Tuesday Tidbit: Bill Chadwick

SELLER: William J. Chadwick
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $35,000,000
SIZE: 10,480 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 9.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Brace yourselves west coast real estate freaks because it's baaaaack! In the summer of 2008, right about the time that the bottom fell completely out of the real estate markets in southern California and around the country, low profile real estate financier William J. Chadwick heaved and ho-ed his behemoth ocean front mansion on Malibu's Carbon Beach on the market with an elephantine (and insanely optimistic) asking price of $65,000,000.

The price eventually fell to $35,000,000 and in mid-September, more than three years after it first appeared on the open market, an auction was scheduled with the minimum bid price set at a substantially and somewhat shockingly lower $22,000,000.

Alas, butter beans, the auction was unsuccessful and yesterday Your Mama received a covert communique from Our Fair Godmother in Bel Air who informed us that Mister Chadwick recently re-priced the 10,480 square foot pile with an asking price of–are y'all sitting down for this?–$35,000,000.

Now, children, Your Mama is well aware we are far from the sharpest knife if the drawer. However, it seems to our rather pea-sized brain that if Mister Chadwick's Malibu manse didn't sell for $35,000,000 before and the September auction failed to entice someone with both the desire and deep pockets to sign on the deed's dotted line then it follows that the increased asking price is just pie in the real estate sky. Yes? No? Bueller?

Then again, let's get real people, what does Your Mama know about anything? We never thought someone would pay Candy Spelling more than $50,000,000 for her monster mega-mansion in Holmby Hills for which Formula One Racing heiress Petra Ecclestone coughed up $85,000,000 in cash money. We also would not have put all our chips on black 35 that sitcom queen Jennifer Aniston would have snagged $35,000,000 for her sprawling Beverly Hills mansion a few months ago either.

Anyhoodles poodles, Mister Chadwick's bulky and hulky quasi-Cape Cod style beach house sits on an unusually large .54 acre parcel, claims an almost unheard of for Malibu 150-feet of beach frontage, and includes a long list of fancy features such as an attached three car garage with direct entry, 90-foot long great room, 6 en suite bedrooms, a total of 9.5 bathrooms, 4 fireplaces, a 16-seat state-of-the-art home theater, formal dining area with 5-seat built-in wet bar, wine cellar (natch), an ocean front gym, paneled library a wall-sized aquarium–breathe, breathe, breathe–a small patch of grass for piddling pooches, a 4,500 square foot ocean side entertainment terrace with outdoor kitchen and barbecue station, and a 75-foot long two-lane lap pool.

This beach house is without question unreservedly lavish and amenity-loaded in that pseudo-casual sort of way that billionaires seem to like to decorate their super-sized beach shacks in the Bu. It is also a weighty and high-maintenance real estate albatross around Mister Chadwick's pampered neck from which he's not been able, despite years on the market with heaps of international publicity and a last ditch effort auction, to un-tether himself.

Your Mama imagines that Mister Chadwick must be about as frustrated as a bee stuck in a jar of honey but we also expect that free-floating real estate schadenfreude will keep Argentina from crying much for Mister Chadwick and his ongoing real estate woes.

listing photos: Westside Estate Agency

Tuesday Tidbit: Ellen Degeneres

Late last week Your Mama discussed the 26-acre equestrian extravaganza in Thousand Oaks, CA that chat show host Ellen Degeneres and her actress wife Portia de Rossi have on the market with an asking price of $16,500,000.

Celebrity real estate gossips and watchers know the horsey spread in Thousand Oaks isn't the only posh property in the Los Angeles area the Missus Degeneres and de Rossi own but want to unload from their property portfolio. Rumors started to slip and slide down the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine in early 2011 that the couple desired to divest themselves of the deluxe Beverly Hills, CA compound they've spent many tens of millions of dollars amassing and customizing.

In the fall of 2007 the property mad pair coughed up an almost unbelievable $29,000,000 for the main portion of the compound, which they bought from residuals rich Will & Grace co-creator Max Mutchnick. A few months later the compound loving ladies shelled out an additional $8,500,000 for the property next door that they razed and replaced with a serene, watery garden with long views down the rugged, mansion-dotted canyons and over the twinkling lights of Lala Land.

The following June the real estate flip-floppers spent $5,000,000 for an adjacent fixer upper and just a month later they shelled out another $5,500,000 for a hillside house with oblique views into the backyard of the main house. Altogether, according to our ever-present bejeweled abacus, the Missus Degeneres and de Rossi dumped an astonishing forty-eight million clams for the various properties that comprise the compound, not counting renovation and customization costs.

In late May (2011), the swankety-swank Degenere-de Rossi compound finally hit the open market with an undisclosed price that several sources swear was $60,000,000 for the entire multi-parcel, multi-residence compound. A few weeks ago, amid rumors that Formula One Racing heiress Tamara Ecclestone rejected the compound as not grand enough for her grandiose real estate tastes, the property disappeared from the listing agent's website.

Lo and behold, yesterday the couple's compound popped back up on the market with an official asking price of $49,000,000.

New listing information shows the compound contains a total of 9 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms spread throughout a sprawling single-story a main house, a detached guest house tucked into the hillside at the front of the house and and guest/staff apartment, fitness facility and underground parking garage tucked discretely underneath the swimming pool with its adjacent pavilion. The compound includes an additional and separate 3 bedroom house for staff, security, extended family, or whatever.

Listing information goes on to reveal there are more than half a dozen fireplaces on the property, lavishly landscaped grounds that include a meandering pond and grassy back yard with infinity-edged swimming pool and spa, and state-of-the-art security systems.

Certainly the Missus D. and de R. sit high on a mountain of money that would make the knees of ordinary rich people turn to jelly with envy and Your Mama needs a god damn nerve pill to smooth out the bitter agita caused by the financial flabbergast that overwhelms us when we consider the the monetary resources it takes just to pay the taxes and upkeep costs for their high-maintenance Beverly Hills compound as well as their Thousand Oaks horse farm.

It not known where Miz Degeneres and Miz de Rossi would like to reside next but Your Mama has heard–but can not confirm–from someone in a position to know such matters that the couple would like to simplify their real estate lives with the acquisition of an in-town estate/ranchette where they can both live and house their horses. We shall see, puppies, we shall see.

listing photos: Westside Estate Agency

Frances Bean Cobain Buys A West Coast Crib of Her Own

BUYER: Frances Bean Cobain
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,825,000
SIZE: 3,350 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Last week Your Mama received an enlightening missive from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial who alerted us to a well-maintained Los Angeles, CA residence they believe was acquired–through a trust–by tatted-up teen-aged rock-and-roll heiress Frances Bean Cobain.

In case any of y'all live under a showbiz rock and don't know, Miss Cobain, now a quite striking and decidedly worldly 19 year old young woman, is the only progeny of deceased Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain, who (in)famously did himself in when his daughter was just a toddler, and Hole front woman Courtney Love, a not-particularly-stable-seeming twittering typhoon of a woman who can be counted on as rich fodder for the tabs, blogs and gossip glossies but but isn't, we imagine, on any body's list for Mother of the Year.

Miz Love and Miss Cobain have a wickedly cantankerous mother/daughter relationship. In late 2009 it was widely reported that Miz Love lost legal custody of her minor daughter and that a temporary restraining order was issued that forbid Momma Love from having any direct or indirect contact with Miss Cobain.

On the occasion of her 18th birthday in August 2010, Miss Cobain not only became a legal adult but also the sole beneficiary of a multi-million dollar trust set up in the years after her father's suicide to ensure her future financial security. Now in control of her very own and very substantial mountain of moolah, the former Rolling Stone intern turned pseudonymic artist Fiddle Tim, has indeed busted out and bought herself a home of her own in Tinseltown.

After getting word of the purchase from The Bizzy Boys, Your Mama did some asking around and our frighteningly well-informed friend and informant Lucy Spillerguts quickly confirmed the purchase by Miss Cobain of a vintage Spanish style casa tucked into a quiet canyon in the foothills just above Hollywood. Property records show the deal went down in late July 2011 in the amount of $1,825,000.

Listing information for Miss Cobain's new crib shows it measures a grown up but far from excessive 3,350 square feet with a total of 4 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. The two-story house, built in 1930, was designed by architect Carl Jules Weyl and retains many original architectural and decorative details such as hand-forged iron work, colorful decorative tiles, numerous stained and leaded glass windows, hand-stenciled wood beams, and vintage light fixtures and hardware.

The terra cotta tile floors in the entrance hall turn to restored wood floors in the "formal" living room that features a wood-burning fireplace, vaulted wood ceiling with exposed and stenciled beams, a row of leaded glass windows at the front of the house and a bank of pane-free French doors that open the room to a large tiled terrace at the rear of the property.

Like the entrance hall, the formal dining room has an articulated ceiling treatment and connects to the kitchen/service area through an old-timey swinging door. The fully updated and upgraded kitchen isn't huge but is well-equipped with white Shaker-style cabinetry, open shelving for daily dishes and glassware, high-grade commercial-style stainless steel appliances, and white subway tile back splashes. The kitchen complex also includes a long and narrow walk-in pantry with washer and dryer and an adjoining breakfast room with shallow barrel vaulted ceiling.

A room next to the kitchen is labeled as a "Media Rm" in the listing description of the property but is so exiguous that even a committed and unashamed tee-vee addict like Your Mama would rather scrub terlits with an old toothbrush than be trapped in that claustrophobic cubicle of a room with a blaring boob-toob.

Anyhoo, the wood-floored staircase winds up to the second floor bedrooms that include a modestly-scaled but nicely appointed master bedroom that listing information indicates includes a small private terrace, a wonderfully cacophonous tiled bathroom with separate soaking tub and stall shower, "generous closets," and a separate dressing area charmingly outfitted with built-in vanity and adjustable three-sided mirror.

Although the rear yard is, as per listing information, "pool-sized" there isn't a swimming pool. There are several outdoor areas where Miss Cobain can take advantage of the classic (and somewhat cliché) indoor/outdoor California lifestyle. The main dining/lounging and outdoor entertaining area is a tree-shaded, courtyard-like patio accessible through French doors located in various rooms on the main floor of the residence. A short, gated driveway cuts along the side of house and leads back to a detached garage currently converted to a studio/office.

It unclear how much time Miss Cobain plans to spend in Los Angeles given that she reportedly attends private, pricey and proudly arty-farty Bard College in upstate New York.

Your Mama asks that the children keep in mind that the perfectly banal day-core depicted in listing photographs reflect the tastes of the seller and not Miss Cobain who we imagine (and hope) has far less traditional and more quirky ideas about how to turn a house into a home.

listing photos: Prudential California Realty

Redfin sets the blogosphere on fire, along with lots of agents

Late last week, Redfin announced an important addition to their site -- an agent scouting report.  Now, you'll be able to look up just about any agent anywhere in the country and see their statistics -- average sales price, number of buyer and seller transactions, map where those transactions occurred, etc. 

The r.e. blogosphere has gone crazy over this. I'm a Redfin Partner agent myself, and I often look at the Redfin site to get property info that I can't get on the mls (yes!).  I don't think this will be useful for many, many reasons.  My main area of concern is this: real estate is not baseball, and statistics don't really tell potential customers much.  Stats simply measure number of properties bought and sold, and as we all know, a real estate transaction isn't necessarily a unit that can be measured.

We'll see how this plays out in the coming weeks.