Ken Olin and Patricia Wettig Sell in Santa Monica

SELLERS: Ken Olin and Patricia Wettig

LOCATION: Santa Monica, CA
PRICE: $6,900,000

SIZE: 4,584 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.75 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Actor/producer/director Ken Olin and three-time Emmy-winning actress Patricia Wettig seem to be a real rarity in Tinseltown. Not only have they been married—to each other—for more than 30 years, they frequently work together (Brothers & Sisters, Alias, thirtysomething) and they've owned and occupied the same historic house in Santa Monica, CA since 1995 when they acquired the early 20th century center hall Colonial Revival residence for an undisclosed amount of money.

While their marriage seems solid they recently decided to sell their Santa Monica home of 15-plus years. Online resources indicate the now 50- and 60-something year old former thirtysomething actors first put their sophisticated spread for sale in early April (2013) with a celebrity-sized $6.9 million asking price. The property was quickly put into escrow with an unknown buyer at an unknown price but, alas, the deal was not consummated and the house was returned to the open market over the weekend with its original $6.9 million price tag.

Listing details reveal the residence was designed by distinguished L.A. architects Sumner Hunt and Silas Burns and built in 1913 for Thomas C. Bundy, the fourth son and scion of a prominent property developing Santa Monica family. T.C. Bundy was three-time national double tennis champion turned real estate developer who who founded the Los Angeles Tennis Club and developed L.A.'s Miracle Mile District and parts of Sherman Oaks.

The 4,584 square foot main residence occupies a flat, .4 acre double wide corner property and, although substantially updated and upgraded, retains much of it's original detailing: plaster moldings, leaded windows and built-in cabinetry. There are, according to listing details, four bedrooms and 3.75 bathrooms plus a separate guest house with an additional bathroom.

Pale blond original wood floors run throughout the main living spaces that include a generous foyer and a roomy formal living room with multi-pane casement windows, built-in book cases, a wood burning fireplace, and French doors that lead out to a walled dining terrace. There's a second fireplace in the formal dining room where a massive, original built-in hutch is smartly balanced with an austere white oval dining table and eight iconic Hans Wegner chairs.

The spacious eat-in kitchen has a vintage vibe but is fully souped for modern living with crisp white custom cabinetry, top quality stainless steel appliances, and a chunky butcher block topped center island with two-stool snack and booze counter. The kitchen adjoins a good-sized breakfast room with built-in cabinetry as well as a large family room with paneled wainscoting painted a subtle shade of gray, over-sized multi-pane windows, and a third, corner fireplace. Also in the general vicinity of the kitchen, according to marketing materials, are an office and an enclosed porch.

The sun-flooded second floor master suite has more wood floors, high ceilings, two closets and a vintage-style attached bathroom with a sarcophagi-style soaking tub set into a windowed niche lined with gray-grouted off-set subway tiles.

The backyard is a fantasia of mature trees and flowering shrubbery, numerous terraces, at least one fountain, and a pergola shaded dining area and lounge with outdoor fireplace. The dark-bottomed swimming pool is solar heated, according to listing information.

Your Mama's research reveals that in addition to their home base in Santa Monica, Mister Olin and Miz Wettig also own a modestly scaled if hardly inexpensive home in the Hamptons where they bought a 1.5 acre parcel in May 2006 for $800,000 and in 2008 they complete the custom build out of a contemporary residence with 3,239 square feet and a lap lane swimming pool.

Property records show the Olin-Wettigs share a long, private driveway with two other larger but remarkably similarly contemporary residences. As it turns out one of the houses is owned by two-time Tony winning Broadway actor and director Joe Mantello (Angels in America, Take Me Out, Wicked, Assassins) Property records suggest the other is co-owned by Mister Mantello's former long-time man-mate, Pulitzer prize nominated playwright (A Fair Country) and screenwriter (Brothers & Sisters) Jon Baitz, and Tony winning and Emmy nominated actor Ron Rifkin (Brothers & Sisters, Alias, Law & Order: SVU) and his wife Iva Rifkin.

listing photos: Teles Properties

Your Mama Hears...

...(via the New York Observer) that Kanye West wants 4.5 million bucks for his Big Apple bachelor pad, a 2,300-ish square foot two unit combination crib in SoHo that he had decked out in austere, haute-minimalist style by maverick Italian architect Claudio Silvestrin in 2007. Property records we picked at and perused reveal he paid a total of $3,140,000 in two separate transactions for the fourth floor apartments.*

Mister West's East Coast pied-a-terre apparently popped up on a New York City-centric real estate listing service but quickly disappeared in—you got it—a proverbial New York minute. A subsequent report in today's New York Post reveals that the 21-time Grammy winner's top producing real estate agent hosted an invite-only open house yesterday for some of the city's top brokers. There are—not surprisingly—"more than a dozen" pair of high-cost sneakers in the master closet and—more surprisingly—several small statues that one broker who toured the space described to The Post look like "an angel, or a little boy Cupid." Oh dear.

Other high profile residents of the full-service building include actor Julianna Margulies and model/t.v. presenter Padma Lakshmi who records show paid nearly eight million clams for her two-unit penthouse pad in early 2012.

Mister West also owns a contemporary, art-filled residence in the Hollywood Hills he's been trying to unload on and off since at least May, 2010 when it was briefly on the open market for $3,995,000. The multi-story hillside house is currently priced at $3,150,000.

Mister West reportedly also maintains an apartment in Paris near his fashion world b.f.f. Riccardo Tisci, the very same Givenchy creative director who just bought a West Village townhouse from high brow performance artist Marina Abramovic and with whom Mister West has been salaciously rumored to share something more than just Platonic. Whatever the case—and who cares, really?—the tabloids and celebrity gossip blogs went berserk this week with unconfirmed reports that the newly divorced Miz Kardashian has agreed to live in Paris with her baby daddy for at least three months after the birth of their bundle of joy. Hard to believe her mother/manager would allow that, but K.K. is a grown woman, and can do what she likes right? Anyways...

In February (2013), Mister West's soon-to-be baby momma Kim Kardashian shelled out $9,000,000 for a 9,000 square foot faux-Tuscan/mock-Med mish-mosh macmansion in the guard gated Bel Air Crest community in Los Angeles. Call us a cynic—and we've certainly been called worse—but Your Mama can't imagine Mister West, a man who fancies he has posh and cutting edge taste, actually living in such a downright ordinary macmansion any more than we imagine our mean ol' pussy cat Sugar speaks Cantonese. We shall see, butter beans, we shall see.

*Mister West bought the first and larger of the two apartments in December 2004 for $1,890,000 and the smaller adjacent unit in February 2006 for $1,250,000.

photos: Claudio Silvestrin

Steve Martin To Shed St. Barts Villa

SELLER: Steve Martin
LOCATION: Saint Barthélemy, French West Indies
PRICE: €8,750,000
SIZE: 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Late last night Your Mama received a covert communique from a friendly fella we'll call Bart St. Barts who thoughtfully forwarded a digital press release meant to get the word out about semi-retired and famously private comedic deity Steve Martin putting his mountain top vacation villa on the swish Caribbean island of Saint Barthélemy up for sale on the open market with a multi-millionaires only asking price of €8,750,000.*

Saint Barthélemy, the trendily chic and prolifically pricey crown jewel of the French West Indies, is typically more simply referred to by the international jet-setters and globe trotters who can afford to vacation there—as well as those of us who only wish we could afford to vacay there—as St. Barth or, for all us American English speakers, St. Barts.

Over the last ten or fifteen years the tiny island has become a winter time hot spot—especially over New Year's—for sun seeking celebs and demi-celebs such as Jay-Z and Beyoncé, Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon, Rachel Zoe, Michael Kors, Andy Cohen—here he is a few years ago doing the beach thing with Daniel Craig, Demi Moore, Simon Cowell, and Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale. In addition to the hordes of spendy Showbizzers and ridiculously rich media mavens like Martha Stewart, all manner of moguls, royals and potentates also congregate in great numbers on the French-controlled collectivity.

Frequently seen hobnobbing and cavorting around the ultra-exclusive island during the winter holidays are big time movers and shakers like tech tycoon Paul Allen, diversified businessman Ron Perelman, paper and media pasha Peter Brant and his aging gracefully supermodel wife Stephanie Seymour, art dealer Larry Gagosian, famed fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier, and late night chat show honcho David Letterman. Last year, the children may recall, Russian gajillionaire and inveterate trophy property collector Roman Abramovich paid—so the stories go—about $90 million for a 70-ish acre, multi-pavilion beach side compound built on land once owned by rich and profoundly powerful banker David Rockefeller.

Your Mama doesn't know how much Mister Martin paid for his St. Bart's getaway that he picked up sometime in 2008 and was last listed for $9,000,000.** What we do know is that Mister Martin, a card-carrying Mensa member and an astute collector of name brand modern art who is surprisingly proficient at throwing a lasso as well as playing the harmonica and the banjo, recently became a father for the first time at the ripe old age of 67. That may seem, children, like a clunky segue and it very well may be nothing more than a real estate coinky dink but every celebrity real estate gossip knows that when people as famous and/or rich as Mister Martin have a baby, get married and/or get divorced they very often also shake up their real estate portfolios. Anyhoo...

Current listing details show Mister Martin's gated, tropical Colonial style villa occupies a private perch high in the hills of Lurin where its mountain top vantage provides postcard perfect, 180+ degree views over and beyond the sleepy, swank, and duty-free port city of Gustavia as well as across the yummy, sparkling blue waters of St. Jean Bay and directly down on busy Gustaff III Airport.***

The single-story house has four en suite bedrooms and a total of 4.5 bathrooms, according to listing information, in an unknown amount of air conditioned square footage. At the heart of the boomerang-shaped residence is a multi-winged, open plan living area with red tile flooring and airy, exposed beam vaulted ceilings. One end of the central living room opens through collapsing glass doors to a lush, wind protected interior courtyard while the other end has floor to ceiling windows that suck up the quintessential Caribbean views.

The living room is flanked by a casual "formal" dining room on one side and a media lounge with built-in entertainment cabinet and a couple of humble but comfortable-looking couches on the other. For a man who collects museum quality contemporary art, the photo-realist paintings (or whatever they are in the media lounge and throughout the house strike Your Mama as painfully and, well, pitifully banal. It's not that we think he ought to have hung one of his Diebenkorns of Fischls up in there but, holy moly that looks like some seriously cliche, low rent "art." Frankly, we'd rather stare at a blank wall but—let's get real, people—what does it matter since Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter are neither in the market to buy nor lease a ten-plus million dollar villa in St. Barts?

The living and dining areas, as well as the angled, galley-type kitchen that the press release rather generously described as "state-of-the-art,"open to a deep veranda with panoramic views and a built-in barbecue station. The media lounge, on the other hand, links through to a smaller covered porch that online marketing materials suggest is punished with fitness equipment.

Online resources indicate the four bedroom suites are well separated for privacy. Two smaller suites occupy their own wing behind the media lounge. Both have exterior entrances, private bathrooms, private terraces, and—oo la ls—private outdoor showers. A larger, third guest suite, on the opposite side of the house behind the dining room and kitchen, also has an exterior entry, a private deck, and an attached bathroom with French doors that open to a fence-ringed deck with outdoor shower.

The master bedroom is contained in a separate building that all but butts up to the far end of the house beyond the largest of the three guest bedrooms. The suite is complete with an elevated bed area, a sunken sitting area, and an unexpectedly large walk-in closet/dressing room. The attached wood and stone themed bathroom has a wall of glass in the shower that opens to a secluded deck with outdoor shower. French doors in both the bedroom and the bathroom open to a large, wrap around deck with sunken spa and a view that's enough to make even the most jaded globe trotter pee their pants with vacation glee.

The shaded verandas off the main living area(s) give way to multi-level sunbathing and dining terraces that embrace a two-tier, infinity edge swimming pool. Steps at either end of the pool lead down to a curved deck cantilevered slightly over the hillside with dreamy views over all of St. Jean Bay. The interior courtyard provides a serene balance to dramatic views that consume the eyes on the other side of the house. A narrow, red tile lined water channel cuts across a flat lawn and connects a gurgling urn fountain just outside the living room to a a flourishing lily pond the wraps around three sides of a slightly elevated Balinese-y pavilion.

Mister Martin's private residential property portfolio includes at least three additional residence. Since at least 1995, the actually quite shy funny man has owned a 5.86 acre (two parcel) estate in Santa Barbara—on the east side of Montecito—with a very contemporary 7,300-plus square foot residence that's partially submerged in the knoll top on which is sits. In Los Angeles Mister Martin owns a pair adjacent mini-estates on a little known cul de sac nestled into a holler high above the trendy and hideously expensive Trousdale Estates 'hood in Beverly Hills. Property records show he purchased the first of the two Bev Hills properties, with its 7,005 square foot main house, in the early days of 1995 for $3,175,000 from actor Corbin Bernsen and his long-time actress wife Amanda Pays. He scooped up the neighboring property in October 1997 from a not-famous person for an unknown amount.

*Listing details show$11,328,327 (USD) but  quick consult with Your Mama's currency conversion contraption shows the current listing price of €8,750,000 equals $11,363,500, at today's rates.

**Not long after he purchased the property, Mister Martin offered it out for least at $28,000 per week. The press release indicates it can still be leased by the week but did not provide a price.

***Just for shits and giggles: In 2010 The History Channel ranked Gustaff III as the third most dangerous airport in the world behind Toncontín International in Honduras and Tenzing-Hillary Airport, a remote air strip in Lukla, Nepal where most mountaineers begin their hike up the Mount Everest Base Camp.

listing photos and floor plan: St. Barth Properties Sotheby's International Realty

In Case You Missed It: Robert and Alex

All the children should know by now that Your Mama don't a damn thing about professional athletics but for those of y'all who do know and care about such things we sally forth with the following two quickie tidbits...

We first learned it from The Barefoot Financier but it was first noted by the Washington Business Journal that Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III has gone and spent $2,497,000 on a 9,000 square foot mansion in the prosperous Creighton Farms golf community in the rural Washington, D.C. exurb of Aldie, VA.

listing photo: MRIS via Washington Business Journal

According to TMZ, New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez has reportedly accepted an offer of about $30 million for the nearly 20,000 square foot ultra-contemporary mansion he custom built on a pair of Miami Beach (FL) parcels that combined come to about 1.1 acres with 275 feet of private bay frontage.

Your Mama parsed and picked at the nine bedroom and 11 full and two half bathroom behemoth back in August 2012 when A-Rod shoved it on the open market with a publicity ensuring $38,000,000 price tag.

listing photos: ONE Sotheby's International Realty

In Case You Missed It: Jessica Simpson

We're not sure who first reported it but Your Mama first read it on Zillow that pop tartlet turned reality t.v. star turned apparel mogul and Fashion Star judge Jessica Simpson heaved her Beverly Hills (Post Office), CA residence on the open market with an asking price of $7,995,000.

Miz Simpson, currently with baby number two in her belly, paid $5,275,000 for the five bedroom and 5.5 bathroom property in 2007. That was back in the tabloid-y aftermath of her split and divorce from her first husband, former—and current—boy bander Nick Lachey. She's now hooked up and procreating with but not yet married to former professional footballer Eric Johnson, a manly man who Your Mama can't fathom cared much for the hyper feminized—and arguably immasculating—day-core.

Current listing details show the "romantically emotional" 5,500 square foot residence was recently worked over—and hard—by Shabby Chic queen Rachel Ashwell. The formal living room adjoins the formal dining room and the expensively equipped center island kitchen opens up to a window wrapped breakfast area. There's also, according to listing information, a media/family room, an office/library, and fitness room.

The painstakingly and magnificently lit exterior living areas probably cost a fortune in electricity each much but, damn children, they sure look fantastically spectacular. Outdoor living spaces include a walled and gated entry courtyard with gurgling fountain, a foliage enshrouded stone dining terrace, and a stepping stone pathway that leads from the entertainment terrace off the kitchen and family room back to a lap lane swimming pool tucked tightly into dense, towering, privacy ensuring thicket of trees and shrubbery.

The long list of previous high profile owners of the home include actress Jami Gertz with financier husband Tony Ressler and Showbiz executive Tom Freston who now owns a larger house around the corner. The ever-peripatetic chat show queen Ellen Degeneres owned the property for a brief couple of years before she sold it to high powered celebrity manager Rick Yorn who, in turn, sold it after just two years to the then newly single Miz Simpson.

Current home owners in the guarded enclave include Cameron Diaz—who bought her house from Candice Bergen, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, Reggae royal Ziggy Marley and entertainment industry power player Guy Oseary.

Miz Simpson and Mister Johnson have decamped to the family friendly and equestrian oriented guard-gated community of Hidden Hills where they recently shelled out $11.5 million for Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne's nearly 11,000 square foot Martyn Lawrence Bullard decorated mansion on 2.25 mostly landscaped acres. Their new neighbors include famous folks like Jennifer Lopez, although we wouldn't expect much in the way of play dates and backyard barbecue invitations since—call it a hunch based on nothing but absolute conjecture—we imagine Miz Simpson and Lopez would not like each other very much.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty

In Case You Missed It: Kat Von D

Five days ago the long legged blond gal at Trulia Luxe Living reported that Kat Von D, the heavily tattooed high priestess of tattoo and L.A. Ink reality t.v. star, pushed her 1920s Spanish style micro-compound in the celeb-filled Outpost Estates area of the Hollywood Hills on the open market with a $2.5 million asking price.

No surprise to Your Mama, the day-core skews Gothic, dark and brooding with lots of taxidermy in the formal living room and bends towards glammy with shimmery brocade wall paper in the den and formal dining room.

Miz Von D, who was twice affianced to Sandy Bullock's philandering ex-husband Jesse James and is currently engaged to internationally acclaimed DJ Deadmou5—who proposed to her on Twitter, dontcha know?—purchased the walled and gated 4,148 square foot residence in August 2011 for $2,175,000.

Current listing information shows the four bedroom and 4.5 bathroom main residence has hardwood floors, original tile detailing, a turreted entry and an expensively equipped kitchen. The formal living room quickly converts to a screening room with a retractable projection screen and high octane surround sound system. Listing details indicate there's a guest house somewhere on the property, probably atop the detached two car garage at the back of the property.

The backyard isn't big and, while it does have a spa, barbecue station and built-in fire pit, it does not have a swimming pool. It also, unfortunately backs up to a multi-story apartment building that—praize Jeezis—is all but hidden behind a towering row of thick and high hedges.

No word has (yet) reached Your Mama's inbox about the future real estate plans of the soon to be Missus Deadmau5.

listing photos: The Sher Group

In Case You Missed It: David, Darren, Megan, and Madonna

Famously hairy chested, and—ahem—decidedly cheese ball actor and singer David Hasselhoff recently sold his former family estate in Encino, CA, for $3,549,000 and, as was revealed by the celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ, coughed up $1,950,000 to buy himself a big new mock-Med macmansion bachelor pad in a small, guard-gated enclave in the affluent L.A. suburb of Calabasas (CA).

Online resources show the 5,767 square foot residence—on and off the market since November 2006!—has five bedrooms and six bathrooms. The Baywatch babe's new abode also has a double-height foyer for impressing guests and Chinese food delivery men, a sunken formal living room with fireplace and double height ceiling, a formal dining room and an adjacent center island kitchen, a family room with wet bar, and a office/library loft that overlooks the formal living room.

The 1.54 acre grounds include numerous patios, a waterfall equipped swimming pool and spa, built-in barbecue center, lush semi-tropical landscaping, a grassy play yard and a huge concrete pad with basketball nets but no guide lines or whatever those linear markings on the basketball court are called.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker

Thanks to the New York Observer we learned that wildly successful television super-producer Darren Star (Sex and the City, Melrose Place, Beverly Hills, 90210 and the reprise 90210) sold his swank New York City pied-à-terre at the glitzy Trump International Hotel and Tower on Columbus Circle for $13 million to the family of shopping mall magnate Frank Lowy, otherwise known as second richest man in Australia.

Mister Star acquired the 35th floor spread in 2005 for $6.1 million so the thirteen million clam sale price represents an enviable and elephantine return on his real estate investment.

Listing details show the L-shaped, 3,059 square foot corner apartment has three bedrooms and 4.5 marble bathrooms, including a master suite with two bathrooms and private study/sitting room. The living/dining space stretches almost forty feet with a built-in wet bar in the dining area and there's a stacked washer/dryer in the corridor that connects the living room and the compact but generously windowed eat-in kitchen.

Mister Star owns (at least) one very luxurious residence in Los Angeles, a 6,808 square foot residence on a prime street in Bel Air that he bought in November 2005 for $6,850,000, filled with a small museum's worth of name brand contemporary artworks and had photographed for the March 2012 issue of Architectural Digest.

listing photo and floor plan: Brown Harris Stevens

The long-legged blond at Trulia Luxe Living reported this week that sitcom superstars Megan Mullally (Will & Grace) and Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation) finally sold their published, city view house in L.A.'s Bird Streets 'hood—where are the streets are named after birds, natch. They hoisted the 3 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom residence on the open market in September 2011 for $12,650,000 and last week at a steep discount for $9,970,000 million.

Back in December 2011 the modern-minded couple bought a glassy contemporary in Bel Air for $4,150,000.

listing photos: Keller Williams Beverly Hills

We first heard it from the ever industrious kids at Curbed that Her Pop Music Majesty Madonna has done sold her 6 bedroom and 8 bathroom duplex digs at Harperley Hall on New York City's Upper West Side. Not surprisingly, the deep pocketed buyer, identified as Deepak Narula, is a prodigiously rich hedge fund fat cat.

The still fit as a fiddle and strikingly well preserved mid-50s Material Girl first listed her approximately 6,000 square foot multi-unit combination spread in November 2012 with a $23,500,000 asking price. So the celebrity real estate scuttlebutt goes Mister Hedge Fund paid quite a bit less than the last and final $19,995,000 price tag.

The sprawling apartment was decorated with Art Deco zing style by her dilettantish brother Christopher—now a shoe designer—and was photographed in 2007 in all its art-filled glory for Architectural Digest.
The celebrity real estate leprechauns haven't been so kind to Madge on the West Coast where she hasn't had much luck yet unloading her Beverly Hills estate either off market—with a rumored $28 million asking price—or on the open market where it's currently listed at $22.5 million.

Madonna continues to own a horse farm in the Hamptons—bought from Calvin's ex-wife Kelly Klein in late 2009—and the near mythic Upper East Side triple-wide townhouse with private garage she bought in 2009 for $32,000,000 and spent heaven only knows how much on extensive renovations that included penthouse level expansion and the addition of roof deck.

listing photos: The Modlin Group