LOCATION: Los Angeles (Bel Air), CA
PRICE: $3,501,000
SIZE: 3,424 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Retired professional tennis player Pete Sampras—unquestionably one of the best players to ever manhandle and finesse a tennis racket—may be largely out of the hot glare of the tennis watching public but all the real estate obsessed children know the A-list athlete pops up on the regular in all the celebrity property gossip columns.
In early 2008, the 14-time Grand Slam winner and his actress wife, Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, slapped a $25 million price tag on a gloomy, English Manor in Beverly Hills that they sold about six months later for just under $17 million to (Will & Grace co-creator) Max Mutchnick and his well-connected entertainment attorney husband, Erik Hyman. The Showbizzy pair, parents to twin girls, worked the place over in a sumptuously comfortable yet family friendly haute-homo glamour that was professionally photographed a couple of years ago for the glossy pages of Elle Decor. But we digress...
The Sampras packed up their rackets and sneakers and decamped what Your Mama understands to be a very good part of Beverly Hills to what Your Mama understands to be a very good part of Thousand Oaks, CA, where they'd custom built a contemporary compound on a private, 20-ish acre promontory behind the swanky gates of the Sherwood Country Club. It wasn't long—March, 2010, as best as we can tell—before the sports-minded spread was hoisted on the open market with a $25 million asking price. Mister Sampras doesn't appear to possess much of a green thumb for residential real estate and his spacious Thousand Oaks estate finally sold last October (2013) for $13,560,000, pretty damn close to half the original asking price.
In late 2009 or early 2010 Mister and Missus Sampras high-tailed it back over the Santa Monica Mountains to the Brentwood area where they shelled out $5.6 million for a six bedroom and six bathroom rustic-contemporary at the tail end of a leafy cul-de-sac.* A couple of short months ago just about every property gossip besides this one discussed how the increasingly peripatetic Mister and Missus Sampras laid out $5,996,500 for a 5,100 square foot celeb-pedigreed residence on 2.08 acres in the mountains high above L.A.'s Bel Air. The gated estate—with circular motor court, swimming pool and tennis court— had previously been owned by Albert Brooks and, before him, deceased television mega-mogul Merv Griffin.
This morning, quite out of the blue, Your Mama received tongue wagging word from one of the Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial that Mister and Missus Sampras coughed up another $3,501,000 to acquire a 1.12 acre property that's adjacent (and below) the hill top house they just bought in Bel Air. There must have been some serious competition for the semi-secluded property because Your Mama's research shows it was last listed for $3,195,000, a whopping $306,000 less than the recorded sale price. So says Your Mama's bejeweled abacus, the Samprases paid a total of $9,497,500 for the neighboring properties that combined encompass 3.2 acres.
Listing details we coaxed out of the internets show the 3,424 square foot single-story residence, described in digital marketing materials as "an emotional ranch home," sits privately down a long, gated and tree-lined drive. An emotional ranch home? What in the devil's name does that mean? Will the damn thing will break into fits of tears or have a conniption when it feels under appreciated? No thank you. Just ask The Dr. Cooter. Your Mama can be a little—uh—moody so we'll take our house sans emotions of its own, thank you very much. Anyways...
Listings show the four bedroom and three bathroom house has roomy, interconnected main living spaces with dark chocolate brown hardwood floors, vaulted, beamed and/or exposed wood ceilings, several fireplaces and sky lights, and expensively fitted and kitted kitchen and bathrooms.
There's a "seamless indoor/outdoor flow" as per listing details between the house and the myriad of outdoor entertainment and recreation areas. A partially covered terrace wraps around (at least) three sides of the abode and includes a built-in outdoor kitchen and slightly elevated dining deck tucked up against the hillside. From the house the grounds meander and wander through a sylvan and mature landscape that includes at least two amorphous swathes of lawn; a children's playground; a built-in fire pit; a spa and sauna; and an oval-shaped swimming pool surrounded by a narrow strip of flag stone terracing.
While the two properties do butt up against each other and share a long, common border, the smaller house—the one featured here—sits well below the larger one and it seems to Your Mama that to get from one house to the other Mister and Missus Sampras will need to install a long, booty-busting stairway or—better yet—a short-haul funicular.
*Iffin we're honest, children, and we aways are, we confess that we have no idea—nada, zip, zilch—if Mister and Missus Sampras moved into the Brentwood abode full time or if they remained primarily in residence in Thousand Oaks and merely used the Brentwood property as an in-town crash pad.
listing photos: Partners Trust
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