Your Mama Hears...

...from Wanda Wantsyoutoknow that there's been a unexpected residential real estate transaction in Beverly Hills so massive that it will straighten the curly locks of real estate watchers and give mega-manse selling ladees like Candy Spelling ($150,000,000), Suzanne Saperstein ($125,000,000) and Iris Cantor ($53,000,000) a whisper of hope like perfume on a breeze that a gallant knight with behemoth bank accounts might ride into town and relieve them of their shockingly high-priced white elephants in Los Angeles.

Now then, hold on to your real estate britches children because Wanda, a well-connected gal who works the real estate in some of the better zip codes of Los Angeles and, natch, prefers to remain anonymous, just whispered in Your Mama's ear that Apple co-founder and multi-billionaire Steve Jobs has gone and purchased The Knoll, the former estate of deceased oil and movie magnate Marvin Davis and his philanthropic wife Barbara. Wanda says word on the real estate grapevine is that Mister Jobs forked over a equilibrium ruining $53,000,000 for the sprawling Schuyler Road estate.

Lo-ward have mercy butter beans, Your Mama did not even know the property was being shopped around to tech titans, foreign potentates or any other billionaire buyers for that matter. But then again, we really know so little about these things.

Anyhoo, property records and previous reports state the the current owner, tool and die tycoon Eric Smidt, scooped up the hilltop property estate in February of 2005. The prodigious 10.77-acre Davis property was priced as high as $70,000,000 and, although records to not reveal a purchase price, reports from the time of the sale indicate that "people with knowledge of the transaction" whispered to the press that the deal went down for right around $46,000,000.

At the time of the purchase, the Roland Coates designed manse known as The Knoll was built in 1955, measured a monstrous 25,427 square feet and included 11 bedrooms and a staggering 17 terlits. There were, additionally, at least two guest houses, a 30-seat 35-mm movie theater, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a tennis court, and 7 fireplaces. Missus Davis was well known for her extravagant day-core which, as Your Mama understands, sometimes manifested itself in not so subtle ways such as a staircase lined with mirrors that reflected that lavish interior space ad infinitum. That sounds dizzying at best and nauseating at worst, but these are sometimes the wacky interior dee-zine ways of the very, very rich.

Mister Smidt, who also owns one of the largest spreads up in the guard gated Beverly Park community, has spent millions and, as we understand from some of our fancier friends, the last few years giving The Knoll a full-on face lift in the form of a gut renovation and interior overhaul. Your Mama does not know if the re-did residence is complete or if there remains any this and thats to be done to the interiors, exteriors and landscaping. Thanks to one of Your Mama's eagle-eyed kiddies, we've learned that the structural elements of the massive manse were done over by architects Hablinski-Manion who have designed many large and elaborate estates in Los Angeles and whose plan, according to their website called for transforming the the Davis' "contemporary Georgian" into a "white brick Regency residence." A few snaps of a model of the estate as proposed and planned can be seen here.

Of course, as soon as Wanda spilled her dee-voon real estate beans, Your Mama got on the horn to inquire with a few of our better connected informants and within minutes heard back from Whispering Wendy, another gutsy gal who works her real estate stuff in the finer sections of Tinseltown, who told us she heard the very same scuttlebutt as Your Mama.

Now listen puppies, real estate transaction records do not currently reveal a property transfer from Mister Smidt to Mister Jobs or other entity at this point so be smart and recognize this is all just rumor and gossip. Rumor and gossip. For now.

UPDATE LATER SAME DAY: We quote from an Beverly Hills real estate insider regarding the rumors floating up and down Cañon Drive in Bev Hills about Steve Jobs buying The Knoll: "Lies."

Jeezis, Mary and Joseph Your Mama is all kinds of confounded and positively perplexed now. We don't know what to believe about this juicy but perhaps completely inaccurate real estate rumor anymore. In an effort to untangle our gin soaked and bamboozled brain, we're gonna have another gin & tonic and a damn nerve pill. That ought to put us in the frame of mind to forget all about this nonsense.