The oft-repeated “27 miles of scenic beauty” tagline also includes horse ranches, ramshackle old hillside cabins, secret creeks and many miles of hillside hiking trails and craggy canyon roads that spiderweb their way across the forests that dot the majestic Santa Monica Mountains.
Take stalwart actress Daryl Hannah’s 17-acre Malibu compound, secreted way up in the hills above PCH and about as far removed from more “glamorous” areas like Malibu Colony and Broad Beach as a house in the city can be. The only thing visible from the canyon road in a fairly remote part of northern city that accesses the property is a dirt road and an old-fashioned padlocked timber pine gate. That’s right, kids, Ms. Hannah’s mini-compound has a damn dirt driveway.
First, a little background on our gurl. The humble (for a celebrity) residence might give you the impression that Ms. Hannah, despite her professional success, is admirably clinging to her modest beginnings before the bright lights of Ho-wood beamed down on her. But that’s not the case. By all accounts, Ms. Hannah grew up extremely wealthy in Chicago with her mother and her late stepfather, billionaire businessman Jerrold Wexler. She studied at the most-definitely-not-for-poor-folks Francis W. Parker school (tuition runs around $30,000 per year) before graduating from the also-most-definitely-not-for-poor-folks University of Southern California (tuition exceeds $50,000).
Ms. Hannah may be best-known for her seminal role as the mermaid in Splash, but she’s also had starring turns in a host of other successful films that include Steel Magnolias, Blade Runner, Wall Street, and one of Yolanda’s favorite film series of all time: Kill Bill, where she portrayed master assassin Elle Driver. We’ve seen that movie countless time and it’s Yolanda’s opinion that Ms. Hannah killed that sh*t. You go, gurl.
Mr. Young, of course, is the Neil Young. A guy who needs no introduction. Anywho, Ms. Hannah and Mr. Young — 55 and 70 years old, respectively — have been dating since 2014 and shacking up for quite some time, apparently. Mr. Young also has ranches in Northern California and Hawaii, and Ms. Hannah keeps a secluded estate outside Telluride, Colorado.
In 2011, Ms. Hannah pushed her 17.6-acre compound onto the open market with a hefty $4,995,000 pricetag. The ask eventually tumbled to $4,250,000 before the listing went off the market in early 2013.
Unfortunately for Ms. Hannah — or perhaps fortunately — it wasn’t until her boyfriend of 1.5 years decided to buy the place this year that she was finally able to unload it. Property records show Mr. Yong acquired the (mostly) rustic compound via something called the “Mosquito Trust” in March 2016 for $3,600,000.
Though it’s a good 10 minutes’ drive from PCH, the coumpound still sports distant views through the hills and down to the sea.
Ms. Hannah acquired the two-parcel property in two separate transactions back in 2001 for a total of $1,325,000. The earthy driveway and solar panels ensure her enviro-friendly cred game remains strong.
The stone hunting lodge of a main residence dates all the way back to 1927 and was extensively upgraded by Ms. Hannah during her 15 years of ownership. She added a walk-in dressing room/closet, radiant heated floors, a Japanese soaking tub, and an indoor/outdoor shower.
Can y’all picture these two frolicking together in the outdoor shower? Completely nakey?! We can, but we don’t want to. Lord have mercy!
There’s also a tiny little shack on the property with slapped together with corrugated metal panels. Yolanda noted that Ms. Hannah has a whole bunch of bird feeders, wind chimes, potted plants, and other assorted bric-a-brac hanging around the structure. There’s also a Prince-approved purple hammock.
The most alluring feature of the property (in Yolanda’s opinion) are the gorgeous, upspoiled acres of flat land that include a numerous species of cacti, a California live oak grove (with a wigwam!), natural streams and waterfalls, a fenced pasture, and an “ancient palm grove”.
We can’t imagine that a successful actress from a richie-rich family wants for money. But still, homegurl must be thanking her lucky stars that she didn’t sell this place when it was on the market a couple months ago. Now she’s got the money, still lives on the property, and will be saving on her moving expenses. Will Ms. Hannah be bustin’ out a U-haul to tote all her environmentally-friendly junk to a new locale? We sorta doubt that very much.
Seems like a whopper of a great deal for Ms. Hannah. A gargantuan whopper of a deal.
This has been rumored to infinity and beyond already, but Yolanda would like to inform y’all that property records now confirm that weirdo actor Mr. Crucero sold his big Beverly Hills mansion to multi-billionaire financier Leon Black and his wife Debra earlier this month.
Now, kids, we fully realize the difference between a $40 million house and a $38 million house is pretty damn insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But Yolanda would like to point out that this difference means Mr. Cruise does not currently hold the title for most-expensive LA County home sale this year. That trophy still lies with ubiquitous high-end spec mansion developer Nile Niami, who sold a modern confection in the nearby “Trousdale Estates” neighborhood to billionaire financier Brian Sheth for $38,270,000 a couple months ago, as Yolanda first reported.
There’s also the Kelly Wearstler estate on Hillcrest Road in Beverly Hills, which is in escrow for somewhere close to $53 million with fashion designer Tom Ford. (However, Yolanda has heard from our gurl Your Mama that the house is actually on a yearlong escrow that will not close until 2017 (!!!). Apparently Mr. Ford wants Mrs. Wearstler to do some renovations for him first or some such silliness.)
Anyway, the Mr. Cruise’s newly former flag lot palace was originally built way back in 1937. At some point it came to be owned by Guadalupe Hank Shannon, a member of the powerful, feared, and extremely wealthy Hank clan of Mexico. It was Ms. Hank who sold the house for nearly $6 million in 2003 to top real estate broker Kurt Rappaport and his former wife Juliette.
Over the next several years, the Rappaports completely remodeled and expanded the estate. In early 2007, they managed to unload it for an eye-popping $30,500,000 to our Mr. Cruise. If you’re keeping track, the Rappaports managed to secure a sale price that was more than five times the amount they paid for the place just four years prior. Though we imagine they invested many millions into the complete overhaul, the Rappaport couple no doubt made major bank off that transaction.
For his part, Mr. Cruise himself made significant alterations to the property immediately after purchasing in in its newly-remodeled condition. Remodeling a newly-remodeled house may sound like bizarre and wantonly wasteful behavior, right? But remember, y’all, we’re talking about couch-jumpin’ Tom Cruise here. Yolanda would be shocked if Mr. Cruise had not altered the estate to suit his no-doubt bizarre needs.
Some reports say that Mr. Cruise invested $15 million into the estate overhaul. While that number sounds absurdly high, Yolanda would not be the least bit surprised if he did, in fact, spend millions. Thus, the $38 million sale price to Mr. Black probably does not represent a huge profit for Mr. Cruise, despite it being $7,500,000 more than he paid 9 years ago.
Mr. Black, the founder of hedge fund juggernaut Apollo Global Management and long a mega-baller of the highest magnitude, maintains a $50 million+ townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a large apartment in a Park Avenue building, a large estate in rural Bedford, NY, an oceanfront condo in Miami’s much-lauded Faena House, and a multi-acre oceanfront compound in perhaps the best part of the Hamptons.
Though Mr. Black is a huge baller, the decision to buy a house in Los Angeles may not have been as random as you might expect. In fact, Yolanda is a bit surprised Mr. Black didn’t buy here years ago. We think the Blacks plan to spend a significant amount of time in LA — after all, the family has many close friends and family members who reside primarily in this city.
Michael Milken’s Fleur de Lys
One of Mr. Black’s closest friends is fellow billionaire Michael Milken (Mr. Black refers to him as “my mentor”). And let’s not forget that both Mrs. Debra Black’s brothers and their families reside here.
Tony Ressler & Jami Gertz’s estate in Beverly Park
Mrs. Black’s brother is a guy named Tony Ressler. He’s also — looky here! — a billionaire himself. And he’s long been married to actress Jami Gertz. The couple currently reside on a massive estate in LA’s most fabled guard-gated community: Beverly freakin’ Park.
Richard Ressler’s home, the largest estate in the celebrity-filled “Hidden Valley” neighborhood
Mrs. Black has another brother, a lesser-known financier guy named Richard Ressler. This Mr. Ressler is clearly very rich himself. He and his family currently own and reside in the largest estate in LA’s most celebrity-studded enclave: Hidden Valley. Some of their nearest neighbors include Adele, Ashton Kutcher & Mila Kunis, Nicole Richie, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz, and Jennifer Lawrence.
By the way, Tony Ressler and Jami Gertz used to live in this very same gated community before they moved up to their big spread in Beverly Park. During the 1990s, they owned a house on Lime Orchard Road, which they sold to bigshot entertainment exec Tom Freston in 2001. Mr. Freston flipped the house to our gurl Ellen DeGeneres, who flipped the house to celebrity talent agent Rick Yorn, who flipped the house to booze hound entertainer Jessica Simpson. Ms. Simpson eventually sold the house to Sumner Redstone’s ex-girlfriend Sydney Holland, who recently flipped the property at a substantial profit to J.Law.
Whew!
Ms. Longoria, photographed at her new Ho-wood Hills home
As for Mr. Cruise, he still owns a picturesque estate in Telluride, CO that he put up for sale in 2014 at $59 million (the price where it lingers today).
By the way, just to round out this story: It may not be surprising that our pals at the LA Times reported that Mr. Black used the services of real estate agents Fred Bernstein and Sharyn Gertz in this transaction. Mr. Bernstein is Michael Milken’s son-in-law and Ms. Gertz is Jami Gertz’s mummy.
Now let’s all say a little prayer for Mr. & Mrs. Black — that they’ll have the good sense to hire some faith healers to burn incense and what-not in this house. All that crazy is gonna take some good shit to get gone.
Listen, everyone, Yolanda is sick like a dog today so we’re going to be uncharacteristically brief with this one because we need to go kneel before the porcelain goddess once again. But we digress!
Here we have a young blonde lady from Nashville named Christy Bamber. Miss Bamber has a fairly popular Instagram account (18,000 followers) called “Rented Lifestyle”. The mission of this Instagram account, so says Ms. Bamber, is to give “luxury travel, fashion, and lifestyle tips from a serial renter!”
“Renting a lifestyle is much easier than owning it. Returning an item after it has been worn or played with, becomes a freedom. With less ownership, comes less responsibility. Variety increases, while costs decrease.”
Sure, hunny. That all sounds well and good. But just what does plunking down $14,500,000 last year on a sexed-up Beverly Hills mansion have to do with living a rented lifestyle?
For the record, Ms. Bamber and her Nashville entrepreneur husband Larry Beckwith purchased the property via the rather boringly-named “Trousdale BH Properties Trust”. Yawn. If it were up to Yolanda she’d rechristen that mess the “We gotta lotta money so we actually don’t need to rent Trust”. But we suppose that’s irrelevant since they’re trying to unload the place now, right? Right.
Situated in a prime section of one of Trousdale’s main thoroughfares on a sizable .55 acre lot, the sleek contemporary residence (originally built in 1959 but essentially rebuilt from scratch in 2014) boasts 4 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms in approximately 6,000 square feet. The asking price today is $17,995,000.
We haven’t the faintest idea why Ms. Bamber & Mr. Beckwith are attempting to sell their Beverly Hills baller crib scarcely a year after purchasing it. And we also don’t see why the residence is asking $3.5 million more than what it sold for just 12 months ago. It does not appear that Mr. Beckwith and Ms. Bamber have made any significant alterations to the property.
The completely walled and gated front entryway leads to the three-car garage and motorcourt.
Inside, everything is as cool and modern as you’d expect of a newly-remodeled Trousdale house. Terrazzo and marble are everywhere.
Honey-hued oak flooring runs throughout the main living spaces. Walls of glass create that seamless fusion of indoor and outdoor living.
Just a few steps away from the living & family rooms is the ultra-modern kitchen, which sports a Chevy-sized center island topped with what appears to be a massive slab of black marble. There’s also a walk-in wine cellar/closet nearby for the booze hound in your family.
The sizable master suite has more of the oak wood flooring, marble, and the walls of glass.
There’s also a petite room with floor-to-ceiling mirrors that Ms. Bamber appears to be using as a yoga studio.
The bathrooms look like they were imported directly from some boutique 5-star hotel. Even the crappers look super fancy.
The backyard is surprisingly small but does manage to accommodate lots of outdoor seating and a zero-edge saltwater swimming pool. There’s also a damn firepit that runs up uncomfortably close to the edge of said pool.
Frankly, y’all, Yolanda would sooner inject Frank’s Red Hot into her eyeballs than half to hoist her fat ass over a damn firepit every time she wanted to go for a swim, but whatever.
Ms. Bamber & Mr. Beckwith appear to own (or rent?) a Mercedes G-wagen and a late-model Porsche 911 Cabriolet. Yolanda will take the Porsche, thank you very much. Ms. Bamber & Mr. Beckwith, you can keep the old brick-shaped clunker of a Benz.
Speaking of Mr. Beckwith, our boy has a lot of money. The Nashville native/resident founded Eco Energy Inc. in 1992. Eco Energy is a “leading provider of biofuel supply chain management solutions, handling 10 percent of the domestic market. Together with our partner, Copersucar S.A., we are the largest biofuels, logistics, and trading company in the world, handling 12 percent of the market share worldwide.”
In late 2012, Mr. Beckwith sold his energy company for a big-time $100 million, which is probably how he and Ms. Bamber (they were married in 2014) can afford to buy a $14,500,000 house in what is perhaps the most desirable neighborhood of Beverly Hills.
As chronicled by the our UK buddies at the Daily Mail, Mr. Beckwith was sued by his ex-wife (the first Mrs. Beckwith) in 2013. Chief among her concerns was that Mr. Beckwith significantly undervalued his company’s worth prior to their split. (the former Mrs. Beckwith eventually dropped her lawsuit.)
Mr. Beckwith has since gone on to found Iconic Entertainment, a “full-service entertainment company”. Iconic’s main client appears to be an up-and-coming country singer named Kelsea Ballerini.
Anyway, Mr. Beckwith and Ms. Bamber do what all newlywed couples do and split their time between their $3.5 million estate in the swanky Nashville suburb of Franklin, Tennessee and their sexy (soon to be sold?) $14.5 million pad in Beverly Hills. By all accounts, they are madly in love.
Aww, sweet. Can’t buy that happiness. But you can rent it, we suppose…
It took a long, long time, but now it finally happened. You may recall a couple months ago, when Yolanda was discussing the I-am-very-rich-bitch Mr. Trent Reznor’s new $17 million pad in Mandeville Canyon, we mentioned that he also owned an ocean view house just above Malibu’s coveted Point Dume area that he was having a real devil of a time unloading.
Mr. Reznor paid $4,250,000 in 2011 for the 5,941 square foot single-story contemporary on 2.16 acres in 2011. He then gave the property a comprehensive modern overhaul similar to what he did to his Beverly Hills Post Office house.
Mr. Reznor, who welcomed a third child with his Filipina wife Mariqueen Maandig a few months ago (belated congrats!) put the property up for sale in August 2015 with a (very) optimistic $7,250,000 pricetag.
At the time Mr. Reznor listed this house for sale, several media outlets erroneously reported the property was owned by fellow musician Jakob Dylan. We’re not entirely sure what caused all the confusion, but Yolanda does know for a fact that Mr. Reznor was the real seller in this case.
But back to the house. Alas, with no takers, the ask was slashed multiple times. Finally, this May (2016), Mr. Reznor unloaded the place for just $5,550,000. That’s still a lot of money, of course. And it’s $1.3 million more than he paid five years ago. But if you take into account the heft renovation costs (this ain’t look like no cheap cosmetic touch-up) and the fact that prices in LA have skyrocketed since 2011, it doesn’t appear that Mr. Reznor did too well on this sale.
Not that it matters, because homeboy is clearly richer than most everyone in the entertainment industry whose name ain’t Beyonce, Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, or David Geffen.
Alright, alright, we’ll shut up now. Let’s take a look at the house.
Though the house is not oceanfront (it’s not even in Point Dume), it’s got a negative-edge swimming-slash-wading pool with a sea backdrop.
The sensuously and unusually curved combo dining room/living room has concrete floors, a Prince-approved purple wall and a grand piano that allows the player to look directly out the massive glass-paned windows, over Point Dume, and to the clear ocean view beyond.
Perfect for Yolanda’s weekly tanning sessions. The kitchen, while a bit too stark for Yolanda’s particular tastes, certainly makes a statement with its sleek blackened cabinets, chunky white marble (?) countertops, and top-of-the-line stainless steel appliances.
There’s also a media room with a projection screen that disappears back into the ceiling with a push of a button. The master bedroom is done-done-done up but good with dark wood floors, a fireplace, and a sitting area.
The austere master bath sports a rectangular soaking tub and a glass-enclosed shower with rainfall showerhead plus a couple more nozzles. Outside, Mr. Reznor had built a very deluxe and no-doubt expensive children’s play area that Yolanda would have loved to have had as a young gal.
The house is all-but-invisible from the street thanks to a driveway gate and tall privet hedges around the rest of the property. The front-facing three-car garage and concrete-slabbed-and-stone-stacked exterior aren’t really to Yolanda’s taste — we feel it’s a wee bit dated-looking — but clearly someone (finally) liked it.
Okay, so by now you’re probably wondering who bought Mr. Reznor’s Malibu house. Well, property records reveal the new owner is a lady named Jill Black or Jill Black Zalben, if you prefer. You may have never heard of Ms. Black, but trust Yolanda when she tells you that the lady is quite wealthy.
Ms. Black is a daughter of Stanley Black, a billionaire or near-billionaire Beverly Hills real estate investor who has lived in this city since the dawn of time (or sometime close to it).
Mr. Black, now in his mid-80s and a widower, occupies a nearly 10,000 square foot mansion on Sunset Boulevard that he and his late wife Joyce purchased way back in 1983 for $2,550,000.
$2.5 million bucks may seem like nothing today, but trust Yolanda when she tells you that was major moolah to drop on a house way back then. Though the property straddles the border of Beverly Hills, the house is actually on the Holmby Hills side, which means it is technically in the city of Los Angeles.
Yolanda can personally guarantee that if you’ve ever driven this stretch of Sunset, you’ve noticed Mr. Black’s property. Not for the house (it’s not visible from the street) but for the rather creepy assorted dolls, figurines, and Seward Johnson statues that are always sitting — or running, walking, or waving American flags — in his front yard. They’ve been there since he bought the place in the early ’80s.
Mr. Black must have a shed full of those things, right? Don’t the ones out front get stolen all the time?
Mr. Reznor — now an Oscar-winning composer of very lucrative films — also, as previously mentioned, still owns a house up in Beverly Hills (Post Office) that he paid $4,187,500 for in 2007, extensively remodeled, and put up for sale last April (2015) for $4,495,000. The property was removed from the market a month later.
If Yolanda were a bettin’ gal, she’d wager that Mr. Reznor’s B.H.P.O. house will soon be available for sale or lease again. We shall see.
But as to the real burning question that’s on everyone’s mind — will Ms. Black take some of her father’s statues/dolls and install them on her new Malibu property? Again, y’all — we shall see.
Listen, my dears, if you happened to try logging onto Yolanda’s hot mess of a blog sometime in the past couple days, you probably experienced a tragedy. Yes, babies, our site was offline for about 48 hours. For that, we do apologize and beg forgiveness.
And no, Yolanda had absolutely nothing to do with that disconnect of services. You see, your gurl has a few haters. Mostly we suspect they’re jealous of our jewels and our Caddy. They might also be bitter because Yolanda stole their man (hey, it’s not your chick’s fault. 9 times out of 10 these fellas insist they ain’t even married!).
Anyway, some Bitter Betty with too much time and money on her hands unleashed a vicious flood of spam bots on Yolanda’s blog, forcing us to abandon our original host for more secure waters. Try us now, beotches. You thought a few of your minions would scare your gurl off the interwebs?! Think again. Yolanda’s dealt with a lot of doubters in her lifetime. We ain’t scared of y’all. And we ain’t goin’ nowhere. Trust.
Now then, all our content has transferred to our new site (naturally Yolanda backs up her shit). All the links should also be working properly, but if you come across a 404 error, be a doll and let your gurl know via the comment section or via our email at yolandayakketyyak@gmail.com.
The only thing we are missing on here is all our photos. Naturally we still have them — all saved and nicely backed up — but transferring them over has proven to be a wee bit tricky. We think we’ll have them up shortly, but for now sit tight.
This ugly format will not be staying for long, either. Your gurl Yolanda has a talented designer friend who will be making this ugly confection much prettier cute.
Have a happy 4th. We’ve got a lot of fun stuff on the way. So stay tuned — and keep those haters nice and shaken off.
Well, kiddies, the ultra-high-end market sure has fought back hard from first quarter, right? If you’ll recall, just three months ago we wailed on about the unusually sluggish sales climate. There was only one (just one!) sale in the $20,000,000+ price range all first quarter.
Now, with half the year under our Burberry belts, there’s been at least 10 big closings recorded, with another hefty handful still in escrow (including one that is easily expected to best the all-time price record for LA). Let’s break it all down, shall we?
1. $38,270,000 — Williams Lane, Beverly Hills (Trousdale Estates)
3. $34,928,500 — Bellagio Road, Los Angeles (Bel Air)
Arkansas native, major philanthropist, and real estate baller Bren Simon — widow of billionaire shopping mall magnate Melvin Simon — finally unloaded her 20,000 square foot, 1.5 acre Bel Air Country Club-fronting compound to a buyer whose identity Yolanda knows. But we’re not ready to reveal who it is just yet. All we’ll say is that his moving vans won’t have far to travel. (Stay tuned!)
4. $28,000,000 — Stone Canyon Road, Los Angeles (Bel Air)
Singer/dancer/actress/big-booty-mogul Jennifer Lopez dropped the big bucks on actress Sela Ward’s rather stunning 8-acre estate in the Bel Air hills.
5. $27,000,000 — Oriole Drive, Los Angeles (Bird Streets)
In what was first quarter 2016’s only $20 million+ sale, entrepreneur Lynda Weinman (she recently sold her Lynda.com website to LinkedIn for $1.5 billion) paid a guy named Sean Sassounian a lot of money for his never-lived-in 12,000-square foot mansion.
Hungarian porn king Gyorgy Gattyan paid up for this 18,000 square foot spec-built Georgian-style mansion. Believe it or not, but this is one of three $20 million+ estates Gattyan owns in the Beverly Hills area.
At this point, with the high-end market steamin’ hot again in this time of stock market volatility, election uncertainties and Brexit, we’re wondering if there’s anything that’s ever truly going to derail this happy gravy train? This is what, the FIFTH year in a row for record highs in the rarified air of seven-figure real estate commissions, right?
So will those Bentley-driving real estate agents ever have to downgrade down to 5-series Beeeemers? Or will those billionaire clients love LA always forever? Sing it, Donna baby…
On this Fourth of July holiday, we hope you’ll pause in the midst of celebrating our independence to hold a moment of silence in remembrance of the countless men and women who donated their lives to fight for the freedom we enjoy today.
Were it not for these brave men and women, dearies, we would likely not be able to sit on our wide behind and discuss the $15 million pricetag heiress-turned-film-producer-extraordinaire Megan Ellison just slapped on her trio of (used) Beverly Hills trash cans.
Well, maybe it’s not just the rubbish containers she’s selling. Based on the listing description, we’d guess the nearby house is probably included in the purchase price, too. But since the listing photo prominently features the smelly barrels, we’re going with that.
Well, apparently Miss Ellison quickly changed her mind about bunking up in the Bev Hills rancher (if that was in fact her original intention) because as our boss beotch Your Mama over at Variety first revealed, she’s thrown the put the property (and the trash cans) up for sale with an ask of $14,995,000. Or nearly $1.5 million more than what she paid a couple months ago.
Unfortunately, the ol’ gurl is a bit camera-shy, because the listing contains just one photo that shows nothing of the property except the front gate, the big-ass privet hedge shielding the house from view, and three black trash cans.
Dayum, Miss Ellison. Gurrrrl! Ain’t you ever heard of recycling? Where’s your green waste cans, too? And leaving them out in your driveway? We oughtta slap you silly for that mess, boo.
(NOTE: the picture appears to have been taken from Google Maps and thus was probably snapped before Miss Ellison ever acquired the property. Also, Miss Ellison has never actually lived in this house, so we doubt she had anything to do with this rubbish bucket conundrum. We’re just trying to drum up drama ’cause there’s precious little else here to discuss! Shut yo’ mouths.)
ANYWAY. Public records tell us the property spans a sizable .88-acre. The single-story sprawler was built in 1955 and has 5,603 square feet with 5 bedrooms and 8 full bathrooms. Miss Ellison’s listing described the structure as a “Mid-Century Hawaiian Ranch” and points out that “the house has not been on the market in more than a generation”, which is true. Miss Ellison purchased the house, as mentioned, in a totally off-market deal from Lynne Wasserman, the only child of Tinseltown legend Lew Wasserman and the mother of up-and-coming mogul Casey Wasserman. Yolanda strongly suspects that Ms. Wasserman owned this house since the 1960s, which means that this is likely the place where Casey W was raised and also indicates that Miss Ellison may only be the 60-year-old house’s third owner.
The property also contains, per the listing, “mature landscaping, beautiful gardens, huge motor court, [and a] swimming pool.”
All of that may not matter much, however. The listing also not-so-subtly implies the house may be a teardown. “Perfect for remodel or rebuild. Your dream estate.”
Given that the house is surrounded by substantial mansions owned by a fabulously wealthy coterie of folks, we’d agree that a teardown or substantial remodel is almost certain. Right behind this house is the 27,000+ square foot glassy mega-mansion built by the late shopping mall mogul Guilford Glazer (still owned by his widow Diane). Just a quick skip away is the shockingly awesome Sunset Boulevard compound of billionaires Stewart & Lynda Resnick. Also very nearby is the mansion that Tom Cruise just sold for $38,000,000 to billionaire financier Leon Black.
So would anyone be surprised if one of those high-end spec-mansion developers pays Miss Ellison the big bucks for this pad? We wouldn’t, not in the least.
And as for our gurl, we fully expect her to proceed with the Mount Olympus teardown, which means she’s gonna have to find some new temporary digs right quick. We’re expecting something back in glassy and modern in the hills, but we shall see.
Choose wisely, dearie. And put those damn trash cans away.
A “modern farmhouse” style home in a south-of-Montana location in Santa Monica recently sold for $2,250,000. While that normally wouldn’t be particularly interesting to your gurl Yolanda, the exterior of this house happens to be completely swathed in a particularly striking shade of cobalt blue. It’s not everyday we come across a cobalt blue house, my dears. What will these crazy kids think of next?
Naturally, Yolanda wondered who would own such a thing and who would want to spend more than $2 million bucks to buy it. Turns out the seller was a young whippersnapper of a kid himself — a guy in his mid-20s named Justin Yoshimura. Good gracious! Mid-20s?! Mr. Yoshimura’s barely out of Huggies and he’s already got a $2.25 million home sale under his belt!
If that weren’t enough to get you hustlin’, wait ’til we tell you who the buyer is. She’s even younger than Mr. Yoshimura. Her identity is technically shielded behind a mysterious blind trust, but of course your gurl just happens to know the new owner is none other than 23-year-old actress Billie Lourd.
Anyway. Let’s dive right into discussing this sorta-patriotic house (it’s blue with some white-ish trim!). Mr. Yoshimura acquired the property in late 2014 for $2,040,000. Our boy is a high school dropout and a tech entrepreneur with a multi-million dollar firm. Damn! You can read more about him here, if you so desire.
But we digress. Mr. Yoshimura is not the guy responsible for the retina-searing paint job or most of the oddball fixtures and cabinets in the place. As far as we can tell, based on a quick comparison of 2014 and 2016 listing photos, it does not appear that our homeboy made any significant alterations to the place other than a little paint and a little redecorating here and there indoors.
The house sits on a tiny-but-typical-for-the-neighborhood .14 acre lot, but it manages to maximize the space thanks to its corner lot location and high hedges, gates, and walls that surround the entire property. A stone walkway leads to the front door. Once within the residence, folks are greeted an open-concept floor plan with the kitchen, living rooms, dining rooms, family rooms and office all mashed together.
Though this house was apparently “published in Art Book 2000 as one of the ‘World’s 100 Best Houses,'” sorry, we just don’t see it. Beyond the unique paint job, there’s not much Yolanda is digging here. We like the white oak flooring, but the kitchen cabinets and distress-inducing light fixture that looks like an exploded 5th-grade science project. Pardon Yolanda.
The living “room” section opens up to the backyard.
The house has 2,279 square feet with just 2 bedrooms and 2.75 bathrooms. One bedroom and bathroom are on the main floor, while the master suite takes up most of the home’s second level.
The listing also calls out there is a potential third bedroom on the first floor, though we really have no idea is Miss Lourd will attempt to convert the space into another guest room. It appears that Mr. Yoshimura had that set up as a sort of quasi-study slash gym area. Odd.
And as for Miss Lourd, in addition to her starring role on Ryan Murphy’s Scream Queens, the up-and-coming actress (Yolanda happens to think she’s quite a cute-lookin’ young lass) is, of course, a Tinseltown scion. She’s the only child of talent agent Bryan Lourd (longtime CAA co-head honcho) and actress/Tinseltown treasure Carrie Fisher. That also makes her Debbie Reynolds’ granddaughter, natch. Holy moly. Lotta big personalities in that family, eh?
But do any of Miss Lourd’s relatives have them a house laciviously slathered in a truckload of cobalt blue paint? Yolanda thinks not!
There’s nothing Yolanda loves quite like she loves the One Direction fan army. While we wouldn’t know a 1D song if it sneaked up and popped us in the booty with a carjack (Yolanda’s an old lady with little knowledge of current pop culture), we still particularly enjoy writing about the boys in the band because their fans are so much fun and so appreciative. So thanks, y’all! We’ll always give you guys the exclusives when we get them, and today we’ve got something quite damn juicy.
Thanks to a drunken 4th of July text from a friend who we’ll call Tipsy Tina, we can exclusively tell y’all (and property records confirm) that Mr. Styles has very, very, very quietly unloaded his petite Oak Pass Road crib in a top-secret deal this June (2016).
It’s not so shocking that Mr. Styles might want to unload his house — more on that in a minute — but what is surprising to Yolanda is the amount of money that property records show Mr. Styles received for the property. According to records, the lowball buyer forked over just $3,175,000 for the house that Mr. Styles bought for an even-steven $4 million just over two years ago.
Yolanda’s no good at math, but our cute and smart soon-to-be-third-grader nephew tells us that Mr. Styles took a shocking $825,000 loss on the property, and that the sale price is more than 20% lower than he originally ponied up. To Yolanda, that indicates one of two things: either Mr. Styles massively overpaid for the property back in 2014, or else he was totally desperate to unload it and took the first ballpark offer he could get. Or both, right?
And that $825,000 could easily balloon to a loss of a $1 million (or more) once taxes, real estate fees, carrying costs, yadda yadda yadda are factored in. Now, y’all, we’re well aware that Mr. Styles is a very rich young man — we’ve seen a net worth estimate of $23 million, but wouldn’t be surprised if it was actually higher — and a million bucks ain’t what it used to be. But still, you know. A million dollar loss is still a million dollar loss. That’s still gotta sting, at least a tad.
Property records also reveal the discount buyer is “Simo Design, Inc“, a West Hollywood-based house-flipping firm that buys luxury properties on the cheap, gussies them up, and sells them for big bucks. Yolanda suspects we’ll be seeing Mr. Styles’ old house back on the market in the next year or two, probably asking with a pricetag much higher than the $4 million Mr. Styles originally paid.
Simo Design’s previous project (below) is located just a quick jog from the house they just bought from Mr. Styles. Simo acquired the “modern farmhouse” style home last year for $3,600,000, gave it a quick gussy-up, and sold it this June (2016) for $6,950,000 to Allison Statter (nee Azoff), daughter of media mogul Iriving Azoff and one of Kim Kardashian’s BFFs.
Anyway, some of Mr. Styles’s nearest (now former) neighbors on his gated street include Channing Tatum (who owns the house right next door), Lisa Vanderpump and her mop-headed hubby Ken Todd, Mike & Irena Medavoy, Bertram Van Munster, Jon Voight, and Demi Moore.
So where, oh where, has Mr. Styles gone? He spends a lot of time in LA — naturally he needs a new house, right? Well, Yolanda has combed over records and though it’s certainly possible we’ve missed something, we’re fairly sure Mr. Styles has not yet purchased a new residence. Perhaps he’s bunking up in a hotel or a rental house for the time being.
…Or could it be that all those longstanding “Larry” fan rumors are correct? Could Mr. Styles have moved in with Mr. Tomlinson at his massive, multi-acre Calabasas compound? Certainly Mr. Tomlinson has the space, right? And what could be more natural than two young bandmates bunking in and shacking up in a big-ass mansion? Really, what?
A mysterious corporate entity with an Orlando (Florida) area address recently appeared in Beverly Hills’ always-red-hot Trousdale Estates area and slammed down a whopping $16,000,000 on a newly-renovated pad near the top of the neighborhood. Naturally, Yolanda was curious about who was lurking in the shadows behind the LLC front.
It wasn’t long before we discovered that the residence’s proud new owners are a married Florida-based couple named Randy Ray & Wendy Lewis. And while you may have never heard of either Mr. Ray or Ms. Lewis, trust your gurl Yolanda when she swears that the couple have lots and lots of moolah. If the fact that they just bought a $16 million second home didn’t clue you in already, of course.
Tennesee native Mr. Ray grew up legitimately dirt-poor, to hear him tell it. But as a young and ambitious fella, it wasn’t long before he discovered he was a natural-born salesman. Together with his wife Ms. Lewis (a former math teacher) Mr. Ray has, over the years, founded a string of somewhat controversial but highly successful MLM (multi-level marketing) companies.
If y’all don’t know what an MLM firm is, let Yolanda give you an uber-brief summary. Actually, let’s let our best buddy Wikipedia give it to ya. According to her, “MLM is a controversial marketing strategy in which the sales force is compensated not only for sales they generate, but also for the sales of the other salespeople that they recruit. This recruited sales force is referred to as the participant’s “downline”, and can provide multiple levels of compensation.” It is these qualities of MLM businesses, kiddies, (in addition to the cult-like atmosphere that seems to pervade most of these businesses) that have led to many naysayers terming all MLMs as pyramid schemes.
However, there is also a different but equally large camp of folks who are fully aware of what the structure of an MLM business entails and enjoy the flexibility and freedom it offers from a traditional salesperson-slash-employee job. There are many ways you can earn income in most MLM firms (it’s usually not just sales commissions). And loads of salespeople have made loads of greenbacks by working for an MLM. Two of the best-known and most-successful MLM companies in history are Avon and Herbalife.
Mr. Ray & Ms. Lewis
Mr. Ray & Ms. Lewis are experienced in running these types of firms firms. One of their better-known ventures is called “Fuel Freedom International“, a company that sells $2 capsules to put in your car’s fuel tank, guaranteed to increase your vehicle’s MPG. And no, Yolanda ain’t kiddin’. Tests of the capsules by various media outlets have proven inconclusive, but oh well. Apparently there’s a market for pills to put in your car’s love tank. Who knew?!
Now in their 70s, an age when many folks are packing their bags for the local rest home, Mr. Ray and Ms. Lewis are raking in more money than ever before. Suitcases full of cash.
But enough of our gossip and chit-chat. Let’s check out the house.
The property sits on a commodious (but not huge) .46-acre lot on one of Trousdale’s quieter streets. The house was owned for decades by a non-celebrity family until they sold it in an off-market deal back in December 2014 for $8,050,000 to a real estate investor who renovated, expanded, and generally snazzed it up with pricey-sounding Black Antolini marble walls inside and out, extra-high ceilings, and motorized glass walls that disappear for that quintessential indoor-outdoor Southern California lifestyle thing-a-ma-jiggy.
Upon entering through the driveway gate into the motorcourt, guests and the delivery man are greeted by a traditional three-car garage to the left and a way more modern glass-enclosed fourth garage spot to the right. We think that glass space is probably for the fanciest automobile in the owner’s mini-collection. Listing photos helpfully display a red McLaren in that parking space.
The snazzy front door — situated next to a mini-reflecting pool — opens up to a dramatic sea of white terrazzo on the floors in front of you. A few steps forward and you’re greeted by the showstopping view out over Century City and all the way to the Pacific Ocean and Catalina. The open-concept floor plan that combines the living room, kitchen, and dining room into one convention-sized space. Yolanda would guess that if all the furniture were cleared out, the place would make a pretty epic ballroom. Just a thought, Mr. Ray & Ms. Lewis. (We’ll be checking our mailbox everyday for y’all’s invitation).
The structure spans a mansion-sized 7,430 square feet of living space with 6 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms. Almost all the private rooms (including the master bed and bath, natch) share the same unobstructed views as the main living area. There’s also a media room, an infinity pool, and naturally the property also has state-of-the-art security and every luxury appliance and appointment you can imagine. And perhaps a few you can’t.
Some of the other homeowners on the same street in Trousdale include crooner Elton John, painter (and billionaire heir) Alex Hank, and nutritional supplement company scion Ryan Drexler.
In a YouTube video, Ms. Lewis mused “We’ve tried retiring three times and it just isn’t for us.” Well, it seems a shame for folks to work into old age. But when you’re making so much money that you can afford a $16 million house in which you will likely only spend a few months — if not a few weeks — per year, who would complain about not being able to retire? Not Yolanda, that’s who.
In case any of y’all are not from LA or familiar with the Brentwood Park area, we’ll provide a quick geography lesson. Brentwood is located just west of the 405 and (kinda) centered around Sunset Boulevard. Brentwood Park is a neighborhood within Brentwood, which is itself a neighborhood within the city of Los Angeles. Brentwood Park generally tends to be the most expensive section of Brentwood, which is itself a very expensive area. But don’t confuse Brentwood Park with the similarly-named and star-studded Beverly Park neighborhood. Brentwood Park, though it has plenty of celeb residents, is neither a gated community nor a mega-mansion haven like that other place. But it does have many large mansions. And it’s deliciously close to one of Yolanda’s favorite LA haunts, the Brentwood Country Mart.
Confused yet? Good.
Though Brentwood Park is not — at the moment — considered quite as hot and sexy a location as trendier neighborhoods like Trousdale Estates and the Bird Streets, it’s highly-prized by the richie-rich sorts who are in the child-rearing phase of their lives. Folks who don’t care for all the noise and drama that comes with owning a house near the Sunset Strip and WeHo.
And don’t get it twisted — Brentwood Park, for all its low-key, family friendly nature, can get just as pricey as the Birds, Trousdale, or even Beverly Park herself. Just ask LeBron James, who set jaws a-slack and panties a-fluttering in the breeze last year when he slammed down $20,970,000 for a big-but-not-huge Brentwood Park mansion. That price was — and still is — the most ever paid for a house in the neighborhood.
But Mon Dieu! We majorly digress, don’t we? Anyway, Mr. Richter acquired his Brentwood Park mansion in 2012 for $9.3 million and almost immediately attempted to unload it. For $16 million.
That’s right, kiddies. Mr. Richter threw the very same house on the market for about $16 million just months after purchasing it for $9 million. No major renovations or nothin’. Crazy, right? You just can’t make this stuff up. Yolanda is ashamed to say that she laughed and laughed at Mr. Richter. And with no takers (duh!) the pricetag eventually tumbled slightly to just below $15 million. Still no takers (double duh!). We laughed some more. Eventually, poor Mr. Richter delisted the property in December 2014. We cackled so very loud.
Sometime in 2015, Mr. Richter commissioned Brentwood/Pacific Palisades mansion specialist Ken Ungar to give the un-flippable ol’ gurl a facelift. Mr. Unger did just that and turned the Mediterranean-themed house into a modern traditional sort of confection. Judging from the pics, it seems he had a surplus of black, white, and grey paint lying about, or something. Mr. Richter lickety-split flipped the newly-renovated thang back on the market in March 2016. But this time, the pricetag ballooned ridiculously — all the way up to $19,995,000!
Whaaaaaaat?!?! Yep. $20 million bucks for the same 12,752 square foot house on a sizable (but definitely not huge) .58-acre lot. At this point, your gurl was wondering if Mr. Richter had the biggest cojones in the whole damn city or if he was just a professional comedian in disguise. “We’ll have whatever he’s smokin'”, we ordered our long-suffering housekeeper (okay, she actually works for Mr. & Mrs. Yakketyyak).
But then, barely a month later, the house sold. Sold. S.O.L.D.!
That’s right. Mr. Richter got the last laugh and your gurl would up with egg all over her face. It took years, but property records reveal Mr. Richter finally and inexplicably managed to unload his house this April (2016) for nearly 20 million bucks. Actually, it was $19,715,787 (to be exact).
So who is the moneybags buyer? Property records reveal the new owner is carefully cloaked behind a tedious thing called “The Stellamarc Trust”. But, of course, Yolanda just had to know who the real buyer was, and now we know. It’s Spencer Rascoff, the formerly Seattle-based CEO of the Zillow Group, which owns some of the most ubiquitous real estate websites like HotPads, Trulia and (of course) Zillow.com.
We’re not sure why Mr. Rascoff paid $20 million for a house in Brentwood Park, but we can only assume that Zillow must be planning to relocate its HQ down here or something, or maybe he’s gonna take a new job (?). Sorry, we really don’t know.
Anyway, Yolanda thought it would be fun to use the Zillow page for Mr. Rascoff’s house to discuss the property. We planned to just link y’all there and let you browse through the pics. So imagine our surprise when we discovered that Mr. Rascoff has removed all photos of his new home from his company’s own website! We kid you not. His house’s Zillow page is confoundingly fun-free. And so is Trulia page, everything. Seriously?! What the heck!
“Who gon’ check me, boo?”
Mr. Rascoff, baby, let’s get real for a hot minute. We’re an investor in your publicly traded Zillow Group, so we feel no shame in telling you what’s good. So how the hell are you gonna remove all photos of your house from your site, a site that depends on clicks (and picture views!) for revenue. You’re a high-profile person. People are gonna to be Googlin’ your house. You’d rather Yolanda’s hot mess of a blog gets the clicks than your own website?
This all sounds a bit hypocritical, if you ask us. Don’t make your gurl come up in your new Brentwood baller pad and give you a big slappin’. Anyway, even though Mr. Rascoff is trying to be a party pooper, we’ve still got some photos of his big new house for you to peruse and enjoy.
A wrought-iron electronic gate leads through high privet hedges to a ebonized stone motorcourt. There is a three car garage with attached service wing directly above it. The whitewashed walls of the house dramatically set off the glassy black front door, which leads into a proper entrance foyer with dark-stained wood floors and a delicately curved staircase.
Straight ahead is the dining room and a row of French doors leading out to the surprisingly-compact backyard. But hold yer horses, we’re not ready to play out back just yet.
The kitchen has one of those super sexy glass refrigerators and all the high-end appliances money can buy. There are also not one but two center islands and an attached eat-in breakfast table that seats four and is fashioned from a couple giant slabs of Calacutta marble.
The restrained but expensive-looking living and family rooms continue the white-and-grey-and-flourescent-lights theme of the interior.
The master bedroom err decidedly on the feminine side, at least from Yolanda’s perspective. We’d guess that Mr. Rascoff’s wife — Dr. Nanci Rascoff — may have picked this house out. But we’re sure Mr. Rascoff can also appreciate the soft luxury, the space, and the row of French doors that lead to his private balcony overlooking the lush backyard.
The master suite oozes luxury elsewhere as well — there are not one but two master bathrooms. And each bathroom is attached to its own smallish mirror-walled gym, or “fitness room” as it’s termed in the listing. At right, a shot of the master bathroom. In addition to the master suite, there are 5 more bedrooms and 6.25 more baths.
Elsewhere in the house there’s a state-of-the-art movie theater with three rows of stadium seating. The chairs are upholstered in a comfy looking pink fabric (velour?). And Yolanda loves it more than she probably should. There’s also a moody library-slash-office with real bookshelves capable of holding real books! Who’da thunk it?
The backyard has a simple rectangular shaped pool and attached spa. The remainder of the property is swathed in emerald-green grass that must cost a small fortune for Mr. Rascoff to maintain.
Also included in the property (but not in pictures) is a small, two-bedroom guest house/mother-in-law suite.
For what it’s worth, Zillow currently lists the value of Mr. Rascoff’s new house in Brentwood Park at $18,251,859 — or nearly $1.7 million less than he just paid. Too bad, so sad, but we doubt Mr. Rascoff really cares much. He’s a rich beotch, and we’re sure he’ll be glad that some of his new neighbors include fellow ballers like Trey Parker and Steve Levitan. The former OJ Simpson property — the house was long ago demolished — also is right around the corner.
As for Mr. Richter, a Managing Director at Lazard, property records reveal he’s already selected his next residence. The finally-lucky fella paid $7,650,000 in June (2016) for an 8,686 square foot Traditional-style house (below) that’s less than 5 minutes’ drive away from his old residence and is located in the bucolic, equestrian-friendly, and celebrity-packed lower Mandeville Canyon area of Brentwood. The seller of the property, records reveal, was former Yahoo! CEO Ross Levinsohn.
That’s all, folks. Oh, and Mr. Rascoff, put your damn house pictures back on Zillow or we’re selling our itty-bitty bit of stock. Yolanda is not playing. Do it!
Well, it took more than six years, multiple price chops, and a lot of time spent on and off the MLS, but the property has finally sold. Records reveal the sale closed in mid-June (2016) for $34,928,500, not far off the last ask of $37.5 million. It’s also, according to Yolanda’s tabulations, one of only three LA-area homes that have transferred for more than $30 million this year. So far.
Despite the huge sale price, you’ll need to sit yourselves down because your gurl’s research suggests that Mrs. Simon actually took a significant loss on the sale of this house.
Back in 2006, Mrs. Simon and her late hubby (billionaire shopping mall magnate Melvin Simon) slammed down $27,500,000 for the .78-acre parcel on which the 20,000-square-foot behemoth rests. Less than a year later, the Simons baller-style paid another $8,800,000 for the much less impressive home next door, which they razed and replaced with a parking lot and a big patch of grass. That’s a total of $36,300,000 for the land alone, but that doesn’t count the millions that without a doubt were invested into the construction, renovations, and all the other work that was done. We wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Mrs. Simon sunk more than $40 million into this place.
The new owner of the two-parcel, 1.44-acre estate compound is obscured behind an entity called “Masterpiece LLC” that leads down a dead-end road to an LA law office, but our gurl at the Wall Street Journal quoted the buyer’s real estate agent who said that the anonymous buyer is a “local businessman”. Well, Yolanda can now tell y’all that said local businessman is a low-profile but mega-rich guy named Robert H. Blumenfield, owner of The Roberts Companies. And he is most certainly very local indeed.
Robert & Sharon Blumenfield
Mr. Blumenfield, who is most widely-known as one of the world’s foremost collectors of East Asian artifacts, made most — if not all — of his tremendous fortune through owning and renting out hundreds of apartments throughout LA. And he has long resided in Bel Air. Just a couple minutes’ drive away from the former Simon mansion he just bought, in fact. Way back in 1998, Mr. Blumenfield threw down $4,000,000 for a 7,017-square-foot house with 6 bedrooms and bathrooms on a hillside lot with sweeping views of the cityscape and the sea beyond. That house happens to be on the very same street as the house that Nigerian magnate Kola Aluko just dumped off-market at a multi-million dollar loss. For what it’s worth.
We don’t have any photos of Mr. Blumenfield’s current home in Bel Air, for those of you who might be interested, but we do have a video that was filmed in the modern-ish-style house (starring Mr. Blumenfield) as a sort of advertisement for a portion of his massive art collection. So you can get a feel for the property, which we expect will be available for sale sometime soon, if not sold off-market.
But we digress. Mrs. Simon’s former and Mr. Blumenfield’s new mansion in Bel Air has 9 bedrooms and an incontinence-style 16 bathrooms within its approximately 20,000 Italianate square feet of living space. The completely walled and gated (and heavily secured) property has not one, not two, but three separate gated entrances along curvy Bellagio Road.
Rooms are grandly proportioned and include a ballroom-sized living room, a library, a billiard room, and perhaps one of the swankiest-looking home theaters we’ve ever laid our beautiful eyes on. The 2,000 square foot upstairs master suite has a giant bedroom/sitting room combo (not shown in listing photos) and an indoor hot tub with gold leaf trim (or at least we like to imagine it’s gold leaf. And knowing how rich the Simons are, it probably is.)
The resort-style grounds encompass an outdoor covered loggia, lots of formal gardens, a large patch or two of grass, fountains, and a swimming pool and spa that are jammed a wee bit too close to the monster mansion, we think. There’s also a car collector-sized underground warehouse, er, garage.
Unfortunately, the property does not sport a tennis court. Were Yolanda looking to spend $35 million on a significant estate in Bel Air, that missing feature would kinda be a deal breaker. But that’s just us. And hey, there’s loads of space indoors for Mr. Blumenfield to store his constantly-expanding art collection.
We’ve already written extensively about Mrs. Simon’s numerous real estate holdings (see our previous post), so we won’t dive in too deep here. But we will say that Mrs. Simon was once one of the world’s biggest real estate ballers. No joke!
But in recent years, as she approaches her mid-70s, our lady has been looking to slim down her portfolio. Though she and/or her late hubby once owned vast residences in Palm Beach, Washington D.C., London, Manhattan, Aspen, Hidden Valley, and Bel Air, the only personal residences Yolanda is aware of Mrs. Simon claiming today are her new $10.7 million house in Santa Monica, her 10,000-square-foot Aspen ski chalet, and the monstrous 50,000+ square foot mega-mansion in Carmel, Indiana that’s served as the longtime Simon family seat. That shopping mall — it’s a bit too large to be termed a private home, we think — was on the market a couple years ago for $25 million.
Okay, so Yolanda doesn’t write about NYC nearly enough. We know, we know. As we’ve said previously, it’s not that we don’t love the city (we do), it’s just that we don’t have the insider scoop on the real estate scene there. Meanwhile, we know LA — to borrow a damn tired cliché — like the back of our hand.
Which is why we’re so reliant on our lovely tipsters like our boy Jiminy Cricket. According to Jimbo, who has kept his real estate ear to the Big Apple’s ground, there’s a very big and top-secret deal in the works that might just come to fruition in one of Manhattan’s most expensive buildings, providing all four parties involved sign off on the deal and the buyer is able to jump through the complex’s 23 hoops (credit, background checks and the like). Note: Yolanda cannot personally vouch for any of the following secondhand gossip, but let us say that we’re pretty damn sure Jimbo ain’t lying.
Although its fame and novelty has been somewhat eclipsed in recent years by bigger and newer buildings such as One57 and 432 Park Avenue, over at 15 Central Park West the (new) money still runs deep. Were we to compare this building to an LA neighborhood, we’d call it the condo version of Beverly Park. It’s got a similar blend of financiers, mega-rich foreigners, and entertainers.
Anyway, Mr. Cricket tells us that someone under cover of strenuously well-secured LLCs and NDAs is fixin’ to throw down somewhere around a shocking $90,000,000 for the entire damn 35th floor of the building.
For those who don’t have the building’s floor plan seared into your brain, the 35th floor currently contains three separate, uncombined units. There’s the massive Unit 35AB combination (photos below), which has been owned since 2008 by steel tycoon Leroy Schecter. Mr. Schecter has been trying to unload the double unit for the last, oh, 58 years. Something like that. It’s currently priced at $43,500,000, less than half the utterly ridiculous $95,000,000 original ask. The apartment has a mansion-sized 6,000 square feet of living space with 5 bedrooms and 6.5 baths.
One of the other two smaller units, #35D, is also currently on the market. It’s owned by a Venezuelan banker named Victor Vargas and is asking $29,000,000. There is 3,173 square feet of living space with 3 beds and 3.5 baths. Unlike many of these “safe deposit boxes in the sky”, this apartment actually looks lived-in. In a good way.
What may pose a problem for the full-floor potential buyer is the third unit, Unit 35C. That 2,761-square-foot, 3-bed/3.5-bath condo was sold just last year for $25,950,000 to mega-rich Korean businessman Michael ByungJu Kim and is not currently on the market.
Accoring to Mr. Cricket, the unknown buyer is negotiating with Mr. Kim to have him voluntarily relocate from Unit 35C to Unit 37C a couple floors up. That condo has the exact same square footage and floor plan — it’s pretty much the same damn apartment, just with different decor. That pad is currently owned by a mysterious LLC with a Buffalo, NY legal address and is currently on the market with an asking price of $23,500,000.
Again per Mr. Cricket, the buyer has volunteered to cover all costs of Mr. Kim’s relocation to the higher floor unit. Sounds like a good deal to your gurl, but you know how finicky these billionaires can be. Lord only knows if Mr. Kim will get down with this bullshiz. We’ll have to see what happens. But should this deal pan out, the new owner will have their hands on approximately 12,000 square feet of ultra-prime Manhattan highrise living space, an almost unheard-of sum in the tightly-packed city.
And no, we don’t have a clue as to why some mystery billionaire would care to spend $90 million or so plus all the renovation costs for a full-floor at 15 CPW when they could likely get a brand-new, never-lived-in higher-floor full-floor unit at one of the glitzier and newer buildings in town like the aforementioned One57 or 432 Park Avenue. And it would likely cost them way less money, too.
We will say, however — and this is solely personal preference — but Yolanda happens to think the Robert AM Stern-designed 15 CPW limestone-clad neoclassical edifice is more attractive than the too-glassy One57 and the rather boring box that is 432 Park. So, mystery buyer, go for it.
As everyone and their mama’s mama knows, in between the turgid Tuscan boxes and numerous rusty ranch sprawlers, Los Angeles is chock-full of residential architectural treasures. Frank Lloyd Wrights to Neutras to Wallace Neffs to Paul Williamses and everything in between. Many homes are internationally famous — the Stahl House, the Eames House, the Ennis House.
Today Yolanda is going to discuss one of the city’s less-lauded but still-stunning masterpieces. We’re heading back to tony Brentwood Park to visit “Casa Shapiro“, a work of much-lauded Mexican modernist Ricardo Legorreta.
For those of you silly billies who believe in love at first sight, you know that feeling you get just after you meet him/her? The euphoria, the butterflies, the inexplicable loss of appetite? Yeah. That’s what Yolanda felt upon seeing her true love. Casa Shapiro. We think this might be our favorite house in all of LA. No joke. Don’t cackle.
Legorreta’s Casa Shapiro
Your gurl has always been an architecture fan, and we know Casa Shapiro, pedigreed as it is, is considered nowhere near the crème de la crème of LA’s architecture or even one of Ricardo’s best projects. But it’s the one for us, we swear.
And perfect she is not. But what beauty is? There’s always going to be that one mole, those too-big ears, the oddly-shaped belly button. In this case, the major flaw with our baby is that kitchen. Good Lord, we can’t even look at it without tearing up. My oh my, that kitchen is a disgrace. ‘Tis true. Some of the other interior spaces are rather uninspiring, too.
But it can be fixed! And we’ve already digressed way ahead of ourselves.
After years of listlessly drifting on and off the market, Casa Shapiro recently sold for a complicated $9,253,500. Unfortunately, Yolanda is not yet in the market for a $9 million+ house. So just to confirm, your gurl is not the buyer. Yet life churns on. Property records show the mini-estate was acquired by a bizarrely-named blind trust presided over by a well-known celebrity business manager.
“Oh my!” we thought. Could the buyer of Casa Shapiro be some A-list tabloid staple?
Well, not quite. Though the buyer closely orbits the entertainment industry, he’s not exactly what we’d term a celeb. The new owner is Dan Aloni, a talent agent at WME (William Morris Endeavor), previously at CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and before that at UTA (United Talent Agency).
The boxy stucco structure — a fetching shade of salmon — was constructed in 1991 on the .75-acre lot and packs 6 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms into a commodious 8,184 square feet of living space. It was last sold in 1997 for $3.3 million (or so) to a non-celebrity couple who have both since passed away — the property was sold by their heirs.
In classic Southern California style, the living spaces extend beyond the walls of the residence to the outdoors, where there’s a built-in cabana and an outdoor kitchen with separate dining area.
Speaking of kitchens, let’s bite the bullet and discuss that hot mess inside. We’re not sure if that’s original to the house or if it was unfortunate later addition, but that baby’s gotta go. The countertops, the chocolate-hued wood, the stainless appliances mixed with the grey walls and sad floors. Yikes. But the Pikachu-yellow skylight is pretty cool.
Bright and vivacious pinks, reds, and orange walls continue through most of the residence. Outside, there’s also a paddle tennis court expertly secreted away from the main house by the lush, tropical landscaping.
Most of the house is not visible from the street — there’s just some palm trees and the pink courtyard gates/walls, but the property does sport a surprisingly generous paver-stone motorcourt and attached three-car garage. The listing also touts the home’s trendy location — “Walking distance to Brentwood Country Mart and Brentwood Country Club!” That’s good, because Mr. Aloni is reportedly a member of the latter institution.
One Deadline article described Mr. Aloni as “a bit of a prick” and Yolanda has seen him elsewhere described on the interwebs as “a real asshole”. But that’s just secondhand gossip, so take that for what it’s worth. For all we know, Mr. Aloni might be the sweetest fella you’ll ever meet. K?
Yolanda’s research shows that Mr. Aloni has long been married to Nina Minardos, the only daughter of Greek-American TV actor Nico Minardos, a guy who reportedly lived with Marilyn Monroe in the 1950s before marrying Nina’s mom Julie.
The current Aloni residence (Pacific Palisades)
Mr. Aloni and Ms. Minardos are longtime Westside residents, specifically of the quietly swanky and family-friendly “Huntington Palisades” neighborhood. Records reveal they paid $3,500,000 way back in 2003 for their 6,464 square foot home, which is way more traditional (basically the polar opposite) in architectural style than their new Brentwood Park pad. No word on what has prompted such a drastic change. Could Casa Shapiro be a teardown? Have mercy! We refuse to even entertain that thought. No one could help but love that house.
So Mr. Aloni, you may have beat Yolanda to the punch this time. But the game’s not over ’til the fat lady sings. So maybe in some years, Mr. Aloni, when you tire of the goddess, give your gurl a ring-ring. We’ll do our best to be ready.
Choosing to write about this one will for sure beget your gurl Yolanda some serious eyerolls.
Buzz off, boys (and gals). Yes, we know this transaction occurred a full year ago (way back in summer 2015). And we know that there’s many, many other big current stories we could be discussing instead. We know. Our cup runneth over at the moment. But we promise we’ll get to them in due time.
We wanted to write about this one because the house is unique, both parties in the deal are notable, and to our knowledge, nobody else has discussed the buyer yet. So if you don’t care to briefly rewind to 2015, sit pretty until tomorrow. Capiche?
Longtime Tinseltown mover-and-shaker Rick Nicita and his longtime wife, Tom Cruise’s producer partner Paula Wagner — they’ve been married more than 20 years, or an eternity in entertainment industry time — first hauled their multi-structure hilltop complex out onto the open market last February (2015). The asking price was a serious $12,500,000 for the .82-acre double-parcel lot, which way up above Beverly Hills in an area known as (of course) Beverly Hills Post Office. So high up, in fact, that the house is practically in Beverly Park.
The mini-estate eventually sold over the summer to a deliberately-opaque trust. Well, just this week — long after we plum forgot about the property — a little gold nugget of info landed in our lap that conclusively indicates the buyer was none other than busy-busy TV writer/producer/director (and new daddy) Greg Berlanti. More on him to come.
Mr. Nicita & Ms. Wagner purchased the estate — as pointed out by Our Mama over at Variety — in two separate transactions in the early 1990s for a total of $3,845,000. Over the years, the couple carefully remodeled and upgraded the estate, transforming it into the deluxe resort-like pad you see in photos today.
Listing information labels the property a “breathtaking Dutch-influenced compound”. While the home’s roof does sport the requisite Dutch gables, Yolanda is tempted to give that phrase some serious side-eye. We don’t see anything besides those rather hokey-looking things that indicate the architecture or design is “Dutch-influenced”. The entire place comes off — to Yolanda — as a rather tired-looking Traditional trying desperate to be something, anything that it is not. Too harsh? You decide.
Anyway, the 4-bedroom main house sits rather uncomfortably hard up on the road. The formal dining room opens directly (via a wall full of French doors) to a commodious balcony with views stretching from Century City to Catalina and the Pacific Ocean. There’s also commodious and art-filled living and family rooms.
The guest house is two stories with “two bedrooms, a living room with fireplace and steeply pitched double-height ceiling, an adjoining dining room and a full kitchen along with a professional quality fitness room” per the listing. Believe it or not, but the less-than-1-acre estate somehow shoehorns a third structure onto the property. Listing information refers to it as “a separate media building” and it contains a professional quality screening room plus another guest apartment.
The property centers around a free-form swimming pool surrounded by a thick grove of palm trees. There’s also numerous terraces for outdoor dining and sunbathing. And the completely walled and gated compound has at least three separate vehicle entrances, perfect for an errant teen who wants to sneak in and out without parental supervision. But too bad for him or her, there’s also a full security/camera system to foil his/her nighttime plans.
We’re not sure where in LA Mr. Nicita and Ms. Wagner have moved. Both now work independently after formerly serving as a Managing Partner at CAA and CEO of United Artists, respectively, so maybe they don’t need to retain a full-time residence here anymore. But as again sussed out by Your Mama, they still own a multi-million dollar flat in the TriBeCa neighborhood of NYC.
As for Mr. Berlanti, back in 2014 he sold a 3,063-square-foot house just off Sunset Plaza in the Hollywood Hills for $2,450,000 to a financier (Mr. Berlanti bought the place back in 2002 from musician Fred Durst for $1,295,000). We assume he’s currently shacking up with his partner, LA Galaxy soccer star Robbie Rogers (the first openly gay player in major-league professional sports), and his new son in a rental residence somewhere while some renovations are done to his new Beverly Hills Post Office property.
Speaking of renovations, Yolanda is about to get underway with manually re-uploading all our “lost” pictures from the posts prior to our surprise site “renovation”. Yeah, we weren’t able to automatically transfer all our junk. Wish us luck, kiddies. Mon Dieu, we’ll need it!
Every neighborhood has a reputation. Some flattering, some decidedly not. Oh dear.
Though the “Bird Streets” area of Los Angeles has long and unquestionably been the most affluent and sexiest location in the Hollywood Hills — several homes have sold for well north of $20 million in recent years — the neighborhood also gets a rather unfortunate rap from most other LA residents.
For starters, many of the homes in the neighborhood are disdainfully termed “coke palaces”. We don’t have to explain that one, right? But if you’re wondering, yes. There’s an inordinately high amount of snortin’ that goes on in the homes there.
Another “feature” the Birds possesses (and you won’t see this one called out in any real estate advertisements) is that the place is chock-full of hardcore douchebags. This stereotype is also somewhat true. Many of the residents are youngish folks with trust-fund bank accounts. Think Dan Bilzerian (yep, he’s a resident). Then there are those not-so-young folks who think and party like they are still 20-somethings. Dear God, you have not seen true sadness until you’ve been to one of those parties. But Yolanda can personally attest to it being rampant up here (forgive us our sinful ways, Rabbi Hedda!).
But we digress. Let’s put the claws away because today we’re going to discuss one of the nicer (and richer) local homeowners: interior designer Lindsay Chambers.
Miss Chambers — a former PhD student at Stanford and now a WeHo-based up-and-coming decorator — was recently named by California Home + Design magazine as their 2015 Emerging Designer winner. Congrats, gurl! She and her “signature transitional style” (per her website) have completed a handful of projects, mostly in the Silicon Valley area.
We scrolled through Miss Chambers’ portfolio and though our gurl has apparently never met a shade of white or grey she didn’t fall madly in love with and marry in international waters, the results are not unattractive and quite pleasant in most cases.
Still in her 30s and a Palo Alto (CA) native, young Miss Chambers first caught everyone’s attention back in December (2014) when she paid a decidedly A-list $10,985,000 (through an LLC) for the former Bird Streets view home of comedic actress Megan Mullally.
Ms. Mullally, who owned the home for more than a decade, had sold it the previous year for $9,970,000 to formerly-Idaho-based venture capitalist Kipp Nelson. It was Mr. Nelson who flipped the property to Miss Chambers for a million-dollar profit. (Miss Chambers herself unsuccessfully attempted to flip the property again in 2015 for $12.5 million, though she has since removed it from the market).
Perched on the so-called “front row” of the Bird Streets (a silly name imagined up to encapsulate the unobstructed jetliner views the neighboring properties enjoy — the 3,803 square foot single-story crib is perched onto the rather cramped-seeming .29-acre lot and sits cheek-to-jowl with its two much-larger neighbors on either side.
Well, babies, our gurl has gone and done it again. Just last month (June 2016), an ultra-dated structure just two doors away from the Mullally-Chambers pad sold for $10,250,000 to a mystery corporate entity calling itself “Gizmo’s Skyline LLC”.
Who is this mysterious Gizmo fella? He’s Miss Chambers’ pooch. Don’t ask Yolanda how she knows, but she knows. Yes, kiddies, Miss Chambers named her LLC after her doggy.
Anyway, the residence is 100% a teardown, to the point that listing photos do not show a single interior photo of the structure (and only one shot of the sad exterior). Hey, at least it looks like a home, unlike most of the sterile 5-star office buildings surrounding it, right?
The .41 acre lot, owned for over 50 years by the same family, was originally listed for a ludicrously-unrealistic $17,500,000 before undergoing multiple (and much-needed) price chops.
So Miss Chambers has now spent a big-time total of $21,235,000 on her two non-contiguous properties, one of which she is remodeling and the other of which is almost certainly a teardown.
By now you’re probably wondering how an interior designer can afford $21 million worth of property in one of LA’s most exclusive and priciest neighborhoods. Well, we’re gonna tell y’all. Miss Chambers’ father is a guy named John T. Chambers, the current Executive Chairman and former CEO of Palo Alto-based tech firm Cisco Systems, the largest networking company in the world. He’s a very, very big deal in the tech industry.
Lindsay Chambers & dad
Mr. Chambers, a wildly successful businessman (and major Republican donor) who was one of the longest-serving CEOs in Silicon Valley history (he held the CEO position for a full 20 years), is also one of the highest-paid executives in history. In 2011, Forbes estimated his total five-year pay package (benefits and stock awards included) was worth in excess of a mind-numbing $170,000,000. And that’s just for five years, kiddies.
It’s no surprise that several sites estimate Mr. Chambers’ net worth at approximately one billion bucks — or more. And it should also be no surprise that Mr. Chambers is a bit of a real estate baller himself.
John T. Chambers’ $20 million Palo Alto mansion (prior to completion)
Back in 2008, Miss Chambers’ old man forked over a fat $20,000,000 for a Palo Alto “fixer-upper” mansion (above) with more than 15,000 square feet of living space. In 2012, after “fixing up” their new place and settling in, Mr. Chambers and his longtime wifey Elaine hauled their longtime Los Altos Hills estate, all 8,200+ square feet of it (below), onto the market with an asking price of $14,800,000. Just one month later, the property sold for the full damn asking price to Chinese entrepreneur Duan Yongping. Reportedly, it was the biggest sale in all of 2012 for swanky Los Altos Hills.
950 Fifth Avenue, where Mr. Chambers is believed to own a $25 million duplex
But back to his only daughter. The two properties in the Bird Streets are hardly Miss Chambers’ first foray into Los Angeles real estate. Four years ago, in July 2012, she threw down $3,050,000 for a single-level uber-modern pad just above the Sunset Strip (and very close to the Chateau Marmont) that features panoramic views of the LA basin. As far as Yolanda knows, this house is currently her main residence.
After renovating the property, Miss Chambers unsuccessfully attempted to sell this house earlier this year, first with an ask of $5,495,000 and then at $5,250,000 before it was delisted. She also utilized some rather unusual marketing techniques in an attempt to sell the home — three brunette bikini babes (none of whom appear to be the blonde Miss Chambers) and one lucky board-shorts-clad dude who is never photographed up close. Weird.
Miss Chambers, if you’re reading this, Yolanda has got a few questions for you. Do these folks come with the residence or somethin’? For goodness’ sake, one of the shots is basically just their toned booty-cheeks blocking the panoramic view! And if so, do they come with their own food, water, and laundry service? Because Yolanda does not want to spand $5 million on a sexy Hollywood house just to have to run errands and do chores for the living furniture. Nothing sexy about that. Please clarify. Thanks, boo.
Moving on. We also located direct, conclusive evidence that Miss Chambers recently owned not one but two separate, non-contiguous houses on Laurel Way in Beverly Hills. She flipped both homes to the very same developer in two separate transactions, one off-market and one on, raking in a whopping $4,150,000 profit on the two deals, minus real estate fees, taxes, and any renovation costs (we don’t think she did much work at all). Damn! Get that money, gurl.
Miss Chambers’ two former Beverly Hills properties, flipped for a $4 million+ total profit
But back to Miss Chambers’ new double-down in the Birds. Now that she has two houses just two doors apart, will she attempt to snap up the property in between? A contiguous triplex, if you will?
Records show the house in between Miss Chambers’ two properties was sold by actor Tobey Maguire (and his wife Jennifer Meyer) for $10,800,000 in 2007 to an anonymous shell company that everyone and their granny’s lint-roller knows is a front for recently-divorced Wal-Mart heiress Paige Laurie, the only child of Bill & Nancy Walton Laurie (the latter is the younger daughter of Bud Walton, the long-deceased younger brother and business partner of Sam Walton).
Remember, y’all, there are three big D’s that constitute the most common reasons for folks to buy and sell houses: Death, Divorce, and Diapers. Given that Miss Laurie is (we assume) currently putting the finishing touches on a long, drawn-out, and deeply acrimonious split from her moochin’ hubby Bo, could she be in the mood to unload her marriage crib? Let’s just say it wouldn’t surprise your gurl in the least. But given that we’re told she paid over $10 million and poured mega-bucks into renovations, she wouldn’t let it go for less than $15 million, we think.
Celebrities love Birds, apparently
One last little tidbit. There are so many celebrities and notable business folks in the Bird Streets we couldn’t possibly list them all in a single post. Well, we could, but that would be one long-ass story and ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat. So we’ll just tell you who’s within crawling distance of Miss Chambers’ properties. In addition to Miss Laurie, there’s the Facebook-suing Winklevoss twins, actors Keanu Reeves and Leo DiCaprio, songstress extraordinaire Diane Warren, apparel mogul Calvin Klein, high-paid DJ Avicii, big-haired socialite widow Joan Dangerfield, and TravelZoo CEO Holger Bartel.
“These Birds ain’t big enough for the two of us.”
So will Miss Laurie and Miss Chambers meet face-to-face to hash out a deal, gal-to-gal? Will they sit outside, overlooking the LA basin poors far below? Is Miss Chambers attempting to be the new Megan Ellison with her three-in-a-row houses? Would we like to be a fly on the wall if and when it happens? Are you seriously asking?! Hell yes, we would! Imagine that deliciousness. Two billionaire daughters haggling over how many millions one should pay the other for a house — and one of them who infamously cheated her way through USC. All the coke-snortin’ douches in the Bird Streets couldn’t keep us away.
Recent years have brought a storm of tech folks from Silicon Valley and beyond pouring down on LA’s fair hills and the beach cities below. And 2016 shows no signs of this particular trend abating, kiddies.
This March (2016) an opaque entity with a San Francisco address slammed down $4,200,000 on a very contemporary crib near the tippy-top of famous (or infamous?) Sunset Plaza Drive, a place known just as well for its long and treacherously narrow and winding roadway as the powerful, sweeping views many of the street’s homes enjoy.
Well, Yolanda just happens to know for a fact that the mystery entity is a front for a Silicon Valley veteran named Wayne Chang.
By the time he reached high school, Mr. Chang was involved with all sorts of ventures including the original Napster. Then, while attending college in Massachusetts, Mr. Chang founded i2hub, perhaps his most notable venture to date.
Novel peer-to-peer file-sharing system i2hub was much-loved for its lightning-fast download speeds by the high school and college students for whom it was principally created, but unsurprisingly much-loathed by organizations such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), who eventually succeeded having the wildly-popular site shut down permanently.
But the shutdown did not occur before Mr. Chang’s system had attracted the attention of the Facebook founding crew (Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker, Andrew McCollum, and Adam D’Angelo) who quickly launched a competing service called Wirehog. Unfortunately for the F-Book pack, Mr. Chang already had a near-monopoly on the market (or maybe lightning really only strikes once?) because while i2hub flourished, Wirehog floundered, struggling to gain popularity and was ultimately nixed by the founders. That’s right, y’all, Mr. Zuckerberg got his ass kicked by Mr. Chang, at least on that front.
i2hub also attracted the attention of those infamous Winklevoss twins, who took the opposite approach as Mr. Zuckerberg and decided to partner with Mr. Chang — creating the Winklevoss Chang Group.
At some point, Mr. Chang and the Winklevii were sued by Facebook in regards to the twins’ ConnectU social media website. If y’all saw The Social Network, y’all should know that the lawsuit was eventually resolved by Facebook acquiring ConnectU in a cash-and-stock deal.
Unfortunately, the Chang-Winklevoss partnership soon dissolved with, apparently, a great deal of bitterness and shite. In 2009, Mr. Chang sued the Winklevoss twins for 50% of their Facebook settlement money. Though a Massachusetts judge finally reached a decision in favor of the Winklevii just last year (2015), the case continues on appeal. As far as Yolanda can tell.
In the meantime, Mr. Chang hasn’t been weeping over his lack of Facebook moolah. In 2011, he founded Crashlytics, which seems to be some sort of thing for app developers (Sorry, y’all. In case you can’t tell, Yolanda ain’t too tech-savvy in her advanced years.) Mr. Chang sold the company just two years after founding it — in 2013 — to Twitter for somewhere around $38 million.
Yes, y’all, Mr. Chang created $38 million bucks for basically nowhere in the span of 2 years. How you like them apples? He may not have received as much Facebook cash as he originally wanted, but Mr. Chang is a rich 32-year-old man.
Anyway, fascinating as Mr. Chang’s career history may be, we’re here to discuss his brand-new LA crash pad today.
The uber-contemporary home is perched hard up on the street on a tight-tight-tight and steeply-sloped that listing information shows is less than one-fifth of an acre. The listing also reveals the structure was “Custom built by a renowned L.A. developer as his personal residence”. Property records show the “renowned LA developer” is a guy named Matthew Greene, a fella Yolanda — bless her heart — ain’t never heard of before. Sorry! Maybe we’re just out of the loop with who’s who in coke palace builder business.
Oopsies. Was that rude? Let’s just come out and say it, then. Yolanda personally finds the house hideous. All that tacky-ass chrome and/or stainless steel littered inside and out would make us feel like we’re living in one of 50 Cent’s Range Rover rims.
That’s not to say the view isn’t snazzy, however. Almost every room has beautiful skyline sights. The main living area encompasses a large Poggenpohl kitchen with two center islands, both of which are a bit undersized, in Yolanda’s opinion. The glossy cherry-red cabinetry seems very turn-of-the-millennium to your gurl. A bit dated, you know?
The flooring switches from shiny white tile to shiny black wood in the family/living room and the bedrooms. There’s also a party-sized bar area with a flatscreen and stool seating. Somewhere there’s a beige-carpeted media room/theater with a 120-inch projecter screen, per the listing. There’s also — somewhat unusually — a hidden “security camera monitoring room”.
Speaking of bedrooms (and bathrooms), the listing seems somewhat confused by how many there actually are. Though official stats say there are 4 beds and 4 baths, the main listing copy paragraph explicitly calls out 3 beds and 5 baths. We’re not sure why the discrepancy.
Though the house has no grassy yard, it does sport a surprisingly-commodious outdoor terrace that the developer seller adorned sparely with a small table and chairs.
Sadly for Mr. Chang (and other folks living near the top of Sunset Plaza), it’s going to be a real chore getting to and from their houses in the coming months. Anyone living in the area is aware that a significant portion of the street is currently closed to car traffic, which means Mr. Chang and other folks living above that section must take a 10-minute-plus detour just to reach Sunset Boulevard.
Lastly, one of Mr. Chang’s new neighbors is YouTube star Jordan Maron aka CaptainSparklez (he paid $4,500,000 last year for a house just three doors away). Just around the corner is a concrete-poured mansion known as “The Fortress” that was recently leased by Rihanna and once owned by billionaire Russ Weiner, who sold it to DJ Val Kilmer, who sold it in 2012 to Jed Leiber, a son of the late songwriting legend Jerry Leiber. The most expensive house ever sold on Sunset Plaza is this showstopping mega-mansion near the mouth of the street, which went for an unprecedented $24,000,000 in 2014 to allegedly corrupt Indonesian politician/businessman Aburizal Bakrie. Yolanda hears that house is currently leased out.
There ain’t nothin’ Yolanda loves better than gossiping about a crazy-rich heiress who lives to slam down the cash on top-flight real estate. And Mon Dieu, today’s subject is not afraid to bust out the sultan-sized checks. So naturally, although the story has already been thoroughly covered, we just couldn’t resist tossing our $0.02 into the property bucket.
Astute real estate watchers may recall it was only just last year (2015) that Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs — quietly, with no fanfare — dumped a dumbfounding $44,000,000 (in cash, duh) on an unfinished blufftop estate compound on Paradise Cove, arguably Malibu’s most scenic and desirable stretch of land. It was the 5th-biggest sale of that year in the entirety of LA County.
That house was sold in an off-market deal (and without the aid of real estate agents) by a former investment banker turned magazine owner and aspiring politician named Jack Ryan. Though we digress, we must point out that Mr. Ryan — who was formerly married to actress Jeri Ryan — is perhaps most (in)famous for running as a Republican against Obama in the 2004 Senate election. The controversial widespread media release of Mr. Ryan’s certain (alleged) sexual proclivities — which resulted in him ending his campaign — is sometimes credited with paving a direct path for Obama’s rapid political ascent that ultimately culminated with his current presidency.
But back to less political things. Only a few months before paying Mr. Ryan a huge sum of money for his shell of a Malibu mansion, Mrs. Jobs secretly threw down $16,300,000 for a 10-acre equestrian facility in Los Altos Hills (CA).
The estate was purchased from a local Silicon Valley venture capitalist couple (Alex & Cathy Mendez) and is equipped with state-of-the-art equine facilities including a massive 13,000-square-foot barn with 12 stalls, full-size riding ring, pastures, and the only residential structure on the property: a 2-bed and 1-bath caretaker apartment.
In a recent equestrian facility permit renewal application, Mrs. Jobs — through her LLC — stated that she intends to keep the property and facilities essentially unchanged from prior to the transfer of ownership. Only difference is they shall now be operating as her own private stables.
Moving on: it was also last year that Mrs. Jobs announced her intention to resurrect her late hubby’s hard-fought yet never-completed plan: constructing the couple’s dream mansion on a three-parcel, 9+ acre compound in shockingly-wealthy Woodside (CA).
The property — likely worth a good $20 million (or more) even in its current neglected state — has been vacant land for the last 5 years, since just before Mr. Jobs’ death. In February of 2011, Mr. Jobs tore down the historic “Jackling mansion” on the site after a bitter and protracted fight with local preservation groups.
Mrs. Jobs’ new proposals show a compound measuring a total of nearly 16,000 square feet. However, it’s not a mega-mansion that our gurl is planning to build. Rather, the future estate will be centered around a main residence of a very modest 3,706 square feet. Then, as best Yolanda can tell, there will be at least 8 smaller buildings on the site: two guest houses, a yoga studio, a sauna building, a wine press building, an olive press building, a garden shed, and a relatively small “garden” barn. For more information on the fancy yet decidedly bucolic and rustic project, which was designed by architect Chris Garrick, go here.
In the meantime, while she waits for her new Woodside complex to be constructed, Mrs. Jobs and her kids are believed to still mainly reside at the multi-million-dollar but relatively-modest Palo Alto mini-estate that was purchased by Mr. Jobs back in the mid 1990s.
The English Country-ish style house, 5,678 square feet with 7 bedrooms and only 4.5 bathrooms, sits on a corner lot of an area packed with much larger and more glamorous homes. Apparently Mrs. Jobs still enjoys the modest life, or at least enjoys giving the impression she enjoys living simply.
But now our itchy-footed gurl has gone and done it again, this time on the other side of the country. Back in May (2016), she shut the haters down when she forked over $15,300,000 (in cash, natch) for a 3-acre estate in the equestrian-oriented (and wealthy) Palm Beach County community of Wellington, Florida.
For what it’s worth, the estate was actually acquired by “Even Stride LLC”, an entity that Yolanda found is very easily linked to our gurl. The story was first reported by the hardworking folks at Gossip Extra.
The seller of the estate, according to public records, was another LLC easily linked to a guy named Christian Paillot, a very wealthy equestrian who co-founded the France branch of Samsung Electronics back in the 1980s.
At least Mrs. Jobs definitely won’t have to worry about security for this particular property. That’s because King of the World Bill Gates owns the entire cul-de-sac directly across the street from her new spread. We wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he’s got a battalion of private security guards or a Mad Max-style tank stationed out front. You know how these bazillionaires are.
Supposedly Mrs. Jobs’ new ranch was acquired, according to previous reports, as space for her equestrienne daughter Billie Jo to hone her hardcore horse-handlin’ hobby. Apparently Miss Billie Jo Jobs regularly competes with Bill Gates’ daughter Ginger on the riding circuit, so perhaps that’s a big reason why Mrs. Jobs & fam were drawn to the neighborhood. See? When you’re as rich as Mrs. Jobs, you can indulge your daughter’s hobby by spending $30 million+ on two horse ranches on opposite ends of the country.
Directly next door is another estate that billionaire parking lot king (and former Dodgers owner) Frank McCourt sold to a sick-rich entrepreneur named Hakan Bjorklund earlier this year for $11,850,000.(He has since upgraded to a larger estate just a quick jog away.)
In addition to her $100+ million worth of residential real estate, and as befitting a gal who is now one of the world’s richest women, Mrs. Jobs also lays claim to several other big gurl toys. These include at least two Gulfstream jets — one of them a G650 — and a recently-completed superyacht co-designed by her late hubby and christened “Venus”. Mrs. Jobs was spotted vacationing in the Caribbean on her floating mansion last year with her rumored new boytoy, former Washington, D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty.
Disclaimer: Billie Jo Jobs & Ginger Gates may or may not be the names of Mrs. Jobs’ and Mr. Gates’ daughters, respectively. Yolanda is far too obese and lazy to check that stuff herself, so we don’t know and until these young ladies start buying some prime real estate, we don’t much care. They’re just not on our radar, sorry!
It’s been a very long time coming, but thanks to the legend herself — Your Mama over at Variety — Yolanda can tell y’all that the celeb-pedigreed Harvey Mudd estate in Beverly Hills has found a new owner for the princely sum of $15,000,000. Before we discuss specifics of the estate or the sale, however, let’s take a quick drive and have a brief history lesson.
Head directly north from the hustle and bustle of Rodeo Drive and downtown Beverly Hills for about, oh, maybe 10 minutes or so by car. As you pass the Rolls Royce-filled Sunset Boulevard and begin the trek up Benedict Canyon, the road’s incline gradually grows steeper. Then, just before you reach the point where Beverly Hills turns into Beverly Hills Post Office (Los Angeles), brake hard and make a soft right into a barely-there, tree-shrouded, exceptionally long private driveway.
Carefully make your way up the quarter-mile roadway, just past Bruce Springsteen’s deceptively-modest compound. Finally, through the dense foliage, you’ll see the ol’ gurl herself.
This, y’all, is the Harvey Mudd estate.
Thanks to our friends over at the LA Times, we can tell you the Tudor pile was built in 1922 for multi-millionaire glass manufacturer Charles Boldt, the son of hotelier George C. Boldt, Sr. The structure was designed by Elmer Grey, the same accomplished architect who did up the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel. At that time, it measured roughly 7,200 square feet.
In 1925, the estate was sold to major philanthropists Harvey & Mildred Mudd. The couple held onto the property for 30+ years, until both their deaths in the 1950s. He, of course, is the namesake for the estate as well as the elite private college in Claremont (CA).
In the mid-1960s, the property was briefly owned by a young Rothschild fellow. Well, kudos to him because he sold the estate in 1968 to two of Yolanda’s absolute favorite Tinseltown icons: Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, aka Rollin and Cinnamon of Mission: Impossible. And yes, that’s the groundbreaking television series, not those absolutely hideous Tom Cruise films. If you have DVDs or whatever of that sacrilege, burn that mess immediately!
Anyway, Mr. Landau and Ms. Bain — he an Oscar-winner who also starred in films such as North by Northwest, she a four-time Emmy-winner — are such perfection in Mission: Impossible, well, you just must watch it. If you haven’t yet found a reason to sign up with Netflix, Yolanda just gave you the ultimate one, K?
Cinnamon and Rollin… together no more.
But we majorly digress, don’t we? Anyway, the Hollywood couple owned the house for more than 20 years, so in your gurl’s useless opinion it should instead be christened the Cinnamon Rollin Estate. (Get it? Get it? Anyways…) In 1991, the sadly-soon-to-be-divorced pair sold the ol’ rambler for $2,425,000 to some producer fellow named Jack Rapke, a guy whom Yolanda knows very little about.
Fast forward to 2004. It was then that our mysterious Mr. Rapke himself sold the property for somewhere between five and six million bucks to a high-flying developer named John Bersci. His gal pal, Million Dollar Decorators star Mary McDonald, proceeded to give the grand but faded lady a major facelift complete with leopard print decor and all.
Unfortunately for Mr. Bersci (and Ms. McDonald), the house did not sell and he was served him with a big fat real estate reality check in July 2009, when he officially lost the estate to foreclosure. Rumor has it that Mr. Bersci was, for a time, forced to move into his own mama’s house while attempting to ride out the recession! Oh, the indignity of it all.
In February 2010, the foreclosing bank sold the property for $6,250,000 to a British developer named Brendan Deschamps. Our boy spent several years renovating and expanded the already recently-renovated property before tossing it onto the open market with a frightfully greedy $22,995,000 asking price.
To get an idea of the changes Mr. Deschamps made to Ms. McDonald’s decorating, have a detailed look-see at the before and after pics on the very thoroughly-researched Cote de Texas blog. Suffice to say that Mr. Deschamps’ version, while tastefully done and classy, is a bit too restrained and ho hum for Yolanda than Ms. McDonald’s more avant garde take on the place. Different strokes and all that.
Now we get to the good part. After removing the property from the open market in 2014, it finally happened. The estate has sold for a significantly lower and even-steven $15,000,000. Though that’s nearly $8 million less that Mr. Deschamps originally wanted, we would bet big bucks he still walked with a significant profit.
“We’re takin’ over…”
The new owner, again according to real estate royalty Your Mama, is Canadian toymaking mogul Ben Varadi, the co-founder of Spin Master, one of the top 5 biggest toymaking outfits in the US (in terms of sales). Mr. Varadi and a couple of his friends started their money-minting firm in a garage!
The entrance hall has gorgeous wood paneling and an impressively massive glass chandelier that looms over the foot of those loud-looking wooden stairs. The sort-of clerestory stained glass windows above the stairway are a decadent touch.
Moving on, the living room gives off a decidedly gothic vibe — wee think — with its intricately detailed ceiling, and carved wood paneling encapsulating the space. We enjoy the library, which breaks from the rest of the house’s more muted tones with its matte-red looking walls.
Just across from the entrance hall is the exceptionally-roomy dining room — it easily seats 12 — with its glossy patterned flooring. The house also has at least two roomy breakfast nooks overlooking the estate’s grounds.
While unarguably spacious and luxurious, the kitchen just does not quite do it for Yolanda (or Your Mama, she assures us). It’s just a bit too monochromatic or a bit too much “Yes, this house was most definitely a flip project” -looking, we’re not sure which. But that should be a fairly simple fix.
Under the ownership of Mr. Deschamps, the estate ballooned up to 10,993-square-feet with 7 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms, including the practically all-white master suite.
An oddball feature of the property is the stone-walled “game retreat” downstairs that features a pool table just across from a six-seat wooden dining set. Strange, that. The room also opens directly to the backyard via a knotty oak door. Could this be the room where you bring back the “game” after a day out shooting? (Do they allow sport shooting in Beverly Hills? Somehow Yolanda doubts it.)
The one-acre property isn’t particularly big for the neighborhood, but it is equipped with rolling lawns, stone terraces, a classy rectangular-shaped pool, and a rather beautiful motorcourt that’s anchored by what appears to an old (???) tree. Sorry, kids, Yolanda ain’t no dendrologist.
Guess what, everyone! Don’t pay your taxes this year. Let that parking meter run out. Shred that speeding violation. Whip your hair like you just don’t care. Wanna know why? The Jupiter-sized sinkhole that is the US government just got $33.5 million (or so) richer this month. Or $33.5 million less poor, as it were. They don’t need your cash no more.
Before we get to the juice, we’ve got something to say. We know this is going to elicit some eyerolls and some stern, disdainful glances from pious folk like Rabbi Hedda and any of you other peeps who have been following this site for some time. But Yolanda needs to toot her own horn for a minute. We just don’t get enough opportunity. And we promise we’ll be quick with it.
You see, your ol’ gurl Yolanda doesn’t know a thing about politics, business, sports, or how to ghostride the whip (???). But we do know about real estate. And for being as unclassy, disjointed mess of a gal as she is, Yolanda is almost always dead-on accurate when it comes to that. You see? We always knew Mrs. Yakketyyak wasn’t lying when she told us we were special growing up.
Now put on your thinking caps and rewind all the way back to early May (2016). It was then that Yolanda discussed an epic mega-estate up on a very prominent Malibu hilltop in the guard-gated and celebrity-packed “Serra Retreat” community. It’s known as Lady Malibu. Or that’s what neighborhood folks have christened it.
Just a few days prior to posting that story, we’d heard from an old school chum who resides in Serra Retreat — let’s call her Serra Sweetwater — who whispered that neighborhood rumors were running rampant about the long-vacant and woefully neglected estate being soon sold to a hyper-rich couple from Mexico City named Mauricio & Sharon Oberfeld. Naturally, we included said rumor in our post.
Well, weeks passed, turned into months and still no sale. Yolanda began to second guess herself, thinking perhaps the deal fell through or worse, that the property was never in escrow at all! This despite the fact that Ms. Sweetwater has never, ever steered us wrong when it comes to Serra Retreat.
Well, kiddies, guess what? Even though it’s been nearly three months and though the off-market sale has still not yet made its way into public records, the real estate gossip grapevine is abuzz with news that the property has officially sold. Sold. S.O.L.D.!
According to both the real estate street and our best gal-pal Your Mama over at Variety, the estate went for somewhere right around $33,500,000. We’re not positive about the exact number, but that’s what we hear. But can you guess who the buyers are? Wait for it. Wait for it…
Mauricio and Sharon Oberfeld. That’s right, y’all. Is Yolanda (or Ms. Sweetwater) psychic, or are we really just the damn best? Toot toot on that hoot hoot.
Okay, we’ll stop boasting now. Anyway, not only is this far and away the biggest Malibu sale so far this year (that we know of), it’s also one of the top five in all of LA County.
(Crappy photos courtesy of the US Justice Department via the LA Times.)
Unfortunately, as visible and notorious as this mansion may be, some things remain perhaps forever shrouded in mystery. We don’t know who the original architect was, and we also have never seen photographs of the interiors (photo above excepted). Though the house has now changed hands twice, it has never made its way onto the MLS.
Our previous post went into great depth about the estate’s history, so we’ll be brief here, but suffice to say the massive mansion — easily one of the city’s largest — was built over a period of several years beginning in the mid-1980s by a Beverly Hills real estate developer named William (Bill) O’Connor and his mysteriously wealthy then-wife Karen.
The lavish and symmetrical Spanish hacienda-style crib was completed in 1991 and features a horseshoe-shaped main residence of 15,000 square feet, a guard house that’s larger than most regular folks’ house, a guest house, another structure of unknown use that may be another guest house or extra garage space, a three-hole golf course/greens, a koi pond that’s large enough to qualify as a mini-lake, and an infinity pool with low, wide views across the entirety of downtown Malibu’s coastline. All this on 15.74 acres.
Sounds like a dream, right? Unfortunately, this place caused the previous owners nothing but grief and heartbreak. We’re not sure if all those hokey rumors of a “curse” are factual, but we’re hoping the Oberfelds at least took them into consideration before signing on the dotted line. Y’all can never be too careful…
But we digress. Less than 3 years after completing the estate, the O’Connors began bitter divorce proceedings, eventually incurring more than $3,000,000 in attorney fees and costs. In the end, Mr. O’Connor was basically shipped off to the poorhouse and the former Mrs. O’Connor — who immediately changed her name to Karen Rabe — continued living in the estate. Alone, for all intents and purposes.
In 2006, Ms. Rabe sold Lady Malibu for $30,000,000 in an off-market all-cash deal to a shell company called “Sweetwater Mesa LLC” — a front for Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the party-boy son of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been President of Africa’s tiny and ultra-poor yet oil-rich nation of Equatorial Guinea for nearly 40 years.
In October 2014, the US Justice Department seized the home in a blaze of glory and publicity. We’re not sure when Mr. Obiang actually moved out, but it was most assuredly long before that date. For the last couple years, the property has been vacant.
By 2015, the abandoned house and grounds had fallen into major disrepair, and the Lady Malibu received a citation for her excessive weeds being a public nuisance. Last month, our gurl Serra Sweetwater sent us the following eyewitness pics she took, which reveal the degree of Lady Malibu‘s decay. We’d hazard a guess that the house is in poor shape but still salvageable.
Now, nearly two years after the seizure, the Oberfelds will take control of our Lady‘s destiny. Will they refurbish her old glory and live there? Will they flip it for a substantial profit? Or could they — and would they — tear down the house to build a modern mega-mansion? It’s not out of the question. Mr. Oberfeld owns a high-end home construction firm, Dugally Oberfeld.
In case you’re wondering where Mauricio and Sharon Oberfeld (they are married) get $33,500,000 to drop on a house — well, Yolanda will tell you. The Oberfeld family is a clan from Mexico City but of Polish Jewish ethnic background. They made their money, so we hear, through banking and real estate and have frequently been described to Yolanda as “old Mexico City money”. Everyone in Beverly Hills knows them, everyone knows they are super rich, and apart from that what more do we need to know, right?
Though you won’t ever find the Oberfelds on a Forbes wealth list, Yolanda would be absolutely shocked if the clan are not billionaires. These folks are so rich, y’all. We can’t emphasize that enough. They are loaded.
In addition to their new $33.5 million mansion in Malibu (or however much they actually paid), various members of the Oberfeld family currently own: two mansions in Beverly Park, two mansions in Beverly Ridge Estates, two side-by-side mid-century residences in the best section of Beverly Hills, and a few other scattered mansions in and around Beverly Hills.
Once upon a time, Mauricio Oberfeld himself owned (and built) a spec-mansion in Beverly Park. Our boy sold the 19,000-square-foot faux-Tuscan terror to highly-compensated sitcom star Kelsey Grammer and his former Real Housewives alum wife Camille in early 2004 for $17,500,000. The Grammers — lucky in Beverly Park but unlucky in love — then lickety-split flipped the crib just two years later for a whopping $22,000,000 to Saudi Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad, a nephew of the late King Abdullah.
Oberfeld’s Beverly Park spec-build: sold to Kelsey Grammer, currently owned by a Saudi prince
Mauricio & Sharon Oberfeld currently reside in their showplace near the tippy-top of the Bird Streets. Designed by Culver City-based architect Zoltan Pali and built by Mr. Oberfeld himself, the all-white uber-modern extravaganza has an exterior clad solely in cement paneling. The L-shaped crib overlooks a very large (for the Birds) patch of green grass and an oh-so-sleek and expensively engineered infinity pool with crystal-clear views to the Pacific Ocean.
But we digress. While the (rumored) $33.5 million sale price of Lady Malibu may seem high, it isn’t anywhere near the most ever paid for a home in the city. In early 2013, sunglasses and camera billionaire Jim Jannard dropped $74,500,000 for fellow billionaire Howard Marks’ oceanfront estate in the northernmost reaches of Malibu.
Then, just last year, an unprecedented trio of massive sales hit the beachside community: Jimmy Iovine paid $60,000,000 for Marcy Carsey’s renovated Paradise Cove compound (it was the biggest sale in all of 2015), Laurene Powell Jobs threw down $44,000,000 for Jack Ryan’s unfinished estate on the opposite end of Paradise Cove, and Cindy Crawfod & Rande Gerber dolled out a downright shocking $50,500,000 for the development-ready estate next door to their longtime residence and just two doors away from the Jannard sale record-breaker.
But, as nice as all those other places are, Yolanda actually believes Lady Malibu, with her A+ in the Serra Retreat, her gigantic size and proportions, and her sweeping, unsurpassed vistas — is about as epic as Malibu estates get. We’d even go so far as to say it’s the ultimate Malibu trophy estate. So, obviously, Yolanda is of the opinion the Oberfelds got a very good value with this sale. Of course, keep in mind that the property is currently in very poor condition and does not have direct beach access. Wanna have a quiet evening beachside stroll? You’ll have to pack up the family van (or Bentley Bentayga — good Lord, that thing is butt-ugly) and valet at Nobu first. But ain’t that the fun of Malibu, after all?
Lady Malibu is the irreplaceable Malibu estate to rule all Malibu estates. Just take our word for it.
And babies, when you read this same story on one of those larger and classier news websites, which you eventually will – and without credit to Yolanda, natch — don’t ever forget that it was your chick who first whispered this to you, all those months ago. Oh, oopsies. There we go tooting on that horn again.
“It’s a gargantuan-ly good deal for me, babe.”
“Xenu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111”
Michael Milken’s Fleur de Lys
Tony Ressler & Jami Gertz’s estate in Beverly Park
Richard Ressler’s home, the largest estate in the celebrity-filled “Hidden Valley” neighborhood
Ms. Longoria, photographed at her new Ho-wood Hills home
“We do own you.”
