Mish-Mash Tuesday

Before we move on to some serious, pee in your pants floor plan porn in New York City tomorrow, we thought it might be interesting for the children–partick all the Chicken Little children–if Your Mama did a little mish-mash reporting on a couple of recent price chops and big losses.

Much to the chagrin of the paparazzi and much to the delight of tweeners around the world, pop super star Britney Spears has risen Phoenix like from the ashes of her (in)famous mental mess that caused her to fraternize with shady mens, shave her damn head bald in some tawdry beeyootee salon in Sherman Oaks, CA–or some other town in the Valley–and get herself hauled out of her Bev Hills house in an ambew-lance and stuck up in the psych ward of the Cedars-Sinai.

After putting the pieces of her puzzled mind back together, Miss Spears went on to make a number one record–that would be the aptly named Circus–and work her stuff in a comeback tour that by all accounts was a raging success. She also moved out of the big Beverly Hills mansion that was the scene of much of her crazy and into an even bigger house in The Oaks, an expensive, gated community in uber-suburban Calabasas, CA.

Miss Spears bought her house in Beverly Hills on an impulse in January of 2007, paying $6,750,000 for the 5 bedroom and 6 pooper mock-Mediterranean villa in a guard gated community called The Summit, the same enclave that is home to Gwen Stefani, Ed McMahon and Anita Pointer, she-ra of the Pointer Sisters. Just a month after moving in, fickle Miss Spears flipped her real estate mistake back on the market with an asking price of $7,495,000. Nine months later the asking price had inexplicably risen to $7,900,000. Six months after that, in about March of 2008, the price had plummeted to $7,195,000.

It was at this point that the courts gave Daddy Spears control of Miss Spears' fortune resulting in the Beverly Hills house being pulled from the market and Miss Spears packing up her museum worthy collection of Daisy Dukes and Moon Pies and high-tailing it to Calabasas. Fast forward to June of 2009 and Miss Spears' Bev Hills house was again hoisted on to the market but with a drastically reduced asking price of $6,499,000. The house was, once again, removed from the market in September of 2009.

But just yesterday it reappeared, stripped of most of its day-core and with the shocking and greatly reduced asking price of $5,495,000. A few flicks of the well worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that even if Miss Spears gets her full asking price–which seems highly doubtful in our humble and meaningless opinion–she' bell out $1,255,000. Add to that the fat real estate fees that could amount to well over $250,000 plus the taxes and carrying costs she's endured just since moving out and she's facing a net loss of way over a million and a half clams.

Certainly Miss Spears' bulging bank accounts can handle the loss of a few million dollars without it affecting her ability to buy lip gloss by the boat load or a new Mercedes on a whim but still, it hurts even a rich person to lose a couple million bucks. Listen butter balls, even if a rich person tells you it don't hurt to lose a couple million–and they will tell you it don't matter–it does.

Some reports have said that Miss Spears bought the 10,330 square foot mansion in Calabasas where she now lives but, as of today, property records don't show any transfer records, which indicates she's settled in on a long term lease.

photo: Prudential California Realty (Nancy Sanborn)

Television's highest paid actor Charlie Sheen–who reportedly earns more than $500,000 per episode starring in the not particularly funny situation comedy Two and a Half Men–and his wife Brooke Mueller have been much in the news lately.

First there was the Christmas Day kerfuffle they had while vacationing in star-studded Aspen, CO. Their rumble resulted in a call to 911. Mister Sheen was arrested on domestic violence charges due to Missus Sheen's alleging that Mister Sheen held a knife to her throat after she told him she wanted to do a dee-vorce. Subsequent to their good ol' fashioned holiday brawl, both Mister Sheen and Missus Sheen checked into rehab facilities, presumably for substance abuse issues. Mister Sheen,pleaded not guilty to the charges of "menacing, criminal mischief and assault."

Next came the strange events of February 6 and 7, 2010 when Mister Sheen's $160,000 S-class Mercedes was found crashed and abandoned in a ravine near his house in the guard gated Mulholland Estates community above Sherman Oaks, CA, home to Paris Hilton among other famous folks. Of course, Your Mama's first thought was that maybe Mister Sheen was loaded and drove his car off a cliff. That was quickly followed by the thought that maybe Missus Sheen was 47 kinds of p-oed and drove his car off a cliff. Then we learned a second car had been found in a nearby ravine turning this into a weird car-stealing prank of some kind. The second car found down a ravine was registered to former "actress" Lisa Vanderpump-Todd and restaurateur Kenneth Todd who live in a massive mansion not far from Sheen's upscale guard gated community in the even ritzier and guard gated Beverly Park community.

As an aside, Your Mama hears through the Bev Hills gossip grapevine that along with a couple of Paris Hilton's aunties, the uncomfortably named Miz Vanderpump-Todd is one of the pampered beehawtchas who will appear on the The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills on the Bravo channel.

Anyhoo, back in June of 2009, before Mister and Missus Sheen were daily fodder for the tabs and gossip glossies, they made a little real estate news when they listed a recently rehabbed residence they own in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles with an asking price of $3,697,000. Records show they once happy couple purchased the 4,179 square foot crib in November of 2007 for $2,575,000, although its unlikely they ever occupied the residence. On March 15, 2010, after 9 months and 4 price slices, the property was taken off the market and re-listed the very same day with a much reduced asking price of $3,297,000.

If they get their full asking price they might be able to slide out of the deal with a few pennies in their pocket but when we use our bejeweled abacus to add up the fat real estate fees, carrying costs, taxes and renovation costs it's unlikely they'll have enough left over to buy Mister Sheen a new Mercedes. Not that they need the money from the sale of this house to buy Mister Sheen a new Mercedes, but y'all know what Your Mama means.

photo: Sotheby's International Realty Los Feliz (Konstantine Valissarakos)

Another famous house owned by a famous person who recently got a significant haircut is the Hal Leavitt designed house in Beverly Hills owned by tonsorial tycoon Vidal Sassoon. Originally listed with in mid-January of 2010 with an asking price of $17,500,000, the price is now at $14,995,000. That's a heart-stopping $2,505,000 difference, children.

Mister Sassoon hasn't had the best real estate luck lately. In June of 2007 Mister Sassoon listed the Singleton House, a Richard Neutra designed number up on Mulholland Drive, for $19,995,000. By late January 2010, the price had sunk to $14,995,000 before being taken off the open market.

photo: Westside Estate Agency (Kurt Rappaport and Jonas Heller)

There are a number of rich and famous folks gearing up to take big losses on their real estate mistakes–can you say Scarlett Johansson?–but a few have already suffered gargantuan losses. One of those real estate losers is Madonna's former boy-toy Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez.

In December of 2004, when Mister A-Rod was still married to Missus A-Rod, they forked over $12,000,000 for an 8,310 square foot "Old World Mediterranean" style mansion in Coral Gables, FL. Four years later, in late October 2008, on the precipice of dee-vorce, the erstwhile couple listed the 6 bedrooms and 5 full and 3 half pooper property with an asking price of $14,876,000.

But alas. Although Mister A-Rod may have a way with the ladees–"dating" everyone from Rachel Uchitel to Sofia Vegara to Madonna to the insatiable man-eater Kate Hudson–he doesn't seem to have as much luck with the real estate. According to a recent report in the Miami Herald, Mister Rodriguez and ex-Missus Rodriguez recently sold their bay front estate to an unknown buyer for $8,500,000. Eight and a half million clams is a lot of money by any standard but it's also a staggering $3,500,000 loss on the property.

Ex-Missus Rodriguez is said to be shacked up in a rental on Palm Island in Miami Beach and Mister A-Rod is said to be shopping for new digs. He reportedly looked on star-studded Star Island–where homeowners include Rosie O'Donnell, Gloria Estefan and Puff Daddy or P-Diddle or whatever his damn name is–as well as even more exclusive Indian Creek Island, home to folks like crooner Julia Inglesias, embattled professional basketball coach Rick Pitino and big biznessman and former ambassador to Belgium Paul Cejas. According to the Miami Herald, Mister A-Rod is also considering building a house on celebrity lined North Bay Road.

photo: Bing

The award–if if can be called that–for the biggest recent real estate loss that Your Mama knows of goes to a man named Christopher Nassetta, the president and CEO of Hilton (Hotels) Worldwide. After being transferred from the Washington, D.C. area out to Beverly Hills, CA, Mister Nassatta bought a behemoth mansion in the Bel Air area of Los Angeles. He paid a numbing $27,500,000 in December of 2007 for his new house. Remember that number chickens.

The massive, 17,000+ square feet Paul Williams designed domicile was owned from 1977 to 2005 by seven times married St. Louis Rams owner Georgia Frontierre. Miz Frontierre, who went to meet the great quarterback in the sky in early 2008, sold the property in 2005 for $8,375,000 to a group of developers who rehabilitated and expanded the house to encompass 10 bedrooms and 15 poopers. The approximately 1.75 acre estate also includes two motor courts, off street parking for up to 40 automobiles, formal gardens, rambling gravel paths, a canal, a swimming pool, lighted tennis court, and a guesthouse.

It wasn't long after Mister Nassetta, his wife and their six children settled into their Bellagio Road residence that he was transferred to the Washington, D.C. area. So, just 18 months after buying their Bel Air beast, it was flipped back on the market with an asking price of $29,500,000. Three and a half months later an eye popping seven million smackers was lopped off the asking price and in late January the property sold for $18,000,000, representing a blood curdling $9,500,000 loss to Mister Nassetta, not counting the real estate feels that could have quite easily totaled another three-quarters of a million bucks. Your Mama, who doesn't know a lamp post from a hill of beans, has to assume that Hilton absorbed at least some of that loss. Even still, lo-ward have mercy, just thinking about a ten-plux million dollar loss has Your Mama sweating like a sow and reaching for a stiff gin & tonic to wash down a fat nerve pill.

photo: Nick Springett for Hilton & Hyland (Mauricio Umansky)

Your Mama Hears...

Let's kick off the week with a little celebrity real estate rumor and gossip, shall we? Late last night, while the children slumbered and our resident raccoon ravaged the recycling bin yet again, Your Mama received a covert communique regarding the famous Wolf's Lair property high above Beachwood Canyon and Lake Hollywood in Los Angeles, CA.

If the children will put on their thinking caps they'll recall from previous reports and discussions that Wolf's Lair was built in the 1920s by L. Milton Wolf, one of the developers of the upscale Hollywoodland community for which the Hollywood sign was erected. By late 2002, the peculiar property had come to be owned by music executive Jay Faires and tee-vee talking head Debbie Matenopoulos who, as we're sure y'all know, got her start in the entertainment world back in the mid 1990s on that tedious tee-vee gabfest known as The View. Nowadays, Miss Matenopoulos can be found on the E! channel flopping around on red carpets, chit-chatting with celebs and then later dissin' dresses with campy queens like Peter Ishkhans and that wacky Jay Manuel from America's Next Top Model who wears more damn make up than eh-nee of the ladees working their stuff on the red carpet.

Anyhoo, after 5 or six years of married life lil' Debbie and Jay-bird decided to do a dee-vorce and in May of 2008 they heaved their kooky castle in the Hollywood Hills on the market with the high-sterical asking price of $7,500,000. Eventually and slowly the dueling duo came to their real estate senses and in mid-February 2010, after several previous reductions, they dropped the price all the way down to $4,295,000. A few flicks of the well worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that's a stunning 57% reduction from the original pie in the sky price tag.

The final chop and drop must have brought a buyer or two out of the woodwork because not long after the price plummeted to $4,295,000,00 the property was placed in escrow, meaning that after a year and a half languishing on the market the seller(s) and a buyer had reached a purchase price agreement. As of this morning, online listing sites still show the property as being in escrow but according to an informant, a gentleman we'll call Spencer Spillerofthebeans, the soon to be new owner of Wolf's Lair is Grammy winning musician Richard Hall, otherwise known as Moby. Mister Spillerofthebeans also whispered to Your Mama that minuscule Mister Moby will fork over a prodigious pile of cash amounting to $3,900,000 and some change.

Early this morning, before the sun had barely cracked in the sky, Your Mama put out a few feelers to some of our better connected sources to see if we could get an amen on this juicy celebrity real estate rumor. Sho' enuf, within the hour we heard from Bob Barksuptherighttrees who confirmed the rumor. Even still, Your Mama has to tell the children that until the property records clear and/or Mister Moby or some other person connected to Mister Moby makes some sort of statement regarding his alleged purchase this, technically, remains just rumor and gossip.

Among celebrity real estate watchers Mister Moby is known to suffer from a serious case of The Real Estate Fickle so only time will tell how long he hangs on to Wolf's Lair. In the early 2000s, Mister Moby built a huge contemporary house in upstate New York that not he sold long after completing because, according to a 2009 interview in Magnet magazine, when he was there alone it, "was big and lonely and weird."

Mister Moby's next real estate folly was the 2005 purchase of a quirky quadraplex located in one of the towers of the Eldorado building on New York City's Central Park West. Records reveal Mister Moby paid $4,500,000 for the five floor apartment with 4 terraces, 2 bedrooms and 2.5 poopers. This seemed an odd choice for a dedicated denizen of the downtown scene and, indeed, immediately upon finishing the renovation he figured out that he, "didn't really want to live on the Upper West Side," and after more than a year on the market, Mister Moby sold the aerie for $6,700,000. As far as Your Mama knows–and we really know so little about anything–Mister Moby is back downtown, in Little Italy, living in the same itty-bitty custom fitted studio apartment he's owned since 1991.

Only time will tell if Wolf's Lair will be just another of Mister Moby's real estate mistakes or if this will finally be the real estate round peg that fits in his square hole.

Paul Giamatti Buys In Brooklyn Heights

BUYER: Paul Giamatti
LOCATION: Brooklyn Heights, NY
PRICE: $1,300,000
SIZE: 1,400 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama has spent the better part of the last three days curled up under a cashmere blanket coughing up a lung and doped up on some kind of medicine that makes us feel like we don't have any legs. Needless to say, we are a little out of the celebrity real estate loop. So, even though we're still drippin' and trippin' we're going to try to get back in the saddle today, the day of the Lord, and ride, ride, ride.

We're going to jump back into the celebrity real estate fray on the back of a little tip from The Rolling Stone about Oscar nominated (Cinderella Man), Emmy and Golden Globe winning (John Adams) actor Paul Giamatti snatching up a $1,300,000 condo crib in the Brooklyn Heights section of–natch–Brooklyn, NY.

Although Mister Giamatti's entree into mainstream fame only came in 2004 when he deftly played a maladroit oenophile in the 5-time Oscar nominated and 1-time Oscar winning film Sideways, he'd long been around the Hollywood block with various roles in movies like Mighty Aphrodite, Donnie Brasco, The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan, Cradle Will Rock, Big Momma's House, Planet of the Apes, Big Fat Liar, and the Oscar nominated American Splendor. So, ya-know, he sorta paid his Tinseltown dues.

A little click-clacking around on the interweb reveals that Mister Giamatti comes from a priviliged background. As it turns out his father, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was not only a former professor of Renaissance Literature at Yale University he also became the youngest president of Yale University. In 1986, the elder Mister Giamatti was appointed the president of major league baseball's National League and in 1989, shortly before his unexpected death, he became Commissioner of Baseball. As a result the younger Mister Giamatti was provided a top-notch and very pricey education that included graduating from the exclusive Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, CT before obtaining both undergraduate and masters degrees from, of course, Yale University.

Perhaps the most unexpected tidbit Your Mama dug up on the internets about Mister Giamatti was that he was inducted into Yale's uber-exclusive Skull and Bones secret society. Other illustrious members of the S. & B. include major power brokers like William F. Buckley, John Kerry, Steve Schwarzman, three generations of the Bush dynasty–George, George, H.W., and Prescott, political reporter Dana Milbank who writes about many of his fellow Bonesman on Capital Hill, and Austan Goolsbee, one of President Obama's economic advisers.

Anyhoo, according to listing information, the condo that Mister Giamatti and his wife Elizabeth recently scooped up is located in a lovely pre-war building in the upscale Brooklyn Heights neighborhood and measures around 1,400 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 2 poopers. Despite the inelegant situation of the front door opening directly into the kitchen–an undesirable set up that allows the nosy bizzy-body in 4-A who's always knocking on doors complaining about noise to see deep into your private quarters–it is non-the-less a decently considered and architect designed apartment well suited to a couple or small family.

From the front door one walks through the kitchen, past the secondary pooper and hangs right into a long gallery from which most rooms orbit. There are two archways from the gallery–which is really just an extra wide hallway–into the living/dining room that stretches an impressive 29-feet with eight windows on two walls including a gracefully bowed window in the living room.

The kitchen, not large, but still fitted with a breakfast bar, sits in the literal heart of the condo and besides seeming a bit enclosed does have light and air coming in from two windows, satisfactory grade stainless steel appliances and white Carrara marble counter tops.

Each of the three bedrooms are well situated and separated for maximum privacy from each other if not maximum privacy from the neighbors. The smallest bedroom, located behind the kitchen and just to the right of the front door would make a perfect home office. The room's only window opens into an air shaft. As anyone who has ever has a New York City apartment that opens to an air shaft knows, this room lack a kind of privacy one might want in a bedroom. The second bedroom measures a generous 17 feet long and has another bowed window that looks out into the tree tops on the street side of the building.

The master boo-dwar, it can hardly be called a master "suite", consists of a smallish bedroom, a windowed hallway, a walk-in closet and a small pooper. We'd say that the only saving grace of the master pooper is the double windows that provide for light and ventilation, but from the looks of things, those windows look directly into the apartment across the light well which means that the apartment opposite can look directly across the light well into Mister and Missus Giamatti's pooper. This situation will ensure that those windows not only get frosted and/or covered up but will seldom if ever be open lest the neighbors be within earshot of some pretty intimate Giamatti family moments.
Your Mama took the liberty of making a few tweaks to the floor plan (above) that would provide for that more open, lofty sort of space that so many people seem to prefer these days. In all honesty, Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter like well defined rooms that flow easily into each other rather than one big multi-purpose room like a damn elementary school. None the less, we flipped the second bedroom to the other end of the apartment which allowed for the kitchen, living and dining areas to function as one large room. The thing we like best about this scenario is the light and air it brings into the kitchen. The thing we like the least is the same thing we like the least about the existing floor plan, which is that the guest/family pooper opens through a pocket door di-rectly into the kitchen, making the kitchen an olfactory disaster zone.

Anyhoo, property records show that Mister and Missus Giamatti also own a wee house on the west coast, in Venice, CA. According to the tax man, the Giamatti's close to the beach house measures only 880 square feet with 2 bedrooms and 1 pooper. The couple paid $665,000 for the puny pad in June of 2002.

Call us crazy–and we're sure some of y'all will–but we're rather smitten with the relative real estate modesty of Mister and Missus Giamatti. There really is little more pleasing to Your Mama than seeing someone famous and rich–or, at least, rich by the standards of the average American–who buys property based on what he or she needs in a residence rather than what he or she wants. Bigger is not always better, babies. At least not when it comes to houses. If more celebs sat down and pondered that for a good long time before signing the deed's dotted line we might not see so many famous folks selling their homes a jumbo jet sized losses. Are you listening to Your Mama Scarlett Johansson and Alex Rodriguez?

Your Mama Regrets...

...To inform the children that we are down for the count with a nasty cold we caught from our gal pal The Chicken who was visiting from New York City earlier this week. Not even an emergency IV drip of gin & tonics has taken the edge of our sick off, lamb chops, so rather torture our self trying to whip up something pithy and clever, we're just going to call it a day. We promise we'll make up for our lapse this weekend.

In the meantime, have a look-see at Forbes who recently and exhaustively reported on the who's who of worldwide billionaires including a bit of hoo-ha about the homes of billionaires. and some 411 on some real estate stuff recently reported in the Wall Street Journal about the dee-voon playwright Edward Albee and dee-vorcee Edra Blixseth listing her vacation casa in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico–her primary residence in Rancho Mirage is also listed at a bone rattling $75,000,000.

While y'all are at it, have a quick read of the New York Post's always informative Gimme Shelter column, another New York Post bit on wild eyed New York City Housewife Ramona Singer, Mister Big Time's recent doings and, of course, all the real estate drama and mysteries reported by Chloe Malle in the New York Observer.

Let's Talk 'Bout Baby Jane Holzer

Every now and then, along comes a well-born and usually quite beautiful gal who at a young and dewy age comes to epitomize the uber-chic intersection between New York City's nitty gritty downtown art world and uptown high society denizens. In the mid- to late-1960s that female flower of downtown freaky meets uptown money was Jane Holzer (nee Brukenfeld). Missus Holzer was the pampered daughter of a successful Palm Beach, FL real estate developer, the seriously stylish young wife of Leonard Holzer–an heir to a New York real estate fortune–and a budding but reluctant Park Avenue princess with a heaping halo of blond hair.

The fate of the young, glammy and well-connected Missus Holzer was sealed in 1963 when she was introduced to up and coming art world weirdo Andy Warhol by British bon vivant, global socialite, cuzzin of the late Princess Diana, prolific writer and nice, gay decorator Nicky Haslam. Soon after meeting, Mister Warhol–who had yet to metamorphosize from an arty-farty toad about town into the international pop art icon he would become–asked Missus Holzer to appear in Soap Opera, one of his first of many films. Missus Holzer–who was subsequently nicknamed "Baby Jane" by high society gossip columnist Carol Bjorkman–went on to appear in several of Mister Warhol's movies. Although Missus Holzer, who palled around with people like Mick Jagger, Sharon Tate and Janis Joplin, had bailed out of the drug-infested scene at Mister Warhol's famed Factory by 1967 or eight she managed to maintain a lasting friendship with the wacky and be-wigged artist.

From early on Baby Jane Holzer had a penchant for posh properties. Real estate was, after all, in her blood. In 1970, not long before her marriage to Mister Holzer made its final flush down the terlit of love, the on the rocks couple purchased a legendary and leviathan Southampton, NY estate called Chestertown House. The white brick Colonial Revival mansion, situated on 16 ocean front acres, was originally built by Henry Francis du Pont and contained an unimginable 60 bedrooms. That's not a typo puppies, Chestertown House measured more than 45,000 square feet and contained more than 70 rooms, 60 of them being bedrooms.

The Holzers, who stripped the house of many of its historic insterior features, quickly defaulted on the mortgage and the estate was sold at auction to coal magnate John Samuels III. By 1979 Chestertown House was in a state of disrepair and had come to be owned by tax evader Barry Trupin who finished tearing out the original interiors and transformed the house into an infamous and over-sized neo-Gothic horror show of turrets, cathedral windows and shark tanks that he called Dragon's Head. Mister Trupin went belly-up bankrupt before he finished punishing the old du Pont property with his tacky vision and sold it in 1992 or three for about $2,300,000 to WorldCom executive Francesco Galesi who re-named the grotesquerie Elysium. Some of the children who retain a few brain cells may recall that Mister Galesi–no stranger to trophy real estate–hoisted his massive, Robert Couturier designed doo-plex at the super posh River House building in New York City on the market in 2005 with and asking price of $50,000,000. He still had the 16 room and 8 pooper apartment on the market as recently as the fall of 2009 with an asking price that had dipped dramatically to $35,000,000.

Mister Galesi sold Elysium in 2003 for approximately $29,900,000 to clothing king–or queen, depending on who you ask–Calvin Klein who razed the behemoth beast to make way for a smaller but still massive and minimal Michael Haverland designed mansion that is, as far as we know, not yet completed.

But we digress...After Mister and Missus Holzer went splitsville and Missus Jane Holzer became Miz Jane Holzer, she moved out of her sprawling Park Avenue pad where she reportedly employed a couple of drag queens as butlers, scrapped city life and decamped with her young and only son to a 170+ acre farm in the Pennsylvania Amish country. Soon enough the thrill farm life faded and in the mid-1980s she opened–and closed–a couple of ice cream parlors she called Sweet Baby Jane's in Palm Beach and Los Angeles. Eventually, the now in her late 60s Miz Holzer picked up the family mantle and started buying, renovating and selling high priced properties, mainly on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.


Records show that between 2005 and 2009 Miz Holzer sold at least three apartments at The Volney on East 74th Street including a 5 bedroom and 6.5 pooper doo-plex penthouse that she unloaded in April of 2009 for $14,100,000 (above). The buyer was–for those children who might care to know–apparel mogul Jason Rabin who among other things holds the licensing and brand management agreements for big boo-tay Beyoncé's House of Dereon fashion dee-zaster. Property records show that Mister Rabin and the the Missus, who previously bunked at 850 Park Avenue, also own a major house in the Hamptons on Water Mill's hoity toity Cobb Road.

There we go a-digressin' yet again. Miz Holzer, who operates out of a Lower East Side building just around the corner from where Your Mama lived for about a hundred years before marrying up and moving to the Dr. Cooter's much swankier digs on the far west side of Chelsea, currently has an East 69th Street townhouse (above) on the market with an asking price of $15,900,000. This is the property, believe it or not, Your Mama originally planned to discuss when we sat down in front of our trusty laptop yesterday morning.

Records reveal that in February of 2008 Miz Holzer paid $10,500,000 for the 20-foot wide brick and limestone Federal style townhouse that measures, according to listing information, approximately 8,350 square feet. From what we can tell by peeping and poking around the Street Easy, Miz Holzer dumped the 5-floor (plus basement) townhouse back on the market about 18 months later with an asking price of $17,000,000. By mid-January of 2010 Miz Holzer had karate chopped the asking price to its current number of $15,900,000.

A quick compare and contrast of current listing photos and the listing photos from the time Miz Holzer purchased the property reveals that little obvious was altered besides replacing the old and outdated kitchen with a sleek, all white galley style number that closely resembles the one she installed in the penthouse property on East 74th Street that she sold to Mister Rabin. Not even the very 1980s master pooper was replaced but given that current listing information promotes the townhouse as "newly renovated and completely restored" we have to make the not entirely safe assumption that Miz Holzer updated and upgraded some of the internal systems of the house.
According to listing information, the townhouse contains 5 bedrooms and 5 full and 1 half poopers. A study of the floor plan included with marketing materials (above), however, shows 5 family bedrooms, each with a private pooper, plus 2 powder poopers, one right off the foyer and another at the back of the ground floor kitchen. The floor plan also indicates there are 2 staff rooms, one in the basement with its own private pooper and a second one rather bizarrely and impractically accessible only through the pooper of one of the 4th floor guest bedrooms.

The grand foyer, the dining room and the formal living–where Miz Holzer's hung an humongous and delightfully incongruous purple Anselm Reyle painting–all retain much of the townhouse's original and ornate architectural detailing. The public rooms also include a third floor library with dee-lishus Chinese red lacquer walls and a gold-leafed ceiling. There are additionally 2 full kitchens connected by a back staircase, 7 working fireplaces, a terrace off the back of the 5th floor, a petite backyard, and laundry facilities in the basement. The elevator does not currently appear to descend down into the basement, a matter that would cause our tyrannical house gurl Svetlana to have herself a hissy fit of epic proportions. Iffin Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter were to buy this house–which we most assuredly could never afford–we are certain Svetlana would insist we hire her an assistant whose sole duty was to carry and ferry the laundry from the elevator on the ground floor to the basement laundry room and back because ol' Sveta does not do any heavy lifting or, for that matter, any lifting she deems heavy.

At some point in the not too distant past, the well preserved Miz Holzer, who still has that huge halo of blond hair, toured the peeps at LXTV through the townhouse during which she explains how the properties she buys speak to her and how she digs the tension and juxtaposition created between the elaborate, old-school details of this townhouse and the much more modern furniture and artwork she's used to stage the house. That's right butter beans, stage the house. Despite the notable artworks peppered throughout the house and despite the very contemporary furnishings, this is not where Baby Jane Holzer actually lives.

Miz Holzer, by all accounts, lives in a far more grand, 6 floor and 15,000 square foot townhouse on East 65th Street that property records and previous reports reveal she acquired in 2006 for $15,772,324. In the spring of 2008, Miz Holzer had the lucky and soo-blime writer Pilar Viladas over to her elegant, quirky and art-filled townhouse for a tour that developed into a feature article in The New York Times Style Magazine. The long article not only gives a good feel for who Miz Holzer is and how she operates but also highlights her impressive, valuable and vast contemporary art collection that includes signature works by top flight art stars such as Ed Ruscha, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Richard Prince, Jonathan Seliger, Tom Sachs, Christopher Wool, Rudolf Stingel and any number of lesser known artists.

In November of 2008, before he went on to greener and arguably more dignified journalistic pastures, Mister Max Abelson at the New York Observer revealed that he had unexpectedly come across an online listing for Miz Holzer's East 65th Street townhouse that showed a spine tingling asking price of $45,000,000. However, a little intrepid questioning of Joanna Cutler, the real estate agent on whose website the listing appeared, revealed that Miz Holzer did not actually authorize Miz Cutler to put the property on her website and hence the listing was quickly removed. Although Your Mama is of the mindset that most wealthy people including Miz Holzer will sell their homes for the right price, we really don't not know if Miz Holzer's townhouse is or is not quietly available. We do know, however, that Miz Cutler is a real estate broker Miz Holzer has used for transactions in the past and she is one of the two agents who currently represent the East 69th Street townhouse that is on the market.

Property records also show that among a myriad of other properties Miz Holzer also owns a small and secluded house in Cos Cob, CT as well as a not particularly small residence just five houses from the ocean in posh Palm Beach, FL that she's owned since at least 1997.

UPDATE: Jeana Keough

Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief because according to the Orange County Register, Real Housewife of Orange County Jeana Keough has once again pulled a real estate rabbit out of a foreclosure hat.

Last week Your Mama discussed and dissected the impending foreclosure and scheduled auction of Miz Keough's hulking house behind the gates of the upscale Coto de Caza development in the blistering hot inland area of Orange County, CA. The property had been on the market in the summer of 2009 with an asking price of $5,500,000 but as recently as last weekend, Miz Keough had her 7 bedroom and 8.5 pooper property on the market with a substantially reduced asking price of $3,900,000.

However, according to Miz Keough, after much cajoling, finagling, harassing and calls to HUD, her congressman and the Governator's office she managed to get her lender Citibank to not only call off the foreclosure and auction but to restructure her damn mortgage to an amount that she can afford during this time of economic upheaval and reduced circumstances.

The children can say what they will of Miz Keough and her profligate ways, but bee-hawtcha is nuthin' if not tenacious and resourceful when it comes to saving her house. She also says in the article that things are going well for her and that she starts filming next week, which can only mean that she's returning for the next installment of the reality tee-vee trainwreck that is The Real Housewives of Orange County.

Maurice Marciano Goes Modern In Beverly Hills

BUYER: Maurice Marciano
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $10,000,000
SIZE: 9,000 square feet (approx.), 5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Oh lo-ward children Your Mama has people streaming in and out of our house for days, tying up the guest room and taking up more of our time than we got to give. We love us some house guests, especially when those house guests are Bunny, Flower and the Chicken, but they are just so damn distracting. So forgive us out "just the facts maam" point of view today.

Anyhoo, today we're going to pop over to Beverly Hills, CA to discuss a fully renovated and very contemporary house that property records reveal was recently purchased by denim tycoon Maurice Marciano for a spine tingling $10,000,000.

Along with his two brothers, Mister Marciano is the co-founder and current chairman of Guess?, the company that made tight jeans sexy in the early 1980s, introduced and inflicted stone washed denim into the market and, for better or worse, made that tortured and deceased Anna Nicole Smith ladeee a household name.

Located just a stone's throw from Greystone Park and a block down from the mansion Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman bought from Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne for $11,500,000 back in the summer of 2007, the rehabilitated residence was did up and done over by a group that include Michael Hahn and John Bersci. These group of high end house flippers–for those who do not recognize their names–are responsible for a fair number of high end house flips in the Platinum Triangle including the Holmby Hills house that billionaire Ron Tutor bought in October of 2009 for $13,200,000.

Property records show that Mister Hahn purchased the property in August of 2006 for $6,000,000. At the time it was purchased, the house was a real mid-century modern fixer with outdated everything, shag carpeting and an indoor swimming pool. The overhaul did away with the indoor pool and replaced most of the more authentic mid-century elements with a new-fangled, sexed-up and very L.A. kind of contemporary with vast expanses of glass that slide back into the walls, lots of right angles and clean lines, and scads of sleek surfaces that include white marble floors throughout much of the house, rich paneling in the dining room and a horizontally striated material in the master bathroom that is of an unknown material but looks far to perfect to be natural.

Prior to the renovation and expansion, the single story house measured 4,651 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 5 poopers. Now, according to listing information, the super slick crib weighs in at approximately 9,000 square feet and includes 5 bedrooms, 7 poopers, several water features, 6 fireplaces and off-street parking for up to 20 automobiles. The winter white interior spaces flow organically into each other making for a perfect party house but not one that feels particularly cozy except, not even the screening room that space feels oddly proportioned and a week bit big and square to feel like the sort of room we'd want to curl up on the velveteen sofa and spend the evening watching those ca-ray-zee bitches from The Real Housewives of New york City who are going to eviscerate each other this season right on national freaking tee-vee. Fortunately there is another, more intimately scaled room wrapped in paneling and warmed by a fireplace for long evening with a pitcher of gin & tonics and the boob-toob.

The u-shaped residence wraps around an interior courtyard where a flat green lawn surrounds a rectangular swimming pool and party-sized spa. Many of the rooms open to the courtyard/backyard through massive walls of glass that slide open and disappear into the walls blurring the distinction between what is indoors and what is outdoors. The kitchen not only opens to the exteriors through big panes of glass it's flanked by a couple of private patios, one for cocktailing and the other with a built in barbecue center with a mirrored back splash that was, in our humble and meaningless opinion, a mistake.

Given that property records show that Mister Marciano continues to own a 19,299 square foot beast on 2.69 acres in the Benedict Canyon area of Beverly Hills that he purchased in April of 1987 for $2,825,000, it's unclear if he plans to downsize and occupy the new house or if here is some other reason that he'd want to spend ten million smackers for a house in a town where he already owns a serious estate. Records show the Benedict Canyon domicile contains 8 bedrooms and an unlucky 13 poopers, a number that ensures that Mister Marciano would never be able to poach our hardworking–and autocratic–house gurl Svetlana who will not go anywhere near a house with 13 of anything, particularly 13 terlits.

Previous reports show that in August of 2006 Mister Marciano scooped up another house in the Benedict Canyon area of Beverly hills paying $3,750,000 for a 4,000 square foot house with 4 bedrooms and 4 poopers. He flipped the property just a year later at a $50,000 loss and quickly snatched up a 2,325 square foot Bev Hills condo for $1,600,000.