Jon Bon Jovi Lists Downtown Duplex Penthouse

SELLER: Jon Bon Jovi
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $42,000,000
SIZE: 7,452 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Painstakingly preserved middle-aged rock superstar Jon Bon Jovi and his Missus, Dorothea Hurley, coughed up $24,000,000 in June 2007 for a sleek and sophisticated, suburban MacMansion-sized duplex penthouse atop a very swank cast iron building in New York City's tourist-filled SoHo neighborhood.

Thanks to the diligent research of our unofficial (but much appreciated) aide de camp Hot Chocolate we've learned that Mister and Missus Bon Jovi have hoisted the nearly 7,500 square foot spread on the open market with a significantly increased $42,000,000 price tag.

This isn't the biggest surprise. Avid real estate watchers may recall that back in the fall of 2011 rumors surfaced on Curbed and elsewhere that the post-reno penthouse was quietly being shopped off-market with a $45 million price tag.

A key lock elevator opens directly into the five bedroom penthouse's upper level main foyer off of which are coat closets and an itty-pitty powder room. Floor to ceiling windows wrap around four sides of the massive main living/dining space that includes a mirrored fireplace and access to both the the posh penthouse's expansive roof terraces that together total more than 3,100 square feet of fully landscaped exterior living space.

Besides the addition of a lot of beige, brown and—although undoubtedly excessively expensive—very boring furnishings, a quick comparison of the floor plan included with current marketing materials (above) and the one included with online listings from the time of their purchase (see here) show Mister and Missus Bon Jovi made a couple of significant alterations and reconfigurations. When they purchased the penthouse there were two master suites, one upstairs the other downstairs. The upper level master suite—the one we imagine was likely used by the previous occupant as the actual master bedroom—occupied a private wing on the upper level. That space was converted by the Bon Jovis to a media room with adjacent projection room, a puny, window-lined study and a compact guest bedroom with adjoining bathroom.

The master suite was moved to the lower level and includes small entry vestibule that promotes privacy, a 25-foot long bedroom area with a trio of over-sized street-facing windows, a double-sided fitted dressing room and a spacious (if windowless) bathroom with two sink, crapper cubby and double-headed shower. Three more guest/family bedrooms on the lower level each have private bathrooms as does the squeezy staff bedroom that's tucked up behind the laundry room.

The penthouse has two U-shaped kitchens, one off the main living space on the upper level and the other slightly smaller one off the 1,100-plus square foot so-called "Great Room" on the lower level. Both kitchens are equipped with custom cabinetry and top of the line appliances, natch, but, oddly enough, neither is much bigger than what one might safely expect to find in a mid-priced suburban tract house.

Our brief and entirely unscientific research indicates Mister and Missus Bon Jovi maintain a small but rock star style real estate portfolio that in addition to the Manhattan duplex they'd like to unload and a jaw dropping $18,000,000 profit includes (but may not be limited to) a multi-acre river-front spread in quietly ritzy Red Bank, NJ and a large house on one of the finest and most expensive lanes in East Hampton, NY, that they scooped up in August 2004 for $7,600,000.

exterior photo: Kate Leonova for Property Shark
listing photos and floor plan: Corcoran

Tuesday Floor Plan Porn: Heath Hall

WHAT: Heath Hall
LOCATION: London, U.K.
PRICE: £65,000,000
SIZE: 2509.29 square meters, 15 bedrooms, 15 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen, chickens, Your Mama has some personal matters that require our undivided attention. However, rather than leave the children completely high and dry in the (celebrity) real estate way we thought we'd quickly drop some hardcore floor plan porn on y'all in the form of Heath Hall, an historic, newly renovated and much expanded mega-mansion on The Bishop's Avenue, one the most (in)famously recherché residential enclaves in all of ludicrously expensive London.

Heath Hall has been on the market for a while now but recently had it's monstrous £100,000,000 asking price slashed to a still tumescent £65,000,000. A few quick flicks of the well-worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that's an electrifying $151,068,000, at today's rates, reduced down to still stultifying $98,194,200.

The seller, according to previous reports, is a property magnate named Andreas Panayiotou who purchased Heath Hall in 2006 and spent—so the stories go—£40,000,000 on the recent overhaul and expansion.

Current listing details show the Edwardian era three story (plus partial basement) mansion, a stately red brick pastiche of Classical, Arts & Crafts and Scottish Baronial styles, was designed and built in 1910 for sugar baron William Lyle and, after its recent expansion, measures in at 2,509.29 square meters. That's just over 27,000 square feet for all us non-metric types.

Your Mama counted at least half a dozen or more public entertaining rooms that include a regal, 700-ish square foot center stair hall with a massive oak staircase and a banquet hall sized dining room; a gargantuan "Garden Room" with a (melo)dramatic glass ceiling and a glinty dandelion-like chandelier. A pair of nearly 30-foot long drawing rooms, both with fireplaces, flank a refreshingly intimate paneled library. All three of the latter rooms spill out to 60-foot long, glassed in veranda that overlook the estate's formal gardens.

The floor plan first provided to Your Mama by a U.K.-based aide-de-camp we'll call Flower Perfectbush and included with online marketing materials shows Heath Hall has not just one but two kitchens. At the northeast corner there's a somewhat isolated commercial catering kitchen with walk in larder. That's a pantry, American butter beans. A more central, expensively outfitted center island family kitchen has a direct view into the adjacent family room but a strangely circuitous route to the formal dining room. It seems a bit odd to Your Mama that there's not a butler's pantry or service kitchen between the kitchen and dining room. Unless there's a weird and ill-advised pass through we don't know about, plated food must be carried from the kitchen through a vestibule off the main reception hall in order to be served in the dining room.

Even though listing details say there are 14 bedrooms and 15 bathrooms Your Mama (repeatedly) counted a total of 15 bedrooms and 15 full or three-quarter bathrooms and two powder poopers on the main floor.

At least four of the bedrooms are located in a separate wing above the catering kitchen and laundry room making them suitable for habitation by live-in domestic staff. In addition to the five guest/family bedrooms and the master bedroom on the second floor there are three large if awkwardly shaped en suite bedrooms on the third floor plus two more smaller bedrooms that share a hall bathroom.

The second floor master suite is a roomy if surprisingly simple affair comprised of a 500-square foot bedroom/sitting area, an itty-bitty stud-nook, a pair of custom-fitted windowed dressing rooms and a single, spacious bathroom sheathed almost entirely in Milas Lilac marble. The high contrast marble in the master bathroom was certainly a bold choice and we imagine many of the children will poo-poo its use as conspicuous and vulgar. And it is, hunties. It is. Even still, Your Mama thinks it's insane. Rachel Zoe might say, "It's mayj!" The free-standing soaking tub carved from a huge hunk of the same marble is just icing on the crazy cake in that glorious high luxury meets high camp style to which Your Mama is inexplicably and somewhat embarrassingly drawn. We don't want that bathroom for our bathroom but we're sorta glad it exists in all its unapologetic über-splendor. Anyhoodles poodles...

Additional creature comforts at Heath Hall include: a cloak room/powder pooper larger than most people's bedrooms; a basement level wine cellar; a discreet and fully equipped panic room (not shown on the floor plan, natch) with toilet and separate telephone wires that can not be cut; a surprisingly compact but state-of-the-art home cinema lined with cream colored suede; an indoor swimming pool complex complete with spa and multi-colored fiber optic lighting situation that kinda gives Your Mama the decorative willies. The indoor fitness area also includes an adjoining gymnasium, steam room and dry sauna and two shower/changing rooms.

Every square foot of the walled, gated and high maintenance 2.5 acre estate is landscaped to include a motor court with central water feature at the front of the house and a rear motor court for easy access to the five car detached garage. There are formal gardens, a serpentine pathway winds in and out through the sylvan edges of the estate, a hard surface tennis court and a rectangular swimming pool overlooked by a slightly elevated glassed-in gazebo.

listing photos and floor plan: Knight Frank

Pam Anderson's Malibu Modern Up for Grabs

SELLER: Pam Anderson
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $7,750,000
SIZE: 2,752 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama certainly ain't tellin' anybody a damn thing about former Baywatch babe Pam Anderson's money woes, unpaid tax issues and sundry real estate meshugganuh, all of which has been covered at length and ad infinitum by others in the tabloid and celebrity real estate gossip media.

To quickly recap: In the last days of 2000 Miz Anderson coughed up $1,800,000 for a land-side fixer upper in the guard-gated and star-studded Colony enclave in Malibu (CA). She spent years and God only knows how many millions on eco-minded overhaul and re-imagining of the original 1959 cottage led by architect Philip Vertoch of Vertoch Design Architects and designer Josh Chrisant of Chryssanthou.

In November 2011, reportedly strapped for cash, Miz Anderson's newly overhauled contemporary crib in the guard-gated and star-studded Colony enclave in Malibu (CA) unexpectedly popped up for rent on VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner) at twenty grand a week or $75,000 a month with a dozen or so over-processed photographs.  The property was up for least again over the summer of 2012 at a much more reasonable but still pocketbook punishingly high $50,000 per month. We don't know if anyone actually leased the house but we're sure one or two of the children could probably enlighten Your Mama about that if they'd so choose.

When the middle-aged bombshell finally decided to sell her financial albatross in the Colony a month or so ago—that would be February 2013—she pushed it on the open market with a $7,750,000 price tag with but a few—ahem—artfully staged listing photographs. One showed a Golden Retriever lounging on a sun bed, another of a pair of over-sized pillows arranged just so on the roof deck and a third an inane tableau of perfume bottles and pink roses.

However, hunties, it appears that Miz Anderson's extraordinarily successful real estate agent has recently added a whole lotta much more customary photographs to the online listings for the teak-sided contemporary that has three bedrooms and three bathrooms in 2,752 square feet of modern splendor.

An intimate, gated courtyard planted with lavender bushes and olive trees leads to an extra wide pivoting glass door that, for all intents and purposes, opens directly into kitchen. The open concept lower floor, bisected by a muscular wood and steel floating staircase, has a media lounge area with wall-mounted flat-screen tee-vee and built-in surround sound system, a living room lounge with book shelf flanked fireplace and a galley style kitchen expensively equipped with slab stone counter tops, custom cabinetry and the sorts of high grade and extravagantly pricey commercial grade appliances that Make Your Mama swoon. Did y'all see the glass-fronted Sub-Zero? Refrigeration heaven as far as we're concerned. A wall of floor to ceiling glass windows disappear into the walls when opened and seamlessly join the compact interior spaces to the outdoor living spaces.

Up the floating staircase two family/guest bedrooms share a bathroom. The master suite with floor to ceiling wardrobe closets hidden behind matchbook pattern wood doors, a corner fireplace and an open-plan bathroom that Your Mama hates because, seriously, who wants to wake up looking at the sink/vanity and the goddamn bath tub, even if it is a stunningly sculptural, $14,000 Agape Spoon Bathtub? Anyhoo, like in the living area downstairs, a wall of windows slide back into the wall and exposes the room to the elements. The bedroom spills out to a large deck and second, exterior floating staircase that climbs up to a roomy roof deck. Now, naturally we love the roof terrace with its all around mountain and ocean views but it's a little inconvenient for the rood deck access to be through the master bedroom.

A couple more quirky details Your Mama thinks the children ought to take note of include: the flush mounted television in the sauna; the full-sized tepee set on a concrete plinth at the far end of the pool; the glimmering, disco-ball-like mirrored tiles on the wall in that aforementioned master bathroom; the direct view of Jerry Perenchio's private golf course from the upper level decks off the master bedroom; the rather interesting collection of artworks and coffee table books; and, finally, for the love of Pete,the ebony baby grand piano that someone for some inexplicable reason put on the covered porch off the main living space where the salt air can quickly corrode everything there is to corrode on a grand piano.

To be honest, children, we're not sure if Miz Anderson has been living up in this house in the Colony or not. The last we heard of her—which was ages ago, really—she was shacked up in a fancy trailer home in the Paradise Cove Mobile Home Park but we really don't know if she's still living there or no. Bueller? Anyone? Bueller?

listing photos: Coldwell Banker

Summer's Comin': Natasha Gregson Wagner

OWNER: Natasha Gregson Wagner
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $20,000 per month
SIZE: 2-3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Summers a-comin' chickens and children so, if you don't already own a crazy expensive  shack at the beach, it's time to start thinking about securing a sickeningly expensive rental for the beach going season. Thanks to a seaside canary we'll call Ben Tothebeach, Your Mama has learned that one, relatively and comparatively modestly priced option for West Coasters may be the compact ocean front cottage in Malibu, CA that Tinseltown scion and part-time actress Natasha Gregson Wagner has made available for lease at $20,000 per month.*

Miz Gregson Wagner, in case y'all don't know, is the daughter of British producer/writer/agent Richard Gregson and child star turned movie actress Natalie Wood, who tragically and mysteriously drown in 1981 off the coast of Santa Catalina Island. After momma Wood married actor Robert Wagner (Hart to Hart) for the second time in 1972 he adopted Natasha which is how she came to have the (second) surname Wagner.

Anyhoo, property records show Miz Gregson Wagner purchased the property way back in late 1996 for $1,200,000 when she was just a dewy young woman in her mid twenties. Imagine that. Those really were the real estate salad days, weren't they, when you could snatch up a wee beach front home in Malibu for under a million and a quarter clams? Your Mama will let the real estate experts in Malibu determine what the value of this house would be if it were for sale but we'd bet both out long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, that it's at least several times more than the lady paid.

Pale blond wood floors run through out the open plan main living/dining space that has a pitched and beamed ceiling, a brick fireplace in the living room area and a wide bank of wood-framed glass sliders that open to a beach front deck that spans the full width of the house.

The matte finish wood floors extend into a cozy den as well as into the recently-remodeled and sky-lit eat-in kitchen outfitted with crisp, discreetly hardwared white cabinets, open upper cabinets for kitchenware displays, marble counter tops and back splashes and—natch—high grade stainless steel appliances. A wood-framed sliding door set into a wall painted an unusual shade of black connects the kitchen to land side courtyard dining deck and Zen garden.

Listing details suggest the walled and gated beach house has a somewhat unusual set up with a compact beach side main house with just one ocean view master bedroom and one bathroom slathered in olive green subway tiles. Separate detached guest quarters offer a spacious second master suite with vaulted wood ceiling and marble bathroom plus an additional small office, nursery or bedroom.

Last year Miz Gregson Wagner and her actor man-friend Barry Watson (Gossip Girl, 7th Heaven) made a girl baby out of wedlock—those moral flouting Hollywood types—which may or may not have something to do with her/their decision to lease out her charming but not exactly small child friendly Malibu getaway. As far as we know or can quickly tell from a spin through various property record data bases, Miz Gregson Wagner does not own any other residential real estate in Los Angeles.** Twice married Mister Watson also does not appear to own any residential real estate in Los Angeles** although he did previously own a couple of houses up in Topanga Canyon, one he sold 1995 and the other he got rid of in 2009.

If you're among the financially fortunate who are willing and able to spend ten times as much dinero on a seaside summer rental there's always the glassy, Malibu Road contemporary sold by Perry Ellis's handbag designer daughter Tyler Alexandra in 2007 for $16,000,000 and currently for rent at $200,000 per month. For a mere quarter million clams a month sand and sea seeking Wealthy Wendies and Richie Riches can opt for the much-coveted, guard-gated Colony community where some of the other owners of homes include movers and shakers like Tom Hanks—who owns two houses, Brian Grazer, Jim Carrey, Jason Statham, Peri Gilpin and boob-toob producer Mark Burnett and wife Roma Downey. By Your Mama's admittedly unscientific research, billionaire media mogul Jerry Perenchio owns—buckle your real estate safety belts, butter beans—no fewer than dozen homes behind the guarded gates of the Colony not to mention a controversial private golf course that abuts the swanky seaside enclave.

Three time Academy Award-nominated Tinseltown legend in the making Leo DiCaprio—always a bridesmaid, never a bride at the Oscars—owns (at least) two homes in da Bu including an ocean front compound in the western end of the guard gated Colony community that is up for sale for $23,000,000 and available for short term lease at $150,000 per month.

Barely working (h)actress and occasional tabloid train wreck Pam Anderson has her recently completed land-side contemporary inside the Colony is listed for sale at $7,750,000. (More on that shortly.)

*Listing information indicates the rental rate for the prime June-September months is higher.
**That does not mean she doesn't, only that we're unable to confirm or deny it.
***That does not mean he does not, only that we're unable to confirm or deny it.

listing photos: Westside Estate Agency