Friday This and Thats

Listen puppies, the celebrity real estate world has been a bit stale lately so instead of trying to squeeze blood from a turnip we're going to dump a few of the tidbits, morsels and updates that have languished on our plate the last few days and weeks.

But first we're going to have a wee update on the rumor and gossip whispered to and passed along by Your Mama regarding Candy Spelling bailing out of her $47,000,000 deal at The Century building: According to the peeps at Curbed LA who communicated with Miz Spellings publicist, the deal is on. Now that that is cleared up...

Septuagenarian sexpot Burt Reynolds (Boogie Nights, Evening Shade, Cannonball Run, Smokey and the Bandit, Deliverance, and etc.) has had a rough go of it lately. Last year the Academy Award nominated and Emmy winning actor checked himself into rehab for a nasty addition to prescription pain killers and in March of 2010 he underwent quintuple bypass surgery. Lo-werd have mercy children, Your Mama did not even know a person could have a quintuple damn bypass.

Mister Reynolds' real estate luck seems to have worn thin too. The gum snapping and famously mustachioed man has been trying to unload his water front spread in Florida for five unfruitful years. He first listed his Hobe Sound estate in 2005 with an asking price of $15,000,000, a number that by 2007 had bizarrely increased to $15,900,000. In early 2008, when Your Mama discussed the 3-acre estate, the asking price had plummeted to $10,500,000. This week, Mister Reynolds once again chopped the price, all the way down to $8,995,000.

In addition to the 12,538 square foot residence with 5 bedrooms and 7 poopers, the estate also includes private dockage capable of handling a large boat or two, a 2-bedroom guesthouse, caretaker's residence, exercise and wine rooms, a large cinema, billiard room, an office with antique paneling, and, natch, a beauty salon for keeping the aged movie icon gets his hair did and mustache trimmed.

Given that Mister Reynolds scooped up his Hobe Sound estate way back in 1980 for $700,000, he's not in much danger of losing money. Britney Spears, on the other hand...

photo: JIC Realty



Pop super star Britney Spears' had some dark days in 2006 and 2007. She shaved her head, affected a bad and sad British accent, palled around with trouble makers and party princesses like Paris Hilton (remember her?), hooked up with some shady dudes, flashed her baby maker for all the paps, and impulsively purchased a fully furnished mansion in The Summit, a guard gated community off Mulholland Drive. The Summit has long been home to a number of famous people such as Jennifer Lopez when she was still JLo and Puff Diddy–or Diddle Puff or Daddy Diddle or whatever his damn name is. JLo and Fiddle Faddle Daddy have moved on but the community remains home to a number of other famous folks like Gwen Stefani–who bought JLo's manse–and lesser lights like Holly Robinson Peete, and Ed McMahon.

According to property records, Miss Spears paid $6,750,000 for the 7,453 square foot house in January of 2007. Some reports say she coughed up $7,150,000, but Your Mama guesses the higher number may have something to do with house full of furniture Missy Hoo Hoo allegedly bought along with the real estate. The house became the scene of all sorts of crazy including when Miss Spears locked herself in her bathroom and was subsequently forcibly removed and admitted to the psych ward at Cedars-Sinai hospital.

Eventually and many more bumps in the road later, Miss Spears was stabilized with help of medication and her well being turned over to a conservatorship controlled by her Big Daddy, Jamie Spears. In early 2009, no doubt in an effort to bury bad memories and put a number of nefarious man-friends in her rear view mirror, Miss Spears and entourage decamped for another star studded gated community in Calabasas, CA where she settled into a 10,330 square foot mansion where her new neighbors included–and still include as far as Your Mama knows–Brad Wilk of the anti-establishment band Rage Against the Machine and former Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker.

Long before that, in early 2008, she had listed her Bev Hills mansion with an asking price of $7,495,000. Eventually and inexplicably the price shot up to $7,900,000. By mid-March 2010, after running through several real estate agents who removed and re-listed the house more times than Your Mama cares to count, the asking price had tumbled to $5,495,000. Yesterday the price sank another $645,000 to $4,850,000. Beehawtcha must be getting eager eager eager to dump this former house of horrors.

A few quick flicks of the well worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus reveals that best case scenario Miss Spears will lose a gut wrenching $1,900,000 on her Beverly Hills real estate impulse, and that's before any of the real estate agents get their cut that could easily take another $200,000 of out Miss Spears bank accounts. Ouch.

photo: Prudential California–Beverly Hills (Nancy Sanborn)

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the Gucci family–that would be the Italian Guccis famous for their shooz, handbags and sexed up image thanks to former Gucci guru Tom Ford–put their gigantic 14-room doo-plex penthouse atop New York City's legendary Olympic Tower on the rental market at $60,000 per month. Unfurnished only. No dogs, thank you very much.

According to listing information, the titanic, approximately 10,000 square foot penthouse on the 51st and 52nd floors of the famed tower includes 7 bedrooms and 9.5 poopers. We count 7 full and 3 powder poopers on the floor plan but either way it totals 10 terlits, a double digit number that surely requires at least one full time staff person whose sole responsibility is scrubbing terlit bowls.

According to the floor plan, the oddly configured spread has multiple entrances and thus can be divided up a number of different ways providing a variety of different living configurations. The doo-plex digs includes a vast living room wrapped in vertigo inducing floor to ceiling windows, a formal dining room, media room with a sky light, two kitchens–one an eat in number with stainless steel cabinetry, a library/second living room, and a gym. There are also, at least 20 closets, 2 curving staircases, 2 private elevators, 2 wood burning fireplaces, and a hot tub in one master suite and a sauna in the second master suite. The floor plan also shows a "control room." Our imagination runs wild thinking about what a "control room" is for.

photo: Brown Harris Stevens (Daniela V. Rivoir)

Your Mama apologizes in advance to all the children with sensitive real estate constitutions for going here, but the public wants what the public wants and sometimes we have to go where no celebrity real estate gossip should have to go. Brace yourselves.

According to Miss Tammy Tarzana, some of the peeps in the Tarzana, CA neighborhood where Kendra Wilkinson–former gal pal and bed mate of octogenarian Hugh Hefner–and her newish husband Hank Bassett recently rented a mansion are not so pleased about the ongoing filming of her eponymous reality program–Kendra–which is scheduled, according to the note sent recently around to neighbors, to continue until April 30.

One of those neighbors not thrilled with the continued disruption filming causes not to mention near constant presence of paps, according to Miss Tammy, is none other than Mel B–aka Scary Spice–and her man-mate Stephen Belafonte who, according to property records, dumped $3,159,000 in September of 2009 for their 6,727 square foot manse that happens to be across the street from Wilkinson/Basset clan's classic "Mediterranean" mcmansion.

Property records and listing information Your Mama yanked from the interweb shows the double gated Wilkinson/Bassett rental residence was last on the open market with an asking price of $3,100,000, measures 6,744 square feet and includes 6 bedrooms and 7 poopers. Other cliché mcmansion amenities include a 30-foot high impress the guests style foyer with double curving staircases, travertine floors and a large swimming pool with water slide and–drum roll please–a grotto. That's right chickens, you can take the gurl and her plastic boob out of the Playboy Mansion and give her a baby, but you just cain't take the Playboy Mansion out of the gurl.

Property records show that Kendra owns a 2 bedroom and 3 pooper condo in Sherman Oaks, CA she purchased in December 2008 for $488,000 and, because the Mister plays the pigskin for the Indianapolis Colts, the couple also maintain a big ol' brick built mansion in a fancy-schmancy gated community in Carmel, IN.

photo: Pacific Coast News

and finally...

Rumor has it that global warming soothsayer and former vice-President Al Gore has been house hunting in Oprah's back yard. Ever since November of 2009 rumors have swirled and slip-slid down the high-income gossip grapevine in Montecito, CA that Mister Al Gore himself had his eye on a pricey property on posh Park Lane.

Montecito, a bastion of conservative rich people until Hollywood (and The Big O) started snatchin' up insanely expensive estate, seems an odd choice for a ol' boy from Tennessee. But maybe he thinks California is going to drive the green economy and he wants a foothold–albeit a wildly expensive one–on the west coast? Or maybe he's just an uppity liberal too rich to live among common folk?

If Your Mama is being honest, and we always are, we don't know a damn thing about this alleged interest in and offer to purchase a Park Lane mansion. All that we know is that records do not show any recent transactions on Park Lane and according to one source in Oprahville, the local news rag recently reported that Mister Gore snatched himself up some sort of mini-mansion in Montecito. We're still digging down and around into this one trying to get to the meat of the matter and the bottom of the scuttlebutt. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?