BUYER: Sandra BullockLOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $22,950,000
SIZE: 8,110 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: High-paid Oscar-winning girl-next-door actress Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side, Miss Congeniality, Speed et al) has bounced back smelling like a sweet rose from the stinky debacle of her marriage to and divorce from cheating chopper customizer Jesse James.
Miz Bullock, one of the highest paid female actors in Tinseltown, reportedly earns more than fifteen million bucks in salary per movie (not counting the back end income that easily doubles her salary), claims a net worth of $125,000,0000 and brought in lifetime global box office receipts of nearly three and a half billion bucks. With stratospheric numbers like that it should come as no surprise America's Sweetheart has a property portfolio that bulges at the seams with half a dozen luxury residences.
In January 2001 Miz Bullock paid $1,485,000 for a 3 bedroom and 3 bathroom Los Angeles house behind the Chateau Marmont Hotel and just a few doors down from fellow a-list movie star Cameron Diaz. Six months later she forked over another $1,495,000 for a house on Tybee Island (Georgia) and in June of 2009, just before her marriage to Mister James hit the skids, she shelled out $2,250,000 for a large and historic abode in New Orleans, LA. Your Mama's brief and decidedly unscientific research shows that Miz Bullock also owns a privately-set home in Austin, TX, a ski-chalet in Jackson Hole, WY and a townhouse in downtown New York City.
Although Miz Bullock's name appears nowhere on any of the property records and title documents at which Your Mama peeped–the documents show the property was acquired through a Mississippi-based business entity set up for the express purchase of a domestic residence via a New Orleans based attorney–according to a covert communique we recently received from Our Fairy Godmother in Beverly Hills the accomplished and beloved lady actor is now and also the new owner of a substantial and legendary estate near the western edge of Beverly Hills.
A long gated drive climbs and curves through the 4.1 acre estate to a generously-proportioned motor court with cross-hatched pattern detailing and detached four-car garage. The hulking Tudor-style pile stands a stately two and a half stories tall with stone facing on the ground floor and what looks like–and we hope are–leaded glass windows. The main house measures a sizable but not pathetically gargantuan 8,110 square feet with 5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms that include an expansive master suite with sitting room, fireplace and dual bathrooms.
Public and private spaces include a grandly-scaled living room with fireplace, paneled dining room with fireplace, library, office, eat-in kitchen, work out room and staff quarters all of which are protected by a serious security system, one that Your Mama imagines may soon include an armed and angry guard at the gate.
The supremely-sited property, which has a large flat backyard and stunning 270-degree views from downtown to the Pacific Ocean, includes a separate screening room and a pool side pavilion with an additional bedroom and terliting facility.
The famous and fabled hill top estate has a long list of prominent former owners who include That Girl Marlo Thomas who sold it to showbiz billionaire David Geffen sometime in the late 70s or early 80s. Mister Geffen, whose real estate feet eventually landed down the street at the even more legendary Jack Warner estate, sold the posh property in 1986 to radio station tycoon Norm Pattiz $5,933,000.
At that point the estate encompassed two parcels. One, the 4.1 acre parcel that Miz Bullock (allegedly) bought), holds the main house. A second, smaller and contiguous lot located down the steep hill side at the estate's southern flank contained the estate's tennis court plus a two-story 2,080 square foot guest house/tennis pavilion/screening room/recreation facility. Mister Pattiz, in a move kind to his pocketbook but unfortunate for the overall grandiosity of the estate, sold the larger lot that includes the main house in September 2006 to Hard Rock Café co-founder Peter Morton for $18,500,000. He sold the lower portion of the estate–once accessible from the upper portion of the property by a private funicular–in December 2006 to a non-celebrity for $3,500,000.
Mister Morton, who as far as Your Mama knows had big plans for but never actually occupied the property, put the imposing pad back on the market in July of 2008 with an asking price of $22,500,000. The property was marketed as a fixer-upper and/or as a tear down. The in-need-of-some-TLC mansion was eventually and finally sold in March 2010 at a significant three million dollar loss to Mister Morton. The buyer, L.A.-based hedge fund hog and hotel developer Reagan Silber, paid $15,500,000 for the property but like so many folks with money to burn, quickly caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle, and flipped the storied estate back on the market a year later with an asking price of $22,950,00.
Mister Silber, some of the children may already know, isn't exactly a stranger to the west coast real estate gossip columns. The deep-pocketed Mister Silber famously sold an über contemporary Bel Air mansion in June of 2006 for $20,000,000 to financially beleaguered tech tycoon Halsey Minor. Mister Minor, who has had real estate woes all up and down the state of California and beyond, has many times since buying failed to sell the house even though he's attempted at various times to unload it for ten million buckaroos less than he paid for it.
Anyhoo, getting back to the matter at hand...Real estate juggernaut Redfin shows that the Thomas/Geffen/Pattiz/Morton/Silber cum Bullock estate entered escrow in early May 2011, just two months after first appearing on the open market. Property records show the property transferred ownership from Mister Silber to Miz Bullock in mid-May for, according to Redfin, $22,950,000. Interestingly, our well-connected Fairy Godmother in Beverly Hills snitched to Your Mama that despite what appears on Redfin, she heard through the Beverly Hills real estate gossip grapevine that the property actually transferred for somewhere in the neighborhood of $17,000,000. Make of that, children, what you will.
While married to Jesse James, Miz Bullock's Los Angeles-area home base was an ocean front house in Sunset Beach–that's south of Long Beach–that Mister James recently sold in December 2010 for $4,500,000 after first listing the property in April for $6,750,000.
listing photos: Westside Estate Agency
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