Howard Marks Spends Big at 740 Park Avenue

SELLER: Courtney Sale Ross
BUYER: Howard and Nancy Marks
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $52,500,000
SIZE: Huge with lots of bedrooms and bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: No babies, your eyes have not played tricks on your brains and Your Mama’s weary finger-nubbins did not make a mistake in that-there purchase price. According to all the property gossips in New York City—and property records available on Streeteasy—Los Angeles-based Oaktree Capital kingpin Howard Marks and his wife Nancy really did fork over an eye-popping and record-breaking $52,500,000 for a legendary duplex at the ludicrously expensive building at 740 Park Avenue in New York City.

The two-floor, two-unit combination crib—sold by Time Warner widow Courtney Sale Ross who some time ago re-located her city digs to a much smaller but hardly inexpensive apartment downtown—had been widely rumored to be available off-market for a number of years with asking prices as sky high as $75,000,000 and last winter the approximately 10,000 square foot duplex was at-long-last hoisted on the open market a still scorching $60,000,000 price tag. The two units were also put out for sale separately at 25 and 35 million clams apiece.

The easiest and best way to comprehend the magnitude of Los Angeles-based Mister and Missus Marks’ new Manhattan pied-a-terre is by the numbers. According to listing information—and Your Mama’s count according to the floor plan included with marketing materials—the colossal co-op encompasses 30 (or so) rooms with more than two dozen closets and dressing rooms, 6 principal bedrooms including a spacious master suite with private sitting room, 2-3 staff bedrooms, 9 full and 3 half bathrooms, 6-7 wood burning fireplaces, 6 separate landscaped terraces (none of them particularly large), 2 grand entrance galleries (each with swooping floating staircase), 2 living rooms (one 35-feet long and almost 20-feet wide and reportedly kitted out as a media room), formal and informal dining rooms, 2 well-equipped chef-friendly kitchens (connected by an all-but-hidden corridor), two libraries, 2 offices, and one game room/gym. 

Listing information from late 2011 shows common charges and maintenance for the bloated duplex totals $34,326 per month, and amount Your Mama’s bejeweled abacus calculates at a blood-curdling $411,912 each year just to keep the doorman making nice-nice when you come through the building’s lavish and whisper-quiet lobby.

Your Mama discussed the Sale Ross cum Marks apartment late last year, iffin any of y’all give a white what we thought about it back then.

As truly epic as Mister and Missus Marks’ new spread at 740 Park may be, it’s still out-shown, one could argue, by the building’s even larger triplex penthouse owned by Blackstone Group’s Stephen Schwarzman who allegedly coughed up $35-40,000,000 for the 34-room titanic triplex in 2000. See kids, there’s always someone with bigger and more, even for free-spending billionaires.

Mister and Missus Marks, as mentioned above, reside primarily in Los Angeles, CA where property records (and other online documentation) reveal they are the very picture of what Your Mama would call hardcore real estate ballers. They play, our unscientific and incomplete research shows, on the same real estate battlefield as recently (and oh-so-bitterly) divorced ballers Frank and Jamie McCourt.

Records show way back in July 1996 Mister and Missus Marks paid commercial real estate tycoon Robert Maguire III a tongue-twisting $7,963,570 for a nearly 2-acre estate area on one of the most desirable and priciest streets in all of Los Angeles. The L.A. County Tax Man and other online sources indicate the the multi-structure estate in Brentwood has an 8,617 square foot multi-winged quasi-Colonial main mansion with 6 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms surrounded by expansive lawns, fussed-over gardens, a parking lot-sized circular motor court, a swimming pool complex with pool house and at least one other detached structure of unknown purpose.

Property records are a wee bit convoluted but as best as we can tell Mister and Missus Marks acquired all three pieces of their 10-ish acre oceanfront estate in Malibu, CA in early 2000. The bulk of the estate had previously belonged to casino widow Verna Harrah who sold it in 1999 for $27,000,000 to Herbalife founder Mark Hughes who was found dead in the house just a few months after buying the extravagant, bluff-top property. We didn’t turn up a purchase price for the but an snippet in Forbes from the time of the purchase indicates that word on the real estate street at the time was the big deal went down for around $31,000,000.

Since then Mister and Missus Marks have re-built the mansion from the ground up and replaced every square inch of the fully-landscaped estate. Aerial images show a multi-pronged mansion that winds around a pair of motor courts and various terraces that give way to broad lawns, a bluff-top swimming pool and a tennis court complex with viewing pavilion. There are least four additional structures we presume (but do not actually know to be) guest houses and/or staff quarters. The Los Angeles County Tax Man puts the existing main house at 19,340 square feet with 8 bedrooms and an unlucky 13 poopers.

The Marks’ nearest neighbors in Malibu include mustachioed actor Sam Elliot (Up In The Air, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), hedge fund honcho Jon Brooks, and television super-producer Marcia Carsey (The Cosby Show, Roseanne, 3rd Rock from the Sun, The ’70s Show) who all live close enough that one of Mister and Missus staff could easily dash over in a golf cart to borrow a cup of sugar or bottle of Perrier Jouet.

In June 2010 First Lady Michelle Obama and the First Children (in)famously spent an afternoon at the Mark’s Malibu estate, a seemingly innocuous summertime seaside event that triggered a lot of sharp-toothed chatter and controversy by folks who found it unseemly the First Lady and her children would take a luxurious and care-free vacay while the American economy remained stuck in a great big pile of stinking shit.

Anyhoo, politics, shmolotics…

Since the early 1980s, according to online documents Your Mama peeped, Mister and Missus Marks have owned and maintained a privately-situated, 7.7 acre estate in the semi-rustic but very uppity enclave of Montecito, CA (above). Records indicate they paid just under $700,000 for the property that the Santa Barbara County Tax Man shows now includes an 8,306 square foot mansion with additional outbuildings that include (but may not be limited to) a pool house, tennis pavilion and detached guest/staff residence. In 2007, about the time they were buying up their Malibu estate they unsuccessfully attempted to sell the Montecito estate with a $29,000,000 price tag.

Your Mama needs a damn nerve pill just to consider the brobdingnagian financial resources required to pay for, staff and maintain three, multi-acre high-maintenance estates in southern California. Add to that the cost associated with owning Mister and Missus Marks’ new, $52,500,000 real estate bauble at 740 Park Avenue and we are out cold with flabbergast. Iffin we were the betting type, and we’re not, we’d wager both our long-bodied bitches Linda and Beverly that it costs more each month for the Marks to pay their various utility bills than most people earn in an entire year.

740 Park photo (exterior): Property Shark
740 Park listing photos (interior): Brown Harris Stevens
Aerial images (Los Angeles & Montecito): Bing 

Monday Mish-mosh: One Hyde Park

Hold on to your britches children…

A massive 9,000-plus square foot spread in London’s insanely expensive One Hyde Park recently hit the open market with a staggering asking price of £65,000,000. A couple of quick clicks and clacks of Your Mama’s currency conversion contraption reveals that’s a bone-crushing 104,419,000 U.S. dollars at today’s rates.

Listing information shows the two-wing apartment, linked by a extravagantly long 65-meter corridor, occupies the entire 8th floor of the very contemporary Richard Roger’s designed complex’s Pavilion C and includes both city and tree-top views of Hyde Park. Listing information indicates the decked-out spread—which appears to Your Mama to be a sponsor unit with interiors by Candy & Candy—has 5 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, and 3 reception rooms.

Most buyers at One Hyde Park are shrouded in secrecy and a matter of intense gossip and speculation. Most of the sold units are owned by off-shore corporations and it’s been reported that fewer than 10 of the 86 units are occupied by full-time residents, a situation that no doubt leaves the glitzy complex in natty Knightsbridge feeling like a bit of a ghost town most of the time.

Current and/or former owners in the four-tower complex are said to include high-flying developers Christian and Nick Candy, pop star Kylie Minogue, London-based Kazakh copper tycoon Vladimir Kim, insolvent property developer Ray Grehan and Ukrainian mining magnate Rinat Akhmetov who reportedly paid £136,400,000 for either a penthouse or two adjacent units expected to cost him another £60,000,000 to combine

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, otherwise known as the Prime Minister of Qatar, is a principle investor in the complex along with the Misters Candy and reportedly owns one of the palatial penthouses. Mister Al Thani, who owns a 8+ acre vacant parcel in Bel Air bought in late 2010 for $34,500,000, recently made a $31,500,000 offer to purchase two of deceased heiress Huguette Clark’s New York City apartments but was rejected by the board who (allegedly) refused to even grant the sheikh an interview due to concerns about the size of his family, entourage, staff and security detail.

listing photos: Aylesford International Estate Agents

Monday Mish-mosh: Jennifer Aniston

photo: Blanco/X17online.com

The U.K.’s Daily Mail revealed yesterday that house hopper Jennifer Aniston and her man-beau Justin Theroux have embarked on an extensive renovation of the sprawling, low-slung A. Quincy Jones-designed residence she/they bought a few months ago for, as per property records, a purse walloping $20,970,000.

A recent aerial photograph (above) from The Daily Mail shows the approximately 8,000 square foot mid-century modern mansion and and much of the surrounding 3.25(ish) acre grounds in Los Angeles’ hoity-toity Bel Air ‘hood all tore up and under construction.

listing photos: Trulia Luxe Living

In the meantime, Jenny and Justin. are reportedly shacked up in a fully rehabbed 1962 Hal Leavitt-designed house in the trendy and star-stocked Trousdale Estates area of Beverly Hills (above) that was recently up for sale with an $11,500,000 asking price. The lovebirds are paying, so the stories go, around forty grand a month for their temporary crib that includes, as per listing information, 5 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in about 6,500 square feet and state-of-the-art entertainment and home automation systems.

Monday Mish-mosh: Rob Dyrdek

According to the Realtor.com (via the kids at Curbed) professional skateboarder turned reality tee-vee hot Rob Dyrdek listed his concrete crib in Los Angeles’ Mount Olympus neighborhood for $2,599,000.

Your Mama had never heard of this fella before but yesterday we happened to catch about 2 minutes of his show Ridiculousness on the MTV but turned away in horror after it showed some moron on a motorcycle do a wheelie that caused his gal-pal on the back to slide off and land on her face. Nice.

Anyhoo, Mister Dyrdek picked up the 4,706 square foot modern in 2008 for $2,459,000.

listing photo: St. James + Canter

Monday Mish-mosh: Bristol Palin

Sarah’s daughter Bristol Palin bought a big ol’ house in Maricopa, AZ in December 2010 for $172,000. So the story went, she planned to go to school there, or something like that. By June 2011 the 21-year old single mother relocated to Los Angeles, put her Maricopa house up for lease at $1,400 per month and recently flipped it, according to the fine folks at Zillow, for $175,000.

We don’t know a thing from a thing about Miss Palin’s plans but recent reports in the tabs say she has already moved back to Alaska where she and baby Tripp will live in sin with pipeline laying boyfriend Gino Paoletti in a house she bought just across the lake from her mother’s house where, so the stories go, Bristal, baby and man-friend are holed up until renovations are her house are finished.

Monday Mish-mosh: Brian Baumgartner

The Office’s often offensive accountant Kevin Malone—known in real life as the much less offensive Brian Baumgartner—recently acquired a new crib in Tinseltown according to the long-legged gal at Trulia. Mister Baumgartner paid $1,066,700 for the modest and modern new house in the Franklin Hills area between Los Feliz and Silver Lake.

Mister B. also owns another home in the nearby Oaks neighborhood in Los Feliz purchased in 2007 for $1,912,500.

listing photo: Coldwell Banker / Los Feliz

UPDATE: Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds

Just to make sure all of y’all got it: The bew-colic, almost-two acre country spread near Bedford, NY Your Mama originally thought was bought by Gossip Girl’s Blake Lively appears on closer inspection to be have been purchased through a trust connected to her man-friend Ryan Reynolds.

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A Quiet Life in the Country for Ryan Reynolds

BUYER: Ryan Reynolds
LOCATION: Bedford/Pound Ridge, NY
PRICE: $2,350,000
SIZE: 4,753 square feet, 3-4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

NOTE: This was updated later same day. We originally thought this house was bought by Blake Lively but a second look (and a hint-hint from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial) indicates something a little different…

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Almost since the very moment they first made googly eyes at each on the set of The Green Lantern last year all the celebrity-based tabs, blogs and gossip glossies have breathlessly reported that Gossip Girls blondie Blake Lively and hard-bodied actor Ryan Reynolds (The Green Lantern) have been on the hunt for a celebrity-style nest they can feather together.

Late last year, just a short month (or so) into their romantic interlude all the New York City property gossips went nuts about the two of them touring a handful of pricey penthouse apartments including a $4.35 million dollar duplex penthouse at The Grand Madison with 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and 2 terraces that overlook Madison Square Park where New Yorkers line up like lemurs all summer long for a burger and fries at Shake Shack.

Being above all things cynical and practical, Your Mama remembers reading the reports and thinking these two Tinseltown types were out of their damn minds to even entertain the purchase of a multi-million dollar home together after just a couple of months of hooking up.

More recently, all the celebrity and property gossips have been frothing at the mouth over the rampant rumors the pretty pair have been house hunting for a country spread in the sylvan and star-studded New York City suburbs of Westchester County (NY) and Connecticut.

Yesterday the New York Post reported Miss Lively and recently divorced Mister Reynolds finally bit the real estate bullet with the purchase of a $2.3 million dollar country spread on 2 acres that overlook the Cross River Reservoir near the upscale community of Bedford.

Or did they?

In late April an unidentified source snitched to the peeps at E! that the scads of reports of Miss Lively and Mister Reynold house hunting for a country house together were not only not exactly accurate given that Miss Lively had, in fact, already acquired a house near Bedford, NY that belongs to her and only her.

We don’t know about any house Miss Lively may or may not have bought but last night, out of the blue, we received a covert communique from an intrepid sleuth we’ll call Westchester Willy who put two and two and two together and came up with what appears to be six, six being a secluded property that all circumstantial signs point to having been purchased in January 2012 not by Miss Lively $2,350,000 but by Mister Reynolds who, according to a cross-referencing of property records, used the exact same trust name he used to buy his house in Los Angeles.

The privately situated property, about an hour by car out of Midtown Manhattan, measures 1.7 or 1.8 acres depending on what online documentation one looks at and listing information we scared up out of the interweb shows the kind-of-rambly, yellow clapboard Cape Cod-Colonial stands 3 stories tall in some sections and encompasses 4,743 square foot residence with 3-4 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms.

The house is hidden from the street down a long driveway that cuts through the woods and curves gently around to a small parking pad that comfortably fits two or maybe three cars. There does not appear to be an attached or detached garage which could be a real bitch come winter when somebody has to scrape all the snow and ice off the windshield every time Mister Reynolds and/or his gal pal Miss Lively want to go anywhere.

A pair of pink trees direct residents and guests up some meandering stone steps to a broad stone terrace that stretches out in front of the front door with views over the green grass that rolls down to a low, stacked stone wall near the reservoir’s edge.

Inside, according to listing information from the time of the purchase, there is a double height stair hall with nearby powder pooper, paneled living room with stone-faced fireplace, and a formal dining room that opens to what’s described as a “Cntry Kitchen.” There are also fireplaces in the library and family room but not, as far as we can tell, in the window-wrapped sun porch.

Upstairs in addition to the master suite that has a private bathroom and two dressing rooms, there are two more bedrooms that share a hall bath. The lower level contains another bedroom and bathroom, an office with recreation room, an office with fourth fireplace, recreation room, laundry facility and cedar closet for off-season clothing storage.

A wide covered porch off the living room steps down to a semi-circular stone terrace with direct view of the reservoir through a narrow cut in the thick stand of trees along the shore. Terraced gardens with stacked stone retaining walls give way to a massive, rolling lawn that weaves and knits itself almost entirely around the residence.

The property does not currently have a swimming pool or tennis court but iffin we had the deep pockets of Mister Reynold it soon would.

A few of the other high-profile property owners in the general vicinity of Bedford include Ralph Lauren, Martha Stewart, Lena Olin and Glenn Close, booze heir Matthew Bronfman, and money men George Soros, James Dinan and Leon Black.

Miss Lively reportedly gave up her rental apartment in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood not so long ago and stays in hotels when in Manhattan for business or pleasure.

Mister Reynolds maintains a modest, ranch-style residence perched on a ridge-top street in the celebrity-filled Outpost Estates neighborhood in Los Angeles where other homeowners include Charlie Theron, Felicity Huffman and Jason Statham who recently bought one of two mansions Ben Stiller owned in the ‘hood. He bought the house in fall 2007 for $1,715,000 and has twice since then unsuccessfully attempted to sell the 2 bedroom and 2.5 bathroom house.

Mister Reynolds and his ex-wife Scarlett Johansson recently sold The Wong House, a low-slung Buff & Hensman-designed domicile in Los Angele’s Los Feliz area they picked up in August 2010 just before they split for $2,900,000 and listed in early 2012 for $3,650,000. As of today, the 2 bedroom and 3 bathroom mid-century modern is in escrow for an unknown price.

listing photos: Ginnel Real Estate via Trulia

A Quiet Life in the Country for Blake Lively

BUYER: Blake Lively
LOCATION: Bedford/Pound Ridge, NY
PRICE: $2,350,000
SIZE: 4,753 square feet, 3-4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Almost since the very moment they first made googly eyes at each on the set of The Green Lantern last year all the celebrity-based tabs, blogs and gossip glossies have breathlessly reported that Gossip Girls blondie Blake Lively and hard-bodied actor Ryan Reynolds (The Green Lantern) have been on the hunt for a celebrity-style nest they can feather together.

Late last year, just a short month (or so) into their romantic interlude all the New York City property gossips went nuts about the two of them touring a handful of pricey penthouse apartments including a $4.35 million dollar duplex penthouse at The Grand Madison with 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and 2 terraces that overlook Madison Square Park where New Yorkers line up like lemurs all summer long for a burger and fries at Shake Shack.

Being above all things cynical and practical, Your Mama remembers reading the reports and thinking these two Tinseltown types were out of their damn minds to even entertain the purchase of a multi-million dollar home together after just a couple of months of hooking up.

More recently, all the celebrity and property gossips have been frothing at the mouth over the rampant rumors the pretty pair have been house hunting for a country spread in the sylvan and star-studded New York City suburbs of Westchester County (NY) and Connecticut.

Yesterday the New York Post reported Miss Lively and recently divorced Mister Reynolds finally bit the real estate bullet with the purchase of a $2.3 million dollar country spread on 2 acres that overlook the Cross River Reservoir near the upscale community of Bedford.

Or did they?

In late April an unidentified source snitched to the peeps at E! that the scads of reports of Miss Lively and Mister Reynold house hunting for a country house together were not only not exactly accurate given that Miss Lively had, in fact, already acquired a house near Bedford, NY that belongs to her and only her.

Mister Reynolds (and insanely cute pooch Baxter)—until recently holed up in a rented apartment in Boston while filming the upcoming action/comedy R.I.P.D.—is simply, so the story goes on E!, shacking up with Miss Lively (and her Malti-Poo Penny) in her house near Bedford.

Last night, out of the blue, we received a covert communique from an intrepid sleuth we’ll call Westchester Willy who put two and two and two together and came up with what appears to be six, six being a secluded property that all circumstantial signs point to having been purchased by Miss Blake Lively back in late January 2012 (through a trust) for $2,350,000.

The privately situated property, about an hour by car out of Midtown Manhattan, measures 1.7 or 1.8 acres depending on what online documentation one looks at and listing information we scared up out of the interweb shows the kind-of-rambly, yellow clapboard Cape Cod-Colonial stands 3 stories tall in some sections and encompasses 4,743 square foot residence with 3-4 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms.

The house is hidden from the street down a long driveway that cuts through the woods and curves gently around to a small parking pad that comfortably fits two or maybe three cars. There does not appear to be an attached or detached garage which could be a real bitch come winter when somebody has to scrape all the snow and ice off the windshield every time Miss Lively and/or Mister Reynolds want to go anywhere.

A pair of pink trees direct residents and guests up some meandering stone steps to a broad stone terrace that stretches out in front of the front door with views over the green grass that rolls down to a low, stacked stone wall near the reservoir’s edge.

Inside, according to listing information from the time of the purchase, there is a double height stair hall with nearby powder pooper, paneled living room with stone-faced fireplace, and a formal dining room that opens to what’s described as a “Cntry Kitchen.” There are also fireplaces in the library and family room but not, as far as we can tell, in the window-wrapped sun porch.

Upstairs in addition to the master suite that has a private bathroom and two dressing rooms, there are two more bedrooms that share a hall bath. The lower level contains another bedroom and bathroom, an office with recreation room, an office with fourth fireplace, recreation room, laundry facility and cedar closet for off-season clothing storage.

A wide covered porch off the living room steps down to a semi-circular stone terrace with direct view of the reservoir through a narrow cut in the thick stand of trees along the shore. Terraced gardens with stacked stone retaining walls give way to a massive, rolling lawn that weaves and knits itself almost entirely around the residence.

The property does not currently have a swimming pool or tennis court but iffin we had the deep pockets of Miss Lively it soon would.

A few of the other high-profile property owners in the general vicinity of Bedford include Ralph Lauren, Martha Stewart, Lena Olin and Glenn Close, booze heir Matthew Bronfman, and money men George Soros, James Dinan and Leon Black.

Miss Lively reportedly gave up her rental apartment in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood not so long ago and stays in hotels when in Manhattan for business or pleasure.

Mister Reynolds maintains a modest, ranch-style residence perched on a ridge-top street in the celebrity-filled Outpost Estates neighborhood in Los Angeles where other homeowners include Charlie Theron, Felicity Huffman and Jason Statham who recently bought one of two mansions Ben Stiller owned in the ‘hood. He bought the house in fall 2007 for $1,715,000 and has twice since then unsuccessfully attempted to sell the 2 bedroom and 2.5 bathroom house.

Mister Reynolds and his ex-wife Scarlett Johansson recently sold The Wong House, a low-slung Buff & Hensman-designed domicile in Los Angele’s Los Feliz area they picked up in August 2010 just before they split for $2,900,000 and listed in early 2012 for $3,650,000. As of today, the 2 bedroom and 3 bathroom mid-century modern is in escrow for an unknown price.

listing photos: Ginnel Real Estate via Trulia

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