Saxophonist David Sanborn Lists Manhattan Townhouse

SELLER: David Sanborn
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $12,000,000
SIZE: (approx.) 5,500 square feet*, 4-5 bedrooms, 3 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama first saw the listing on the internet but the lightening fast property gossips at the Daily News were the first to chat up the New York City townhouse owned by five-time Grammy-winning alto saxophonist David Sanborn and (re-)listed this week with a $12,000,000 asking price.

This is not the first time Mister Sanborn and his missus, Sofia, have been to the real estate rodeo with their fully updated and upgraded turn of the 20th century townhouse located mid-block on a lovely, tree-canopied street just off busy-busy Broadway on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The legendary single reed woodwind blower and his educator wife listed the townhouse on the open market in September 2010 with a nine million dollar price tag. Several months later the price dropped to $8.45 million and in August 2011, for reasons Your Mama ain't privy, the well-maintained urban mini-manse was taken off the market.

We aren't exactly sure why the Sanborns and their team of moving and shaking real estate agents think the townhouse can now be sold for more than $3.5 million more than the reduced price it failed to sell for two years ago. Then again, children, business is quite brisk in the upper tiers of the property market in Manhattan and there is—some of y'all have surely heard it before—a certain school of converse real estate logic that suggests that if a high end house fails to sell at a certain price it sometimes and strangely becomes more desirable to deep pocketed buyers if the asking price is substantially increased. Don't scoff and pout and stomp your indignant feet, kittens. Believe it or not, this trick o' the trade isn't always effective but it works far more often than you might imagine or real estate agents would stop doing it. Anyhoo...

The 19-foot wide red brick and brownstone townhouse was originally built in (or around) 1900, according to current marketing materials, and was custom converted from a five unit multi-unit building to a single family residence by Mister and Missus Sanborn who bought it, according to the Daily News, more than 25 years for an unrevealed sum from an unidentified opera singer.

Current listing information shows the (unfortunately elevator-free) five-plus floor brownstone-type townhouse has a total of 13 rooms that include 4-5 bedrooms, depending on use, plus three full and two half bathrooms. Floor plans show half a dozen fireplaces (kitchen, parlor, living room, one guest bedroom, the master bedroom, and the music studio) although the listing description isn't specific about which of the four of them work.

A classic stoop that makes Your Mama ache at our very core with Big Apple nostalgia climbs to the parlor floor where the rehabbed interiors retain many original architectural details and features. There are intricate inlaid parquet floors, almost grand 11-foot-8-inch ceilings, meticulous mill work, and crown moldings. A narrow sitting room off the foyer overlooks the street while a larger living room at the rear of the residence benefits from a more serene garden view and an exquisite all-oak coffered ceiling that's original to the house. Mister Sanborn reportedly used the wee library beyond the living room as a meditation lounge.

The garden level kitchen has both wide-plank wood and stone tile flooring plus custom-crafted Shaker-style cabinets, some sort of stone or solid surface counter tops, a large center island with vegetable sink and snack counter, and high-quality commercial-style appliances. An adjoining breakfast room connects through to a 35-foot deep walled garden with foliage-ringed brick dining terrace. Also on the garden level are second, under the stoop entrance, a guest or staff bedroom that does not have a private bathroom and instead makes use of a nearby three-quarter hall bathroom off the laundry room. There's a full basement, which is fantastic for storage, but the floor plan shows it has but a 6'4" high ceiling height so it's not exactly the best spot for the next wildly wealthy owners to add a media room or fitness studio.

Two equally sized guest/family bedrooms on the third floor share a Jack 'n' Jill style bathroom. One of the bedrooms—listing photographs indicate Mister Sanborn uses it as a den—has a pocket door that slides open to reveal a cozy office/study. Both of the bedrooms have a shockingly stingy amount of closet space that would be barely adequate for weekend guests—never make 'em too comfortable, right?—but an out and out toy and clothing storage nightmare for a resident child or teenager. Think, puppies, about how many pairs of shoes and designer sunglasses a 16 year old New Yorker with wickedly rich parents is likely to have.

The master suite, a proper retreat the encompasses the entire fourth floor, has a comfortably-sized bedroom with a fireplace and direct access to a small, private terrace that peers through the trees over the the surrounding buildings' storage unit-sized backyards. A well-equipped (and windowless) galley-style bathroom connects the bedroom to an enviably spacious dressing room lined with built-in wardrobes.

Mister Sanborn old the peeps at the Daily News he'd recorded half a dozen albums in the 52-foot long, open-plan penthouse level recording studio that's painstakingly soundproofed so as not to disturb the neighbors. He said, in fact, that fire crackers we're set off in the space to test the heavy duty soundproofing. One end of the loft-like space has a fireplace and lounge area while the other has a jumbled plethora of musical instruments beneath a massive sky light. A half bathroom is convenient if not exactly as private as Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter might prefer.

Mister and Missus Sanborn plan to maintain a (smaller) residence in Manhattan but, according to the Daily News  are also shopping for a house in the country.

*Listing information from 2010-11 show the townhouse has about 6,800 square feet, the Tax Man's records put it at 5,529 square feet and Your Mama calculates it comes in at around 4,700 square feet, give or take a couple hundred square feet. 

listing photos and floor plan: Core

Reality Producer Buys House From Arty Farty Entrepreneur

SELLERS: Julie Hermelin and Mitchell Frank
BUYERS: Martin and Elizabeth (Morehead) Hilton
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
SIZE: 3,805 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms
PRICE: $2,750,000

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Bear with us celebrity real estate aficionados while we veer a wee bit off the "celebrity" real estate monotrack today. Rather than (diss and) discuss the high-wattage real estate antics of, say, a superstar Hollywood high roller like Jennifer Aniston who reportedly upgraded the existing chicken coop on her completely overhauled $21 million dollar estate in Bel Air, Your Mama decided to have a look-see at a well-maintained gated micro-compound in Los Angeles's Los Feliz area recently sold by a couple of card carrying members of L.A.'s arty-farty east side cultural demimonde—that would be Julie Hermelin and Frank Mitchell—and purchased by Martin Hilton—an executive producer of several seriously successful reality television programs—and his occasional actress wife, Elizabeth Morehead.

Among other endeavors Miz Hermelin currently bills herself as the founder of The Friendex and a co-creator of the web-based mommy experience forum/series Jen&BarbMomLife as well as an investor/advisor for The Mother Company, another online portal for mommies to revel and wallow with other mommies in the trials and tribulations of Mommydom. During the first decade of the Aughts Miz Hermelin produced eight episodes of the z-list celebrity reality program The Surreal Life and wrote, directed and produced a short film called Final Sale. She probably did other stuff in the early 2000s too but that's what we got. Anyways, Miz Hermelin's urban hipster bona fides actually date back to the mid 1980s through about the late 1990s when she was a busy director of music videos for a platinum-plated list of underworld/alternative oriented musicians and bands such as Moby, Machines of Loving Grace, Luscious Jackson, Ben Folds Five, The Golden Palominos* and the ever so naughty early 90s club world cult favorite Ethyl Meatplow.

Mister Frank's name may mean nothing to a Platinum Triangle prince or princess who seldom ventures east of West Hollywood but, make no mistake, children, in rapidly gentrifying communities of Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Echo Park and Eagle Rock (and beyond) he is a curtsy-worthy elder statesman of L.A.'s ever more mainstream east side music scene. In 1995 Mister Frank opened the venerable and venerated Spaceland nightclub music venue on on Silver Lake Boulevard where the opening night acts included The Foo Fighters and Beck. Closed in late 2010 the space continues as an indie music venue called The Satellite. Ten or so years ago Mister Frank (and a business partner) opened the now also venerable and venerated Echo and Echoplex live music venues in Silver Lake's grittier next door neighbor Echo Park. In more recent years Mister Frank opened the boutique-sized late-70s Fern Bar-ish El Prado beer and wine bar on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park as well as the always crowded Mexican eatery Malo in Silver Lake and its recently opened 1980s-chic sister establishment, Más Malo, in the heart of downtown L.A.'s rapidly emerging restaurant scene.

Mister Hilton—no relation to Rick and Paris that we know of—helped to pioneer the heart breakingly Hallmark-ian love and dating genre of the reality television craze when, in 2003, he signed on to (executive) produce The Bachelor. Additional reality t.v. credits include a number of other mostly dating oriented reality programs such as The Cougar, Leave It to Lamas, High School Reunion, and Bachelor Pad. He currently serves as an executive producer for The Bachelorette. Missus Hilton (née Morehead) never quite got a solid toe hold on Tinseltown fame but she has had minor roles in a slew of programs that include Seinfeld, ER, The Practice, NCIS, and Judging Amy. Last year she popped up in the little seen or heard of feature-length film Lionhead.

Okay, now that we know who the players are, let's (finally) get to the house in question, a fully renovated and modern minded 1922 Mediterranean that the Hermelin-Franks sold in late May (2013) to the Morehead-Hiltons for $2,750,000. Online resources show the house was in mid-April (2013) for $2,585,000 and within two weeks the property was put into escrow. The $2,750,000 sale price indicates there was stiff competition for the property that drove the Hilton's final sale price to a gob smacking $165,000 over ask.

Property records show Mister Frank and Miz Hermelin purchased the .34 acre property in October 2004 for $1,832,000 and digital listing details from the time of the most recent sale show there are four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms in 3,805 square feet of extensively renovated interior space. An additional 750-some square feet of living space is contained in a detached structure at the rear of the property—originally a two-car garage—with a game room/art studio/office space/whatever and an adjoining but separate guest suite that overlooks the three shaded lagoon-style swimming pool and spa.**

The front door, set into a shallow archway in the front facade, opens into a roomy center hall foyer with lustrous oak floors, a touch of rich wood paneling, and a powder pooper for guests semi-privately stashed under a right-angle staircase that's softly sun splashed by a vintage stained glass sky light. French doors on the left connect through to a library or possible formal dining room and, on the right, a triple wide door way leads into the unexpectedly open—if somewhat low-ceilinged—open concept living space that wraps tightly in a U-shape around the backside of the foyer and staircase.

The living room, with two separate seating groups and a fireplace, makes a clean sweep from a row of French doors at the front of the house to a trio of pivoting glass doors at the rear. The adjoining "formal" dining area, plenty large enough to comfortably seat 8 or 10 people for casual and/or formal meals, has one entire wall of maritime-y, floor-to-ceiling glass fronted china and curio storage cabinets and a parallel wall of solid glass. Or maybe there are Fleetwood-type sliding glass panels that disappear into the wall? We can't tell. Can you?

There's no barrier between the "formal" dining room and the organically contemporary, state-of-the-art interpretation of a farmhouse-style kitchen that's outfitted with quirky robin's egg blue flat-fronted cabinetry and a chunky, slab marble-topped walnut (or teak or something) center island. The top-quality stainless steel appliances include a built-in espresso machine and a $16,000 fridge/freezer that Your Mama covets in a Biblically forbidden fashion. A built-in dining banquette and vitrine-like ceiling-mounted glass cabinet breezily divide the kitchen from a compact family room/t.v. lounge floridly dressed with serpentine floral wallpaper. The more spatially minded children may have already noted that the family room connects through to the aforementioned library (or possible formal dining room), a fortuitous linkage that allows for a circular, Feng Shui friendly traffic pattern of the lower level living spaces.

All the bedrooms ring the dramatically sky-lit and hardwood floored upper hall. In the master bedroom the the ceiling is vaulted, French doors provide easy, step out access to a pair of tiled terraces with views over the tree-ringed backyard, and the bedroom-sized walk-in closet has a small sky light and a large central dresser peninsula. The adjoining private master bathroom is decked out with streamlined cabinetry hand-crafted of walnut or teak or some other quasi exotic wood and over-scaled white subway tile laid on the floor and up the parts of the walls that are mirrored or hidden by cabinetry. Next to that large, oval soaking tub there's a separate, glassed-in bench- and steam-equipped shower that's plenty large enough for two or—in a sexy squeeze—three. At least two of the other bathrooms are updated and upgraded in a similar if more colorful, clean-lined manner.

The "formal" living and dining areas as well as the kitchen open to a tiled wrought iron railed dining and lounging terrace that steps down to a patch of grass that slopes gently down to a multi-level free-form flagstone terrace that amorphously girdles an amoebic, lagoon-style swimming pool and spa. The back of the property, a densely foliaged up up slope, backs up to the historic and gated Laughlin Park enclave where some of the high profile home owners include Kristen Stewart, Natalie Portman, Natasha Bedingfield, Ellen Pompeo, will.i.am, David Fincher, Casey Affleck and Summer Phoenix, and Jenna and Bodhi Elfman.

We're not sure to where Mister Frank and Miz Hermelin have decamped but a quick search of property records reveals Mister and Missus Hilton still own a much more modest, 1922 traditional residence in the historic but little lauded Wilshire Park area of Los Angeles—about 4 miles directly south from their new house—that they picked up in October 1999 for $330,000.

*Unfortunately Your Mama could not locate the official, Julie Hermelin directed video for Little Suicides so instead we linked to a December 2012 live performance of the ditty by The Golden Palominos featuring singer-songwriter Lori Carson.

**It is not clear to Your Mama if the detached structure by the pool has a bathroom but it would sure be luxuriously convenient if it did because it just seems rude to ask an over nighting house guest to hike back up to the main house in the middle of the night to use the crapper or have a glass of water, no?

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty

Billionaire Jeff Greene Still Trying to Unload in Malibu

SELLER: Jeff Greene and Mei-Sze Chan
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $12,500,000
SIZE: 4,110 square feet, four bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Palm Beach-based multi-billionaire Jeff Greene, in case you somehow don't know, is a successful property developer now in his late fifties who smartly bet against the sub-prime mortgage market and laughed all the way to the bank when the real estate bubble burst in a blizzard of foreclosures and quickly constricting property values in 2007. Like all good and profligate (overnight) billionaires Mister Greene owns a hefty handful of high maintenance residences in some of the better and more expensive zip codes on both the east and left coasts of the United States. In Malibu, Mister (and Missus) Green have long-owned a custom-built ocean front home that has been for sale for just about for-evuh and is currently up for grabs with a $12,500,000 price tag.

The Mister Greene acquired the ocean front property for $5.5 million in May, 2007, a few months before his camp-glammy one million dollar Beverly Hills wedding—Mike Tyson was the best man fer chrissakes!—to the two decades younger former real estate entrepreneur Mei-Sze Chan. The property was purchased, as per property records, from a trust connected to fashion designer Perry Ellis's handbag designer daughter Tyler Alexandra Ellis who also—dontcha know?—also owned the gigantic, cutting edge contemporary house next door until she sold it in 2007 to a Beverly Hills-based real estate investor. Anyways...

Current listing information indicates the muscular, three-story glass, concrete, and wood clad residence was built in 2010 with four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms in 4,110 square feet of expensively finished interior space. That would indicate that when Mister Greene added the property to his portfolio either it was essentially undeveloped or he substantially altered (or obliterated) whatever house was there to make way for the one that's for sale today.

There are medium brown hardwood floors throughout the multi-purpose, mid-level main living area, an open concept space outfitted with a fireplace surmounted by a flat-screen television in the living room and lots of ashy brown Armani Casa-esque cabinetry in the kitchen and dining area. Several floor-to-ceiling green-tinted sliding glass doors slip open to a slender, glass-railed terrace that hovers over a sensationally pricey strip of sand that—as appears in easily accessible digital aerial images—all but disappears at high-tide.

Three guest bedrooms on the lowest level each have private bathrooms and green-glass sliding doors that let out to a second, also very thin terrace that also hangs over the sand and surf. The top floor master suite has some sort of marble or Tavertine tile floor material, high ceilings, a fireplace, and an attached bathroom. There's floating double sink vanity, a soaking tub is set into an over-sized marble (or Travertine) platform next door to a separate glassed-in shower with a knock-out ocean views through a knee-to-ceiling window.

The master bedroom gives way through more green glass sliders to the largest of the homes' three ocean side terraces with panoramic, ocean liner-like views over the roiling and typically frigid Pacific. Now children, naturally Your Mama loves us a big ol' roof top terrace in a surf-side house. Who doesn't? Howevuh, hunties, let's talk the T here. Is there a person among the children who, like Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter, don't find it more than a little—uhm—unfortunate that the largest terrace, the one residents and guests would be most inclined to use precisely because of its commodiousness, requires a far too intimate for traipse through the master bedroom?* Oh, hayell no! Not for twelve and some million clams, thank you very much.

This is hardly Mister Greene first time on the real estate hobby horse with this house. In fact, Your Mama's brief and unscientific research shows the property has been on and off the market more than half a dozen times since November 2008 and a variety of prices. Although Mister Greene would, it seems, like to sell his long unwanted—or,at least, long un-needed—Malibu beach house, digital marketing materials indicate Mister Moneybags would also be open to lease it fully furnished short term at $49,000 per month or for one or more years at $29,000 per month.

Even when Mister Greene manages to finally unload his albatross in Malibu his property portfolio will still qualify him as a Class-A real estate baller. His other west coast outpost is Palazzo de Amore, an extravagantly immodest 27-ish acre estate above Coldwater Canyon in Beverly Hills (CA) where Mister Greene married the current and first Missus Greene. Mister Greene purchased the unfinished property out of foreclosure in early 2007 for about $35,000,000 and reportedly spent $15 million more finishing the main mega-mansion and the various accessory structures. Based on previous reports and listings for the property the compound has a quarter mile long gated driveway, a 43,000 (or so) square foot Mediterranean-style main mansion with 11 bedrooms, 14 bathrooms, and a 6,000 square foot ballroom. Substantial outbuildings include a 12,000 square foot pool house/entertaining pavilion, an 8,000 square foot guest house, and a 24 car garage with—so the stories go—a revolving dance floor on which their wedding guests danced the night away.

In 2009 Mister Greene made Palazzo de Amore available for least at a sphincter tightening $250,000 a month. The resort-style estate is currently available for lease at a discounted $195,000 per month and last year Your Mama heard through the Platinum Triangle property gossip grapevine that Mister Greene was prepared to list the house with tongue numbing $150,000,000 asking price. As of today, the house has not popped up for sale on the MLS at any price, let alone 150 million clams, but would anyone be at all surprised to learn that British Formula Racing heiress and hardcore real estate baller Tamara Ecclestone had a look see around the palatial property? No, Your Mama wouldn't faint with flabbergast either. Anyhoo...

Mister and Missus Greene's private residential holdings also include: La Bellucia, a 12,000 square foot Addison Mizner designed mansion on 2.8 super-prime ocean front acres in Palm Beach (FL) that he/they bought in April 2011 for $24,000,000 as well as a 55-acre spread known as Tyndal Point near Sag Harbor in the Hamptons (NY) that he/they picked up a few months later for $36,000,000.

In April 2011 Mister Greene paid $26,270,000 for an historic, six story cast iron building in New York City's Soho 'hood. Your Mama found evidence online that Mister Greene seeks to re-zone the upper five floors to multi-unit residential use and add a nearly 1,900 square foot penthouse lounge on the roof that's only accessible by way of the sixth floor unit and will give way to a roof terrace equipped with a private roof-top swimming pool and spa. That's right, a private roof tops swimming pool and spa in the very heart of SoHo. Imagine that... And, of course, we mustn't forget the illustrious Seawind, Mister Greene's nearly 150-foot long and internationally (in)famous boat.

*In all honesty, Your Mama isn't completely sure there one must cross through the master bedroom and/or bathroom to access the top floor terrace. It very well could be there's a more privacy promoting public access from an upper floor stair landing or some other such traffic pattern solution.

listing photos: Berlyn Photography for Coldwell Banker Previews International

Miscellaneous Monday Morsels

As first reported by celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ Singer Billy Joel has quietly sold his nearly 9,000 square foot Mediterranean Revival style mansion on Miami Beach's swanky La Gorce Island for just under $14,000,000 to Italian billionaire shoe and handbag honcho Diego Della Valle who founded and still owns a controlling interest in the Italian luxury leather goods brand Tods.

listing photo: One Sotheby's International Realty

The long legged blond property gossip at Trulia Luxe Living revealed today that Kristen Stewart's mid-divorce mom, Jules, shelled out $999,000 for a ho-hum house in Sherman Oaks, CA.

listing photo: MLS via Trulia Luxe Living


We first heard it from the beaver busy kids at Curbed that limousine mogul turned restaurateur turned restaurant designer Nico Santucci has hung a publicity ensuring—and quite probably rose tinted—$5,250,000 price tag on Las Vegas's so-called Parisian Palace, a grotesquely meretricious mansion of dubious architectural distinction about five miles off The Strip that he rents out as a party space. Somehow Your Mama thinks Parisians will take justifiable umbrage at Mister Santucci calling the place the Parisian Palace.

listing photos: Rodney Marullo via YouTube

Several weeks ago Your Mama let the celebrity real estate cat out of the bag about blunt-tongued t.v. judge Judy Sheindlin snatching up a $10.7 million pied-a-terre at the super plush Montage in Beverly Hills and now comes word via the New York Observer that the gavel thumper has sold her two bedroom pied-a-terre at the high fallutin' Sherry Netherland Hotel in New York City for $8.5 million.

floor plan: Corcoran

As first reported by the folks at The Real Deal, ultra high end property developer Christian Candy paid $25.4 million for a 6,300+ square foot triplex apartment at The Plaza in New York City that he did over in signature haute-luxe Candy and Candy style and flipped back on the the open market last week with a stomach churning $59,000,000 price tag...furnishings included.

listing photos and floor plan: Brown Harris Stevens

Your Mama Hears...

...from a well-connected informant we'll call Charlene Chatterbox that on-again/off-again chat show hostess Rosie O'Donnell has sold her waterfront mansion on Miami Beach's Star Island for $12,675,000 million to an unknown buyer.*

Property records Your Mama peeped reveal the comedienne and actress (Web Therapy, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Drop Dead Diva) bought the acre-plus property in March 1999 for $6,750,000. Your Mama (dissed and) discussed the deluxe domicile when Miz O'Donnell first put the posh pad on the (open) market in March 2012 with a $19,500,000 price tag. In March 2013 the price was cut to $17,500,000.

Listing details show the two-story mansion was originally built in 1923 and current listing information shows there are a total of 12 bedrooms and 11.5 bathrooms between the 11,104 square foot main house and two separate and private guest houses.

Listing photographs show a full grown adult-sized, taxidermy hammerhead shark hung ominously on the wall above the staircase in the double height foyer. There are also formal living and dining rooms, a den/library/office, media room, and a well-equipped, two-island kitchen that's open to a family room and informal dining area with a huge built-in fish tank. The second floor bedrooms include what listing details describe as a "vast master suite" with sitting room, fireplace, private office, and direct access to a large terrace that overlooks the water.

At the front there's a massive red brick motor court shaded by a massive mangrove tree at its center. At least we think it's a mangrove. Anyways, at the back of the house there's extensive tropical landscaping, a swimming pool, and 203 feet of water frontage with private boat dock.

Other high profile residents/home owners on Star Island include seven-time Grammy winning singer Gloria Estafan, Puff Diddle—or Diddle Fiddle or whatever Sean Combs calls himself nowadays, and hunky Russian billionaire Vladislav Doronin who bought his nearly 20,000 square foot Star Island mansion from retired professional basketballer Shaquille O'Neal for $16 million in 2009. Mister Doronin—so the scuttlebutt goes—recently traded famously volatile 43-year old supermodel Naomi Campbell in for a much younger, 25-year old up-and-coming model who—as it turns out—was mentored by Miz Campbell on the first season of the model search reality show The Face. Oh what a tangled romantic web he weaves. But that's really another story for another time and place.

In May 2011, Real Housewives of Miami's Lea Black, married to illustrious Miami-based criminal defense attorney Roy Black, paid $7,107,500—in cash—for a 9 bedroom and 9 bathroom Star Island fixer upper. Last fall (2012), in confusing bankruptcy and foreclosure situation, prominent plastic surgeon Lenny Hochstein and his lavishly plastified wife, Lisa—also a Real Housewives of Miami cast member—acquired a storied Star Island house that's immediately next door to Miz O'Donnell's. The Hochsteins say the mansion has a multitude of crippling issues includes a faulty foundation and would like to tear down and replace the existing house but they face a whole lot of opposition by preservation minded folks who would prefer they restore the existing house rather than tear it down. If we were the betting type—and we're not—we'd put all our dinero on the Hochsteins being granted permission to knock the beotch down. But that too is really another story for another time and place.

Miz O'Donnell's property portfolio includes a 1,391 square foot condo in Midtown Manhattan's Hells Kitchen area that she bought in October 2008 for $2,005,000 and a multi-acre Hudson River-front compound in Nyack, NY that has at least five separate residences and cost her a total of $8,605,000, according to property records and other online resources.

*For the record, as of this morning most online listings show Miz O'Donnell's Miami Beach spread is still available at  $17.5 million and Your Mama did not find any record of a recent transfer of ownership so that means this is all, technically, just a bit o' celebrity real estate rumor and gossip.

listing photos: One Sotheby's International Realty

Micheala McManus Lists Bantam Bungalow

SELLERS: Michaela McManus and Mike Daniels
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $849,000
SIZE: 1,315 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Every now and then Your Mama unexpectedly comes across a humbly-sized house in Los Angeles that, as it turns out, is owned by a celebrity, a demi-celebrity, or a "celebrity." Such was the case this week when we stumbled upon a colorful and stylishly quirky 1930s bungalow in L.A.'s hip and trendy Los Feliz area that popped up for sale this week with an $849,000 asking price and is owned, as per property records, by up-and-coming actress Michaela McManus and her up-and-coming writer/producer hubby Mike Daniels.

Miz McManus and Mister Daniels—married in July 2011—aren't Tinseltown superstars in the vein of, say, Tom Cruise or Jennifer Aniston but over the last four or five years they've steadily climbed the often treacherous and sometimes soul crushing Showbiz ladder of fame. Miz McManus has had substantial roles in a handful of top-rated prime time shows including One Tree Hill, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and The Vampire Diaries. She currently shakes her well-formed money maker on a recently picked up program called The Last Ship, a post-apocalypse type drama with Adam Baldwin and Eric Dane. Mister Daniels' short list of high-profile credits include One Tree Hill, The Vampire Diaries, Pan Am, and the acclaimed dark drama Sons of Anarchy.

Property records show the couple purchased the petite pad in July 2010 for $780,000. Current listing details show the dark taupe stucco residence, conveniently located a few blocks off the Vermont and Hillcrest Avenue shopping and dining districts, was built in 1937 and has just two bedrooms in an apartment-sized 1,315 square feet. Charming if not exactly luxurious as this itty bitty bungalow may be with just one bathroom it is clearly not an acceptable situation for a couple of any persuasion who prefer to steer clear of each others toileting habits and issues.

Online marketing materials show the current owners—that would be Miz McManus and Mister Daniels—made numerous updates and improvements over the last three years. The kitchen underwent an cosmetic face lift, including new paint, new hardware and—we regret to inform—a new pot rack hung in front of the window.* A quick comparison to listing photos from the time the couple purchased the property suggests the pint-sized old bathtub appears to Your Mama to still be in residence in the lone bathroom that was otherwise done over just about soup to nuts with new plumbing, electric and tile work. The chimney was entirely overhauled, according to listing information, and the salt water swimming pool heater was replaced with one described as "high end."

A high hedge partially obscures the view from the sidewalk up to the compact covered porch where a baby blue door opens into a puny but proper entry hall. The children will note that Mister Daniels and Miz McManus have, Martha Stewart-like, stenciled the word "hello" over the doorway between the foyer and the living room. It's a bit too cute for Your Mama's particular decorative palette but it's, you know, cute. Medium brown hardwood floors and white-white walls highlight the vaulted ceiling, glossy black fireplace surround and provide a neutral backdrop for the mid century modern-edged mash up of clean lined contemporary and visibly worn vintage furnishings.

The next door dining room isn't particularly large but it certainly packs a giant visual wallop with an over-scaled, in-your-face mustard and ivory colored flower pattern wallpaper set off against gun metal gray walls. The graphic fantasia continues with a dark blue and white, diamond pattern rug and, on either side of the doorway to the kitchen, dozens of framed snapshots hung in a fetchingly cacophonous salon style. Based on intel harvested from a quick spin through Mister Daniels' Twitter Your Mama guesses the sextet of spindle-back chairs were more than likely hand-crafted by fifth generation furniture maker Geoffrey Keating and—in all seriousness—we covet them like no body's bizness. Those, children, are timeless heirlooms in the making. Anyways...

Beyond the dining room, the updated (could be an eat-in) kitchen has boring beige tile floors, crisp white cabinetry, common flecked gray granite counter tops, medium grade stainless steel appliances, and that aforementioned pot rack. The children will note the adjoining but separate laundry room, an out and out luxury in a house of this size.

There's only one bathroom between the two bedrooms so we're not sure how exactly one decides which to utilize as the master bedroom. One bedroom—the one used by Mister Daniels and Miz McManus as their master—has windows on two walls for breezy cross ventilation and paned glass door that connects to the spacious deck that runs along the back of the house. The second bedroom doesn't appear to be any larger than the master but it also has direct access the backyard plus a separate study/office nook. The only bathroom has vintage style tiles on the floor and gray-grouted subway tile behind the single-sink vanity, around the tub, and in the separate glassed-in shower stall.

The super-sized deck at the back of the house—accessible from both bedrooms as well as through the laundry room—gives way to a narrow strip of lawn anchored on either end by (what may or may not be) a couple of fruit trees. A slightly elevated concrete plinth pretty much stretches the full width of the lot with a small sunbathing terrace, a plunge-sized swimming pool with an inset spa.

Listing details indicate there is about 1,000 square feet of dry, concrete lined storage space beneath the house where there is also a street-facing two car garage.

Your Mama has no inside intel on where Miz McManus and Mister Daniels might move once they sell their bantam bungalow in Los Feliz but we'd fall over with flabbergast if they didn't decamp to a bigger and more expensive residence that's more reflective of their rising success.

*All the children know that Rule #7 in Your Mama's Big Book of Decoratin' Do's and Don'ts vehemently declares—and we paraphrase—that pot racks are entirely undesirable kitchen accoutrement due to their gleeful dust collection, propensity to snag and grab teased up weaves, and their occasional malicious intent to drop a copper pot on an unsuspecting pooch's tender cranium. In the case of pot racks, anyways, Your Mama whole heartedly agrees with former first lady Nancy Reagan and urges each and every one of the children to "Just Say No!"

listing photos: Val Riolo for Keller Williams

Oprah Bought (Somebody) a House in Nashville.

BUYER: Oprah Winfrey
LOCATION: Nashville, TN
PRICE: $299,0900
SIZE: 3,045 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama heard word from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial that, last November (2012), epically powerful cross-platform media maven Oprah Winfrey—through a trust every property gossip on the globe understands to be linked to her—quietly coughed up $299,900 for a well-maintained if perfectly ordinary suburban home in a well-kept if architecturally homogenous development about 7.5 miles from miles northwest of The Main Library in downtown Nashville, TN.

No, puppies, Miz Winfrey did not buy this ho-hum house for herself. At least Your Mama can't fathom she purchased it for herself because this place is a little—uh—middle class compared to how Miz Winfrey rolls when it comes to her personal residences.

The self-made multi-billionaire may have come from severely restricted economic circumstances but, as anybody who's ever picked up a gossip glossy knows, nowadays the lady lives as high on the hog as a person can live. She is, to be sure, a real estate baller of the highest order and she most certainly lives in a money-is-no-object manner commensurate with her nearly three billion dollar-plus fortune. (More about her major real estate holdings in minute.)

Your Mama don't know a camel from a canoe, of course, but we have to presume Miz Winfrey purchased the suburban property for a friend, a staff worker or, most likely, a relative. It could be for her father, long time Nashville resident Vernon Winfrey, or it might just be for Vernon's soon-to-be ex-wife Barbara Winfrey, the two of whom have been engaged in a messy and public divorce that involves scandalous allegations infidelity and attempted murder.

Whatever the case, Miz Winfrey's fat property portfolio now includes a fairly modest house in Northwest Nashville that listing details Your Mama scared up out of the interweb show was built in 2006 on a .27 acre lot that backs up to an undeveloped forested open space. The 3,054 square foot brick-built two-story—uh—transitional-style** residence has four bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms according to marketing materials.

A pair of arches separate the central foyer and stair hall from the intimately scaled "formal" dining room. Both the dining room and the foyer open to a living room at the back of the house that has wood floors and a (gas) fireplace surmounted by a flat-screen t.v. and flanked by built-in book cases. Either French or sliding doors—we're not sure which—allow for direct access to the backyard from the living room. The tile floored eat-in kitchen with step-in pantry adjoins the living room and is outfitted with hickory (or hickory-toned) raised panel cabinets, black granite counter tops, and medium grade stainless steel appliances.

The main floor master suite opens directly off the living room and includes a 22-foot long bedroom with a wide bay window, a high tray ceiling, and wall-to-wall carpeting the color of wet sand. The attached bathroom has more raised panel cabinetry topped with some sort of inexpensive looking solid surface material, two sinks, a make-up vanity, and a separate tub and stall shower. In addition to the two upstairs bedrooms that share a single hall bath, there's a decent size den/lounge on the upper floor with angled ceiling, wall to wall carpeting, and a Palladian-esque window.

The backyard isn't particularly big and it lacks any landscaping besides an essentially flat lawn. Although it's private at the rear as it backs up to a dense forested space, the backyard lacks any privacy from the sides where the iron fence shown in listing photos might keep Fido from escaping but it certainly won't stop the neighbors from gawking when The Big O swings by for some sweet tea on the patio.

Miz Winfrey has owned a slew of luxury properties from coast to coast and in many places in between but her primary residential real estate holdings currently include a multi-unit duplex penthouse atop Water Tower Place in Chicago (IL), a 23,000+ square foot mansion on 40+ landscaped acres in Montecito (CA), and a large and growing swathe of farmland near Kula in on the Hawaiian island of Maui.***, ****

By our last calculation of Miz Winfrey's Hawaiian holdings—in June 2012—she then owned more than thirty separate (and not all contiguous) rural parcels that combined encompass nearly 800 acres. She'd shelled out, according to property records and Your Mama's bejeweled abacus, well over $40 million and perhaps as much as sixty million for her sprawling Hawaiian hideaway that has more houses and farm buildings than Your Mama has fingers and toes.

Your Mama can't confirm it but late last year (2012) we heard word from a usually quite reliable source who snitched that Miz Winfrey (allegedly) dropped eight figures on a macmansion sized pied a terre apartment at the high-fallutin' Montage hotel and residences in downtown Beverly Hills, the same exclusive complex where East Coast-based Judge Judy Sheindlin recently dropped $11.7 million for a posh pied a terre of her own.

*There are multiple reports on the internets that Papa and Step Momma Winfrey's LaurelBrooke home was sold but none o' the property record databases Your Mama peeped yet reflect a recent transfer of ownership. Make of that what you will.

**We use the vague term "transitional-style" to describe an otherwise undistinguished and/or indistinguishable architectural vernacular.

***Miz Winfrey recently did a photo shoot—for her essentially eponymous lifestyle magazine O, natch—on her working Hawaiian farm. For one of the photos she donned a wide-brimmed straw hat and pushed a wheelbarrow laden with luscious, leafy greens. Your Mama laughed a day over that nonsense. How often, hunties, do we think Miz Winfrey actually pushes around a damn wheelbarrow laden with a whole bunch of leafy greens? Pleeze.

****Back in 2006 Miz Winfrey had the O photographers over to Hawaii to snap perfectly posed pictures of one of the many residences on the farm for the Summer 2006 issue.

listing photos: Realty Trust Residential