UPDATE: Nic Cage

Poor, poor Nic Cage. The one time a-list actor who made upwards of $15,000,000 per film has been through the real estate ringer since he last got lucky and unloaded a Newport Beach, CA waterfront mansion in January of 2008 for an astronomical $35,000,000. He paid, it might please the children to know, $25,000,000.

Shortly thereafter, the economy–particularly the real estate markets–went to hell in a hand basket faster than Your Mama can down a tumbler of gin & tonic. Pretty soon the financially beleaguered and hair challenged Oscar winning actor had more than a half dozen lavish and expensive to maintain properties on the market including but not limited to a private island in the Bahamas, a Las Vegas mansion, a Bavarian schloss, a couple of historic mansions in New Orleans, a pied a terre in New York City's Olympic Tower, and an estate in Rhode Island with a 24,664 square foot sprawler. He's managed to unload the schloss and an historic townhouse in Bath–that's the U.K. puppies–but it's his legendary mansion in Bel Air, CA–first floated as a pocket listing in 2007 with an equilibrium upsetting $35,000,000–that has surely given him some of his worst real estate headaches and hassles.

The Bel Air property–nicely situated on Copa de Oro Road and formerly owned by Tom Jones and Dean Martin–failed to sell as a pocket listing and eventually, in late 2007, was put on the open market with that almost laughably large $35,000,000 price tag. The property languished, it was taken off the market, put back on the market, the price was reduced and eventually an asking price of $17,500,000 was slapped on the white elephant. But alas, that much reduced price didn't pull any buyers either, at least not any buyer's willing to pay seventeen million smackers.

In early September (2009), in a surprising and seemingly desperate move, the property was put up for a sealed bid scheduled for late September with a minimum bid of just $9,950,000. Shortly after the sealed bid deadline passed, the 7 bedroom and 9 pooper property popped back up on the open market with a familiar asking price of $17,500,000. Although the celebrity real estate watchers moaned and groaned and were very vocal about how it was self-defeating to slap a seventeen million dollar asking price on the house after indicating via the minimum auction bid that he was willing to negotiate at a much lower price we're told by someone who would know that the sealed bid process stirred up lots of interest which is why the property is now marked "looking for backup" on listing information indicating Mister Cage has accepted an offer and the buyer is doing their due diligence. What's going to be interesting is to see at what price the property actually sells. If anyone cares–and they really shouldn't because we don't know a apple from a pair of reading glasses–Your Mama would say somewhere between twelve and 13.5 million clams, a far cry from the thirty-five million he wanted but still far more than $6,469,000 property records show he paid for the 11,817 square foot white elephant in 1998.

Maybe, just maybe selling this house will help him square up with East West Bank who issued Mister Cage a two million dollar line of credit that according to court documents he has failed to pay. Oh dear. Will poor Mister Cage's epic real estate and financial saga ever end?