1.
It seems that Democratic movers and shakers Bill and Hilary Clinton can't make up their damn real estate minds. For the last six or so months the couple have been traipsing through some the finest homes in the best zip codes in Westchester County (NY) looking to upgrade from their already quite luxurious residence in Chappaqua, NY.
According to a recent report, Bill and Hil have toured 20-acre Clover Hill Farm in Bedford, NY no less than nine times and yet they can't seem to pull the trigger and make a stoopid offer. One local broker snitched to The Post that some other real estate people in the area have grown sick and tired of the Clinton's tire kicking and if they weren't Bill the former president of the United States and Hil the current Secretary of State "no one would show them anything anymore." Ouch.
Over the course of the 9 times they've (allegedly) toured Clover Hill Farm the price has sank from $10,900,000 to $8,900,000. Maybe they're just a couple of Bargain Betties and they're waiting for the price to drop another two million?
2.
Oscar winning romantic comedy queen Julia Roberts (Eat, Pray, Love, Erin Brockovich, Pretty Woman) picked up a penthouse pad in a post-war building on lower Fifth Avenue in New York City. The Greenwich Village aerie, with its roof top terrace, according to The Post, cost the toothy west coast based superstar $3,895,000. They also reported that Miz Roberts will hang on to her long time Gramercy Park pied a terre.
Miz Roberts lives primarily at a big ranch in New Mexico and a quite large, recently completed cliff top estate in Malibu, CA.
3.
Writer Michael Gross, who literally wrote the book on the famed 740 Park Avenue building in New York and is working on a similar book about the lives of Los Angeles' richest and biggest living residents revealed that philanthropic entrepreneurs Lynda and Stewart Resnick–they own Teleflora, POM Wonderful, Fiji Water and a number of other things–have added a fourth contiguous property their their already massive three parcel spread in Beverly Hills.
Mister and Missus Resnick own Sunset House, a a famous and famously astonishing 1929 Beaux-Arts mansion on Sunset Boulevard. Over the years the mad-rich couple purchased the estates on either side of their palatial pad and razed the residences and in their places added citrus and pomegranate groves, formal gardens, a football field sized lawn large enough to pitch the largest party tent money will rent, and a vast parking area.
According to listing information, Mister and Missus Resnick paid $7,935,110 for the 8,287 square foot house that sits on a 1.05 acre corner lot and includes 2 bedrooms (plus 2 staff rooms) and a total of 8 poopers. The private and gated estate has a circular drive, massive service court, 3 car garage, large lawns and a swimming pool but that's probably of little import because Your Mama expects they'll knock the house down.
According to Mister Gross, the house the Resnicks bought was owned in the mid-1970s by actor James Caan.
4.
Now that he's purchased Diane Keaton's Ralph Flewelling designed Colonial Rivival residence in Beverly Hills, über successful Tinseltown scribe Ryan Murphy (Popular, Running With Scissors, Nip/Tuck, Glee) has re-listed his Los Angeles home in the hills above the star studded Chateau Marmont hotel.
Mister Murphy unsuccessfully attempted to sell his sleek but warm concrete, wood and glass Carl Maston designed digs in May of 2008 when it was listed for $4,195,000. This week it was hauled back on the market with a much lower asking price of $3,250,000.
5.
After a big ol' dust up with their neighbors who installed scaffolding to the exterior of their building in preparation for an extensive renovation, art Collector Charles Saatchi and his celebrity chef wife Nigella Lawson have, according to the Daily Mail, opted to cash out of their large London crib rather than suffer through a long and loud renovation next door. They are said to have heaved their sprawling apartment on swank Eaton Square in Belgravia on the market with an asking price of £36,000,000–a skin blistering $56,433,600 according to Your Mama's currency conversion contraption–which is a seriously higher price than the £3,800,000–that's just under six million American clams–that Mister Saatchi paid for the place just nine years ago.
We're not sure what he did over the last 9 years to justify a ten fold increase in value but for those numbers it better have some solid gold Jeff Koons designed terlits.
6.
Daphne Guinness, fashion daredevil, international gadabout, and heiress to the Guinness beer fortune, has also got trouble with her New York City neighbors who, according to The Post have filed suit against the sassy sartorial icon for repeatedly flooding their multi-million dollar apartment no fewer than four times due to an over-flowing bathtub.
The quartet of floods have not only inconvenienced the downstairs neighbors–hedge hog Karim Samii and his wife Tina–but caused extensive damage to the sheet rock, moldings and a vanity table. The Samiis say they've become afraid to leave their apartment lest Miz Guinness once again turn the water on to fill her tub and then just forget about it. They've asked for more than a million bucks to pay for damages and compensate for their emotional distress. They have also asked the court to bar Miz Guinness from taking or filling her bathtub until something is done that will keep her bathtub from over flowing.
According to StreetEasy, Miz Guinness purchased her 4,118 square foot spread in April of 2008 for $11,734,719 and the Samiis theirs a month earlier for $12,852,946.
Miz Guinness did not, surprisingly, have any comment for The Post.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Sunday Serenity
Each Sunday, I will feature a picture taken by one of my daughters,
and some words of faith, hope, and love given by our Father:
But the exact day and hour?
No one knows that, not even heaven's angels, not even the Son.
Only the Father.
So keep a sharp lookout, for you don't know the timetable.
It's like a man who takes a trip,
leaving home and putting his servants in charge,
each assigned a task,
and commanding the gatekeeper to stand watch.
So, stay at your post, watching.
You have no idea when the homeowner is returning,
whether evening,
midnight,
cockcrow,
or morning.
You don't want him showing up unannounced,
with you asleep on the job.
I say it to you, and I'm saying it to all:
Stay at your post.
Keep watch.
Mark 13:33 (The Message)
Friday, October 22, 2010
It's Official!
Hang on to your britches beehawtchas...Back in late February (2010) our trusted informant Buhneeda Beansouttathebag snitched to Your Mama that maximalist decorator ju jour Kelly Wearstler and her hotelier/property developer huzband Brad Korzen quietly slipped their palatial Beverly Hills, CA estate on to the market with an ear piercing price tag of fifty million clams. We quickly corroborated Buhneeda's gossip with another well informed tattle-tale we know named Candy Canconfirmit, then Your Mama went on and on and on about it.
Well puppies, eight months later Mister Korzen and Miz Wearstler have made it official. Although the preening pair's posh pad with its dizzying and dy-no-mite 1970s inspired day-core has yet to pop up on the Multiple Listing Service, the storied and fabled spread now appears on the website of the Westside Estate Agency with an official price tag of $46,000,000.
Listing information shows this walled and gated "Opportunity of a Lifetime," originally designed by little lauded but soo-blime architect James Dolena, spans 3.2 manicured acres with a sweeping celebrity style driveway and includes 5 family bedrooms, 2 staff rooms, and a total of 10 poopers in the main house plus a gorgeous guest house down by the cee-ment pond with another three bedrooms and, we presume, at least a couple more poopers.
For Your Mama's previous discussion/diatribe go on and get yourself a snack and a cocktail and click here.
listing photo: Everett Fenton Gidley for Westside Estate Agency
Anjelica Huston Wants Out of Venice Beach Complex
SELLER: Anjelica HustonLOCATION: Venice, CA
SIZE: 13,796 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 full and 3 half bathrooms
PRICE: $18,000,000
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We're joining this party a little late but Your Mama loves us an artist space so we're going to re-hash a Venice, CA live-work property owned by movie star and Hollywood icon Anjelica Huston that's already been well hashed in Curbed LA and the Huffington Post.
Anjelica Huston is dee-vine, hunnies. As far as we're concerned beehawtcha can just stand there looking into the camera not saying a damn word and we'd happily hand over 13 or 15 bucks to watch that movie, you know? She was flaw-less in Prizzi's Honor–for which she was awarded an Oscar–she was insanely good in The Grifters–which earned her an Oscar nomination–she was dead on target in the The Addams Family film franchise, she was delicious in The Royal Tenenbaums and even tastier in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
More recently Miz Huston, the widow of famed and acclaimed sculptor Robert Graham, has turned in smashing performances in lesser known films such as the black comedy Choke and a cinematic adaption of Leo Tolstoy's novella The Kreutzer Sonata. The movie star has also taken on couple of boob-toob roles on Huff and Medium.
Mister Graham, most known for his obsession with the human form, particularly that of a nekkid ladee. Some of the children may have seen one of his famous female torsos in Beverly Hills, CA where a 14-foot solid aluminum hottie that stands on a chunky bronze pedestal at the intersection of Rodeo Drive and Dayton Way. Others may recall the headless and feetless über athletic male and female torsos standing atop a post and lintel structure commissioned by the Los Angles Olympic Organizing Committee and installed at the main entrance to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to commemorate the 23rd Olympiad held in Los Angeles. New Yorkers who deign to go above East 90th Street will recognize Mister Graham's 30-foot tall cast bronze and gold leaf Duke Ellington Memorial installed in the center Duke Ellington Circle–that's Fifth Avenue and East 110th Street–at the northeast corner of Central Park.
Miz Huston and Mister Graham's contemporary complex sits on three contiguous parcels just 200 feet from the wild, wacky and high-lariously entertaining hot mess that is the Venice Beach Boardwalk and the often thickly populated sugary sand that stretches out towards the surf. The residential quarters occupy the center parcel, the massive art studio sits on the eastern parcel and the smallest third parcel on the western side is a narrow, ficus tree shaded garden with a patch of grass, a lot of potted plants, and a tiny brick terrace with a carved Balinese sofa, plant laden coffee table and one of those fire chimney things that can be purchased from any Home Despot around the country.
The entire compound is walled, gated and presumably very well secured. The blocky residential side, which presents and all but windowless fortress-like face to the street, spans 4,063 square feet over two floors and according to listing information combines French, Mediterranean and Bauhaus architectural styles. The interior spaces of the residence include 3 bedrooms and 2 full and 3 half poopers. The main living areas include a combination living and dining room with hardwood floors, fireplace and a soaring barrel vaulted ceiling , a game room down in the basement–a basement is surely a very rare thing in Venice–and a narrow book shelf lined library/den. Several balconies and French doors open the house to the side yard or the quite and exquisitely private central courtyard that separates the two buildings.
In addition tot the living quarters, the Graham-Huston's corrugated metal and glass warehouse-style complex includes a gigantic studio with 9,733 square feet of airiness designed by Robert Graham's son Steven with the assistance of avant-garde Venice, CA architecture firm Studio Vass. The studio space towers three stories tall with 2 mezzanine and offers a series of interconnected and voluminous flexible use spaces flooded with light and ocean views from the higher levels. The studio is currently configured, according to listing information and previous reports, as a gallery, offices, dance/exercise room, communal kitchen, large workshop, and top floor sitting room with vaulted ceiling, poured concrete floors, and a view of the Pacific Ocean past the palm trees and over the surrounding roof tops.
Shaded by a lovely coral tree, the quiet courtyard that separates the living quarters from the studio building including coral colored concrete hardscaping, dining terrace, a couple nooks and crannies for contemplative moments, and a raised black bottomed lap pool and party-sized spa.
Listen puppies, Your Mama can hardly tell a dog from a cat but we can easily recognize that Miz Huston and Mister Graham's leviathan live-work space this is a massive complex that sprawls across 3 contiguous lots with astronomical square footage. But we also know that it's located Venice or, as Curbed LA succinctly called it, "the corner of tourist and crazy." Don't none of your Venice Beachers misunderstand Your Mama. We loves us the nitty-gritty architecturally forward thinking city of Venice–well, not those RV people who dump there terlit waste right into the street gutters–but let's be honest, $18,000,000 is a lot of damn clams for a house in a plush zip code like 90077, 90210 or 90024 so a price that stratospheric in the 90291 makes it seem like someone got hit hard over the head a serious case of Real Estate Insanity. But then again, because of it's proximity to the beach, this property might very well be a goldmine if it can be further developed and converted to an arty-farty but freakishly expensive boho-chic condominium complex.
Your Mama doesn't know where Miz Huston plans on moving or where Mister Graham's archives will be kept if not in this building. Although it seems unlikely she'd move there full time we do know from property records and previous reports–including this one in Architectural Digest–that Miz Huston owns a 120+ acre ranch spread up in the bee-yoo-tee-ful and rugged foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Three Rivers, CA, near where the north, south and middle forks of the Kaweah River merge. As it turns out Your Mama knows a little summin-summin about that particular neck of the California citrus groves. As a child, our tough talkin' Granny and sweet talkin' Grandpappy used to toss Your Mama and Sister Woman into the back of their Datsun pee-cup truck and take us on up to the Kaweah Chuckwagon Cafe, a smorgasbord style restaurant where we feasted on soggy chicken, dried out ham, and red Jell-O with that horrible hard skin it sometimes gets. The Chuckwagon has done went out of business but perhaps Miz Huston had the distinct if dubious pleasure of eating at the Chuckwagon before it shut its doors because we'd like to think we've had at least that one shared experience with such a creature as Miz Huston.
listing photos: Engel & Voelkers
One Closet Fits All :: The Linen Closet, That Is
Our tiny, lone linen closet serves 4 bedrooms/2 baths upstairs.
It needs to be edited often to store the basic necessities.
As you can see, I prefer white linens. They are easier to keep clean.
At our house, anyway.
I saved up the empty bags from linens that I'd bought,
went through all the sheet sets and kept the ones that we'd use,
and used the zippered bags and a label to neatly, freshly and conveniently
store slipcovers, pillowcases, and sheet sets.
Comforters/duvets and blankets stay on the beds in their rooms,
or on the shelf in the bedroom closet.
Baskets are great for containing toilet paper!
This jar is full of travel-size shampoo, conditioner, lotion, mouthwash, soap and shower caps
for guests that may have forgotten theirs.
Also for the guest room.
Carafe and water glass, alarm clock, doilies and chocolates for guest room pillows.
Love this soap!
White towels are our choice because they are bleachable, when or if necessary.
I buy the softest, fluffiest towels at Wal-Mart, of all places.
I buy, all at once, a matching set of
4 bath sheets, 4 bath towels, 8 hand towels, and 8 washcloths.
The last set I had lasted 5 years.
I don't bleach the towels every time, only as I notice stains.
I also do something really weird.
After I wash the towels, have dried and folded them, I put them back into the closet
UNDERNEATH the towels that are already on the shelf.
This keeps the towels rotated.
In other words, we are not using the same towels on top over and over again.
This causes them all to last longer.
(I also do this with kitchen towels, underwear, socks, t-shirts.)
Method products are our favorite cleaners.
They work.
And, the chemicals don't knock us out while cleaning with them!
This is my "rag" basket. Bar mop cloths on the left and micro-fiber cloths on the right.
On the door rack: vintage and new linens.
Waiting to be ironed. Waiting and waiting.
I love linens. A lot. I think I have an obsession!
These are our linens, but...
...I have many, many more!
Did I mention I am addicted to linens?
I have even opened a new eBay account that sells just linens.
I haven't listed anything yet.
I have gathered my inventory, and am ironing and taking pictures of them all.
It is coming soon!
Back to the closet.
On the floor are two baskets that I found in two totally different Good Wills in
two totally different cities in two totally different states!
Flour sack drying cloths, bar mop "rags".
I like bar mop cloths as rags because they leave no lint when cleaning things.
The END.
I am partying with these chicks:
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Packing My Suitcase :: Girls' Road Trip to PA
Today is the day I leave for the Harrisburg, PA, Sheraton
for
I am travelling with an "old" friend:
And a "new" friend:
I am rooming with three other girls.
If you'd like to read more about how I'd be as a roommate,
read about it here.
I have packed simply.
Mix and match clothing in white, black and gray.
Some jackets and jeans.
A little bit of bling.
{The heart necklace was made by Miss A.}
{The heart necklace was made by Miss A.}
I have gotten to the point in my travelling experience, that less is actually more.
When I pack too much, I can't find anything.
I can't decide what to wear, and waste time figuring it out.
Who am I trying to impress?
I don't usually wear makeup or jewelry during the week, anyway!
My face usually stays in the jar by the door.
I do clean my ears regularly, however.
My monogrammed locket is special to me.
A gift from beefcake, and I want to keep him close to my heart while I am away from him.
I packed my chandelier pajamas, and my Elmo, and a really annoying alarm clock
so I don't miss breakfast.
He just wants to have fun, too!
He is so excited!!
And I don't want to be bothered by what I am wearing or look like.
I just wanna connect to other kindred hearts,
enjoy sweet and fruitful fellowship,
to engage other women bloggers in sharing, inspiring and learning
and to figure out how to integrate my life fully
with my faith and family...
all the while giving GLORY to HIM!
I can't wait to share with you what I learn!!
Another Biggie On the Block in the Bu
SELLER: Richard and Liane WeintraubLOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $75,000,0000
SIZE: 12,045 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 8.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Late last night as we we sipped on our pre-bedtime gin & tonic and perused all the new listings in Los Angeles Your Mama came a may-jer estate in Malibu, CA recently heaved on to the market with a back breaking–and probably optimistic–asking price of $75,000,000. Two minutes of research on the interweb revealed that the opulent and extravagant 8+ acre ocean view spread, dubbed La Villa Contenta, belongs to well-known and prolific Malibu-based real estate developer Richard Weintraub and his entrepreneurial and social wife Liane.
Your Mama well recognizes that unless one lives in Malibu, flits amongst wealthy Angelenos, and/or closely follows southern California real estate Mister Richard Weintraub ain't likely to be a household name. None the less, the 40-something year old property pasha is a big deal around town having instigated, revived or brought to fruition a number of high profile retail, commercial, and residential projects around Los Angeles. He is–at least in part–responsible for getting approval and erecting the dee-luxe and heralded Californian condominium tower on Wilshire Boulevard as well as developing the sleek and green Malibu Lumber Yard, a low-key but very swank outdoor shopping complex with a small number of boo-teeks that include James Perse, Kitson, Tory Burch, Intermix, and the Malibu outpost of avant-garde clothing emporium Maxfield where fashion daredevils can buy brooding, impossibly chic and shockingly expensive togs created by sartorial mavericks such as Paris-based American-born designer Rick Owens.
In 2007 Mister Weintraub purchased and began an ongoing update and revitalization of the Hollywood-historic, renowned, and kinda campy Sportsman's Lodge Hotel in Studio City. Legend has it that the San Fernando Valley outpost, where many rock and roll road crews still shack up when passing through town, regularly hosted a cavalcade of Old Hollywood stars like Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Tallulah Bankhead, Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne who along with regular folks used to fish for their own dinner in the Lodge's stocked trout ponds.
While she could probably sit around in couture clothes and eat bon-bons all day, tall, toothy, and well educated Missus Weintraub is committed to saving the environment and children from all that might ail them. As such, she co-founded Tastybaby, a line of organic baby food and snacks popular with and endorsed on the company website by celebrity parents such as Lisa Loeb, Scott Baio, Stella McCartney, Cindy Crawford, Joel McHale and Melissa Joan Hart.
Iffin we're being truthful, and we always are, property records for Mister and Missus Weintraub's lavish La Villa Contenta compound have perplexed and driven Your Mama to an early morning Bloody Mary. Although we really aren't certain, it appears based on the property records we accessed that Mister and Missus Weintraub began to piece parcels together in the mid to late 1990s and completed the erection of their residential monument to their money and success in the early 2000s. (Some of the structures appear to have been completed later than the main house.)
The estate is unquestionably sumptuous, luxurious, well equipped, beautifully maintained, and constructed and decorated with high quality materials. But, butter beans, it all looks to Your Mama jaded aesthetic like a nipped and tucked third wife trying very hard to be a high society doyenne who does not realize–or care to realize–she's oozing vulgarity and ostentation by wearing far too much jewelry and custom concocted terlit water. Keep in mind, puppies, Mister and Missus Weintraub were child-free and in their late twenties and early thirties when they embarked on building their own version of Hearst Castle on the bluffs of the Bu. Why Mister and Missus Weintraub wanted a mansion of this magnitude is beyond Your Mama's ability to comprehend. If we've said it once, we've said it too many times, the real estate machinations of the rich and famous are often, at best, convoluted, intellectually Byzantine, and completely foreign territory to someone like Your Mama whose real estate needs are quite happily sated with far less beastly and braggy accommodations.
Anyhoo, according to listing information, the main mansion of the Weintraub's gated estate measures 12,045 square feet with 8 full poopers and 4 family bedrooms and 2 staff rooms. Marketing materials and other online photo caches of La Villa Contenta show a large sitting room–that may or may not be the formal living room, we don't know–swaddled in paneling with mirrored panels and elaborate moldings, fitted with a fireplace and French doors and windows with ocean views, and decorated with various Chinoiserie including a gigantic folding screen that Your Mama would bet cost more than an Ivy League education.
Also in the main house, according to listing information and other online photos, a soaring stone-walled foyer with mosaic tile floor, a formal dining room with red jacquard fabric covered walls and fireplace, a gore-may kitchen complex with family room area, a home theater, fitness center, expansive decks, and at least one loggia with hand-painted groin vaulted ceilings and outdoor fireplace with what appears to be dee-lishus verre églomisé detailing.
Also on the intensely landscaped and manicured property, according to listing information, are a guest house, office space which can be used as a 6 bedroom second home, and a palatial Greek Revival style natatorium/pool house with marble pilasters, walls encrusted with more than 500,000 seashells, six glittery crystal chandeliers, and a glass ceiling. The indoor plunge pool in the sea shelled-out natatorium is, the children may be amused to know, just one of three swimming pools on the property. A second pool with sunken spa and dramatic ocean view sits just just below and adjacent to the natatorium and a third pool, sunk into the flat ocean view lawn area that stretches out behind the main house, saves the Weintraub's a long trek across the flamboyantly restrained formal garden when they feel the urge to take a quick dip.
La Villa Contenta also includes a tennis court with proper north-south orientation, a massive glass greenhouse, formal gardens, several parking areas plus covered parking for up to 10 automobiles, and acres of unnaturally green grass. What the estate does not have, the children might find interesting, is an inch of beach frontage or direct ocean access. The property sits on a high bluff that tumbles down to the strip of ocean front homes on exclusive and pricey Malibu Cove Colony Road. It appears that the homes on Malibu Cove Colony Road don't interfere with the wide and panoramic vistas of the Pacific, it would seem that stand in the way of being able to see the beach itself.
Mister and Missus Weintraub, in addition to hosting numerous charity events, have over the years leased La Villa Contenta for several movies including Adam Sandler's Funny People and Paul Rudd comedy I Love Your Man.
In May of 2010, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Weintraubs put their La Villa Contenta compound up for short term lease of $87,500 per month for the main house only and $250,000 per month for the entire estate. They also, according to listing information Your Mama teased out of the interweb, made the estate available as a summer rental in 2010 with asking priced of $150-175,000 per month. We're not sure if those figures were just for the main manse or the entire estate nor do we know if any Richie Rich with a Versailles complex forked over the rent money. Back in May, Mister Weintraub told the Wall Street Journal that he and the Missus were wanting to lease the property because they wanted to take the family traveling for several months and, besides he said, they are building another house nearby. We know nada-zip-zilch of this other house they are–or were–allegedly building nearby.
La Villa Contenta, in addition to being available to lease, is available to purchase at equally treacherous and breathtaking sums. The main house, which sits on 1.52 acre parcel that includes the tennis court and one of the outdoor swimming pools, is currently on the market at $34,500,000 while the entire 8-ish acre spread is up on the block with an astronomical $75,000,000 price tag.
Your Mama really can't say whether this property is worth anything near seventy five million clams or if there's anyone who wants a home in Malibu willing to pay that fat price for an estate with annual upkeep costs that could easily be 2 or even three hundred times what the average person earns in a year.
What we do know is that the highest recorded sales in Malibu in the last year or so are the $40,000,000+ sale of deceased philanthropist Nancy Daly's beach front beast on Carbon Beach that was first listed at $57,000,000, and the as yet unreported off-market sale of the totally overhauled and stuh-ning former Don Rickles residence on Malibu Road that Your Mama heard from Harry Hasthenews went for around $30,000,000 in mid-September.
Your Mama heard through the Malibu gossip grapevine–but can not confirm–that the former Rickles residence was purchased by cantankerous New York City-based real estate tycoon Sam Minskoff and his much younger wife Julie who once brought her pet pig to a dinner party at Vera Wang's Park Avenue apartment. The couple gad about between residences in Palm Beach, Southampton, and New York City where they bed-down at the high-toned 730 Park Avenue.
In addition to the recent real estate news that the new owners of Nancy Daly's Carbon Beach abode leased the fully furnished at $200,00o per month on a 1-year minimum lease, Your Mama has also had a couple of bits of speculation about the identity of the forty-plus million dollar buyer come slip sliding down the real estate gossip grapevine. First, Our Fairy Godmother in Malibu whispered in our ear that she heard the buyer might be Oracle honcho Larry Ellison. This makes a certain amount of sense given that he has a penchant for buying up property in Malibu. But then again, Mister Ellison, who owns a dozen or more residential investment properties in Malibu many on Carbon Beach, needs another property in Malibu like he needs a damn hole in his head. Then we heard from another, also very reliable source, that the buyer might actually be a b.f.f. of junk bond billionaire and philanthropist Michael Milken who bought the place "direct from the estate with no brokers involved."
Whatever the actual purchase prices and whomever the buyers of the former Daly and Rickles residences actually are, it seems that there's a limit to what someone will pay for homes in Malibu no matter how nice, how large, and how extravagant. Perhaps the Weintraubs will get lucky and sell their La Villa Contenta for more than fifty million clams. Or maybe they'll need to take a real estate reality check. We'll just have to wait and see, butter beans, we'll just have to wait and see.
Unfortunately Your Mama does not have much information on the other private real estate holdings of Mister and Missus Weintraub. Property records reveal that the couple have bought and sold a fair number of expensive homes in Malibu over the years as well as a couple of condos on Wilshire Boulevard including a 19th floor pad at the Californian.
What we did find that Your Mama found most interesting is that, in March of 2005, Mister and Missus Weintraub laid out $1,900,000 for a low floor New York City pied a terre in the very same Fifth Avenue building where domestic diva Martha Stewart keeps a city crib, which happens to be the same building where much in the news recluse multi-millionairess Huguette Clark maintains buts does not occupy two massive spreads–one that encompasses the entire 8th floor and another half of the 12th floor–that comprise a staggering 42 rooms. Mister and Missus Weintraub no longer own that small apartment having sold it in July of 2008 to a well known Austrian blue-chip art dealer for $4,950,000. Given that Missus Weintraub was raised and educated in New York City Your Mama would be powerful surprised iffin they did not replace their Fifth Avenue pied a terre with another one, but a rudimentary search did not turn up ownership of another condo or cooperative apartment.
listing photos: Coldwell Banker Previews International
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