It is time to kill California High Speed Rail

Lisa Schweitzer notes that the cost estimate has been raised to nearly $100 billion (which she says still might understate the cost).

Let's do a little math about this--$100 billion throws off about $5 billion per year. If low income people work 200 250 days a year, and we were to fully subsidize the $5 LA metro day pass (and if I have my zeros right), we could fund 5 4 million people's transit per year.

Now BofA wants to know if they can help me

For those who don't think social media has an effect: BofA Help has tweeted me several times since I posted the item below.  I've tweeted back that they can help me by telling me what is going on with my short sale.  Now, they've promised to call me tomorrow.  I wish they'd spend more time clearing their backlogs of short sales and less time managing their online reputations.

Tuesday Tidbit: Updown Court

Your Mama somehow missed all the many mid-October (2011) reports–we blame the lapse on gin and nerve pills–that revealed the opulent monster mansion in the U.K. known as Updown Court was sold–Sold!–for £35,000,000 to an as yet unidentified "foreign businessman."

Thirty five million pounds–$56,202,300 at today's rates according to our currency conversion contraption–is by any and all standards a serious and significant amount of money to cough up for a private residence. It is none-the-less, chick-a-doodles, nowhere near the hefty (and approximately) $145,000,000 at which the 50,000-plus square foot pile was first listed six or so years ago.

The gilt-trimmed 58-acre Updown Court estate was developed by a gentleman named Leslie Allen-Vercoe who may (or may not) have spent as much as £50,000,000 purchasing the land and constructing the massively monolithic but–in our humble and meaningless opinion–architecturally challenged mega-mansion that boasts such extravaganzas as a triple-height entrance hall that has more in common size-wise with a mid-sized suburban shopping mall than a private home.

Sometime in 2005 the property was listed with an asking price of about $145,000,000, making it the highest-priced house on the market in the U.K. In June 2011 the property was re-listed with an asking price of £75,000,000, a figure that then converted to just over $123,000,000. The new price was twenty million clams lower than the original price but still well more than twice what the "foreign businessman" buyer reportedly paid for it.

As have many property developers who had a lot of money on the line, Mister Allen-Vercoe ran into some financial troubles set off by the global real estate slump triggered in large part by the 2007 sub-prime mortgage meltdown in the United States. Unable to make his meet his mortgage obligations the hotel-sized house fell into the hungry jaws of foreclosure and was seized by the Irish government earlier this year.

The Irish government apparently didn't have any need for the 40-plus room white elephant in the upscale rural London suburb of Surrey and quickly heaved it back on the market.

The scale and scope of the four-floor house flabbergasts and nearly defies imagination. Floor plans included with marketing materials for Updown Court show it was built with such necessities and conveniences as a marble driveway, a dozen or more fireplaces, two-lane bowling alley, indoor squash court, home theater, panic room, underground parking for at least seven cars, and a house-sized master suite with glass elevator that connects to a private indoor swimming pool and spa. The massive mansion and estate has four more swimming pools including a negative edge number on a fourth floor terrace shared by two titanic guest apartments that each comprise 2 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms.

Note: The above is just a teaser. Your Mama suggests y'all steel your nerves with some liquor before you click through but any of the children who have yet to peep or would like to revisit Updown Court's floor plan full monte can view them here.

listing photo: Updown Court
floor plan: Savills

Tuesday Tidbit: Courtney Cox

Word recently slipped down the West Coast celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that sitcom star Courtney Cox (Friends, Cougartown) has added to her impressive real estate portfolio with a condo in the storied and star-stocked Sierra Towers building (above) on the border of West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, CA.

Property records show Miz Cox, separated from but still working with husband David Arquette, dropped $2,050,000 on the high floor residence in the full-service building. Records show the unit contains 2 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms in 1,672 square feet of interior space as well as a long balcony with views to the north and east. Miz Cox acquired the condo-crib from a not-famous short-term owner who, according to records we peeped, purchased the unit less than six months earlier for $1,450,000.

Property records also show that just weeks after Miz Cox purchased her Sierra Towers aerie former cast mate Matthew Perry–himself on a bit of a real estate roll–dumped a 2 bedroom condo in the building he'd bought in April 2005 for $3,200,000 and sold at a huge loss in late September (2011) for $2,850,000.

Some of Miz Cox's new neighbors at Sierra Towers include a lot of high profile peeps like Cher, Elton John, Joan Collins, Diahann Carroll, and diet guru/social doyenne Nikki Haskell. Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne currently lease a unit in the building, which they had worked over by Million Dollar Decorator Martyn Lawrence Bullard, and past renters have included the likes of tabloid fixture Lindsay Lohan and stylist to the stars Rachel Zoe.

In early 2007, after selling a spectacular John Lautner-designed house on Malibu's Carbon Beach for $27,500,000 to dueling divorcees Frank and Jamie McCourt, Miz Cox (and Mister Arquette) spent $17,150,000 on a much more private bluff top compound she had worked over by architect Michael Kovac and much published nice, gay decorator Trip Haenisch. The spectacular and casually posh property (above) was featured in the July/August 2011 issue of Elle Decor magazine.

In addition to their Malibu spread and a West Hollywood office building where their production company is based, Miz Cox and Mister Arquette also own two Beverly Hill residences located just a half a mile away from the Sierra Towers building. In June 2004 they spent $5,450,000 on a a sleek mid-century modern originally designed by A. Quincy Jones they they had done over by architect Cory Buckner (above) and in late 2008 property records show they scooped up an adjacent property for an unknown sum and unknown reasons.

Back in mid-September (2011), just about the same time she was closing on her new condo at the Sierra Towers, Your Mama heard from an informant we'll call Ivana Blowarealestatewhistle that the Cox-Arquette crib–the A. Quincy Jones house with the dee-vine circular swimming pool–is being readied for sale with an asking price of around $20,000,000 but that's just celebrity real estate rumor and gossip at this point children, just rumor and gossip.

photo: (Sierra Towers): Pacific Coast News
photo (Malibu): Simon Upton for Elle Decor
photo (Beverly Hills):  Cory Buckner Architects