SELLERS: Drew Barrymore (and Will Kopelman)
LOCATION: Montecito, CA
PRICE: $ 7,500,000
SIZE: 6,258 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Everybody knows when celebrities and other financially fortunate sorts get married, divorced, have a baby or change their damn underwear they typically trade in one perfectly good house for a new one deemed better and more suitable to their new circumstances. Hence, Drew Barrymore—married just a year ago and the mother of an 8 or 9 month old baby girl—has hoisted her low-key hideaway in the monied community of Montecito, CA on the market with a $ 7,500,000 asking price.

The Hollywood royal purchased the property in early June 2010 for $ 5,705,000, long before before she hooked up with her handsome third husband and baby daddy, art consultant Will Kopelman. The quirky and savvy couple were married on the property in June 2012 in a traditional Jewish ceremony attended by a slew of celebrity guests including Cameron Diaz, Busy Phillipps, Jimmy Fallon, Reese Witherspoon and Scarlett Johansson. The then-preggers bride and the groom both wore Chanel, but that’s really neither here not there in terms of the real estate matter at hand, is it?*

Remote-controlled gates swing open to a gravel driveway. Imagine, children, the welcoming crunch of that gravel under the tires of a luxury automobile after a hectic, traffic-choked two hour drive up the 101 from Los Angeles. Heaven. Anyways, a wide circular drive wraps itself around a stately old tree in front of the multi-winged main house where a humble red brick apron stretches out in front of the front door. The traditional, vaguely Monterey Colonial was designed by Santa Barbara architect Chester Carjola and built in 1937, according to listing details, and is currently configured with six bedrooms and 7.5 bathrooms in a spacious but manageable 6,258 square feet.

The front entrance hall is certainly large enough to greet guests comfortably but small enough to do away with the stuffy formality and in-your-face grandiosity of an unnecessarily capacious foyer like those too often found in the mortifyingly steroidal faux-Tuscan and mock-Med macmansions built in upscale gated suburbs in every corner of the country.

Double doors connect through to an elegantly proportioned and fully paneled formal living room with dark-stained wood floors, a large fireplace, and deep set French doors with original wood shutters. Built-in bookcases on either end of the long room appear to be filled with actual books and other interesting looking knickknacks and paddy whacks that Your Mama could easily spend an afternoon perusing quietly. Miz Barrymore and Mister Kopelmen have sparely but boldly furnished the room with little more than a few armchairs around the perimeter, a cream colored baby grand piano in the corner, and grouped in front of the fireplace a pair of gusty, psychedelic print sofas set on a neutral toned and decoratively au courant Moroccan Beni Ourain carpet.

The dark wood floors extend into the adjacent library that is also fully wood paneled and also has a fireplace and built-in bookcases filled with more books and objet. On the floor there are two well-worn zebra hide rugs and, in a sun lit corner, an antique-looking chess table. We’d presume that this is the room where Mister and Missus Kopeman watch the boob-toob but we sort of imagine they’re the sort of people who don’t watch—or even own—a television. Then again, what do we know? Maybe they’re avid fans of Preachers’ Daughter and never miss a ballistically tawdry episode.

The long, dinner party-sized formal dining has over-sized multi-pane windows with long views over the backyard’s vast rolling lawn and white wainscoting topped by celadon colored walls. An Old School antique chandelier glimmers above the table and, for some inexplicable reason, there are a whole bunch of fluffy sheep skin pelts scattered haphazardly around the room.

Wood and glass doors in the library and the dining room open into a bowling alley length sun porch that spills out to a large, sunken red brick terrace. At the time Miz Barrymore acquired the property this sun porch had red brick flooring that was, as per listing photographs, switched out for wide plank wood painted gleaming white.

Depending on one’s point of view the kitchen is either loaded with vintage charm or a hot damn mess desperate out for for a redo. A Subaru-sized center island girdled by eight (or more) bent wood stools has a sunshine yellow counter top that just about but not quite matches the rather unusual yellow and white checkerboard linoleum flooring while the white cabinetry that runs around the room has heavily shellacked dark wood counter tops. Whatever one may think of the room’s decorative style, listing information indicates the kitchen is supremely equipped for large parties with two vintage-style refrigerators (that for some reason are not the same color), two dishwashers and an identical pair of heavy duty commercial-style ranges. The kitchen complex also includes a separate breakfast room, a roomy butler’s pantry, and laundry room according to online marketing materials.

A long gallery lined with built-in cabinets and an compact office nook lead to the secluded master suite where a cozy corner fireplace warms the fully carpeted bedroom. In addition to an attached bathroom with separate tub and stall shower the master suite offers its well-heeled home owners the sublime luxury of two large closet/dressing rooms.

A total of five guest and family bedrooms are contained in two separate wings of the main house. Two upstairs en suite bedrooms each have French doors that open to Juliet balconies and three more bedrooms, each with private bathroom, are grouped on the ground floor in a separate wing off the breakfast room.

A detached, two story guest house has a bedroom, bathroom and studio space on the upper level and, down below, a two car garage/storage space. Listing photos show the garage area is done up as a kind of half-assed arty-farty man-cave with a quartet of surf boards leaning up against the wall, an old timey soda dispenser, a bevy of bicycles and a mish-mosh of furniture that all looks like it was all dragged out of Grandma’s attic. There’s also a separate four car garage.

Rose beds and fruit trees surround the main house and outbuildings and mature trees ring the 2.03 acre estate that has a back lawn the size of a football field. As far as Your Mama knows there is neither a swimming pool nor a tennis court on the property and for seven and some million clams for a swank spread in Montecito, hunnies, Your Mama wants a swimming pool and a damn tennis court, too.

Since 2002, Miz Barrymore’s primary residence has been a gated mini-compound perched atop a private promontory on a quiet cul-de-sac in the Hollywood Hills that she picked up in April 2002 for $ 4,350,000. Your Mama knows at least one person who has been inside Miz Barrymore’s Hollywood Hill house and we hear it’s rather spectacular. Some of her nearby neighbors include doctor turned medical thriller author Vladimir Lange and Nashville actress Hayden Panetierre.

Right about the time they were married Mister Kopelman sold his sleek and modern two bedroom and two bathroom art-filled West Hollywood bachelor pad condo for $ 885,000. He previously had the place photographed for Elle Decor.

*Natch because the groom’s father, Arie Kopelman, is a former CEO and chairman of Chanel. Missus Kopelman—that would be Will’s mother—is named Corinne but she goes by Coco. You can’t make that shit up, puppies. Anyhoo…

listing photos: Sotheby’s International Realty
The Real Estalker

Bless her valiant real estate heart, television hospital drama royal and  Kate Walsh is giving it another go. The Private Practice actress has re-listed her Spanish style house in L.A.’s star-studded Los Feliz area for $ 4,750,000, the exact same price she paid for the 5,940 square foot walled and double-gated mini-estate back in June 2007. This marks the fourth time in three years the red-headed divorcée has heaved her house on the open market.

Listing details show the two story main house has a turreted porch and a double-height entrance hall sure to impress guests and the Chinese food delivery man alike. There are four upstairs en-suite bedrooms—one Miz Walsh uses as a dressing room, a total of six bathrooms and three fireplaces as well as roomy entertaining room that include formal living and dining rooms and a spacious center island eat-in kitchen that adjoins a small t.v. lounge with French doors that open to the backyard.

The landscaping looks lush and mature and there are several outdoor living areas including a pergola shaded lounge with modern-minded concrete outdoor fireplace. A sizable, three-room detached structure at the back of the property near the swimming pool where Miz Walsh has a couple of offices, a Pilates studio and an updated bathroom.

Here’s hoping the fourth time’s a charm.

listing photos: Sotheby’s International Realty
The Real Estalker

Actor Sean Patrick Flanery (The Boondock Saints, Numb3rs, Criminal Minds and soon to be seen on Dexter) sold his house in the Hollywood Hills for $ 910,000.

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Without a Trace star Enrique Murciano listed his rectilinear mid-century modern in the Hollywood Hills for $ 1.79 million. He bought the property in 2009 for $ 1.6 million.

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Although Hugh Hefner and his 27-year old Playmate wife, Crystal Harris, live lavishly at the legendary Playboy Mansion in L.A.’s Holmby Hills, the octogenarian soft-porn peddler does not personally own the sprawling party pad. It’s owned, rather, by Playboy Enterprises.

In order to ensure his young enough to be his great-granddaughter wife has a place to live after he’s gone, he romantically snatched up a sexy-sexy-sexy five million dollar contemporary crib in the Hollywood Hills where the third and current Missus Hefner can reside in her widowdom.
The Real Estalker

BUYER: Mark Foster
SELLER: Maurice Benard
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $ 2,155,000
SIZE: 4,637 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: This one’s for all the music hipsters and indie-pop aficionados out there who—like Your Mama—were swept up in the viral video cyclone that developed and raged over the last couple of years around a catchy little ditty called Pumped Up Kicks.

The song, which has a much darker lyric than its bubbly beat might suggest, first showed up on the You Tube in 2010 and quickly made its way to commercial radio where it shot up the charts in 2011. In a prime example of how social media affects and, arguably, shapes and even dominates the dissemination and digestion of art, culture and, even more so, pop culture, Pumped up Kicks has been remixed and remixed and remixed to death, hunties. To. Death. Key of Awesome did an awesome parody with Ducked Up Lips and bazillions of professional, au courant singers like Karmin—not to mention an army bedroom performers like Lizzy Land and Angelika Eide—gave the song their own spin. Miracles of Modern Science did it with classical string instruments and this young gal did it with a banjo. A slow moving but addictive video of a lithe young dancer doin’ his thang to a Butch Clancy dubstep remix has already been viewed on the You Tube more than 87 million times. If you haven’t been hit by this viral music train yet, well, you must be even older and more out of touch than Your Mama. And, good night children, we’re old enough to have gray hair in places nobody wants it or ever thinks they’re gonna get it. Anyways…

Last year (2012) Pumped Up Kicks earned the smiley, shaggy-haired front man Mark Foster and his semi-eponymous trio Foster the People* a Billboard Music Award for Top Rock Song plus two Grammy nominations, one for the song and another for the band’s debut album Torches. We got it on the iTunes, puppies. We’re not ashamed.

Foster the People may not be the next Rolling Stones—or Whitesnake or whatever band makes your personal Legendary list. None the less, in just the few short years they’ve surfed and sailed the wild popularity of a single song, front man Mark Foster has earned himself enough do-re-mi to buy himself a two and some million dollar country spread nestled into a secluded cranny of the Hollywood Hills where some of his nearby neighbors include Tinseltowners like Adam Carolla and Olivia Munn.

Digital resources show the property in question was sold in late March or early April (2013) for $ 2,155,000 by Daytime Emmy winning soap story veteran Maurice Benard who, along with his wife, Paula, purchased the first of the two parcels that comprise the mini-ranch for $ 420,000 in mid-1997. The following February Mister Benard and his missus paid another $ 274,000 for a much larger, undeveloped adjacent parcel. Based on property records we perused and our own rudimentary calculations Mister and Missus Benard shelled out a total of $ 694,000 for the two lots that combined span 54,450 square feet, a figure otherwise known as 1.25 acres.

Selling the property was a long slog for Mister and Missus Benard, a very long slog indeed. As best as we can surmise from online resources, the couple had the house on and off the market numerous times at a number of prices since they first heaved the unwanted ranch-ette on to the open market in September 2008 with an in-hindsight woefully optimistic asking price of $ 3,599,000. Four long years later—and at least one deal down the tubes—the semi-rural property was re-listed for the umpteenth time with a significantly lower $ 2,399,000 price tag. Property records show it took another 8.5 months before the Benards were kissed by the real estate leprechaun and, at long last, sold their white elephant in the Hollywood Hills. The buyer appears in property records as a vexingly named trust that our impeccably well-informed informant Lucy Spillerguts tattled to Your Mama is connected to—you got it, kitty cats—Mark Foster.

A ratty-looking black top driveway arcs up to an unreasonably and unnecessarily unattractive facade. Check, children, that architectural pearl clutcher of a two-car carport the juts angrily off the front of the otherwise nearly featureless, wood-clad facade. Yeesh! Not surprisingly, listing details Your Mama managed to tease out of the internets shows the residence was originally built in 1975—the pine plank siding is quintessential mid-70s and looks great with ferns—and is currently configured with three bedrooms and three bathrooms in 4,637 square feet of interior space.

Despite the two unfortunately placed doors on either side of that carport, it’s through the Southeast Asian-looking wood and steel entry gates and down the full length of a deep, shaded veranda that one must go to find the residence’s rather reclusive front door. Wood-framed glass front doors, slate tile flooring, wood treads and wrought iron spindles on the open staircase, and a soaring, double-height exposed wood ceiling pretty much sum up the earthy materials palette found throughout the loft-like, open-concept main living spaces on the ground floor.

Wood floors run on the diagonal in the living room area that’s well lit via the sky light that pierces the pitched exposed wood ceiling. A full, trapezoidal wall of windows and sliders connects to a tatty looking courtyard-like outdoor space that, in the right hands, could be a fantastic garden lounge and dining terrace.

The floor switches to giant, square slate tiles that runs throughout a handful of flexi-use spaces—dining, den, sun room, family room, music lounge, reading nook, whatever—and right on into the cook-friendly kitchen. The kitchen is well-equipped with a center work peninsula and a bumper crop of high-grade stainless steel appliances that include a six-burner commercial-style range with built-in griddle section, and a side-by-side fridge/freezer set up. Dark raised panel cabinetry that we don’t care for is topped by mottled gray granite counter tops and, opposite the fridge freezer, there’s a lowered breakfast counter held up by a pair of disturbingly giant carved stone (or molded concrete) corbels that makes it a week bit difficult to access the inset microwave cubby.

A fully-equipped screening room—located in a space that Your Mama is pretty darn sure used to be a garage—has at least seven boxy black leather seats with built-in in drink holders in the double-wide armrests and an exterior entrance through one of those aforementioned unfortunately located doors that flank the carport.

Upstairs the pleasantly roomy master bedroom is blessed with a vaulted, exposed wood ceiling and punished with nappy-looking wall-to-wall carpeting that any sensible person would switch out before ever moving in. No shade Mister Benard, but do we really need to think about all the stuff that gets trapped in deep pile wall-to-wall carpeting…in the master bedroom? Anyways, a bank of windows and glass doors open to a private terrace that serves up an expansive if not exactly electrifying canyon view. According to an 2008 listing Your Mama teased up out of the internets the closet in the master suite is—or was—cedar lined and the attached bathroom is slathered in multi-toned slate tile with a double sink vanity, a sizable soaking tub and a separate shower space. There’s at least one other bedroom on the upper level with direct access to a private terrace and listing information indicates there’s also a “Sep. gym/maids & laundry room w/ loads of storage.”

The kitchen and family room area wrap around a small dining deck that over looks a down-sloping swathe of bougainvillea encircled open space. It’s a big ol’ dirt patch, really. There’s an over the tree tops canyon and mountain view and it seems just enough space for Mister Foster and his band mates to host a mini, backyard version of Coachella, although some of his neighbors might not be so keen about that idea.

*In addition to Mark Foster, Foster the People is composed of Mark Pontius and co-founder Cubbie Fink.

listing photos: Unlimited Style Real Estate for Hilton & Hyland
The Real Estalker

SELLER: Some say it’s Tom Cruise, but y’all should be skeptical of that
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $ 28,000,000
SIZE: 8,300 square feet, 6 bedrooms,

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In 2009 property gossips in New York City and around the globe went plain ol’ berserk over the wildfire celebrity real estate rumor that Tom Cruise and his then third and now ex wife Katie Cruise just might be the mysterious buyers who shelled out $ 15,075,000 for a stunning six floor townhouse on West 12th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the heart of the Gold Coast in New York City’s Greenwich Village.

The speculation and rumors apparently got started by chit-chatting doormen on the block and they persisted even after both Mister Cruise and Missus Cruise—through their representatives, natch—issued denials of the much-alleged townhouse acquisition. Based on our own research into the scuttlebutt, Your Mama is not now and never was convinced that Mister and ex-Missus Cruise were the real buyers of the elegant1860 townhouse.

Whoever the owner may be, it has come to Your Mama’s attention by way of a short missive from our ever-intrepid aide de camp Hot Chocolate that the townhouse long alleged to have been bought by Mister and ex-Missus Cruist back in 2009 has popped back up on the market with an attention getting $ 28,000,000 price tag, and, well, it’s pretty damn spectacular.

Current listing details show the 21-foot wide and approximately 8,300 square foot townhouse, blessed with a magnificent wrought iron railed stoop, stands six stories above ground with an additional finished basement level below grade. There are a total five terraces, seven working fireplaces, 7.5 bathrooms, state of the art built-in surround sound and humidification systems, and an hydraulic elevator that conveniently services all but the penthouse level.  Listing details show the townhouse was worked over but good by accomplished New York City-based architect Steven Harris.

We counted six bedrooms on the floor plan included with online marketing materials, divvied up as follows: a staff suite with kitchenette and roomy full bathroom on the garden level; two ample, full-width bedrooms on the fifth floor, both with relatively compact windowless en suite facilities; two more smaller bedrooms on the fourth floor, one with small private study and puny bathroom and the other with small private terrace and unexpectedly spacious bathroom; and, finally, the master suite on the third floor that encompasses a full-width bedroom, a large walk-in closet plus additional closet space, and a luxuriously appointed but windowless marble bathroom with double sinks and cramped, windowless crapper cubby. The master bedroom connects through to the upper landing of the townhouse’s rear stairs where French doors open to a terrace that’s probably larger than a typical Greenwich Village studio apartment and the master bathroom has a back door into a street-facing library/private sitting room—also accessible from the stair hall—with built-in bookcases on either side of a fireplace.

The parlor floor hosts the primary public entertaining spaces and includes a vestibule entry and foyer, a cozy front parlor, and, separated by a short gallery that runs behind a well-placed powder pooper and elevator shaft, a more stately-scaled rear parlor. Beyond the rear parlor there’s a sunny sun room that could also be used as a formal dining room or den). On the garden level below, a den—or possible dining room—generously spans the full width of the house and has a could-be-awkward attached three-quarter bathroom. A short corridor links the den/dining room to a top quality double-wide galley kitchen that opens at the back through a bank of French doors to a slender garden/terrace that wraps around to an interior courtyard nestled in between the kitchen and the den/dining room.

A glassed in solarium on the penthouse level opens on opposites ends through vast panels of glass to a pair decks that have been well planted for privacy. The smaller, south-facing street-side deck is equipped with an enclosed outdoor shower and—buckle your safety belts for this one—a partially sunken Japanese soaking tub for which Your Mama is living, hunties, living. Not because we like to sit like stew meat in a vat of near boiling water—we decidedly don’t—but but The Dr. Cooter sure does, and on a regular basis. Had we a Redwood number like this on a drop-dead deck like that we might never have packed our bags and headed west. Anyways…

Whether Tom Cruise actually owns this show stopping townhouse or—as Your Mama thinks—it’s owned by a much less famous but even richer businessman, it’s a stunner sure to be a hot property, don’tcha think? Fer chrissakes, kids, about the only thing that might make this place better, really, would be a private garage. And, seriously, a person could suffocate holding their breath for an 8,000-plus square foot townhouse with a mid-block location on a prime street in the Greenwich Village Gold Coast with a private garage, you know? All real estate is a compromise even if it cost $ 28,000,000.

listing photos and floor plan: Brown Harris Stevens
The Real Estalker

Property gossip reports out of South Florida are nine kinds of breathless over the scuttlebutt that lewd, crude and redonkulously rich radio shock jock Howard Stern and his wife Beth Ostrosky dumped (around) fifty million bucks in an off-market deal for a robber baron worthy ocean front compound along the most expense stretch of sand in pompously posh Palm Beach, FL.

The 19,800 square foot Palladian behemoth, owned by New Hampshire textile magnate Martin Trust, has 12.5 bathrooms, according to property records and previous reports, as well as an elevator, a croquet lawn, garage parking for 23 cars and an annual tax bill of more than half a million bucks.

Some of  Mister and Missus Stern’s new nearby neighbors include the conservative blowhard Rush Limbaugh, billionaire Nelson Peltz and Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev who bought his ocean front spread for $ 95 million from Donald Trump. Imagine those backyard barbecues…

Now then, what’s to become of Mister and Missus Stern’s massive ocean front home in the Hamptons? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Bueller?

aerial photo: Bing
The Real Estalker

SELLER: Michael Rapino
BUYERS: Anna Faris and Chris Pratt
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $ 3,300,000

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Back in late February (2013) Your Mama (dissed) and discussed a gated mock-Med villa above Hollywood in L.A.’s lower Nichols Canyon area then owned and listed by Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino and his actress missus Jolene Blalock. The 4,700+ square foot house had been a few weeks earlier with an asking price of $ 2,975,000 and, by the time we got around to reading the residence up and down, it was already in escrow.

Well, children—as an indication of the temperature of the upper end real estate market in Los Angeles, there must have been multiple offers on the three bedroom and 3.5 bathroom mini-estate because property records show it sold in early March for—drum roll please—$ 3.3 million.

It was The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial that first got Your Mama sniffing back around the property records and we came up stymied. Our always impeccably well informed friend and confidant Lucy Spillerguts, on the other hand, snitched with the utmost confidence that property was purchased for $ 325,000 over the asking price by up and coming comedic power pair Anna Faris and Chris Pratt.

In addition to her voice over work on the animated sitcom series King of the Hill in the early to mid Aughts and a handful of money making animated movies that include Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise, Miz Faris’s resume includes a growing list of well regarded feature films like Lost In Translation and Brokeback Mountain. She also has under her professional belt a number of schlocky but successful movies such as Scary Movie (1, 2, 3 and 4) and a couple of goofy rom-coms like The House Bunny and the dismal performing What’s Your Number. All careers have warts, right?

Mister Pratt cut his Showbiz teeth in the early and mid-Aughts on popular programs like Everwood and The O.C. He currently does a downright stand up job as one of the charmingly idiosyncratic doofuses—doofi?—on the the sitcom Parks and Recreation. His credits also include a few serious movies like Zero Dark Thirty and Moneyball as well as a silly rom com or two like the dismal performing The Five Year Engagement. All careers have warts, right?

Avid, long-time followers of the celebrity real estate scene may recall that way back in 2007 Miz Faris and her first and ex husband, actor Ben Indra, pushed their Hollywood Hills house on the market with an asking price of $ 1,995,000, the exact same price they paid for the place two years earlier. Property records do not reflect a transfer of ownership and it’s Your Mama’s understanding from several nearly always reliable sources that the house was retained by Miz Faris who remained in residence with her second husband—that would be Mister Pratt—and their small child.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Beverly Hills South
The Real Estalker