travertine or marble) tile floors. There, we mentioned them.

Although utterly nonplussed by the ochre-colored tile floors that continue right on into the dining area, things do perk up a wee bit with the long shed-roof skylight that runs the length of the dining room. Even more sugar in the real estate coffee is the extra-wide bank of eight-pane doors that slide open to a vine-shaded lanai. The dining room opens into the large kitchen with a myriad of cattywompus counter angles, very ordinary white raised-panel cabinetry topped with mottled grey and beige counter tops.

At least two of the five bedrooms open to the backyard, including the master bedroom that has two walls of sliding doors that, when pushed open, transform the room into a blissful if not entirely private open-air sleeping porch. The attached bath, the floor and walls slathered with the same tile style as the floor in the living, dining and kitchen areas, has a long vanity with two sinks, a separate shower and jetted tub.

In the backyard a small patch of grass separates the vine-shaded lanai from the terracing that surrounds the beautifully rectilinear swimming pool with old-style diving board. All around palm trees sway in the ocean breezes and speckle the blue blue blue Hawaiian sky.

Although we can't say with any certainty where Mister and Missus Kim currently shack up, both public and property records for the house they just flipped back onto the market link back to another house in the same fancy-pants Kahala neighborhood. That house, however, is not owned by Mister and/or Missus Kim, but, rather, was purchased in July of 2008 for $3,500,000 by a Hong Kong-based investment banker. The walled and gated residence measures 5,292 square feet with 5 bedrooms, five full terliting and bathing facilities and two additional powder poopers.

listing photos: East Oahu Realty via American Dream Realty

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