UPDATE: Burt Sugarman and Mary Hart

Back in mid-January (2013), some of y'all may recall, Your Mama passed along the unconfirmed real estate rumor that pioneering entertainment news reporter Mary Hart and her film and television producer husband, Burt Sugarman, had quietly floated their large and low-slung longtime residence in the chic and trendy Trousdale Estates area of Beverly Hills (CA) as a pocket listing with a price tag in the $37-39 million range. Remember that?

Well, dontcha know that two times already this morning Your Mama has heard word—first from Our Fairy Godmother in Bel Air and later from a plugged in real estate whistle blower we call Charlie Chitchatter—that the Sugarman-Harts managed to quietly unload their (possibly Cliff May-designed) Trousdale Estates mansion for just over $30 million?*

The walled and gated property was not available on the open market so we don't have access to any publicly available digital marketing materials but various resources accessible via the World Wide Web do indicate the sprawling single story residence encompasses more than 11,500 square feet and sits on 2.2 acres with a large flat building pad and knee buckling city views that—on a clear day—stretch all the way to downtown Long Beach and the Pacific Ocean. The Los Angeles County Tax Man shows the existing residence has six bedrooms, nine bathrooms, three fireplaces, and covered parking for up to five cars but, of course, Your Mama don't know a pussy cat from a boll weevil so we really can't vouch for the veracity of the government's numbers.

Property records we peeped do reflect a transfer of ownership in the last few days but at this point Your Mama is unable to accurately identify the new owner of the Sugarman-Hart residence. One of our snitchy sources told us there was some unconfirmed chatter amongst the elites of the Platinum Triangle real estate game that the buyer was Nick and/or Christian Candy, the much ballyhooed British developers of billionaire-style properties. That sorta made sense since everybody in the upper echelons of the L.A. real estate game knows the elder Candy brother, Nick, and his Australian actress wife, Holly, have waged an exhaustive hunt for an appropriate West Coast abode over the last several or more months. Indeed, in early April (2013), the flash and fast-talking developer was reported in The New York Times to be in negotiations for "a two acre estate asking $40 million."

However, hunties, Charlie Chitchatter said he's heard from numerous sources that the buyer of the Sugarman-Hart residence is a straight up a sick rich Saudi and, in fact, property records show the mysteriously named corporate entity that acquired the property for an as yet unrevealed sum (that may or may not be around $32 million) links back to the Century City (CA) offices of and U.S. based international law office that specializes in the needs of Middle Easterners. Make of that connection what you will. Anyhoo...

Whether a Brit or a Saudi or some other jet setting foreigner with seemingly limitless wads of disposable income, the new owner of the Sugarman-Hart home joins a couple of other high profile home owners on the curved cul-de-sac high above West Hollywood and Beverly Hills. In April 2010 eyewear tycoon Jim Jannard shelled out $19,900,000 for a crab-shaped 1960s contemporary immediately next door to the Sugarman-Harts that had been re-worked by master architect Hal Leavitt in the 1980s. Published reports said Mister Jannard acquired the property for use as some sort of guest house for business associates but he's since knocked the mid-century modern beotch down to make way for something brand spanking new and—if we had to guess—probably much larger.

In October of 201, televised talent competition mega-mogul Simon Cowell coughed up $15,500,000 for a thrilling if slightly time-worn mid-century modern a few doors up the hill from the Sugaman-Harts. More recently, in April 2013, a corporation connected to B-movie producer Sergei Bespalov plunked down $13,250,000 for a recently renovated contemporary on just over half an acre. **

These are all big and impressive sales numbers. They are nowhere near, however, the extraordinary—not to mention attention grabbing—$30+ million we heard Mister Sugarman and Miz Hart nabbed for their Trousdale aerie that will, no doubt, be substantially altered by the new owner because, well, that's just what the world's super rich do nowadays. They spend $30 million to buy a house and another 10 or 12 million to rework it into a better representation of their real estate fantasies. Stay tuned...

*Your Mama actually heard the Sugarman-Hart house closed in the last few days and went for $32 million (or so). However, property records do not yet show a sale price. That means, butter beans, the $32 million figure is just some high grade real estate rumor and gossip, at least until it's reported—sans credit, natch—in one of the more respectable property gossip columns.

**For the record, we have no idea if Mister Bespalov is the owner of the referenced home that was recently purchased for $13.25 million. We only know that a search of the company that technically owns the home is somehow linked to Mister Bespalov. Make of that what you will.

Hodge Podge Thursday

Since Your Mama was away on a much needed digital-free vacay there have been a number of celebrity (or celebrity related) real estate events that we didn't know about, of course, until we returned to the online accessing world yesterday. Now, children, iffin yer already all caught up with the recaps below, hold your horses—and your damn tongues, stay tuned, and we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming a.s.a.p. Okay? Okay. Let's go...

Always working blue-eyed actor Elijah Wood (Wilfred, Lord of the Rings franchise, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) has reportedly hightailed it outta Hollywood—well, Santa Monica, anyways—and done dropped a cool million on a thoroughly modern-minded turn-of-the-20th-century Queen Anne Victorian located in the leafy, low-key and much sought after Bouldin Creek neighborhood just south of downtown Austin, TX. (via Daily Mail; listing photos Realty Austin)

When Jeremy Renner isn't busy making movies and getting nominated for an Academy Award—okay, it was only once—he and his b.f.f., fellow actor Kristoffer Winters, buy, renovate, and flip multi-million dollar homes in some of L.A.'s most coveted zip codes.

In August 2011 Misters Renner and Winters, through a corporate entity, spent exactly $7 million to acquire a 1.89 acre estate in L.A.'s high-toned Holmby Hills 'hood that's less than perfectly situated between a sweeping curve of busy, loud and dirty Sunset Boulevard and the estate of nonagenarian high society matron Betsy Bloomingdale.

The actor-flippers gave the 10,000+ square foot residence a slick, multi-million dollar make-over spearheaded by architect Phillip Vertoch, dubbed it—ahem—"The Reserve," and flipped it back on the market in late 2012 with a hefty price tag of $24,950,000. The upper end real estate market in Los Angeles being what it is—that's pretty dang swift, according to the movers and shakers we consult with—the house was soon put into escrow—in mid-June (2013), actually—with an as yet unidentified buyer for an as yet unrevealed price.

Listing details show the glammy manse has a front entry portico with four almost luridly thick stone columns, voluminous 14-foot ceilings, six bedrooms, 8 full and 3 half bathrooms, five fireplaces, and—in addition to a cobblestone motor court the size of a small parking lot—garage parking for three vehicles. (via Trulia Luxe Living; listing photos: Hilton & Hyland)

Meanwhile, Misters Renner and Winters aren't the only actors who flip high-end mansions in Los Angeles. Brad Blumenthal (Pulp Fiction, Chaplain, Hook) recently heaved a Hazy Belzberg designed contemporary confection set just about L.A.'s Sunset Plaza shopping and dining district on the market for a mouth drying $28.8 million. The 13,000 square foot spread has three structures according to listing details: a main house, a guest house, and—this being Los Angeles, children—a wellness center above the garage. (via Los Angeles Times; listing photos: Hilton & Hyland)

Comely actress Scarlett Johansson has divested herself of the last of her West Coast real estate holdings—at least it's the last of her L.A. holdings that Your Mama knows about. The husky voiced blond bomber sold a one bedroom and two bathroom condo on the fifth floor of the boxy, mid-century modern Hollywood Versailles Tower building located just west of the tourist packed heart of Hollywood. The $470,000 sale price is considerably more than the $425,000 asking price.

Fun fact about the full-service and extensively amenitied,13 story Hollywood Versailles Tower: Rehabbing starlet Lindsay Lohan once leased a higher floor residence where she lived amid a cacophonous clutter of multi-thousand dollar handbags, sky high high heels, designer clothes, and god only knows what else. (via Zillow; listing photos PostRain Productions for Sotheby's International Realty)

Guitarist Nick Valensi of The Strokes and actress turned celebrity chat show hostess Amanda de Cadenet have put their contemporary Colonial residence in L.A.'s Studio City with an asking price of $1,799,000. Property records show they bought the modest-by-celeb-standards corner lot property in February 2011 for $1.3 million.

Listing details indicate there are five bedrooms and six bathrooms plus a two bedroom and one bathroom guest suite over the detached two car garage. There is not, at least as far as Your Mama can tell, a swimming pool, which is kind of a bummer because it gets hot in Studio City in the summer. (via Zillow; listing photos: The Agency)

Iconic 1970s folk-pop singer-songwriter Carole King has been trying to unload her somewhat remote 128-acre compound in Stanley, ID for a goddamn Ice Age. The kinky haired songstress must finally be getting serious because she's dropped the asking price by $2 million to $9,900,000.

The scenic spread includes a 7,300+ square foot lodge, an owner's residence, a caretaker's residence, and half a dozen or more log built guest cabins plus equestrian facilities, a swimming pool and spa, and a professional recording studio. (via Curbed; listing photos: Hall and Hall)

Quirky and theatrical, the John Lautner designed Wolff House manages to both anchor into and cantilever over a declivitous down slope just above L.A.'s Sunset Strip. The revolutionary residence, built in 1961 for interior designer Marco Wolff, is sometimes poo-pooed by staunch architectural traditionalists for its blatant histrionics but is utterly beloved by others who don't mind a little—or even a lot—of gravity defying hyperbole in their residential real estate. Whatever one thinks of the show stopper, it has returned to the market for the fifth time in nine years, now with an asking price of $7.995 million.

The four bed and four bath abode, aptly described by the kids at Curbed as a "tangle of glass, steel, and stone," was bought in early 2006 for $4.1 million by wacky actor and architecture buff Vincent Gallo who flipped it the fall of 2006 for $4,950,000 to Michael La Fetra, an occasional documentary/film producer and heir to a substantial southern California sprinkler fortune who is well known in L.A. real estate circles as a devout aficionado and prolific flipper of architecturally significant homes.

Property records we peeped are a mite perplexing but it appears to Your Mama the Wolff House last traded hands in May 2008 for $5,550,000. We can't confirm the current owner's identity through property records but loose-lipped real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak swears he's another heir, this time to a Dominican Republic-based product packaging empire. (via Curbed; listing photos: John Aaroe Group)

Megan Ellison Shakes Up Real Estate Portfolio

SELLER: Megan Ellison
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $15,500,000
SIZE: 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A week or so before Your Mama left for a wee summer vacay in a semi-remote region of the Forty-Ninth State, we (dissed) and discussed the quirky New York City pied-a-terre recently picked up for $2.8 million by 27-year old high-tech heiress turned increasingly powerful indie film producer Megan Ellison. She, in case you somehow didn't know, would be trophy property collecting gazillionaire Larry Ellison's daughter. That explains, of course, how it is the ever-so-young but already Oscar-nominated young lady can maintain a residential real estate portfolio worth well in excess of $35 million.

Her purchase of a $2.8 million one bedroom bedsit in downtown Manhattan's perennially chic Police Building is hardly, however, Miss Ellison's only recent spin on the fast-paced upper end real estate merry-go-round. Like her father, Miss Ellison nurses a well-exercised penchant for the procurement of prodigiously pricey properties in desirable locales. In addition to her new digs in The Big Apple Miss Ellison owns three contiguous and uniformly contemporary residences perched near the edge of a vertiginous bluff high above the Sunset Strip in an area known by L.A. savvy real estate-o-philes as The Birds.*

The first Bird Street nest Miss Ellison bought and feathered, a sensationally sleek Steve Hermann-designed domicile, was acquired in February 2008 for $12.6 million and she unexpectedly picked up the glassy, also-Steve Hermann-designed abode next door in April 2009 for $6.25 million from media mogul Byron Allen. Even more surprisingly, in early 2011, the neophyte compound creator coughed up a back stiffening $13.8 million for the newly constructed mini-compound next door to the second one—the one she bought from Byron Allen—for $13.8 million. Her total outlay for the three contiguous cribs in The Birds? Nearly $33 million dollars, according to Your Mama's bejeweled abacus.

It seems, however, that three is more than enough for Miss Ellison who last April (2012) briefly made her first Bird Street acquisition available on the open market for an unknown price. The boxy but sexy residence was on the open market a scant four weeks but, as was pointed out to Your Mama by tipster Paulina Pointsitout, still appears on the listing agent's internet portal. The property does not, however and as far as we can tell, show up as an active listing on the Multiple Listing Service or any of the other two listing aggregators Your Mama briefly consulted.

Whatever the case, current digital listing details show the three bedroom and four bathroom residence carries a hefty asking price of $15,500,000. Listing details do not state the square footage but the L.A. County Tax Man puts it at 3,065 square feet. That seems to Your Mama a little small given the scale of the house as seen in listing photographs but, of course, what do we know? Nuthin', that's what. Listing details go on to explain that there are soaring 13-foot ceilings, custom Poliform kitchen and closets, whole house audio and security systems, and "outrageous views" through vast expanses of floor to ceiling windows, some of which telescope and disappear into the walls.

Other notable creature comforts and luxury amenities called out in listing details include an eight-foot wide gallery hallway, a warehouse-sized open-concept main living area with knee buckling city views, a state-of-the-art 20 seat home theater, and an interior courtyard with swimming pool and spa.

What's interesting, at least to a snarky property gossip like Your Mama, is that the publicly online marketing materials seem to make use of the exact same listing images as when Miss Ellison acquired the property residence back in 2008. Funny that, no?

Anyhoodles, poodles, as it turns out, this isn't the only multi-million dollar Sunset Strip house Miss Ellison has up for sale. A bit higher up in The Birds, at the tail end of an L-shaped cul-de-sac, Miss Ellison owns a low-profile ranch-style residence she quietly acquired in December for $1,800,000. This was, it would seem to the innocent bystander like Your Mama, a short term investment that Miss Ellison subjected to a contemporarizing gut renovation and flipped back on the market in November 2012 for $3,750,000. The price was later reduced—twice, actually—down to its current $2,990,000 price tag. The property, as per public listings, is currently in escrow—and has been since early April 2013—for an unknown price with an unknown buyer.

Listing details show the gated 2,404 square foot single story residence (above) has four bedrooms and four bathrooms plus additional flexi-use space atop the detached two car garage. Sliding glass doors slide open to connect the open plan living spaces (living, dining, kitchen) with the backyard entertainment area that includes a built-in barbecue station, a plunge-size swimming pool and a slightly elevated, party-sized spa in to which several ribbons of water cascade from a stacked stone retaining wall.

*All the streets in The Birds are named after birds. Get it? Robin, Thrasher, Warbler, and so on and so forth.

listing photos (Nightingale): Westside Estate Agency
listing photos (Swallow): Keller Williams Beverly Hills

Dean Cain Does It Again in the Roaring Fork Valley

SELLER: Dean Cain
LOCATION: Basalt, CO
PRICE: $5,900,000
SIZE: 4,399 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen, children, Your Mama is fresh out of the Alaskan bush where we were blissfully removed from the digital world for five liquor and laughter fueled days at a semi-remote and decidedly rustic lakeside cabin—we're talking a no-frills one-room, no indoor plumbing situation—owned and generously loaned by a couple of our dear Alaska-living amiga Sheila Sinn's dear friends (and dog sitters).

We are, y'all can be sure, tired as a post-Iditarod musher dog, dirty as the never been properly vacuumed carpeting in, well, a rustic and semi-remote one-room cabin in the Alaskan bush, and currently marooned in the Seattle airport on a frightfully lengthy layover. Rather than whittle the time away with a couple or several gin & tonics, we figured it was best for everybody if we immediately jump back in the celebrity real estate saddle. A quick sift through our forbiddingly long list of unread emails turned up a number of celebrity real estate tidbits, most of which have been covered by other property gossips during our absence. However, thanks to a nice lady we'll call Teri Ahkee, Your Mama has come to learn that beaver busy B-list film and television actor Dean Cain has recently (re-)listed his 35 acre ranch in Basalt, CO with an asking price of $5,900,000.

Mister Cain's fame peaked, some will argue, back in the mid 1990s when he shook his hard bodied money maker as Clark Kent in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Since then his roles may have been, uhm, a little bit more lower profile but, according to his resume on the Internet Movie Data Base, he's worked consistently with dozens of roles in movies and television programs, most of which Your Mama has neither seen nor heard of (Flight of Fancy, The Division, Clubhouse, Hope & Faith). More recently Mister Cain's popped up on the t.v. programs Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 and Hit the Floor, and he has nearly a dozen projects in the works including a sci-fi thriller with Hollywood veteran Malcolm McDowell (Mind's Eye), a horror film (The Appearing), and several holiday-themed comedies (A Dog For Christmas, Defending Santa, Holiday Miracle).

According to information we easily turned up on the interweb, this is not—by a long shot—the first time Mister Cain has tried to ride this particular real estate pony. In fact, the poor thing has had his Rocky Mountain spread—listing details describe it as a "Gentlemans [sic] Ranch" about 30 minutes from Aspen and minutes from Willits Town Center—on and off the open market since at least July 2011 when it popped up for sale with an in-hindsight optimistic asking price of $9,500,000.

Property records show Mister Cain purchased the 35 acre property in 1997 for $725,000. It's not clear—or, at least, it's not known to Your Mama—if the property contained any residential or ranch structures at the time. Listing information does indicate that the existing residence was custom built in 2002 as a recreational pavilion/guest house to an as yet un-built main house. Listing details indicate that "Plans are in place for a main home" of unknown size or style.

While it may have been designed and built as a guest house/recreation pavilion, the existing residence has all the features and amenities of a high-end Rocky Mountain mini-manse. Listing information shows there are five bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms in 4,399 square feet of luxury interior space finished with the exact sorts of (predictably) rugged materials—stone, rough-hewn tree trunks and the like—that Your Mama expects to find in multi-million dollar, celeb-owned homes in and around the star-studded and profoundly pricey community of Aspen (CO).

Listing details are somewhat slim as to the home's specific features but photographs show a double height living room with an imposing river rock fireplace and what may or may not be heart pine floors. As they are in many frontier areas of The West (and elsewhere), the antlers hung above the room-wide picture windows are de rigueur as day-core in this part of the world. There are also double height ceilings in the expensively equipped, open-concept kitchen area where a light fixture hung from thick, log rafters inexplicably does double duty as a pot rack. Lowerd have mercy, children. If there's anything worse to Your Mama than a goddamn pot rack, it's a pot rack that lights up. Heavens to Betsy. Maybe we will have a mid-morning booze bomb, after all. Anyways...There's also a large office and an attached four car garage, as per listing details.

The scenic property includes a hay meadow and irrigated horse pasture plus, a small stable and riding ring, a fishing pond, and, perhaps most desirable to outdoorsy sorts, a quarter mile of private fly fishing on a gentle bend of the rushing Roaring Fork River that bisects the ranch.

Mister Cain also owns a 3,302 square foot, single story suburban style ranch house with a superbly sweeping ocean view in Malibu, CA that property records show was purchased in October 2004 for $2,590,000. The house, in case any of y'all might be innerested, happens to be located in the very same residential enclave where actress Shannen Doherty owns a house. In the early Aughts there were reports in the European media that were picked up by a number of Dean Cain oriented discussion groups that Mister Cain scooped up a five bedroom villa on the island of Ibiza—that's off the coast of Spain, punkins—from high society portrait artist Birgitte Knaus. Alas, butter beans, we know zip, zilch, and nada about whether the reports were true and/or if Mister Cain still maintains the Balearic Islands abode. Do you?

listing photos: Mason Morse Real Estate

Mid-Week Celebrity Real Estate Link Love

Listen, chickens, Your Mama is just about to board a steel bird and wing our way to the 49th State of Alaska for a 4th of July visit with our wonderfully neurotic old friend Sheila Sinn. That means we don't have the time to go on and on (and on) like we usually do but, rather than leave y'all high and dry, we thought we'd send y'all on over to have a look see at some of the other celebrity real estate doings that have gone down this week.

A year ago, Rosie O'Donnell spent $8,095,087.50 to buy a duplex penthouse pièd-a-terre in downtown Manhattan. It was the eagle-eyed kids at Curbed who revealed that the ol' chat show hostess caught a classic case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle and flipped the four bedroom and three bathroom apartment back on the market this week with a much higher $10,950,000 price tag.

Miz O'Donnell must be in the mood to shake up her property portfolio because Your Mama heard word last month that she'd done sold her estate on Miami Beach's star studded Star Island to an unknown buyer for not quite $13 million but property records now reveal she actually sold it for $16,500,000 to New York City-based real estate investors David and Linda Frankel. (floor plan: Douglas Elliman Real Estate)

Also stricken with an especially acute case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle, as per the peeps at Zillow, is disgraced Tour de France cyclist Lance Armstrong. First he sold his water guzzling central Austin (TX) estate and shelled out $4.34 million for a contemporary compound perched on a bluff that over looks Lake Austin (shown above). However, bunnies, the capricious pedal pumper quickly and quietly re-sold the lake view house for an unknown amount to professional race car driver Bret Curtis and snatched up a 7,646 square foot house in Austin from Texas politico Ben Barnes. (listing photo: via Zillow)

We're not sure who first revealed it but Your Mama first saw it on Trulia Luxe Living that ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky listed his mock-Med mansion in a 12-residence gated enclave in prosperous Scottsdale, AZ, with an asking price of $3,395,000. (listing photo: Platinum Realty Network)

As per the New York Observer, after putting it out for lease in July 2011 at a rate of $16,000 per month—it rented in October 2011 for an unknown amount for an unknown length of time—Los Angeles-based actor Hank Azaria has off loaded his lofty apartment in the heart of New York City's SoHo 'hood in an off-market deal to a mysterious buyer for $8,000,000. Mister Azaria acquired the three bedroom and three bathroom loft in 2005 for $4.6 million from big-shit artist Cindy Sherman. The children will take special note of the 50-foot long entrance loggia and the unusually spacious private professional grade gym. (floor plan: Stribling)

Soon to be divorced movie producer Bob Weinstein has not so quietly heaved his 3.28 waterfront estate in Greenwich, CT on the open market with a $32,000,000 asking price, as was first revealed by those crazy kids at Curbed yesterday. Listing details show the 12,788 square foot mansion was built in 1916 and currently has six bedrooms, six full and two half bathrooms, 9 fireplaces, and 440 feet of prime Long Island Sound shore line with a sandy beach and stone pier for deep water mooring. (listing photo: Coldwell Banker)

The Miami Condo Investments blog spilled the beans about design-oriented hip-hopper Pharrell Williams having hacked a blood curdling $5.9 million dollars off the price of his airy, multi-level penthouse aerie atop the Bristol Tower complex in Miami Beach, FL. Your Mama (dissed and) discussed the  9,080 square foot 5 bedroom and 6.5 bathroom penthouse back in November 2012 when it first popped up on the open market with an in-hindsight wickedly optimistic $16.8 million price tag. (listing photo: Coldwell Banker)

The Zillow folks figured out that Courteney Cox's Cougartown cast mate (and alleged new squeeze) Brian Van Holt unloaded his 1 bedroom and 1.5 bathroom condo-loft in Venice, CA for $925,000. The 1,096 square foot spread has double height ceilings, a wood and steel floating staircase, and a roof top terrace with wrap around views. (listing photo: Partners Trust)

Rosie O'Donnell and Lance Armstrong aren't the only celebs who caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle this week. The celebrity gossips at Radar Online revealed today that sitcom star Kevin James and hoisted the Delray Beach (FL) mansion he bought nine months ago for $18.5 million back on the market for $19.95 million. (aerial photo: Radar Online via Curbed)

NOTE: Turns out, Kevin James does not have a screaming case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle.

Your Mama Hears...

...that Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva—she would be the filthy rich 34-year old youngest daughter of Uzbekistan's autocratic president Islam Karimov—is the new owner of Le Palais, a genuinely prodigious and proudly palatial abode in Beverly Hills, CA, listed last summer (2012) on the open market with a publicity garnering $58,000,000 price tag.

Property records—at least none of the ones Your Mama scoured—do not reveal the purchase price and shield the new owner's identity behind an ambiguously named corporate entity with a mail box address in a run-of-the-mill strip mall in Culver City (CA). However, children, our ever-intrepid informant Yolanda Yakketyyak swears on her bejeweled life that he new owner of Le Palais is none other than Miz Karimova and another source—a high powered real estate mover and shaker we'll call Pete D. Propertypurveyor—snitched to Your Mama that word on the Platinum Triangle real estate street is that the garishly opulent mega-manse sold in mid-June (2013) for somewhere in the neighborhood of $47 million.*

This ain't nuthin' but gossip but we've been told twice by the sorts of people who know these sorts of things, including Mister Propertypurveyor, that Miz Karimova-Tillyaeva et famille—husband, Timur, and their three young children—had previously shacked up in a 12,000+ square foot villa in the guard-gated Beverly Park community that they rented from mid-priced handbag tycoon and hardcore real estate baller Bruce Makowsky. We don't have an inkling, of course, of how much the Karimova-Tillyaevas paid but we do know that Mister Makowsky has the 8 bedroom and 10 bathroom spread back up for rent at $100,000 per month.

Anyone who knows a thing about the upper echelons of the Platinum Triangle real estate market knows that Le Palais, a brobdingnagian faux-French chateau wrapped around technologically advanced and decidedly contemporary interiors, was built on spec from the ground up by Mohamed Hadid, a Beverly Hills based developer of who earned a significant portion of his fortune building Ritz Carlton Hotels and has risen to pop cultural semi-fame as a bit player on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Mister Hadid, in case any of ya'll somehow did not know, pals around with RHOBH queen bee Lisa Vanderpump and is the ex-husband of cast member Yolanda Foster who, some of the children may recall, hosted an on-camera cocktail party at Le Palais on the most recent season of the diamond encrusted drama-rama.

Miz Karimova-Tillyaeva, who maintains an extensive personal website that promotes her various diplomatic and philanthropic endeavors,** may be little known to most Americans but she hails from an internationally illustrious family with vast riches and, not surprisingly, a penchant for lavish living. In 2010 it was widely reported that Mister and Missus Karimova-Tillyaeva plunked down SFr43.4 million—about 41 million U.S. dollars according to Your Mama's trusty currency conversion contraption—for an estate in Vandeœuvres, a swank Swiss suburb often referred to as the Beverly Hills of Geneva. Miz Karimova-Tillyaeva's older sister, Goulnora—a well-connected and polarizing entrepreneur who currently serves as Uzbekistan's ambassador to Spain—also owns a Swiss hideaway in the neighboring community of Cologny that she reportedly picked up in 2009 for $18.2 million.

Le Palais, steel-framed and faced with imported French limestone, sits just off a bustling and clamorous Sunset Boulevard intersection. The house measures in at a monstrous 48,000 (or so) square feet that's tightly wedged on to a walled, gated and heavily secured two parcel property that encompasses a relatively compact 1.09 acres.

While the omnipresent traffic noise—not to mention the car exhaust—might be a deal breaker for some Richie Riches, La Palais' location directly across the street from the heavenly Beverly Hills Hotel is absolute perfection for those who fancy a quick daily luncheon at the world renown Polo Lounge where a (delicious) basket of Parmesan encrusted French fries will set a person back nine bucks and the Niçoise Salad rings up with at $36. (Your Mama and The Dr. Cooter both recommend the Mocha Ice Cream Pie. It's a goddamn bargain at $10 during lunch and still worth it during dinner when the price inexplicably jumps to $12.)

Listing details show the—ahem—elegant and elephantine abode contains a total of 7 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms plus three additional bathrooms that serve the outdoor areas. Digital marketing materials Your Mama peeped and perused do not indicate any existing staff bedrooms in the main house but do reveal that a two bedroom and 1 bathroom staff apartment is planned over the the garage.

Hand-cut Lalique-style glass front doors tucked into a soaring carved limestone arch off the gated driveway and motor court swing boastfully open into a showy entrance hall that stretches a (melo)dramatic (and arguably pompous) 90 feet front to back and soars to 30 feet high over head. Elaborate wood paneling surrounds the door frames and more Lalique-esque glass makes a sexy and sinuous curve up to a second floor gallery. Formal entertaining spaces include a very large but well-scaled formal living room with 14-foot ceilings and wood burning fireplace with French-made Italian white marble mantel. There's another wood burning fireplace with French-made Italian white marble mantel in the formal dining room that listing information states is well capable of comfortably seating 20-plus diners at a prairie-sized burled olive wood table.

Less formal but still preposterously proportioned family quarters include a library/office with paneled walls and built in bookcases that arch gently as they reach up to the ceiling. A ballroom-sized bar/lounge also has 14-foot ceilings, a third wood burning fireplace with French-made Italian white marble mantel, and direct access to the outdoor entertainment and recreation terraces. The colossal center island kitchen/family room combination has an coffered ceiling and is complete with informal dining space and a lounge area finished with a shelf-flanked fireplace surmounted by a flat screen television.

The sprawling lower level, accessed by stair or elevator, is a treasure trove of resort-style recreational amenities. There's a grand ballroom that seats up to 200 with an adjoining commercial grade catering kitchen, a screening room for 40 (or more) movie viewing guests, a professional quality fitness room, and what listing information calls "Moroccan room"—whatever that is. Also downstairs and something of a hallmark of Mister Hadid's gargantuan residential creations, is a sumptuous Turkish-style hammam with elaborately tiled 30-foot long indoor pool, steam and sauna facilities, and a private massage room. Rounding out the lower level, as per marketing materials, are a laundry room, various equipment rooms, and a secured underground garage for 10-12 cars.

Digital marketing materials reveal there's one guest bedroom with private bathroom and walk-in closet on the main floor plus four family bedrooms and a junior master suite on the second floor. The main master suite, also on the second floor, comprises a private sitting room/study with a curving wall of glass, an adjoining bedroom with fireplace, two behemoth bathrooms—plus a powder room, and dual dressing rooms that arguably have more in common with upscale boutiques and haberdasheries than with what most middle-brow people think of as a closet. The "hers" bathroom—bigger than Your Mama's entire garage—has a fireplace and the "his" has a hidden staircase that ascends to a 3,800 square foot roof top terrace with views that give a sweeping, low profile view from sunrise to sunset.

The grounds aren't particularly expansive—this is a massive home on a 1.09 acre piece of property in the proverbial heart of Beverly Hills, after all—but there are none-the-less, according to marketing materials, expansive stone terraces girdled by carved stone balustrades, a chandelier-lit and fireplace-warmed al fresco dining area, a built-in barbecue and outdoor kitchen area, and a row of curtained cabana lounges just like you might expect to see at a swellegant Ritz Carlton resort. There are also, as per marketing materials, four rose gardens, a swan pond (!!), a couple of fountains, a fire feature or two, and a couple of garden sculptures as well as an allee of mature magnolia trees that line the long sides of the sixty foot long swimming pool and 20 person spa. The curving pool pavilion offers additional plein air lounging areas and several bathrooms and changing rooms.

Forget about the mortgage—believe it or not, butter beans, plenty of bazillonaires carry heavy duty mortgages—but Your Mama simply keels and reels at the exorbitant costs associated with staffing, securing and maintaining a private residence of this magnitude. This isn't a beach cottage one closes up and padlocks at the end of the summer. No, puppies, a house like this has to be be fully staffed whether the owners live in it 365 days a year or—more likely—drop in for a few days or a few weeks a couple times a year. For chrissakes the owner of a home like this has to pay a full time person—probably a six figure earning estate manager—just to keep track of the army of low wage workers hired to mow the lawns, pull the weeds, wash the windows, vacuum the carpets, clean the pool, trim the trees, fix the oven, scrub the toilets, secure the perimeter on a 24-7 basis, and on and on and on. But, children, such are the excessive financial abilities of someone like, say, a prodigiously rich dictator's daughter, right?

*All just rumor and conjecture, puppies, rumor and conjecture.

**Miz Karimova-Tillyaeva's website shows she's earned a bachelor's and master's degrees in International Law from the University of World Economy and Diplomacy in Tashkent"—that's in Uzbekistan, kids—and "later received a doctorate in Psychology from Tashkent State University." She heads up a couple of "major charitable organizations" that promote education and sports and champion the rights of orphaned and disabled children. She currently serves and "Uzbekistan's envoy to UNESCO." An unflattering, a September 2012 article on the Foreign Policy website claims Miz Karimova-Tillyaeva "is a business mogul in her own right" who owns a company that controls the import of Chinese goods. Although we have no way of verifying the accuracy of the reporting, Miz Karimova-Tillyaeva and her olders sister's combined fortune was estimated in late 2011 to be about $1 billion. 

listing photos: Coldwell Banker Previews International

Pectastic Actor Joe Manganiello Snags New Digs

BUYER: Joe Manganiello
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,806,000
SIZE; 2,422 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama first heard it last week from the freakishly well-connected real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak and then we heard if from our eerily well-informed celebrity real estate confrère Lucy Spillerguts: In late April (2013), hard-bodied actor Joe Manganiello quietly coughed up $1,806,000 for a updated and upgraded 1960s ranch house nestled into a discrete—and discreet—neighborhood between L.A's Laurel and Nichols canyons.

Not surprisingly, Mister Manganiello—a six-foot-five-inch classically trained thespian with rippling muscles and uncommonly good looks—found immediate if slow burning Showbiz success soon after arriving in Hollywood in the early 2000s when he landed the role of Flash Thompson in the Spider-Man film franchise. He went on to score recurring roles on a handful of television programs such as American Heiress, ER, How I Met Your Mother, and One Tree Hill before he nabbed his plummiest role to date, that of a surveying company owning werewolf on the astoundingly successful supernatural drama True Blood. Mister Manganiello's professional credits also include a number of theater productions and a growing bunch of feature films including the star studded but woefully flaccid rom-com What To Expect When You're Expecting. Last year, much to the delight of lusty ladies and concupiscent gays around the globe, the scraggly bearded and bodaciously built beau hunk bared just about every inch of his carefully sculpted man-body in the high octane male stripper fest Magic Mike.

Evidence Your Mama quickly and easily discovered on the internets suggests there may have been stiff competition for the house as property records reveal Mister Manganiello—through an ambiguously named trust—paid $17,000 more than the last asking price of $1,790,000 for the low slung, single-story residence that contains four bedrooms and three bathrooms in 2,422 square feet.

A slate courtyard lined along the street with a glimmering row of stainless steel planter boxes leads to the front door that opens to a proper entrance hall. A stacked stone wall the color of dry sand anchors one side of the foyer and wraps around to face the over-sized fireplace in the wood-floored living room.  The adjoining dining room, separated from the living room by an elevated stone tile walkway and row of slender square columns, has a quartet of French doors the open to the backyard. The living and dining room flow directly into a family room with more wood floors, more French doors to the backyard, and a handsome, geometrically minded slate-faced corner fireplace.

The well-equipped, U-shaped kitchen has dark brown or maybe black Shaker style cabinets with sleek stainless steel hardware, mottled grey counter tops that may or may not be granite, and a customary suite of high-quality stainless steel appliances. The adjoining breakfast area has floor to ceiling pantry cabinets one one side and frosted glass double doors on the other that conceal a wet bar with under-counter wine fridge, stainless steel vessel sink, and floating shelves on which the sellers displayed their booze bottles and stemware.

The master suite isn't huge but it is certainly comfortably appointed with a custom-fitted walk-in closet, a separate dressing area with built-in dressers, and an all-beige bathroom slathered in travertine. French doors conveniently connect directly to the backyard. It's not, however, the master bedroom but one of the three secondary guest/family bedrooms that's the real voyeuristic show stopper since all the separates the sleeping area from the attached bathroom is a transparent wall of floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall glass.

The back of the L-shaped house embraces a courtyard type back yard where dark slate terracing wraps completely around a dark bottomed, kidney-ish shaped swimming pool and spa. We love the look of that dark slate but we imagine it could get a little roasty on the tootsies when—as it regularly does in Southern California—the mercury spikes. Anyways, there's plenty of room for dining, lounging and sunbathing as well as a built-in barbecue and a built-in fire pit.

Mister Manganiello currently squires curvaceous brunette model Bridget Peters who, at least according to Lucy Spillerguts, currently shacks up with her super-sized True Blood stud.

listing photos: Keller Williams Beverly Hills