It's Back: Camille Grammer

SELLER: Camille Grammer
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $14,995,000
SIZE: 6.645 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms (plus a substantial guest house)

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: After a few months off the market, some legal wrangling and public tongue wagging over a house in Holmby Hills she still co-owns with her luxe-living ex-husband, the expansive Malibu, CA compound owned and occupied by The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' Camille Grammer, the fourth ex wife of five-time Emmy winning television star Kelsey Grammer, has popped back up on the open market with a new, improved and much lower asking price of $14,995,000.

Mister and fourth ex-Missus Grammer purchased the property in May 1998 for $4,500,000 and according to at least one online resource first attempted to unload the 4.77 acre equestrian-friendly spread in the guard-gated Serra Retreat back in 2004 when it was listed for an unknown amount for eight months. They unsuccessfully attempted to sell again in 2005 for an also unknown amount.

Fourth ex-Missus Grammer—a former MTV dancer who was granted complete ownership of the Malibu estate in their divorce—first hoisted the high maintenance compound on the open market in August 2012 with an in-hindsight wildly optimistic $17,500,000 price tag. The asking price dropped at least once before it was taken off the market just before the Christmas holidays.

Current listing information shows the main house, a kind of French country villa meets suburban mock-Med mini-mansion, measures in at 6,645 square feet with four bedrooms, six bathrooms, a formal living room, double height formal dining room with a sliver of an ocean view and a wood-paneled library with chateau-style carved stone fireplace surround.

There's also a media room with seating for at least 14 in baby poo colored brown leather recliners with built-in drink holders in the armrests, a spacious—if stylistically very ordinary—Wolfgang Puck designed kitchen with two center islands, a mac-daddy commercial grade range and heavy-duty rustic wood beams on the ceiling.

A detached guest house (above) has spacious living room, kitchen, garage parking for five cars and, according to listing details, "several bedrooms," a private terrace and a rooftop deck.

The nearly five acre, fully landscaped  estate has a long meandering driveway, scad of 18th and 19th century fountains and benches for quiet contemplation, numerous entertainment terraces including at least one for dining and one with a stacked stone outdoor fireplace, a stone terrace surrounded heated swimming pool, at least two spas, a lighted tennis court, equestrian facilities that include a 9-stall barn and dressage riding ring and a large lily pond with canoe dock and and 18th century stone temple.

No doubt much to their mutual chagrin and frustration Mister and fourth ex-Missus Grammer still co-own a luxurious residence with seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms in the exceedingly affluent Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles—once listed at $19.9 million and priced tagged at $14,995,000. They also still have an 8,500 square foot ski chalet near Vail (CO) that's been for sale since at least March 2011 and is currently listed with a $6,995,000 asking price.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker 

Weekend Wrap Up (03.15.13): Penthouse at the Pierre

The real estate gossip grapevine is all atwitter and agog over unconfirmed scuttlebutt that the titanic, 12,000 square foot triplex penthouse of recently deceased financier—and 1987 stock market crash predictor—Martin Zweig is about to hit the (open) market and may well fetch—some chatty Manhattan broker says—between $100 million and $120,000,000.

The positively palatial penthouse pad, perched proudly atop the super-posh Pierre on Fifth Avenue and purchased by Mister Zweig in 1999 for a then record breaking $21,500,000, was previously and long listed from in 2003 until the fall of 2008 with a then unfathomable $70,000,000 price tag. At that time listing information showed maintenance charges rang up $38,720 per month. That's a pearl clutching $464,640 every year for the privilege of living atop one of the most exclusive—if Old School—hotel and residential towers in all of New York City.

The ever industrious and well-connected kids at Curbed managed to turn up some photos and a floor plan from 1996 that—along with previous reports an old online listings—shows the 16-room suburban MacMansion-sized but oddly configured triplex has—or had—five proper bedrooms, seven full bathrooms plus a tight suite of three half crappers for large parties and events and an additional staff bedroom and bathroom. There are—or were—five functional fireplaces, four terraces, two reception rooms that flank an opera house worthy main staircase, a paneled library and a 42nd floor Grand Salon of—let's bet honest, children—epic proportions: 2,800 square feet with soaring 23-foot high coved ceiling, three towering arched windows and two sets of 20-foot tall French doors that connect to a pair of corner terraces with panoramic city and Central Park Views.

Cozier living quarters are located on the lowest level, the 41st floor, and include a surprisingly small kitchen and a corner living room with adjoining dining area/study. Other notable amenities include an oddly located sauna—on the 43rd floor opposite two guest bedrooms—and a private elevator that services all three floors of the penthouse.

The impossibly swish Pierre is the same building where a bevy of millionaire, billionaires, potentates and international power players own primary residences and pieds-a-terre. Just to list a couple there's Harrod's owner and British royal family hater Mohamed Al Fayed, media tycoon Sumner Redstone and fashion mogul/socialite Tory Burch who lives in a massive 9,000 square foot multi-unit combination spread on the 9th floor that she was granted in her divorce from obscenely rich venture capitalist Chris Burch.

Some of the children who follow these things closely will recall that fashion world icon Valentino's business partner and man-friend Giancarlo Giammetti sold his art-filled pad at The Pierre last year for $8,000,000. He bought the apartment, as it turns out, from Pierre Berge, an antique dealer better known in some circles as the former consort of French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent.

listing photos: Brown Harris Stevens via Curbed
floor plan: Curbed

Weekend Wrap Up (03.15.13): Natasha Bedingfield

SELLERS: Natasha Bedingfield and Matt Robinson
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $329,900
SIZE: 1,380 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama learned from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial that British pop star Natasha Bedingfield and her businessman husband Matt Robinson have listed (and just about sold) an itty-bitty house on the border between the historic if gritty Lincoln Heights and Montecito Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. Property records show they picked the place up out of foreclosure—presumably as an investment—in January 2011 for just $78,000.

Rich people and real estate snobs will probably make a kerfuffle about how the Montecito Heights and Lincoln Heights are the goddamn ghetto—they're just east of downtown and Dodger Stadium and about 1.5 miles from the inner city campus of USC. And maybe they are lesser savory zip codes. What does Your Mama know never having actually stepped well shod foot in that particular 'hood? Whatever the economic and security realities of Lincoln and Montecito Heights today they is often cited as among the oldest neighborhoods in Lala Land where, once upon a time in the mid-1800s, wealthy Angelenos built large and elaborate Victorian mansions. Naturally, hipster house flippers have pegged the 'hood' as the next Highland Park or Mount Washington in their not entirely futile or successful attempts to upgrade and gentrify the area.

Anyhoo, listing details available online show the 1,380 square foot bungalow was was originally built in 1914 and completely renovated by Miter Robinson and Miz Bedingfield with all new systems, kitchen and bathrooms. The couple, who also own a much more celebrity-esque style house in the gated Laughlin Park enclave in L.A.'s famous-friendly Los Feliz area, flipped the ho-hum house back on the market in December (2011) with an asking price of $377,000. By early 2012 the price had dropped to $329,900 and—strangely—appears to have been in escrow since April 2012.

The fuzzy listing photos show an open plan main living space with hardwood floors, white walls and butcher block counter tops in the appliance-free kitchen. The bathrooms are finished with renter-grade fixtures—at least one has one of those horrid molded plastic shower enclosures—and both bedrooms appear to have pale beige wall-to-wall carpeting. The master bedroom is located on the lower level along with laundry facilities and small, tile-floored office area.

Listing details also indicate Miz Bedingfield and Mister Robinson were willing to lease the two bedroom and two bathroom hillside house for $1,895 per month, arrange for a lease to purchase situation and/or were possibly willing to carry the loan on the property.

listing photos: Rodeo Realty

Week End Wrap Up (03.15.13): 778 Park Avenue

Floor plan porn addicts like Your Mama went hog wild over the 17th floor co-operative apartment at the high-brow 778 Park Avenue in New York City that popped up on the market this week with a $22,500,000 price tag.

The brutally swank building was originally designed by much lauded and applauded pre-war architect Rosario Candela, a man who really understood how filthy rich folks wanted to lived when they moved from mansions to urban apartment houses. Howevuh, hunties, most of the drop dead swellegant original architectural details Mister Candela is known for—think wedding cake moldings, thick window surrounds, pedimented doorways—have been mostly if not entirely stripped from the apartment in favor of a more austere environment that compliment's the sellers' rather impressive collection of name brand contemporary art.

Current listing information shows the roomy but hardly humongous urban aerie has a private elevator landing, a 600-square foot living room with 11-foot ceilings, three proper bedrooms and three wonderfully windowed bathrooms (plus an unusually spacious staff room and windowed bathroom), two fireplaces (in the dining room and library), a three room kitchen suite (butler's pantry, kitchen and separate but adjacent breakfast room), five terraces (plus one Juliet balcony) and—a feature Your Mama loves like the dickens—a walk-in wet bar in the cozy corner library.

While the apartment is undeniably spectacular and, generally speaking, remarkably and efficiently laid out it lacks for closet space—particularly in the master bedroom—and there does not appear to be a powder room. Guests who are unable to hold their water are, then, forced to traipse through one of the bedrooms or—heaven forfend—weave their way deep into the service quarters to use the staff bathroom.

Listing details indicate the apartment has been in the same family for 70 years and our brief and unscientific research indicates that, until her death at 99 earlier this year, the sumptuous if dated spread was owned by fairly low profile pulp and paper heiress, arts and culture patroness and generous philanthropist Celeste Gottesman Bartos and her second husband, architect Armand Phillip Bartos, who predeceased her by about seven years. Mister Bartos is best known, according to his January 2006 obit in the New York Times, as being (partially) responsible for the Shrine of the Book building "at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem built to house the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient manuscripts."

In addition to their art-filled Park Avenue apartment Mister and Missus Bartos maintained a supremely located 3.68 acre spread on Georgica Cove in East Hampton, a walled and gated compound in Santa Fe, N.M., and a villa at Round Hill, Jamaica.

Speaking of Santa Fe—as an unrelated aside—have y'all seen any of the few photos of the super-minimal equestrian and residential complex that Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando designed for smoldering fashion world guru Tom Ford on his 24,000 acre ranch outside Santa Fe? Have mercy. The severe, uber-contemporary style will not appeal to anybody with a an architectural yen for the traditional but, holy damn hell butter beans, it's an architectural tour de force to be sure.

listing photos and floor plan: Sotheby's International Realty