R&B Artist R. Kelly Lists Suburban Chicago Mansion

SELLER: R. Kelly
LOCATION: Olympia Fields, IL
PRICE: $1,595,000
SIZE: 22,000 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 8 full and 6 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Word slipped down the Chicago celebrity real estate gossip grapevine this week that native Chicagoan singer/songwriter R. Kelly–née Robert Sylvester Kelly–has officially placed his mega-mansion in suburban Olympia Fields, IL on the market as a short sale with an asking price of $1,595,000.

Our brief and entirely unscientific research on the interweb informs us that Mister Kelly has a number of notable professional accomplishments that include three Grammy awards. He has also written and/or remixed songs for a long list of music industry superstars such as Luthor Vandross, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Michael Jackson, Usher, Mary J. Blige and the Jennifers Hudson and Lopez. However, iffin Your Mama is being honest–and we always are–we'd confess to the children that we wouldn't know an R. Kelly ditty if it chewed the leg from our body and, in fact, before this morning just about the only thing we previously knew of Mister Kelly is that some years ago he was indicted on a slew of lurid charges related to a video tape that (allegedly) showed him as he fornicated with and peed on a minor female. Mister Kelly declared his innocence, the young female came out and said the activities were consensual, the case eventually went to trial, and in June 2008 a jury determined Mister Kelly was not guilty on all 14 counts. Case closed.

Anyhoo, the affluent Olympia Fields community sits about 45 minutes by car due south of downtown Chicago and a short sale, for any real estate neophytes who somehow don't already know, means Mister Kelly owes more on the property than it's currently worth.

Although Mister Kelly only recently put his big ol' crib on the market he did not just get on this-here real estate merry-go-round. Over the summer (2011) it was revealed a lender initiated foreclosure proceedings after Mister Kelly stopped making payments on a $2,900,000 mortgage he secured with his celebrity-style estate. At the time Mister Kelly it was reported the entertainer's failure to make mortgage payments was likely an executed strategy designed to induce the lender to renegotiate the loan. We're not sure if the strategy worked but as far as we can tell Mister Kelly still holds the deed on the property, which indicates the foreclosure was not finalized.

Property records and previous reports on the matter indicate Mister Kelly purchased the property in 1997 and custom-built (or custom-finished) the architecturally uncatagorizable stone, stucco and wood-accented mega-mansion. The approximately 22,000 square foot beast–the Cook County Assessor, for what it's worth, shows it as 11,140 square feet with a 2011 market value of $3,357,700–sits towards the back of six-ish fully-landscaped acres behind towering wrought iron and stone gates and 12-foot concrete-encased fencing.

Inside there are, as per listing information, all the expected formal and informal lounging and entertaining areas as well as 4 fireplaces, half a dozen bedrooms, and 8 full and 6 half bathrooms, a count that ensures Mister Kelly requires a full-time minimum wage crapper cleaner.

Listing photos that depict the mansion's vast innards are few (fuzzy and ill-framed) but we do catch a glimpse or two of a rather colossal kitchen complex with u-shaped center island/snack counter, top-grade commercial-style appliances, very ordinary beige tile floors and a soaring ceiling criss-crossed by heavy wood beams coarsely draped with hundreds if not thousands of twinkling white Christmas lights. Listing photos also show snippets of a wood-floored double-height family room with adjoining home theater space as well as a wee-looking wood-paneled room with fireplace which is probably the library but since we don't see any books (or bookshelves) we can't say for sure.

The humongous but otherwise stylistically ho-hum home's undisputed defining moment would surely be the truly troubling and  jungle-themed indoor swimming pool about which current listing agent told the Chicago Tribune, "It's not a pool room, it's a tropical experience." Bitch pleeze. What we have to say matters little–none really–but we think that indoor pool place looks like the gawdamn Pirates of Caribbean at Disneyfuckingland.

Contrary to probably popular opinion–and some of those theme-fiend designers and decorators on Extreme Home Makeover–themed day-core is almost without exception verboten in any home that aspires towards any level of sophistication or style. We are off the mind that far more often than not themed rooms destabilize delicate (and even not-so-delicate) decorative equilibriums and just plain ol' make (most) people feel light headed with awe, and not the good kind of awe. Indeed, Your Mama's Big Book of Decorating Dos and Donts addresses the issue emphatically in Rule Number 27 which reads in part, "No person of refinement and/or style shall ever ever EVER do up the day-core of any room in any house with any overt theme such as (but not limited to) Arabian Nights, Hello Kitty, Hee-Haw Hoe-Down and Sally Collects Seashells by the Seaside." We digress.

The landscaped estate backs up to the Olympia Fields Country Club and includes a gated circular drive with secondary motor court, acres of flat lawns dotted with mature shade trees, an outdoor tennis/basketball court with adjacent pavilion, a murky-looking private lake-pond equipped with a fountain shoots water into the air like it's Las Vegas, a detached multi-car garage, and a tented structure (of unknown purpose) surrounded by various entertainment terraces. At the front of the property, just inside the electronically operated wrought iron gates, a log-cabin style shed acts as a private security center for the property.

As far as we can tell from a rapid pass through a few property records databases Mister Kelly does not currently own any other private residences and we haven't any idea what Mister Kelly's real estate plans may be once he unloads his white elephant in Olympia Fields. At least one earlier report suggest Mister Kelly leases a high-floor spread at the Trump International Hotel & Tower in downtown Chicago.

listing photos: Century 21 Pro Team

Hollywood's Bronx-Born Brad Grey Buys Fancy Manhattan Co-op

BUYER: Brad and Cassandra Grey
SELLER: Peter M. Schoenfeld
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE $15,500,000
SIZE: (nearly) 3,000 square feet, 2-4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Recently we've found ourselves mostly stuck in Bev Hills and it's environs, the 'burbs, beach communities and other celebrity locales in and around Tinseltown. This past week or more of vast expanses of luxuriously watered lawns and endless ocean views have left Your Mama, like Billy Joel, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, in a(n Empire) New York state of mind where the extreme high end real estate market is alive and well and where Bronx-born West Coast-based entertainment über-executive Brad Grey recently scooped up a pricey and impossibly swank co-operative spread situated high in the tower of The Carlyle, an elegant and impossibly sophisticated hotel and residence complex just off Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Diminutive in stature, as the current, successful and fearsomely powerful CEO and Chairman of Paramount Pictures Mister Grey looms large in the Big Bizness of Show. In his current post he's overseen the development, production and financial successes of scads of television programs and movies that include The Sopranos, Real Time with Bill Maher, Just Shoot Me, and The Larry Sanders Show, the Transformers, Star Trek and Paranormal Activity film franchises, Shutter Island, No Country Fro Old Men, Up In The Air, and True Grit. In the early Noughts, with then-married superstars Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, Mister Grey founded Plan B Entertainment, a film production company with credits that include Running With Scissors (which was really a much better book than movie), The Departed, and, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Mister Pitt is now the sole owner of Plan B but has a release deal with, no surprise, Paramount Pictures.

Probably some of the recent buying and selling of high-priced properties (on both coasts) has to do with Mister Grey's recent divorce from long-time wife Jill Gutterson and his subsequent glitzy, star-studded wagon hitching ceremony in April of this year (2011) to a gal named Cassandra Huysentruyt, a wispy, unusually beautiful high-end vintage clothing boutique owner who appears to Your Mama's boozy eyes to be significantly (if not even remotely surprisingly) younger than Mister Grey. This is after all Hollywood where, let's break it down to brass tacks and be real folks, a successful entertainment executive's mid-life (crisis) pretty much a priori includes a lithe and notably younger second and/or third wife.

Let's begin with Mister (and New Missus) Grey's latest real estate acquisition, the aforementioned full-floor apartment The Carlyle that encompasses about 3,000 square feet with 2-4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, and 4 multi-million dollar exposures. Records show the apartment, originally listed for $17,500,000 by hedge fund honcho Peter Schoenfeld, was scooped up by Mister and New Missus Grey in mid-November 2011 for $15,500,000, as was first revealed a couple weeks ago in the Hollywood Reporter. Mister Schoenfeld and his wife Charlotte, it should be noted, only bought the 26th floor aerie in in January 2007 for $6,451,250. That means, as anyone with an abacus can see, lucky Mister and Missus Schoenfeld are sitting pretty on a nine-plus million clam profit less about 5 years of carrying costs, renovations, decorations and real estate fees.

Speaking of carrying costs, listing information for the 8-room simplex apartment shows monthly maintenance for Mister and New Missus Grey's New York crib runs–we suggest y'all sit and stiffen your spines with a swig of your favorite hooch–an illusion-shattering $37,945. No babies, we did not make a mistake nor did your eyes fail you. Mister Grey's monthlies at The Carlyle run, as per listing information, a spectacular $455,340 per year or, seen another way, $1,247 and fifty cents every damn day of the year not counting upkeep, improvements, and/or maintenance of whatever mortgage he may (or may not) have taken on the place.

Of course, services at The Carlyle are many and impeccable and include twice daily maid service, in-suite room service as well as in-hotel dining options, a deluxe spa and beauty center, private garage with valet parking, 24-hour anything-you-want-or-need concierge services, and extensive security systems and operations that allow pooh-bahs, pashas and potentates from around the globe to feel completely at ease when their wives or lady-friends check in (or move in) with a hand-crafted, locked valise that holds five or ten million in jewelry and other glittery spoils often amassed and toted around by finely pampered and exceedingly wealthy women or sometimes by less-financially independent women who attach themselves to very wealthy and often older men. Before you all get to hooting and hollering about that last statement we suggest y'all hold on Sally. Your Mama insinuates nothing, nada, zilch about the relationship and marital affairs of Mister and New Missus Grey. We assume–as we have no other reason not to and suggest you do the same–the newly wedded May-December duo are madly in love for all the right reasons and plan to spend the rest of their natural and post-natural lives making soft cooing noises while swaddled in each others tender, loving arms.

Anyhoo, whatever kind of conniptions, indignations and indigestions the sale price and monthly maintenance costs will certainly invoke in many, Mister and New Missus Grey's apartment at The Carlyle is really something to behold. This, children, is a plum example of one of the many high-priced real estate ways the very rich do it in New York City, enveloped in refined and sumptuous luxury with attentive white-glove services available at a moment's request, and knee-wobbling wrap-around views that include sunrises over the East River, Midtown's crush of twinkling city lights at night, and sunset views over Central Park.

Floor plans included with the original online listing show a private elevator landing opens into a vast entrance gallery that stretches 36-feet from end to end and is divided only by a chunky support column set smack in the not-quite-center of the room. It's an impressive and ambitious if somewhat superfluously huge space perfect for displaying artworks, doing group calisthenics or hosting a small cotillion.

A wide corridor extends off the gargantuan gallery, passes a sizable bedroom with en suite facility–used by the seller as a library/tee-vee lounge–and whisks quickly by a windowless guest pooper before it flowers open in to a commodious, 420-ish square foot corner living/dining room where horizontally-striped curtains make (maybe too-) busy frames for the over-sized windows that dip nearly to the floor and provide all but unobstructed views north and west over Central Park's pleasantly lumpy carpet of tree tops.

The adjacent kitchen is tiny even by the standards by of fifteen and some million dollar apartments in New York City but it is none-the-less well equipped and efficiently designed to include a full-suite of high-grade Euro-style appliances, sleek blue-grey cabinetry with wintery-white counter tops, and two stools for quick snacks in front of a pair of large windows with oblique park views. A potential bedroom/live-in domestic suite off the kitchen (also with access from the main bedroom corridor and marked "office" on the floor plan) has a private windowed bathroom and a stacked washer and dryer tucked into the closet.

The current layout of the apartment would allow for four complete bedrooms suites but was configured by the seller with just two proper bedrooms: a guest bedroom with walk-in closet and small windowed facility and a considerably larger 323-square foot master suite with eastern morning and southern city views, decent-sized but not particularly huge walk-in closet, and windowed bathroom with double sinks and built-in linen/toiletry cabinet.

Back on the west coast Mister Grey's real estate portfolio remains in a bit of flux. In November 2010 he acquired through a trust a magnificent if somewhat bedraggled hacienda-style Monterey Colonial mansion in the highest of Bel Air's high-holy real estate grounds. Property records show the 2.15 acre estate (above), once owned by Frank Sinatra and the childhood home of his fab daughter Nancy, was purchased for a hefty $18,500,000 and is surrounded by the sizable estates of Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman and couture collector Suzanne Saperstein who has had her hyper-opulent 35,000-plus square foot residential beast Fleur de Lys on the market with a bombastic asking price of $125,000,000 for, literally, years.

Although he never moved into the house it was here where in April of this year (2011) Mister Grey and Miss Huysentruyt hosted an elaborate multi-tented event during which they made their marital vows of chastity (and whatever) in the witness of God, government, family, friends and a small army of expensively attired a-list celebrities.

Mister Grey, in classic Hollywood style, soon caught a nasty case of The Real Estate Fickle and in September 2011–without, as far as we know making any significant improvements to the property–flipped the still-a-diamond-in-need-of-a-multi-million-dollar polish back on the market with a much higher price tag of $23,500,000.

Current listing information shows the 2-story mansion, built in 1936 around a massive, piazza-like brick motor court that gives way to a second rear motor court, measures in at a small for the neighborhood 8,631 square feet with 7 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, and at least 4 fireplaces.

In April 2009, about the time it became know a soon-to-be-divorced Mister Grey spent a considerable $22,000,000 to snatch up a newly built Colonial-style mansion in a swank section of Bel Air, next door to Nic Cage's old spread and across the street from Rick and Kathy Hilton's long-time west coast abode. As far as we know the house was never on the open market but the Los Angeles County Tax Man's records shows the black-shuttered L-shaped mansion measures 10,616 square feet with 4 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms.

For many years Mister Grey and First Missus Grey–who giddily signed their divorce papers with a happy face!–lived in a 13,143 square foot mansion in the ritzy Riviera area of the affluent coastal Los Angeles community of Pacific Palisades. In June 2009, shortly after all us property gossips prattled on about Mister Grey's new digs in Bel Air, he and First Missus Grey heaved and hoisted their hulking 7 bedroom and 12 bathroom family residence on the market with an equally hulking $29,900,000 asking price.

Property records are a bit vague and, in some cases, incomplete, but it appears to Your Mama that Mister and Ex-Missus Grey sold the property in August 2010 for a reported $21,500,000 to Christine and Jordan Kaplan, a well-compensated real estate industry executive who heads up a publicly traded company called Douglas Emmett, according to its website one the largest corporate owners of office buildings and multi-family housing communities in Los Angeles County.

Like many big-shit players at the top of the Hollywood heap, Mister Grey also owns and maintains an ocean front house on celebrity-lined Broad Beach in Malibu.

listing photos (New York City): Brown Harris Stevens via Curbed
listing photos (Los Angeles): Westside Estate Agency

Renée Zellweger Lists Connecticut Country Crib

SELLER: Renée Zellweger
LOCATION: Pomfret, CT
PRICE: $1,500,000
SIZE: 3,400 square feet (approximately, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: While snacking on some dry toast backed up with a stiff, mid-day gin & tonic pick-me-up Your Mama received an unexpected press release that announces Oscar-winning actress Renée Zellweger has listed her rural retreat in puny and purdy Pomfret, CT on the market with an asking price of $1,500,000.

Miz Zellweger has been a bright light in Tinseltown for quite some time and is best known perhaps for her roles in Cold Mountain, Jerry Maguire, Chicago, Nurse Betty and the Bridget Jones's Diary franchise and for her long list of high-profile man-friends and who include Jim Carrey, George Clooney, Jack White, Kenny Chesney–to whom she was married for about 8 minutes–Luke Perry, John Krasinski, André Balazs, Dan Abrams and, for about 2 years until their March 2011 bust up, Bradley Cooper who People magazine named as "The Sexiest Man Alive" for 2011.

Anyhoo, property records show the sinewy and squinty-eyed movie star procured her pastoral Pomfret property in November 2004 for $1,320,000. The press release we received reveals Miz Zellweger acquired the 39 acre farmlette, located in the northeastern corner of Connecticut about 3.5 hours by car from Midtown Manhattan, as a "vacation retreat." She renovated, updated and upgraded the property's primary structures, which include a vintage main house, separate guest house, and fully detached recreation barn while retaining respect and admiration for the age and integrity of the antique structures. The actress also spent handsomely on extensive landscaping improvement that include various gardens, terraces and dry-stone walls that look as if they pre-date the late-18th century spread.

The main house, a quirky and humble but dignified Federal-style Colonial built around 1770, measures around 3,400 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms that include a commodious (if casual) master suite with vaulted ceiling with heavy, exposed rough-hewn beams, private en suite facility on a dressing area with, as per press release, "an extensive suite of closets."

Visibly aged and pleasantly worn wide plank wood floors–either original or reclaimed–spread throughout the main lounging and entertaining areas that spoke off around the center stair hall and include a cozy formal living room with fireplace and an army of 9-over-9 pane sash windows, a formal dining room with fireplace and antique crystal chandelier, and a ebony-paneled library also with fireplace plus floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases.

A fourth fireplace–this one with brick fireplace original built-in bread oven–warms the family room/media room and the well-equipped (and surprisingly over-sized) and natural light bright kitchen has custom white-painted cabinetry, butcher-block counter tops, high-grade commercial-style appliances, a massive center island lorded over by a heavy-duty pot rack laden with a cacophony of pots and pans that could easy ensnare a bouffant hair do and/or mentally incapacitate an elderly person if it were to fall unexpectedly from the white-painted wood-paneled ceiling.

A sunny sun porch with pitched ceiling and original (or antique reclaimed) wide-plank wood floors looks out past the mature tree branches, through a mossy split-rail fence, down a gentle planted slope to a tree- and lawn-ringed amorphous swimming pool with wide flagstone coping.

A separate guest house has a living room, bedroom, kitchenette and full bath while an antique barn located across the large gravel motor court from the main house has been re-purposed into an airy entertainment pavilion with soaring exposed wood vaulted ceiling, hardwood floors, a old-timey (but probably new-fanged) wood stove and hefty, rough-hewn posts that anchor the massive antique timbers that cross the interior of the capacious space.

The high-profile but low-key Miz Zellweger has owned a number of other prominent properties that include a secluded ranch-style residence in the Hollywood Hills she bought in March 2000 for $1,875,000 from The Wallflowers front man Jakob Dylan and sold a few years later when she snatched up a 6,410 square foot mansion in a plum section of Los Angeles' hoity toity Bel Air 'hood that she owned only briefly and sold in July 2003 for $7,000,000 to Will & Grace alum Debra Messing. Most recently she sold a pair of rambling apartments–or a trio of contiguous units, depending on how one counts, that comprise about 5,000 square feet in a grand Beaux Arts townhouse building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for a combined $7,950,000.

As far as we know Miz Zellweger still owns a charming farmhouse in East Hampton, NY she acquired in April 2003 for $2,150,000. In early 2010 there were scads of rumors and reports Miz Zellweger and her then man-beau Bradley Cooper picked up a contemporary house in the Rustic Canyon area of Pacific Palisades but to be honest children, we don't know anything about this house at this point...meaning it's not clear if it was purchased by Miz Zellweger, Mister Cooper or if they bought it together, which we sort of doubt. We have no inside intel about whether or not Miz Zellweger plans to continue to lighten her real estate load or if she'll hang on to her house in the Hamptons.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker Previews International

UPDATE: Brad Pitt and Ellen Degeneres Rumors

As reported by those quick-witted kids over at Curbed, Brad Pitt's clifftop contemporary crib in Malibu, CA–listed at $13,750,000–was taken off the market last week. This could mean any number of things, natch.

It was only last week, the children may recall, Your Mama passed along the shouldn't-be-shocking celebrity real estate scuttlebutt that Mister Pitt was about to sell his sleek, single-story mid-century modern Malibu beach house to none other than Hollywood's most notoriously itchy-footed house hopper Ellen Degeneres and her wife Portia di Rossi.

Ann Brenoff, who spreads the juicy celebrity real estate butter for AOL/Huffington Post and was the first to discuss the listing removal over this last weekend, contacted Mister Pitt's top-producing listing agent who told her that the house had not been sold and that "her office received a request from the business manager asking that the listing be withdrawn." A moving truck seen removing the home's contents last week suggests something a little different to Miz Brenoff like maybe, could be "the deal is all but done."

Immediately after scanning todays' nuggets of real estate hearsay about the possible sale of Mister Pitt's Malibu pad Your Mama automatically contacted our trusted (and sometimes cryptic) informant Sassy Sassafrass who whispered conspiratorially, "I only hear that she bought it, but I can't confirm anything." Donald Doesalotofbigdeals, another of our a-list real estate informants, reiterated he hears the same whispers. Make of these things what y'all will.

The buff actor and architecture and design buff acquired the 1.26 acre spread in March 2005 for $8,410,000. The gated and secured property has a tennis court, lap-length swimming pool and an angular glass and steel residence Mister Pitt custom-renovated and decorated it to his own exacting (and somewhat academic) standards. The 4 bedroom and 4 bathroom residence was officially put on the open market in mid-August 2011 with a $13,750,000 price tag.

Mister Pitt possesses a number of discreet high-style residences and compounds in upscale locales that include near Santa Barbara, the Los Feliz 'hood in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and the south of France. The Missus Degeneres and de Rossi have a sprawling compound in Beverly Hills currently on the market for $49,000,000 plus a ranch in the affluent Hidden Valley enclave near Thousand Oaks, CA on the market earlier this year with an asking price of $16,500,000.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Malibu West

UPDATE: Sue Mengers House Sells

SELLER: estate of Sue Mengers
BUYER: Allen and Deborah Grubman
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: currently unknown

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It was only a few short weeks ago that Your Mama and just about every other celebrity real estate and/or property gossip went bat shit crazy about the legendary John Elgin-Woolf-designed Beverly Hills, CA residence of recently deceased Hollywood über-agent Sue Mengers. The house, a touchstone of high-Hollywood real estate if there ever was one, was listed (mostly) to architectural oohs and aahs with an asking price of $4,995,000 just a few short weeks after the kaftan-clad pint-size dynamo went to meet her maker in mid-October 2011.

The somewhat out-dated, old-school and divinely enigmatic property, according to the New York Post, has been sold to New York City-based law man Allen J. Grubman and his wife Deborah Grubman, a superstar slinger of swanky New York City condos, co-ops and townhouses.

The sale price was not reported but Your Mama hears from an usually very well-informed Bev Hills real estate mover and shaker that Mister and Missus Grubman paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $6,500,000 for the single-story abode situated in a prime neck of the Beverly Hills woods just above Sunset Boulevard and–super conveniently–an easy stumble and bumble to the various hooch and food emporiums at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Miz Mengers, a star in her own right, purchased the house in the spring of 1988 and spent the better part of the last 20-some years kibitzing with everyone who is (or was) anyone in Showbiz. As far as we know, which is nothing, none of the Kardashians ever kibitzed with Miz Mengers but Fran Lebowitz, Barry Diller, Tina Fey, Warren Beatty and Angelica Huston, Elton John, Sidney Poitier, and Jennifers Lopez and Aniston did, to name just a few. The very modestly-scaled by Beverly Hills standards house coils tightly around a stunning (if oddly colored) column-lined courtyard with phenomenal oval-shaped swimming pool. The house measures, as per listing information, 4,434 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms including Miz Menger's oval-shaped pink marble master facility.

Mister Grubman may not be a household name but his star-studded roster of clients reads like the VIP room guest list of an Oscar party: Elton John, David Geffen, Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Bruce Springsteen, Mariah Carey, Robert DeNiro, Martha Stewart, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Vera Wang and on and on and on.

As a Senior Vice President/Associate Broker at real estate juggernaut Corcoran in NYC, Deborah Grubman frequently steers the transactions of more than $100,000,000 in mostly high-end residential real estate deals each year. In 2010 she was the 33rd highest producing team in the entire United States (as per the Wall Street Journal) and in 2008 she was listed at number 22 with almost $135,000,000 in sales volume, an amount that sounds like a lot–and it is–until you see that Missus Grubman's company-mate Carrie Chiang ranked in at number one with a truly mind-melting $505,931,920 in sales volume in a single year. (If you hear a whip cracking sound in your mind as you read that last figure it all works better.) Missus Grubman's clientele is every bit as high wattage as her husband's and includes bigwigs and luminaries like Lyor Cohen, Tommy Mottola, Harvey Weinstein, Martha Stewart and Rupert Murdoch.

Mister Grubman's daughter (from a previous marriage) Lizzie Grubman owns and operates a well-connected New York City-based public relations agency that was it in the go-go-aren't-we-so-fabulous-in-our-Prada-sneakers 1990s. Long a regular in the New York City/Hamptons-centric publications' party pictures Miss Grubman achieved tabloid infamy in the humid summer of 2001 when she backed her daddy's big Mercedes SUV into a group of people outside the Conscience Point nightclub in East Hampton, NY.

The New York Post reports that Mister Grubman (along with, we presume, Missus Grubman) purchased chez Mengers in Beverly Hills because the powerhouse attorney has increasing amounts of business in Los Angeles and because his wife's children (from a previous marriage) live in the area.

In New York City, Mister and Missus Grubman maintain a Park Avenue apartment and own a 2,201 square foot condo crib in a nearly featureless black-glassy TriBeCa tower designed by prolific (but often maligned) architect Costas Kondylis. Property records we peeped show Mister and Missus G. coughed up $3,070,000 for the high-floor unit in July 2007. Mister Grubman also owns three contiguous apartments on two high-floors of an East 61st Street tower where, according to CityFile, Lizzie Grubman lives with her husband.

Like many of New York high-fallutin' well-to-do, the celeb-surrounded Grubmans additionally own a pretty house on a particularly posh seaside lane in East Hampton, NY that records show Mister Grubman acquired in August 1995 for $2,800,000. Their street-mates in the Hamptons include various titans and tycoons who include Martha Stewart, Mort Zuckerman, and Starbucks chieftain Howard Schultz.

As it turns out Miz Mengers' Woolf house is not the first property Mister and Missus Grubman have purchased in Los Angeles. In March 2006 property records indicate they paid $1,195,000 for a 1,956 square foot condo with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms in a perfectly undistinguished (and not very attractive) building in a high-density section of upscale Brentwood. Of course, Your Mama don't know a rain spout from dim sum so we haven't an iota if Mister and Missus Grubman use the condo in Brentwood as their own west coast pied a terre, if it's occupied by one of Missus Grubman's children, if it's rented out as an investment, or if it has some other raison d'etre for taking up space in the bi-coastal couple's property portfolio.

We also have no idea what plans Mister and Missus Grubman have (or don't have) for Miz Mengers' fabled residence. The purist and and nostalgic sections of Your Mama's delicate psyche cling with an insecure desperation to the hope the new owners will update as they see fit yet maintain the vital spirit of Mister Woolf's original architectural intent and the spirited (and even brash) eclecticism and vibrancy of Miz Mengers. We're not sure exactly how they would do that but we're certain it could all be worked over and turned out in fine form by way of a close collaboration between a smart architect and an nice, gay decorator. We shall see, butter beans, we shall see.

listing photo: Nourmand & Associates

Vincent Herbert and Tamar Braxton Buy and List

SELLERS: Vincent Herbert and Tamar Braxton
LOCATION: Encino, CA
PRICE: $3,000,000
SIZE: 7,817 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It seems we've been stuck out in sub- and exurban Los Angeles, CA most of the week yimmer-yammering about celebrity real estate blah blah blah. Although we're certain some of the children wish we would, rather than shift the geographic gears we're going to stay put instead with a discussion on the Encino, CA mansion recently put on the market for $3,000,000 and owned, as per property records, by Vincent Herbert and Tamar Braxton. That's pronounced Tay-mar, okay?

She's a sassy, smart-allecky and sometimes antagonizing R&B singer probably best known as the youngest sister of Grammy-winning songstress Toni Braxton. Missus Braxton-Herbert is, howevuh, does not live entirely in the shadow of her older sister, she's a woman on her own showbiz trajectory who has made a record or two, sang some badass back up on Lady Gaga's anthemic single Born This Way and currently stars–if that's what one does–on the cacophonous Braxton Family Values reality program that was recently picked up for a 13-episode second season.

He's a rather rotund but baby-faced, award-winning music industry executive and producer whose worked over songs for chanteuses such as Toni Braxton, Destiny's Child, Whitney Houston and JoJo. He currently presides over Streamline Records, a division of Interscope Records and the home label for the new Madonna Lady Gaga. A pulmonary embolism–the fancy name for a blood clot in the lung–recently landed Mister Herbert in a New York City hospital after he collapsed in mid-October. He has since returned to Los Angeles, l'chaim.

Property records show Mister Herbert and Missus Braxton-Herbert only purchased their Encino mansion just over two years ago in September 2009 for $2,600,000.

The pancake-flat .42-acre parcel, tucked into a leafy, not-glitzy neighborhood directly behind the Encino Commons business and entertainment district, hosts a gated mansion built in 2007 and described in current listing materials as an "Elegant & Sexy Spanish Hacienda meets Tuscan Villa." The pastiche-y two-story pad measures in at a beefy 7,817 square feet and contains a total of 6 bedrooms and–depending on where in the listing one looks–either 5.75 or 6.5 bathrooms.

A deep, paver-stone tile driveway stretches back from the street to a three-car attached garage with contemporary frosted glass and aluminum doors. The arched front door, set into an arched doorway set into a shallow courtyard, opens into an airy, double height entrance hall finished with a poo-poo platter of not entirely harmonious materials: mottled caramel-colored (and oddly shaped) Spanish tiles on the floor; buttery yellow stucco walls in the dining room; a long arched colonnade fashioned from used bricks; a swooping curved staircase with wrought iron banisters and vibrant orange tile accents on the risers.

Formal living and dining rooms are available for guests, holidays and other moments when a person might want them but far more interior space was devoted to less formal family quarters that include a state-of-the-art 12-seat home theater/media room plus a family room with full-size wet bar that will make hooch hounds gasp with anticipation, French doors that connect to the outdoor entertainment areas, and a fireplace (unfortunately) flanked by arched and mirrored niches outfitted with matching library tables topped with sprays of white orchids. As if the all-too-ubiquitous orchids where not decoratively cliché enough, the person responsible for decorating this room visually multiplied the orchids with the massive mirrors placed where there more better be bookshelves filled with actual books and cherished mementos of the homeowner(s).

Anyhoo, we digress. Archways join the family room to the eat-in kitchen with its semi-circular breakfast nook. We're going to ignore the white orchids in the window behind the delicious copper farmhouse sink on the far wall and instead focus on the massive, multi-purpose center island with two-stool snack counter, vegetable sink, second dishwasher and coppery granite counter top that plays off the green granite counter top that extends out for some distance on either side of the delicious copper farmhouse sink. There's also a walk-in pantry and temperature-controlled walk-in wine cellar.

Listing information explains the "master retreat" includes two over-sized walk-in closets and a "Glamorous," mostly brown and beige en suite complete with custom tile work, glass-lined steam shower that juts our like a peninsula into the the bathroom, and a separate sunken jetted soaking tub set into a window-lined semi-circular niche.

The fully landscaped, wall/fenced, and secured grounds encompass meandering paver stone patios and walkways, a semi-permanent cabana that promotes outdoor living, a built-in barbecue center, a few free-form patches of grass, a built-in fire pit, and two waterfalls that tumble into an amoebic swimming pool with elevated circular spa. The children will note that with the touch of a remote control button a God damn rotating television pops up from a fake boulder at the water's edge.

It's not much of a surprise really that Mister Herbert and Missus Braxton-Herbert have hoisted their Encino mansion on the market given that they've already purchased their next, much larger and far more expensive home (shown below). Property records reveal in early September (2011) Mister Herbert and Missus Braxton-Herbert coughed up a considerable $6,900,000 to obtain an 11,747 square foot French Country-style faux-chateau perched on a low rise in the guard-gated and star-studded equestrian community of Hidden Hills, CA.

Listing information for the Herbert's new home in Hidden Hills shows there are a total of 5 bedrooms and 6 full and 2 half bathrooms, a grand(iose) double-height entry with twin curved staircases and inlaid marble floor, formal living and dining rooms, a paneled library, colossal center island kitchen with a disturbing cornucopia of elaborately carved corbels, a wood-paneled home theater with 125-inch screen, pub/game room with hand-carved wet bar. The titanic second floor master suite encompasses a vast bedroom/sitting room with vaulted and wood-beamed ceiling, wood floors, fireplace and a wide bank of wood-framed glass doors that slide open to a private balcony. There's als a custom-fitted walk-in closets/dressing room and a cavernous crapper with twin sinks, a plunge pool-sized jetted tub with fireplace, and a silly (and tacky), over-sized circular glass shower enclosure.

Other amenities include an elevator, safe room, a total of at least 5 fireplaces (many with elaborate carved stone mantelpieces), direct-entry garage space for four luxury cars, a large fountain in the front yard and a somewhat slim but mostly flat back yard with a petite swimming pool with raised spa surrounded by an expanse of lush green lawn, various shaded porches and patios for escaping the scorching southern California summertime sunshine, and long views over the tree tops to the rugged mountains that encircle the San Fernando Valley.

Some of Mister Herbert and Missus Braxton-Herberts' new neighbors include Jennifer Lopez, Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne who have their estate listed at $12,999,000, Melissa Etheridge, Charlie Sheen's ex-wife and baby momma Denise Richards, former desperate housewife Nicolette Sheridan (who bought her house from Melissa Etheridge), Bruce Jenner and Kris Kardashian, and–for a few more days or weeks anyway–pop superstar Britney Spears who will soon move house from a elephantine leased mansion in Hidden Hills to a significantly smaller but still massive mansion in a guard-gated golf community in Thousand Oaks.

listing photos (Encino): Re/Max Olson & Associates
listing photos (Hidden Hills): Re/Max Olson & Associates

Angelo Mozilo Shakes Up Real Estate Portfolio

SELLER: Angelo Mozilo
LOCATION: Thousand Oaks, CA
PRICE: $3,400,000
SIZE: 6,238 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yesterday, while mindin' the necessary ps and qs for our discussion about the Thousand Oaks, CA mansion recently leased by phoenix-like pop phenom Britney Spears, we rather randomly ran across another, smaller mansion located behind the guarded gates of the well-heeled Sherwood County Club owned as per property records–and much to our pearl clutching flabbergast–by the vastly-loathed and utterly disgraced former Countrywide Financial CEO and COB Angelo Mozilo who has the architecturally conventional (mc)mansion listed on the open market with an asking price of $3,400,000.

Mister Mozilo, a mortgage industry maverick who co-founded Countrywide in 1969 and nearly 30 years later co-founded the dramatically collapsed IndyMac Bank (now OneWest Bank), is widely regarded as one of the more Machiavellian sub-mortgage-men who helped march the U.S. (and global) economy straight off the cliff in the mid-Noughts. While Mister Mozilo and his mortgage-making army pushed and pedaled sub-prime home loans he talked up the then-flourishing company's stock price, earned hundreds of millions in compensation, and cashed out more than $400,000,000 worth of Countrywide stock, a large portion of it during the last couple of years of his tattered tenure as the king of Countrywide.

Alas, the sub-primed fueled real estate bubble burst sometime around 2007 and Mister Mozilo left Countrywide in 2008 after the crippled company was sold for $4.1 billion to Bank of America. In June 2009 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Mister Mozilo with insider trading and securities fraud and in September 2010 Mister Mozilo settled with the SEC and agreed to pay $67,500,000 in fines, $45,000,000 of which was paid by Bank of America. Despite the sizable payout, settlement terms allow Mister Mozilo to circumvent acknowledgement of any misconduct. We can't vouch for or confirm it but online idle chatter says he has a net worth well in excess of half a billion dollars.

To be honest, puppies, Your Mama isn't sure where exactly Mister Mozilo and his wife Phyllis currently (or previously) consider(ed) their primary residence. After all, In addition to the house in Thousand Oaks they now have on the market, they own a variety of luxury residences in Hawaii, Santa Barbara, and the affluent Coachella Valley desert community of La Quinta (CA).

Property records are a bit vague so we can't accurately discern what amount Mister and Missus Mozilo paid for the Thousand Oaks mansion they now have on the market but the deeds and docs we peeped online reveal the long-married couple picked the place up in March of 2000 with a $700,000 mortgage.

Redfin shows Mister and Missus Mozilo first pushed their red-brick, center-hall Georgian-Colonial-style (mc)mansion in Thousand Oaks on the market in late July (2011) with an asking price of $3,680,000. In mid-October the price was reduced to its current $3,400,000.

Listing information shows the stately two-story house was built in 1999 and sits on a half acre lot that backs up to the 2nd fairway of the Jack Nicklaus-designed par-72 championship course at the Sherwood Country Club, The meticulously maintained mansion measures 6,238 square feet with a total of 5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms and a finished 4 car garage.

A wide, lantern-lit brick pathway cuts through a rose-bush filled front garden to the front door that opens into an impressive but still intimately-scaled double-height foyer with cherry wood floors and a grand staircase lined with a tightly-spaced thicket of turned balusters that wrap around a the second floor gallery. A nearby powder pooper is trimmed with black marble baseboards and moldings, a bevy of hand-stenciled wall designs, "gold" or gold-plated fixtures, and a glimmering jet black terlit.

Listen, children, we get the perfectly acceptable decorative meme of transforming an ordinary powder room where guests engage in embarrassing vanities and ugly bodily efforts into an unexpectedly delightful jewel box. However, in our humble and entirely meaningless opinion, this one is all just so faux and sadly earnest that it makes us feel squeamish and unsettled. To use a tired decorating metaphor, this heavily-processed guest facility looks to Your Mama a little too much like putting a not-quite-right shade of coral-colored lipstick on an albino pig. Of course, if you can and would pay three million clams for this house, probably you either like this sort of thing or you can afford to change it so our sassy opinion is–we're well aware–entirely moot.

To the right of the foyer a formal living room has an acre of wall-to-wall beige carpeting, a focal-point fireplace with marble surround and carved wood chimney breast, and numerous over-sized windows partly obscured with yard after yard of draped and puddled metallic fabric. The cherry floors in the foyer extend in to the formal dining room where the walls above the wood-paneled chair rail have florid hand-painted architectural detailing, the same sort of stuff as on the walls in the powder room.

There is even more hand-painted detail work on the ceiling in the library/office behind the formal living room where two opposite walls have floor-to-ceiling built-in cabinetry and book/display shelves and the windows and sliding doors are festooned with the sort of elaborately pleated, trimmed and swagged drapery that always looks to Your Mama like it aspires to be something so much more than mere curtains in a multi-million dollar exurban (mc)mansion outside Los Angeles.

Less formal family quarters include a huge center-island kitchen with full-size side-by-side fridge and freezer, banking institution-like green granite counter tops set on custom chestnut or cherry (or whatever) raised-panel cabinets, a breakfast nook, and an exceptionally large butler's pantry. A long peninsula counter divides the kitchen from the family room with fireplace, entertainment equipment cabinet, and a pair of multi-paned sliding glass doors that glide back to reveal a smallish but fully-equipped brick and concrete entertainment terrace. At one end of the slim terrace there's a built-in barbecue center, at the other end a raised spa with golf course view and in between a plunge-sized infinity-edged swimming pool.

The sizable second floor master suite encompasses a sitting area with fireplace and opens through sliding glass doors to a private balcony with mountain and golf course views. There are two large, windowed and custom-fitted walk-in closets, a mirrored dressing area and a super-sized bathroom with brown and white marble-sheathed floor, even still more hand-stencil architectural details on the walls, twin sinks and vanities, a bidet for washing nether regions, a jetted soaking tub and separate glass-enclosed steam shower.

This is very decidedly not Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's dream master bathroom. The swaggy balloon shade over the built-in bathtub alone is enough to give Your Mama a damn coronary. None-the-less we find the chocolate brown white-veined marble rather attractive even though we'd much prefer it put down in large slabs rather that in less-exciting square tiles trying to act fancy with their 45-degree angle.

Anyhoodles poodles, beyond the swimming pool, the backyard tumbles and slides down to a mature tree-line that–one hopes–provides a modicum of privacy from the daily parade of golfers who stroll and roll by as they play the links and shoot the shit. The steeply pitched and very green lawn gets tamed into flat (or sort of flat) terraces with curving brick retaining walls lined with well-tended rose bushes and other pretty plants. A small round terrace just below the infinity-edged swimming pool has an elevated built-in brick fire pit. This is, it would seem, the perfect almost-but-not-quite-hidden spot where mommy and daddy can smoke an after-dinner doobie while the live-in Malaysian nanny helps their 2.3 children with their algebra homework.

As it turns out, listing their Thousand Oaks mansion isn't the only recent adjustment Mister and Missus Mozilo have made to their rather extensive portfolio of residential real estate. Property records reveal in March 2011 Mister and Missus Mozilo splashed out $1,800,000 on a .78 acre vacant parcel of land at The Madison Club, an upscale, guard-gated golf community in La Quinta (CA) that weaves and winds its way through and around an undeniably scenic Tom Fazio-designed course. Of course we don't have a clue what the Mozilos plan to do with the water feature-fronting parcel.

The Mozilos have owned desert digs since at least August 2005 when records show they procured a 4,161 square foot Mediterranean mini-mansion with 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms that backs up to the golf course in the guard-gated The Quarry at La Quinta, another golf-centric community in La Quinta designed and developed around a Tom Fazio-designed course. Since buying the the house at The Quarry at La Quinta property records suggest (but don't make entire clear) Mister and Missus Mozilo own or owned one and possibly two 3,000-plus square foot condominiums same development.

Mister and Missus Mozilo have also maintained a residence in the upscale coastal community of Santa Barbara, CA since at least 1994 when they coughed up an unknown amount of money to acquire a house located a short and flat walk to both the beach and the casually elegant ocean front Four Seasons Resort, The Biltmore. Almost 10 years later in September 2003 they dropped and undisclosed amount for a house almost directly across the street, which they subsequently sold in February 2008 for $9,000,000.

In July 2004 Mister and Missus Mozilo, who clearly have a real estate thing for country clubby cribs that booty-up to hyper-manicured golf courses, dropped another unknown but no-doubt considerable amount of sub-prime mortgage moolah to buy a 12,692 square foot mansion with 9.5 bathrooms that borders and overlooks the Montecito Country Club.

In addition to their residential holdings in Thousand Oaks, La Quinta and Santa Barbara, property records also provide evidence that Mister and Missus Mozilo own additional residential property in or around Hilo, HI–it appears to be a condo–and in December 2010 they took in $2,500,000 when they successfully unloaded a large house in the wealthy Los Angeles suburb of La Cañada Flintridge that they purchased way back in September 1993 for $875,000.

Certainly Mister Mozilo's career in the mortgage industry is over. In fact he's disbarred from accepting an officer or director level position of a publicly traded corporate entity for the rest of his life. Even still and even though he's a become a bit of a social and professional pariah, he can take whatever comfort there may be in his clearly sizable retained wealth that will likely allow he and his to live in guard-gated golf community luxury the rest of their lives.

listing photos: Prudential California Realty