Double Whammy II: Melissa and Joe Gorga

SELLERS: Melissa and Joe Gorga
LOCATION: Toms River, NJ
PRICE: $520,000
SIZE: 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: As it turns out, The Real Housewives of New Jersey’s resident horn dogs Melissa and Joe Gorga not only have their mansion in Montville Township on the market for $3,800,000, they’re also trying to unload their newly renovated New Jersey shore house in Toms River, on the market since mid-February 2012 with an asking price of $520,000.

Property records show the architecturally vague abode, shown under construction on a recent episode of their fascinating, inter-family-fight-fest reality program, was acquired in May 2005 for $450,000. Current listing information doesn’t indicate square footage but does show the two-story, single family, canal-fronting house has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.

A gravel drive next to a patch of grass leads to a Home Despot-style front door that opens directly into the living room with a two-tone paint treatment on the wall(s). Under foot a mottled-beige and grey ceramic tile floor loops around a ground-floor bedroom into the family-sized dining room designed with French doors that open to the backyard and an uncomfortably off-center, stone-faced fireplace. Surely there was a more elegant solution for this fireplace than this crazy-aligned thing, right? Anyhoo, the adjoining kitchen isn’t particularly big and is equipped with inexpensive-looking, honey-colored Shaker-style cabinets (that may or may not actually have been inexpensive) and medium-grade stainless steel appliances that include a super-cute 4-burner baby Viking range.

All three of the bedrooms look cramped in listing photos, but it’s a seasonally-used weekend house so that’s kind of okay in the summer house scheme of things. The rear, waterside facade opens to a paver-tiled, bi-level backyard with swoopy-shaped built-in barbecue that runs almost right up to the edge of the plunge-sized, free-form saltwater swimming pool. At the far corner of the yard near where the Gorga’s park their jet ski, there’s a free-standing stone fireplace that could be romantic at sunset if it weren’t in full view of the the next door neighbors.

Listen, kittens, we know owning and maintaining a second home is costly and sometime they get the decorative short shrift. But dear God, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the day-core—if you can call it that—at the Gorga’s shore house in Toms River gives Your Mama and The Doctor Cooter both a soul-crushing case of the screaming mimis. It’s all just so half-assed and depressing. We thought these people were rich. They certainly make a point to play rich on the boob-toob.

The “painting” of the wine bottles hung way off to the side of the brown velveteen sofa in the living room? The tee-vee on the floor in the den or bedroom or whatever room that is? The shiny brocade bed clothes on that fake-antique bed shoved up into the corner of the master bedroom like it’s a naughty child? Hunnies. Melissa. Joe-babe. No. Come on now. That’s a foul ball even for a half-million dollar shore house.

Iffin you had asked for Your Mama’s advice—and we know you didn’t so it doesn’t really matter what we think—we’d have said y’all ought to have ixnayed that silly recording studio in the basement of your manse in Montville and hired yerselves a nice-gay or lady decorator to help you pull your decorative shit together in both of y’alls houses. Seriously. Missy-hoo-hoo might know how to match just the right pair of bedazzled, 6-inch stilettos with the perfect, skin-tight and arguably-too-short sequin “cocktail dress” but, bless her heart, clearly behawtcha don’t know a damn thing about how to furnish and decorate a home with anything that isn’t brown-colored, gold-toned and/or meant to impart an image of (newly acquired) money.

Ouch! Did we say that out loud?

Of course, don’t Your Mama know the truth from a horse’s butt but the gossip on the sitch is the Gorga’s would like to relocate to Tinseltown so Missus Mother of Three Gorga can pursue her passion to be an auto-tuned pop star. We’re not sure what muscle-bound Mister Gorga would do in LaLa Land, especially since there are already so many contractors in SoCal who build grossly over-sized and architecturally specious spec-mcmansions. But, she’s got a giggly sort of chutzpah and he’s got an oddly-charming sort of guido charm. They both have porn-style bodies and a great set of teeth and, you know butter beans, the power of a pert booty and a snow white set of teeth can never be underestimated in Hollywood.
 
listing photos (Toms River): Cassese Realtors

Double Whammy I: Melissa and Joe Gorga

SELLERS: Melissa and Joe Gorga
LOCATION: Montville Township, NJ
PRICE: $3,800,000
SIZE: 13,500 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms,

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The deliciously tawdry and wildly successful Real Housewives of Wherever franchise keeps churning out the (melo)dramatics and nowhere more so than in Noo Joizee where the show’s volatile group of mommies are frequently at each others’ throats over rumors, minor insults and a whole host of real and perceived slights. They typically argue about important matters like who copies whose style and/or who bought (or didn’t buy) gifts for the kids. At the center of the current season’s inter-family hysterics is wannabe pop star Melissa Gorga and her ever-horny, fireplug of a husband Giuseppe “Joe” Gorga, baby brother of famously hot-tempered housewife Teresa Giudice.

The young and glitzed-up Gorgas, amid unsubstantiated rumors they want to go Hollywood, have recently (re-)listed their Montville Township, NJ mansion with an asking price of $3,800,000. This is not the first time the Gorgas have gotten on the bronco at this particular real estate rodeo; In 2010, shortly after construction was completed and just before they signed the necessary contracts to appear on The Real Housewives of New Jersey, they briefly had the aggressively opulent and utterly vexatious mcmansion on the market with a higher (and apparently optimistic) price tag of $4,100,000.

Your Mama ain’t a scholar so we can’t really identify the architectural style of The Gorga’s gargantuan mcmansion in Montville. Listing information calls it “European-influenced.” We see it less grandiosely, perhaps, through squinted eyes as the East Coast equivalent of all the over-blown faux-Tuscan and mock-Med mcmansions that line the streets of far too many of the gated, master-planned developments that breed like rats west of the Rockies.

Property records we peeped aren’t entirely clear but indicate Mister and Missus Gorga picked up the then-vacant 2.24 acre parcel in February 2007 for $950,000. Later in the year, as per documentation easily accessible online, they took a $2,250,000 construction loan—recently converted to a traditional 30-year mortgage—and proceeded to erect their hulking, L-shaped dwelling. Current listing information shows the monstrous, 16-room manse measures 13,500 square feet with half a dozen bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms, 4 fireplaces, garage space for four cars, and a 2-story foyer designed to impress family members and pizza delivery boys with biscuit-colored inlaid marble floors, heavy, wedding-cake-ish gilded moldings, curving twin staircases with intricate, wrought iron and gilt banister, and an oddly undulating coffered ceiling laced with—you got it—more gilt detailing.

Listing photographs show the inlaid marble floors in the foyer stretch into the cavernous, double-height formal living room that aims to be decadent with its elaborate fireplace and chimney breast, pilaster flanked windows and doorways, and glittery crystal (or glass) chandelier. Counter-intuitively the room has paltry few furnishings besides a squirrel-colored faux-Louis-style sofa, a couple of mis-matched chairs and a black, baby-grand piano…with the lid propped open.

The inlaid marble floors continue into the baby-blue, white and gold formal dining room and switch to some sort of tumbled stone tile in the cook-friendly center island kitchen. The cabinetry—mostly bone-colored with every inch covered in some awful carved chingadero— has brown and beige speckled granite counter tops. There’s a soaring Palladian-type window above the sink, the ceiling is heavily coffered, and the trio of white, carved wood stools scooted up to the convenient island snack bar are, well, unspeakable.

The floors turn to high-gloss wood in the wood-paneled game room (with carved wood fireplace) as well as in the long family room where listing photos show a built-in entertainment center with gilt detailing—of course—and a smattering of furniture and day-core that consists of barely more than a espresso bean-brown leather sofa and a couple of matching, man-sized recliners, a bow-legged coffee table, and a big ol’ urn from Pier One or World Market or some global marketplace store like that. The floors surprisingly and inexplicably switch to wall-to-wall red carpeting in the circular, double height library/office encircled by built-in (and book-free) bookshelves topped by pastel-colored murals that may (or may not) depict simple vistas of the Italian country- and sea-side.

Somewhere in the house there’s a wood-paneled movie theater with rose-colored carpeting and black leather seating for at least 10 people. In the basement Hubby Gorga installed a costly recording studio so Wifey Gorga could record her thickly auto-tuned club tracks without ever having to leave the house, a feature that will certainly appeal to a few potential buyers.

Upstairs the all-biscuit and beige master suite has a vaulted ceiling, arched windows, a giant walk-in closet and an attached bathroom with free-standing soaking tub, a pair of carved wood sink pedestals, a small crystal (or glass) chandelier, an over-scaled carved wood fireplace and—natch—lots of gilded accents and details. The children’s bedrooms included with online listings—but not shown here—are down-the-line gender specific. A young girl’s bedroom room is all blush pink and princess-y while a young boy’s is baby blue with a sports theme. How imaginative.

We’re not sure if Mister and Missus Gorga (e la famiglia) have already cleared the house of much of their day-core and other personal belongings or if they just don’t own much in the way of furniture or care about the day-core. We hope it’s the former because the latter is just a sad and sorry state of affairs. People who buy or build massive mansions and then don’t have the good sense (or money) to furnish them properly really chaps Your Mama’s delicate decorative hide. We ain’t saying this is the case for the Gorgas. We make zero claims of any knowledge of their financial circumstances. For all we know they’re holding more cash and jewels than the damn Pope. However, hunties, let’s get real for a moment. Rule Number 3 in Your Mama’s Big Book of Decorating Dos and Don’ts reads in part, “There’s little that more loudly screams, ‘We don’t have as much money as we like people to think we do’ than a barely furnished mcmansion.” We’re not sayin’, we’re just sayin’. Okay?

Anyhoo, much of the Gorga’s 2.24 acres sits at the front of the house where a narrow paver-tiled driveway makes its way through un-gated pillars before it snakes across a gently rolling lawn to a too-small circular motor court at the front of the house that connects via an arched passage between the two, rear-facing two-car garages to a second, much larger parking area and motor court.

An uncharacteristically discreet, tri-arched loggia at the back of the house joins the interior spaces to the exterior entertainment areas that include (and may not be limited to) a built-in barbecue, an amoebic terrace lined with boulder-strewn planting beds and wide swathes of un-fenced lawn that gives way to a thick stand of woodland. As far as we can tell from listing information and aerial imagery, unlike most of the other surrounding mansions, Chez Gorga does not have a swimming pool or spa. Pity that for $3.8 million.

As was shown on a recent episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, Joe and Melissa Gorga also own a waterfront house down by the sea shore in Toms River, NJ. More on that also-on-the-market wart below…

listing photos: RE/MAX Village Square

Real Estate Baller Billy Joel Lists Miami Beach Mansion

SELLER: Billy Joel
LOCATION: Miami Beach, FL
PRICE: $14,750,000
SIZE: 8,881 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 8.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Late last night, while settling in with The Dr. Cooter to watch The Big C on the DVR, Your Mama received a semi-covert communique from a fetching real estate purveyor down in Miami Beach who kindly let the cat out of the celebrity real estate bag about six-time Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Billy Joel hoisting his mansion on Miami Beach’s gated La Gorce Island on the market with an asking price of $14,750,000.

Mister Joel has owned the .67-acre, pie-shaped waterfront property since February 2006 when property records and other online sources we perused show the thrice-married, sometimes-troubled and occasionally cantankerous balladeer purchased the posh pile on La Gorce Island (through a limited liability) company for $13,500,000. Your Mama can’t say for certain but it looks to our boozy peepers like The Piano Man paid all cash. Cold hard cash, puppies, because that’s the way this real estate baller rolls.

Listing information indicates the Mediterranean Revival mansion—in the style, perhaps, of much lauded and deservedly applauded resort architect Addison Mizner—was only built in 2004, measures 8,881 square feet and contains a total of 7 bedrooms and 8.5 bathrooms, a count we are pretty sure (but not positive) includes the separate 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom guesthouse.

Palm trees dot the sides of a paver stone driveway that passes through an motorized wrought iron gate and arched porte-cochere to a palm tree-ringed interior motor court with two separate and semi-detached two-car garages. This is exactly the sort of pap-proof motor court a hard partying celeb who occasionally has trouble ambulating after a long night out on the town would appreciate and could benefit from. Anyhoo, a row of archways knitted with wrought iron grillwork define the (false) front facade that gives way not directly to the house but a lush courtyard with fountain and a single, towering palm tree anchored in each of the four corners.

The sheer amount of marble (and/or limestone and/or whatever), the intricately scrolled wrought banisters and the double-height ceiling the in the impress-the-guests-style foyer sets the opulent architectural stage for the ritzy residence that includes elevated and barrel vaulted ceilings, at least one fireplace with a massive carved stone chimney breast—that may or may not be antique—and a brigade of French doors with semi-circular transoms that frame sparkling views of the Biscayne Bay.

The mansion, according to listing details, has formal living and dining rooms and listing photographs show them done up in what Your Mama might describe with a scrunched up face as restrained, non-threatening and surprisingly like the day-core of a well-to-do but not-particularly-soigné grandmother. No doubt every stick of furniture in that house cost more than Your Mama’s big ol’ BMW but it’s all just a great big yawn. We’re not sure it was fair to do so but Your Mama expected more from decoratively a deep-pocked fella with a famously healthy appetite for high-end properties in exclusive locales. Or maybe it’s just been de-personalized for selling? Who knows?

Anyhoo, listing information and images for Mister Joel’s Miami Beach getaway go on to mention and/or show a cook’s kitchen, a home office, and a rather capacious waterside family room with groin-vaulted ceiling, built-in wet bar (with wine cellar) and direct access to one of the many loggias on the backside of the mansion through three sets of French doors with half-circle transoms. We are feeling very iffy about the drapery over the French doors in the family room but they are utterly harmless compared the hidjus and nonsensical gold brocade swaggery that festoons the dining room. Can someone explain to Your Mama why so many rich people (and their nice-gay and lady decorators) think an all-but-useless, pleated and swagged curtain is a good use of expensive fabric?

The essentially symmetrical rear facade is punctuated rhymically with two dozen or more arched windows and openings that liberally join the interior spaces on both floors of the mansion to shady loggias with palm tree sprinkled views across Biscayne Bay towards that bank of low- and high-rise apartment complexes that line the opposite shores. Less deep loggias flank a voluminous central space with grandiose, double-height ceiling held aloft by a couple of slender carved stone columns.

Identical paver stones that make up the driveway and motor court extend out from the lower level loggias, surround a swimming pool and spa, and run up to a precisely-clipped, knee-high boxwood hedge at the water’s edge. At the far end of the pool there appears to be an open air pool cabana where, we can imagine but not confirm, the outdoor summer kitchen mentioned in the listing is located. The property claims 150-plus feet of waterfront, as per listing information, and already has a well-equipped deep water dock for parking the boat.

La Gorce Island has long been a favored enclave by celebs and big bizness types with the dough and inclination to maintain a mansion in Miami. Cher once owned a big house just down the street from Mister Joel as did Latin pop/crossover star Shakira. Bee Gee Maurice Gibb bought a La Gorce Island mansion only the year before he died in 2003 and tatted up, dope-smoking rapper Lil’ Wayne is well known to have leased a colossal, 20,000-plus waterfront contemporary on La Gorce Island once listed for sale at $13,900,000 and that he may or may not have purchased last year.

In addition to the mansion in Miami Beach bought a few years after they were married for $13,500,000 and now up for grabs for $14,750,000, Mister Joel and his much younger third ex-wife Katie Lee bought a slew of high-priced East Coast properties, some of which have been unsuccessfully up for sale and others that have been sold off.

photo: MSLI

In 2002 Mister Joel dropped a considerable and impressive $22,000,000 on an historic, 14,000-or-so square foot mansion (above) in haughty and high-nosed Centre Island, NY on the gilded North Shore of Long Island. He and Katie Lee got hitched on the property in 2004. Sometime in 2006 the Gatsby-esque estate was heaved on to the open market with a whip-cracking asking price of $37,500,000. Alas, and at least as far as Your Mama knows, the swank spread never sold and Mister Joel continues to own the estate that claims more than 1,500 feet of waterfront, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a tennis court and a bowling alley, plus a 3 bedroom and 2.5 bathroom guesthouse and a 3 bedroom and 3 bathroom beach house. The taxes, maintenance and staffing costs for this property aren’t known to Your Mama but we can only imagine they total an amount so high we’d need a God damn nerve pill and a nap after learning it.

Just before they were married, property records indicate Mister Joel paid an unknown amount of money to acquire a very modest and not particularly privately-situated residence in downtown Sag Harbor, NY just across the road from the marina where he often parks the boat he named after his only daughter Alexa. As far as Your Mama knows—which ain’t much—Mister Joel still owns this property.

photo: Prudential Douglas Elliman via Streeteasy

In late 2005, the then-happy and fairly newly-wedded Joels paid $5,900,000 for a townhouse in New York City’s gentrified West Village they had worked over from head to toe with a sophisticated sheen by nice-gay decorator turned tee-vee host Nate Berkus (living room shown above). In fall 2009, their marriage done swirled down the terlit of love, then-still-Missus Joel paid Mister Joel $3,000,000 for full ownership of the renovated townhouse that she subsequently sold to a mysterious buyer in March 2011 for $11,650,000. We’re not sure to where third ex-Missus Joel decamped in Manhattan but, as noted by the kids at Curbed, in August 2011 she coughed up around $3,500,000 for a new crib in the Hamptons, an approximately 6,700 square foot, cedar-shingled pile with 6 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in Water Mill.

photos: Corcoran

In two separate transactions in the summer and fall of 2007, generous Mister Joel bought his tee-vee presenter and cook book writing bride a pair of funky but charming side-by-side ocean front love nests on gorgeous Gibson Beach in the supremely pricey Hamptons community of Sagaponack. The combined purchase price for the pair of humble but haute-ly priced beach front abodes rang up to $28,385,000. He paid, according to public records and previous reports, cash for both homes. Like we said at the outset, that’s how B.J. rolls when it comes to real estate.

By the summer of 2009 their marriage had swirled down the dirty terlit of love and both houses were back on the market, one at $22,500,000 and the other at $12,500,000. The smaller house, a simple if prodigiously pricey beach shack, really, was sold in February 2010 for $10,000,000 to an unknown buyer. That’s a very-serious $1,625,000 less than he paid for the place a few years earlier. The larger of the two homes, which he bought from the estate of late actor Roy Scheider, remained available for more than two years but was taken off the market in early January (2012) as noted by the property gossip gals at Newsday.

listing photos, Miami Beach (top): One Sotheby’s International Real Estate

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Another Quickie Update: Huguette Clark

Real estate gossip queen Jennifer Gould Keil at the New York Post—who is, we know, more than just a real estate gossip—weighed in this morning with additional details about why Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, the redonkulously rich Prime Minister of Qatar, was resoundingly rebuffed and rejected by the co-op board at 907 Fifth Avenue where he’d made a $31,500,000 bid to buy both of late heiress Huguette Clark’s 8th floor apartments at 907 Fifth Avenue in New York City. The sheikh also let it be known, so the story goes, that he was also interested in acquiring additional apartments in the building to house security and staff.

Miz Gould Keil’s unidentified source snitched to her that the board took umbrage with the number of the sheikh’s wives (2), the number of children (15) and the “boatload of staffers” that typically accompany  the Qatari diplomat wherever he goes. “‘It’s just too complicated,’” explained Miz Gould Keil’s source.

Miz Gould Keil also reported the board had additional concerns about where the sheikh’s money came from—!!—as well as his diplomatic immunity, which means he can’t be held legally accountable for anything that might happen on the premises.

The plot thickens…

Hyatt Hotel Heir Tony Pritzker Lightens Load in Bel Air

SELLER: Jeanne and Anthony “Tony” Pritzker
LOCATION: Los, Angeles, CA (Bel Air)
PRICE: $21,990,000
SIZE: 12,289 square feet, 10 bedrooms, 11 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Late last year, usually low-profile Hyatt hotel heir Anthony “Tony” Pritzker and his wife Jeanne finally completed construction on a conspicuously colossal mega-mansion commandingly perched on a private promontory high above Los Angeles’ ritzy Bel Air community. (More on that monster manse later.)

No longer in need of their long-time former family home, Mister and Missus Pritzker recently listed their comparatively puny but still downright huge mansion on the market with an asking price of $21,990,000.

Mister Pritzker, now in his early 50s, in case you don’t know and would like to, has a net worth in excess of $2.5 billion, according to the folks at Forbes, and currently toils as a muckety-muck at the Pritzker Group, a private investment firm, according to the company’s website, that represents Pritzker family interests.

The Chicago-based, sick rich and (often eponymously) philanthropic Pritzker family are the benefactors of, among other things, the exceedingly prestigious Pritzker Architeture Prize, awarded each year to a single living architect who exhibits extraordinary and rare talent, innovation and vision. Past winners include Luis Barragán (Mexico), Oscar Neimeyer (Brazil), Tadao Ando (Japan), Zaha Hadid (Iraqi-born, London-based) and Thom Mayne (United States). The 2012 prize went to China’s Hangzhou-based Wang Shu.

Like many sprawling and enormously wealthy families, the almost publicity-eschewing and almost under the radar Pritzker family has a few times, over the years and probably much to their dismay, been a hotly discussed subject in upscale gossip glossies and at high-society gatherings due to their sometimes ugly internal struggle over control and distribution the family’s vast fortune, estimated to be somewhere close to $20 billion.

Your Mama simply hasn’t the time to fill the children in on all the gory details so, if interested, we send y’all to a depressing but juicy 2003 article in Vanity Fair that parses the circumstances surrounding a (now-settled) $6 billion lawsuit brought by Liesel Pritzker, a.ka. former child movie actress (A Little Princess, Air Force One) turned stage player Liesel Matthews. Young Miss Pritzker, then just 20 years old and a student at New York University, scandalously claimed her then septuagenarian new recently deceased father Robert Pritzker and a parade of Pritzker cousins secretly looted the fat-fat-fat trust funds of her and her brother Matthew. The 2005 settlement terms were not disclosed but most online reports state they received $280,000,000 in cash apiece—paid in equal shares by 11 Pritzker heirs and heiresses—plus more control over their individual trusts worth a combined $340,000,000. Miss Pritzker, now in her late 20s and to her credit, is a very young woman of serious and substantial financial means who follows in the family’s philanthropic footsteps and occasionally coughs up the big bucks for various causes such as an organization that promotes microfinance services in Africa.

Anyhoodles poodles, getting back to the real estate matter at hand…

A couple of quick and rudimentary calculations on Your Mama’s bejeweled abacus reveals the Pritzker pad’s current price tag of $21,990,000 is more than twice what Mister and Missus P. paid for the place back in August 2001 when, as per Blockshopper, they shelled out $9,500,000 for the 1.24 acre estate conveniently (if not ideally) located directly across the street from the elite Harvard Westlake School where tuition exceeds $30,000 per year.

Listing information does not specify the size of the Pritzker’s multi-story Mediterranean-style pile but the L.A. Tax Man shows house was originally built in 1938—it was “restored in 2012,” as per listing information—and measures 12,289 square feet. The interior living areas may or may not actually be larger than that.

A gated, cypress-lined drive sweeps around a tennis court with viewing pavilion up to a tree-shaded motor court with front-facing garage capable of holding up to five cars, according to listing information. A long, double flight of stairs that for some reason we can fathom remind Your Mama of Rome’s Spanish Steps even though they don’t really resemble said steps climb to the somewhat humble front door painted the same shade of tur-qwahze as the garage doors.

There are no interior pictures available online that we know of…yet, but listing information does indicate the swanky canyon-, city- and ocean-view abode has a 2-story foyer, “elegant” formal living and dining rooms and a “handcrafted” library, whatever that means.

Bedrooms and bathrooms number 10 and 11 respectively, according to current listing information, and include “many” guest and family bedrooms, “multiple staff quarters,” and a “magnificent master suite” that encompasses a sitting room with fireplace, private office, his and her bathrooms and closets, and a sauna.

An expansive subterranean level includes a media room, children’s play room—Mister and Missus Pritzker have half a dozen children to house and entertain—a wine cellar for the oenophiles, a bar for the boozers, staff quarters and, yes butter beans, a gift wrapping room.

The back of the house opens to a deep entertainment loggia with at least five archways that join the shaded space to the sunny terrace that runs along the back of the residence and partially around the swimming pool and spa. At the spa end of the pool there’s a built-in barbecue center/outdoor kitchen with easy access to the kitchen and service areas. The terrace wraps around the end of the pool and stretches towards the rear of the property where there’s a dining/lounging ramada with canyon, city, and ocean views.

During construction of their new residence, a dirt path zig-zagged down the hillside behind the old house and then slowly ascended to the building site of the new mega-mansion,  pictured below from a recent mouth-watering and jaw-dropping article in The Wall Street Journal about how a certain ilk of immoderate means still, like their lavish-living, Gilded Age robber baron real estate predecessors, cotton to immodestly-scaled mega-mansions equipped with necessities such as a dozen or more bathrooms, dance studios and yoga rooms, ice cream and beauty parlors, indoor tennis courts and climbing walls, underground tunnels, gift wrapping rooms and intensely fortified panic chambers, art galleries, massage rooms and pedicure stations.

The bulk of the Pritzker’s palace has been reported to measure 49,300 square feet with additional detached structures—one a recreation room and another a guest house—that bring the total to a titanic 53,000 square feet. The boxy and behemoth residence stands two stories on top of two subterranean floors reported to include a game room, bowling alley, bar and media library. The contemporary crib also has, according to online reports, a fitness center with changing rooms, his and her offices, an arts and crafts room for the kiddies and—natch—a hairdressing station because when you’re super rich like the Pritzker’s you don’t mind paying a little extra not to have to sit in an upscale barber shop or hoity-toity hair salon with the merely rich hoi polloi.

The gargantuan but somehow still green-minded mega-mansion is equipped with all sorts of eco-friendly technology that reportedly includes “geothermal cooling, and state-of-the-art energy-efficient lighting and climate control” and, in addition to a massive sky-light, an array of roof-mounted panels that generate a “hefty 72 kilowatts of solar power.”

The house opens inward to a plaza-sized central courtyard and outward to deep, shaded terraces and sunny patios that step down to a wide, tree-dotted lawn that spreads like unnaturally green butter around three sides of the ginormous residence. At the front of the house there are several parking areas and a pair of ramps that descend into the subterranean parking structure. There’s a tennis court area set well below and out of site of the motor court and at the back the green grass gives way to a boomerang-shaped terrace and dark-bottom swimming pool spa.

We’re not sure if they socialize together but Mister and Missus Pritzker’s new mega-mansion is close enough to the west coast pied-a-terre of embattled media tycoon Rupert Murdoch that they can easily send a staff person by car between houses to borrow cups of sugar.

Shortly after Mister Pritzker bought the Bel Air house now for sale, he took in $5,488,054 for a 7,000 square foot oceanfront mansion with 7 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms in Santa Monica (CA) bought in July 1991 for $2,650,000. A cursory spin through property records indicates Mister and Missus Pritzker also maintain a substantial spread with multiple structures on more than 7 mountain top acres in Topanga, CA, above Malibu

listing photos: Jim Miller Residential Realty
aerial photo: Mark Holtzman for The Wall Street Journal

Goldie Hawn Re-Lists Malibu White Elephant

SELLERS: Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $11,200,000
SIZE: 4,195 square feet, 4 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Poor Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. Despite a lot of Buddhist-looking gewgaws and doo-dads they just don’t seem to have very good real estate karma when it comes to the Zen-ed out, late-1970s contemporary on Malibu’s Broad Beach they’ve been trying to rent and/or sell for about as long as Your Mama has been slinging dirt about celebs and their real estate activities.

In May 2007 and again in May 2008 the Tinseltown icons put their 4 bedroom and 4.5 bathroom beach house out for lease at $95,000 per month. By the summer of 2010 they’d dropped the asking price to $80,000 and put the (approximately) 4,195 square foot residence up for sale with an asking price of $14,749,000.

This May, the real estate merry-go-round has brought the Russell-Hawn beach house back for lease at $80,000 per month—no pets, please—and they’ve tossed their real estate albatross back on the market with a significantly lower asking price of $11,200,000.

A lush courtyard connects the detached triple car-garage to a double-height foyer that steps down to an ocean-side living room with vaulted ceiling, fireplace, wet bar area (with unfortunate and upsetting tented ceiling treatment), and more candles than a Catholic church. The adjoining, ocean side dining room opens to a well-equipped center island kitchen outfitted with all the high-end finishes and commercial-style stainless steel appliance to be expected in an 11-plus million dollar beach house.

Upstairs, the voluminous, ocean-facing master bedroom has a vaulted wood ceiling, river rock fireplace, private ocean-side terrace, large closet and bathroom finished with Chinese onyx. The main residence encompasses, as best as we can surmise form listing information, two more guest suites (one up, one down), a Creston powered media room (just off the entry) and what listing information describes as a “fab office” with built-in, U-shaped work space. The detached guest house above the garage has a second kitchen, an exercise room and a meditation space that looks like it’s marinated in incense and can, as per listing information, do double-duty as a guest bedroom.

The back wall of the house, a towering wall of smoked glass, looks out and opens to a large ocean side entertainment and dining terrace protected from the prying eyes of paps and beach goers by rolling sand dunes. One side of the terrace is anchored by a built-in grilling station and the other by a carved wood pergola probably antique and probably imported from a shrine of some sort in Bombay or Jakarta. Thickets of tropical foliage frame the postcard perfect view past the picket fence and over the sand dunes towards the melodramatic magnificence of the Pacific Ocean.

A few of the other high-profile peeps who own ocean front homes along Broad Beach—punished in some sections by a serious erosion issue—include Steven Spielberg, Jami Gertz, Ray Romano, Pierce Brosnan, Mike Ovitz, Danny Devito and Rhea Pearlman, Dustin Hoffman, Marvel Studios magnate Avi Arad, tool and die tycoon Eric Smidt and money manager Mark Attanasio.

Mister Russell and Miz Hawn’s main residence in Los Angeles sits just 22 (or so) miles to the east behind an electronic gate and high hedges in the heart of the low-key but very ritzy Riviera area of Pacific Palisades. The bought the nearly 6,000 square foot spread for $4,124,591 in August 2004, a few months before they sold the much larger mansion across the street to comedian Adam Sandler for $12,000,000. Daughter Kate Hudson and English man-friend/baby daddy Matt Bellamy—the sprite-like lead singer of Muse—live a few blocks away in a star-style compound comprised of two side-by-side mansions.

Mister Russell and Miz Hawn also maintain a penthouse in Midtown Manhattan (bought June 1998 for $3,850,000), a lake-front compound in  Rosseau, Ontario, Canada, and a 70-or-so-acre compound just outside Snowmass, CO with two large residences, several barns, at least three ponds and one tennis court and swimming pool.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Malibu Colony

Kelsey Grammer Does It in the 90210

BUYER: Kelsey Grammer
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $6,500,000
SIZE: 6,093 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: After a trip to Cedars Sinai to visit a funny lady with a new hip and big dinner in a not particularly fancy eatery in downtown Bev Hills, we returned home last night to a covert communique from a dear informant we call Mister Platinum Triangle who snitched to Your Mama that recently divorced (and already re-married), Emmy-winning sitcom star and producer Kelsey Grammer (Cheers, Frasier, The Simpsons, Boss) recently completed the purchase of an historic and particularly lovely, medium-sized mansion in Beverly Hills, CA.

A cursory investigation into the property records reveals the very same trust (and trustee) associated with most of the many other luxury residences owned by Mister Grammer coughed up $6,500,000 in late April (2012) to acquire a fully renovated, Spanish Colonial Revival-style mansion designed by esteemed SoCal architect Ralph C. Flewelling and built in 1926.

Mister Flewelling, in addition to a couple of well-regarded civic buildings in Beverly Hills, is the same smart architect, some of the children surely recall, responsible for the original design of the fully-rehabbed Spanish Colonial Revival-style pile in Bev Hills celebrity house-flipper Diane Keaton renovated and restored and sold to Glee creator Ryan Murphy in September 2010 for exactly $10,000,000. Remember that one, brass buttons?

Anyhoo, a double-gated gravel motor court lays out in front of the dignified and fully-rehabbed two-story residence that measures 6,093 square feet and includes a total of 6 en suite bedrooms and 7.5 bathrooms contained in the L-shaped main house and detached guest house. Painstakingly clipped, ankle-high boxwood hedges and a pair of beanstalk-like cypress trees signify entrance to the mansion through an arched, wrought iron and glass front door. An exceptionally long foyer/gallery/stair hall stretches deep into the house with dramatic double-height ceiling, octagonal Spanish tile flooring, lots of arched doorways and a long row of wide, arched windows that open to the backyard and swimming pool. At the far end of the gallery, near the powder pooper and much to our pleasant surprise, there’s a wood-burning corner fireplace, the first of six in the house.

A party-sized, step-down formal living room has a voluminous, vaulted wood-beamed ceiling overhead and espresso-colored hardwood floors underfoot. The room opens generously to the outdoors on three sides including through a pair of French doors that flank a wood-burning fireplace and open to a west-facing loggia that overlooks the piazza-like backyard and swimming pool.

A surprisingly compact formal dining room has direct access to the motor court through French doors and connects via butler’s pantry (with refrigerated wine cabinet) to the expensively- and well-equipped but hardly colossal kitchen. We’ll probably have to endure a lashing or two from some of the sassier children for saying this, but we’re swooning for the playfully over-scaled, chevron-pattern green and white tile back splashes and foot boards and we are—we admit—deeply and painfully envious of the 800-pound, glass-fronted Sub-Zero fridge/freezer with its pocketbook punishing manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $15,540.

The remainder of the family/service wing, according to listing information and other online marketing materials, includes an adjoining breakfast room with built-in banquet seating, a den with fireplace and direct backyard access, media room and over-sized utility room (with attached bathroom) easily converted to a live-in staff suite.

Like the lower level foyer and gallery, the unusually long and wide, wood-floored second floor gallery has a (corner) fireplace and an orderly echelon of floor-to-ceiling arched windows that look out over the backyard and surrounding tree-tops. The upper gallery acts as the primary thoroughfare that joins the 5 upstairs bedrooms that include the master suite and that each have, according to listing information, access to an en suite facility.

Listing information and property records show the corner parcel measures just over a third of an acre in a fairly prime section of the south-of-Sunset Bev Hills flats not so far from the where busy Santa Monica and Wilshire Boulevards frenetically instersect. The house sits a comfortable walking distance to downtown Beverly Hills, as if anyone in Beverly Hills besides the child minders and household domestics actually walks anywhere farther than the end of their gated driveway. (Simmer down Bev Hillians, we’re just teasing. We know you also regularly amble the aisles of Saks and frequently walk from the valet stand to some restaurant or another.)

Despite its relatively compact size, the landscape architects managed to pack a lot onto a small lot. In addition to the double-gated gravel motor court at the front, there’s a detached three-car garage (with adjoining 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom guest house) at the rear of the property. The main house hugs a courtyard-ish backyard with flagstone terracing, swimming pool and vine-enshrouded open-air dining pavilion. Tucked into the far back corner between the main house and guest house/garage, a wee, flat grassy pad will be perfect, we imagine, for the installation of a shockingly expensive jungle gym for the twins Mister Grammer—already a father of 4 and grandfather of 1—and his new (and much younger) fourth wife Kayte are reportedly expecting.

Long prior to his not-amicable divorce with third wife (and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast member) Camille Grammer, Mister Grammer went on a wild goose hunt for a New York City nest to feather with his then-girlfriend-now-wife Kayte. There were reports of the May-December duo looking at multi-million dollar apartments in many the best starchitect-designed buildings both uptown and downtown. Finally, according to a November 2010 report by the kids at Curbed (via the Post), Mister (and soon-to-be-fourth Missus Grammer) settled on a 3,076 square foot, 3-4 bedroom spread on a high floor at an exuberantly articulated Jean Nouvel-designed building in Chelsea. The apartment Mister Grammer (allegedly) bought was listed for $7,250,000 and sold in late 2010 for $6,400,000 to a limited liability company that may (or may not) be connected to Mister Grammer.

As decadent (and expensive) as owning a sexed-up apartment in New York City and ritzy new mansion in Beverly Hills is, they are hardly the only luxurious residences owned by Mister Grammer, wildly successful, enormously rich and well-known for constantly rotating his property portfolio that, until recently, included more than half a dozen high-priced and high-maintenance homes from Hawaii to the Hamptons, several of which were photographed over the years in all their glossy glory for Architectural Digest.

As far as we know—which is next to nothing—third ex-Missus Grammer, Camille, retains use and ownership of the erstwhile couple’s former family seat, a 4.77 acre, park-like, equestrian estate tucked into the back of the guard-gated and celebrity-stocked Serra Retreat in Malibu purchased in May 1998 for $4,500,000.

A 1.67 acre tennis court estate in the Hamptons—once optimistically listed at $16,100,000—was sold in May (2011) for $9,995,000 and a gigantic ski chalet in the Bachelor Gulch area of Avon, CO—listed in March 2011 at $7,900,000—is currently available on the open market and priced at a recently reduced $6,995,000.

A 10,567 square foot English Country-style mansion in the hoity-toity Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles was built in 1980 for composer Henry Mancini and later owned by baking soda heir Michael Hammer who sold it to Kelse and Cammy in September 2007 for $13,700,000. The real estate fickle couple quickly flipped the 7 bedroom and 9 pooper pad back on the market less than a year later with a substantially higher asking price of $19,900,000. Bless their real estate hearts, the house did not sell and according to property records we peeped, continues to be owned by one or the both of them. The  plush pad is not, as far as we know, on the market but we’d be shocked if qualified buyers were unable to schedule a showing iffin they know which of the right Platinum Triangle property purveyors to ringy-dingy.

Mister and third ex-Missus Grammer, Camille, have owned at least two Hawaiian hideaways, one on Maui sold in 2005 and another, we think, still owned by one or both of them.

Additionally, and finally, Kelse and Cammy owned—and still own either separately or together, we don’t know—a bucolic country estate near the semi-remote Catskills community of Andes (near Margaretville), about three hours north of the city and—in case anyone might care—about 40 miles down Highway 28 from the gigantic farmhouse on 400 pristine acres above the Ashokan Reservoir Your Mama rented for almost 2 years back in the olden days before we met The Dr. Cooter and, as our pithy pal Falsetta Knockers sometimes joshes, married up and bought a turn-of-the-20th-century shingled farmhouse in an historic whaling village on the East End of Long Island.

But we digress with our nostalgia…

listing photos: Sotheby’s International Reatly / Brentwood

Real Estate Rumor and Gossip: Huguette Clark

The real estate gossip gals at The Wall Street Journal revealed in their Private Properties column this week that all three New York City co-operative apartments owned by famously reclusive and recently deceased copper mining heiress Huguette Clark are under contract, pending approval from the board.**

**If you’d like a good long look at all three of the floor plans for Huguette Clark’s former digs at 907 Fifth Avenue, click here.

The 12th floor spread—a 14-room, half floor, park-facer with about 5,000 square feet—was listed in early March (2012) and went into contract less than a month later for—so the story goes—close to its $24,000,000 asking price.

Miz Clark’s two other apartments on the 8th floor at 907 Fifth Avenue—where domestic doyenne Martha Stewart maintains a pied-a-terre—each measure in around 5,000 square feet. The adjacent units are not combined but together comprise one entire floor of the building. One, listed at $12,000,000, has 12 rooms (2 bedrooms, two bathrooms) and oblique park views, and the other, listed at $19,000,000, has 10 rooms (3 bedrooms and 6 full and 5 half bathrooms). Both eighth floor apartments have reportedly gone to contract for close to their respective asking prices that total $31,000,000.

No word has yet to reach Your Mama about the identity of the buyer looking to snatch up the 12th floor unit but Your Mama did hear earlier this week—and again this morning—from I.B. Uhrealestateuberinsider that the two 8th floor units are actually in contract with the same buyer: Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber bin Muhammad Al Thani, otherwise known as the Prime Minister of Qatar.

I.B. Uhrealestateuberinsider also dished that word on the Fifth Avenue real estate street is that the Qatari prime minister might also be interested in the acquisition of a trio contiguous residences on the 7th floor, currently listed as a group with an asking price of $25,000,000.

Should the prime minister pass muster with the building’s board—he is not, according to I.B. Uhrealestateuberinsider, a shoe-in despite the fact he could probably buy up half of Fifth Avenue with the change he loses in the cushions of his sofa—and be given the go-ahead to purchase both of Huguette Clark’s 8th floor units and the trio of apartments below he’d possess more than 15,000 contiguous square feet on two-park-facing floors with a staggering, pre-renovation room count of 40 (or more).

Just take a moment to think about that…40 or more rooms on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

The current asking prices put the combined asking price of the quintet of co-operative apartments at $56,000,000 with, according to listing information, combined maintenance and common charges that add up to $28,915 per month or, according to our rudimentary calculations on our bejeweled abacus, a heart-stopping $346,980 per annum. Have mercy! And that’s just to keep the keys turning in the locks and does not include staffing fees, utilities, renovations and improvements, furnishings, mortgages and other expensive what-have-yous.

If you think $56,000,000 might be too much for a bunch of fixer uppers in upper Manhattan consider that the prime minister spent more than a billion bucks building his 430-plus foot long boat, Al Mirqab, and several well-connected sources have repeatedly snitched to Your Mama that he paid Los Angeles-based billionaire Tom Gores a bracing $34,500,000 in December 2010 for three vacant—vacant!—hill top parcels that total more than 8 super-prime acres above the Bel-Air Country Club and once had a rose-tinted asking price of $65,000,000. We don’t have any details about what the prime minister plans to do with the land but it’s probably pretty safe to assume whatever he would build would be nothing short of monumentally scaled and immodestly palatial.

All just rumor and gossip, children, delicious rumor and gossip about the staggeringly profligate real estate ways of the global giga-rich.

exterior photo: Brown Harris Stevens

Thursday Odds and Ends: Ryan Seacrest

Fastidiously groomed radio DJ, American Idol host, reality tee-vee super-producer Ryan Seacrest—he’s the man responsible for the frightening and frightfully successful Kardashian franchise—Ryan Seacrest had his Los Angeles, CA mansion photographed for the glossy pages of the January 2008 issue of Architectural Digest.

Almost two years later in October 2010, the 8,172 square foot Spanish-style pile nestled privately near the top of Nichols Canyon and dubbed by the rich and powerful Hollywood honcho as Casa di Pace—that’s ‘House of Peace’ in Spanish, dontcha know?—popped up on the open market with an asking price of $14,950,000. Despite at least one price drop the star-style property in the Hollywood Hills has languished.

A week or so ago, as noted by the folks at Zillow, Mister Seacrest re-listed the just-over-an-acre estate with a new, improved and much lower asking price of $11,985,000. A few quick flicks of the well-worn beads on Your Mama’s bejeweled abacus shows that’s just $485,000 more than the $11,500,000 he paid for the place in April 2006 when he bought it from two-time Oscar winner Kevin Costner.

Considering the considerable carrying costs and no-doubt balloon-like renovation and redecoration expenses, not to mention the real estate fees that could easily run into the hundreds of thousands, it appears to Your Mama that even if Mister Seacrest’s Real Estate—unquestionably one of the most successful in Los Angeles—manages to pull in a full price sale he still stands to lose a pretty-pretty penny on the property, a pain and suffering Your Mama imagines just might be at least somewhat mitigated for Mister S. by an annual income that reportedly exceeds $55,000,000.

Current listing information shows the fully renovated, two-story, multi-winged canyon and city view mansion—all decked out by decorator Jeff Andrews—has 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms, a rotunda entry, formal living and dining rooms and—natch—a screening room.

The gated grounds, no doubt fortified with the most advanced security technologies, encompass a circular motor court, well-tended gardens, detached guest house, numerous balconies and terraces, a lap-length swimming pool set into a flat, grassy terrace, and a lighted tennis court set directly but well below the residence.

Although still reeling with a vicious hangover from dinner last night with gal pal A. Stickpot, we still had the presence of mind this morning to give our our always well-informed acquaintance Shirley Icantellya a ringy-dingy to see if she had any dish on Mister Seacrest’s real estate plans. She told us word on the celebrity real estate street is Mister Seacrest fancies a move to the hoity-toity streets of Bel Air where he’s been peeping posh properties priced “up to $35,000,000.”

How y’all like them real estate apples?

aerial photo (top): Pacific Coast News
exterior photos (bottom): Westside Estate Agency

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