Holly Hunter Lists Celeb Pedigreed Downtown Digs

SELLER: Holly Hunter (and Gordon MacDonald)
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $8,700,000
SIZE: 3,000 (or so) square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In the fall of 2005 Oscar-winning actress Holly Hunter (The Piano, Broadcast News, The Firm, Thirteen) paid fellow Oscar winner Julia Roberts $4.1 million for a high floor apartment in a beautiful and dignified full-service Beaux Arts building on New York City's affluent lower Fifth Avenue that, thanks to Polly Wannacracker, we've learned she hoisted on the open market over the weekend with an asking price of $8,700,000.*

Current digital marketing materials indicate the 3,000-ish square foot corner apartment is currently configured with two offices, three bedrooms, and three bathrooms with hefty monthly maintenance charges of $5,941 and loads of original architectural detailing including coved ceilings and beautifully maintained original wood work.

A compact entry vestibule opens to a cozy library done up with with a plush deep purple sofa and built-in book shelves, and, next door, a larger living room parlor with a colorful and wacky mixy-matchy melange of furnishings and artwork. Side-lit French doors connect the living room parlor to a partially paneled formal dining room with wood-burning fireplace and direct access to the expensively equipped eat-in kitchen through a windowed butler's pantry with adjoining laundry room.

The floor plan included with online marketing materials shows three distinct bedroom areas: a maid's room with adjoining Jack 'n' Jill bathroom, a two room suite connected with French doors and also with adjoining Jack 'n' Jill style bathroom, and, at the private rear of the apartment, a master suite complete with fitted walk-in closet, private study, windowed bathroom, and a bedroom with east and west exposures.

Your Mama claims no insider intel about what Miz Hunter's future real estate plans may hold but given that she has early elementary school age twin children it could be she's looking for a bit more space to spread out? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Bueller?

Although our research is far from scientific, as far as this property gossip knows, the only other property owned by Miz Hunter is a 34-acre tract of seemingly undeveloped land that abuts property owned by some of her family members in Conyers, GA, where she was born and raised.

*Your Mama assumes Miz Hunter—who was downright spooky as the grey-maned guru GJ in the the Jane Campion written mini-series Top of the Lake— shares the family-sized spread with her long-time paramour and baby daddy, actor Gordon MacDonald.

listing photos and floor plan: Douglas Elliman

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UPDATE: Singleton Mansion

Let's start this week, butter beans and and kitten kaboodles, the same way we ended last week, with some juicy, high-grade Platinum Triangle real estate scuttlebutt...

On Friday Your Mama discussed a 15,000+ square foot Southern Colonial mansion in L.A.'s uppity Holmby Hills 'hood custom-designed in the late 1960s by much lauded and applauded Old Hollywood architect Wallace Neff for Teledyne co-founder Henry Singleton and his wife Caroline. The Singleton's manse had been on the market a few years ago for $85 million but since September 2013 the grand and gated estate has been listed on the open market with a lower but still astronomical $75 million price tag. In mid-February, according to various online listing sites, the property was put into escrow indicating it was on track to be sold. Since then rumors and swirled that the buyer might be a mysterious Englishman or perhaps the preposterously pampered 29-year old Formula One racing heiress Tamara Ecclestone.

However, children, buckle your real estate saftety belts because even though it was widely reported he paid $23 million for the old Harry Cohn house in Beverly Hills, Your Mama now hears via covert communique from Gloria Gotsthedirt that the buyer isn't a mysterious Englishman or a British heiress or a Chinese industrialist or, as some may have speculated, a Russian oligarch but rather veteran Tinseltown t.v. and movie producer Jerry Bruckheimer who, according to Miz Gotsthedirt, will shell out sixty-some million clams for the stately 7.65 acre spread that sits just north of Sunset Boulevard and is surrounded by some of L.A.'s most impressive and posh estates.

Just in case any of y'all might be under the illusion that Mister Bruckheimer's real estate eyeballs are bigger than his bank account you should keep in mind that, largely due to the Pirates of the Caribbean and National Treasure franchises, his high octane (if low substance) tent pole movies have grossed, according to this, nearly 4.7 billion dollars in worldwide box office receipts and the nine time Emmy winner's long and impressive list of television credits include (among many other programs) the wildly popular Amazing Race and CSI franchises. Back in 2010 Forbes (via The Richest) estimated his net to be around $850 million with an average annual income of more than $105 million between 2004 and 2011. If anyone in Hollywood can afford a $60-some million house that probably costs more than a million buck a year to maintain and operate, it's Jerry "Blockbuster" Bruckheimer.

Like other entertainment industry moguls who make money hand over fist, Mister Bruckheimer and his second wife, former Mirabella editor and novelist Linda Sue (Cobb) Balahoutis Bruckheimer, maintain an impressive portfolio of private residences.* Since the mid-1980s, when he bought it for $1,865,000, the Bruckheimers' primary residence in Los Angeles has been the so-called Siskin House, a gorgeous and glassy, Thornton Abell-designed international style affair in sleepy but swanky Brentwod with, according to property records, 7 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms in just over 6,300 square feet.

The couple also maintain a 400-ish acre ranch property in Ojai, CA, they picked up in July 2006 and where they annoyed some of their lesser heeled neighbors when they planted a bunch of trees near the property's perimeter that obstructed their views of the Topa Topa Mountains. In the mid-1990s the couple purchased the 1,200 acre Walnut Groves Farm in itty-bitty Bloomfield, KY, about 45 miles outside Missus Bruckheimer's native Louisville. A 2005 article about Missus Bruckheimer's preservation efforts in Bloomfield reveals the massive spread includes a restored and updated 1820s Antebellum mansion with landscaped grounds patrolled by peacocks, extensive equestrian facilities, a barn that hides an ice rink, a handful of guest cabins, a smokehouse turned billiard parlor, a wash house and a cannery (whatever those are), a stone-edged swimming pool and spa, a Grecian temple-like gazebo, and a restored slave cabin.

In other Holmby Hills real estate news: Your Mama hears through the Platinum Triangle real estate gossip grapevine that the recently completed and very contemporary, 14,000 square foot Estate Four-developed villa next door to the Singleton estate—quietly shopped off market, we were told, to an international clientele with an asking price of $55 million—is also in escrow and about to be sold but, in all honesty, Your Mama does not, unfortunately, currently have any more dish or details than that.

Interestingly enough another of Your Mama's informants heard the buyer of the Singleton mansion and the Estate Four villa are one in the same and that the buyer—who may or may not be Mister Bruckheimer—plans to raze the Singleton mansion and replace it with something probably bigger and more modern and use the Estate Four residence as a guest house. Now that, if true children, is how a hardcore real estate baller rolls...

All just unconfirmed rumor and gossip, kids, rumor and gossip. At least until you read about it in one of the more respectable property gossip columns.

UPDATE (01.19.14): We are now hearing that Mister Bruckheimer is not the buyer but rather, as was first snitched to Your Mama by Our Fairy Godmother in the Holmby Hills, a wealthy fella from London.

*In 1987 Mister Bruckheimer paid $2.4 million for a modestly sized residence on Malibu's Carbon Beach that he sold in an off-market deal in the December 2012 for $18 million to property collecting software tycoon Larry Ellison. Mister Ellison, as Malibu property watchers well know, owns a dozen or more properties along Carbon Beach and this property gossip wonders if he'd like to buy up all of Carbon Beach? Why not? He already owns the entire island of Lanai in Hawaii so why not the whole of Carbon Beach? But we digress...

listing photo: Coldwell Banker

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Your Mama Also Hears...

...In July 2012 impeccably well-connected Platinum Triangle real estate insider Lenny Lemmetellya snitched to Your Mama that Dawn Arnall, the widow of subprime mortgage billionaire Roland Arnall, quietly made her sprawling Holmby Hills estate known as Owlwood available for $150 million to super-rich buyers who knew the right real estate brokers to call.

The following June (2013) the property showed up as an off-market listing on The Agency's website with an undisclosed price tag that several of Your Mama's well-placed informants whispered was (still) $150 million.

Twice this week Your Mama was told by the Tinseltown pedigreed estate was about to be sold but for much less than the alleged but much tittered about $150 million. One of our informants told us he heard the the deal was going down for $75 million and another told us he'd heard word it was $85 million.

So what does 75 or 85 million clams buy? According to the slim information included with online marketing materials the triple-gated and fully landscaped 10+ acre estate has a newly-built guard house equipped to monitor the entire property, a 12,000-ish square foot Italian Renaissance villa, and a recreation complex with a sunken tennis court, swimming pool and spacious poolside guest house. Several more detached structures include a bank of garages, a greenhouse and a second guest house.

The main house designed by Robert Farquhar and built in 1936 for Florence Quinn, the ex-wife of department store magnate and real estate mogul Arthur Letts, Jr. Subsequent owners include 20th Century Fox founder Joseph Shenk, oil man William Keck, actor Tony Curtis and, briefly in the mid 1970s, Sonny and Cher. Later it was owned by a carpet tycoon and then a flamboyant (and some say shady) Syrian businessman who sold the whole shebang to the Arnalls .*

As has been the case for the last couple of years when a mega-estate goes on the market or goes into escrow there's some scuttblebutt making its way down the property gossip grapevine that British Formula One racing heiress Tamara Ecclestone might be the buyer. And maybe she is but this property gossip wouldn't bet the farm on it. Your Mama's first thought was that maybe it's billionaire real estate baller Tom Gores who recently and unexpectedly floated his unfinished estate in Bel Air on the market with a $50 million price tag while Peter Propertyseller plus a second anonymous informant told us that they'd heard (but can't confirm) the buyer might be Richard Weintraub, a Malibu-based real estate tycoon with a well-known thing for high maintenance trophy estates.

Of course, Owlwood being thisclose to be being sold is all just some delicious real estate rumor and gossip at this point, And, even if it is true, we don't (yet) have a positive I.D. on the deep pocketed buyer who could very well be a rich Russian oligarch, a wealthy Chinese businessman, a Middle Easter potentate, a moneyed African with ties to a despotic regime, or an American hedge fund fat cat with more money than the damn Pope. Or it could be that this is all just a lot of hot property air and that nothing will come of the juicy rumors about Owlwood's pending sale. We'll just have to put on our patience caps and wait and see, right?

*The existing estate comprises what was once three separate estate properties. incorporates a property that once had a large and long ago razed mansion owned by Rudy Vallée, Jane Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay—who famously painted the house pink, and Engelbert Humperdinck. Aerial imagery includes with digital marketing materials indicates that there's a black-topped parking lot where the Valée/Mansfield/Humperdinck mansion once stood.

aerial photo: The Agency

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Your Mama Hears...

...There are a couple of mega-deals about to go down in the hoity toity Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles. One involves a major mansion on Delfern Drive just north of Sunset Boulevard and is more widely tittered and yakked about by upper end property watchers since it's listed on the open market and shows up on digital listings as a pending sale. The other big deal currently in the works, so we've been told by two separate informants, is going down on the down low in a quasi off-market deal. More on that later but first let's discuss what we know about the first property, okay?

In the late 1960s, after they tired of their previous home in L. A.—a glassy and low-slung affair on Mulholland Drive they had designed by mid-century modernist Richard Neutra in the late 1950s*— Teledyne founder Henry Singleton and his wife, Caroline, commissioned high-class architect Wallace Neff to design a large and luxe Southern Colonial mansion on three super-prime parcels in the heart of the Holmby Hills.

Mister Singleton went to meet the great aeronautical engineer in the sky in 1999 and in early 2008 the palatial spread hit the open market with a sky-high asking price of $85 million. The house did not sell but, according to Your Mama's sources, the property was soon leased to freshly bankrupt tech entrepreneur Halsey Minor. We're not sure exactly how long Mister Minor remained in residence or if there were any subsequent tenants after he moved out but we do know that the estate did not show up for sale on the open market again until September 2013 when it popped up with a new and improved but still astronomical asking price of $75,000,000.

Current digital marketing materials show the grand, gated estate encompasses a total 7.65 acres and includes a dignified 15,520 square foot main residence with ten bedrooms and 12.5 bathrooms. Although 15,000 square feet is small in the age of 40,000 mega-mansions in the early 1970s when this house was completed it was considered almost preposterously enormous. Other interior features of note include: a Versailles-inspired oval-shaped double height gallery; a vast formal living with marble mantled fireplace; an oval formal dining room with fireplace, a paneled library/den also with fireplace; a family room with exposed wood beams on the ceiling and yet another fireplace; and a colossal eat-in kitchen that may or may not have a fireplace, we're not sure.

The walled, gated, and fortified grounds feature a parking lot-sized motor court, an attached four-car garage, a prairie-like patio on the back of the house that overlooks acres of rolling lawns and free-form pond, a greenhouse folly with domed room detail, a lighted and lattice-fenced tennis court, and—naturally—a swimming pool with adjacent open air lounge.

Online resources show the house went into escrow in early February with an as yet unidentified buyer for an as yet unknown amount. Our Fairy Godmother in the Holmby Hills told Your Mama that she heard (but can't confirm) the buyer is British, a rumor that falls in line with the name that for the last several years always pops up as a buyer (or potential buyer) when a house of this magnitude and expense goes up for sale or into escrow in Los Angeles: British-Croatian Formula One racing heiress Tamara Ecclestone. The preposterously pampered 29-year old gal can certainly afford it and has a well-known penchant for ludicrously expensive homes—several years ago she paid around £45 million for her hotel-sized house in London on Kensington Palace Gardens that she spent untold millions more to gut renovate, however, Your Mama isn't convinced the newly married and currently preggers Miz Ecclestone actually wants a trophy estate in Los Angeles where her younger and blonder sister, Petra, already owns The Manor, a 56,000-ish square foot behemoth she bought in mid-2011 for $85,000,000 from wealthy Hollywood widow Candy Spelling.

If any of the children would like to confidentially clue Your Mama to the rumors and details of the pending sale please feel free to give us a ringy-dingy or send a covert communique because, you know, inquiring minds want to know.

Your Mama also hears that the sale of the Singleton mansion isn't the only super-sized deal going down in Holmby Hills, which is arguably the finest—or at least the most exclusive—neighborhood in Los Angeles. Stay tuned....

*The Singleton family heirs sold the Neutra-designed house in 2004 for about six million bucks to hair care mogul Vidal Sassoon and his fourth wife, Ronnie Holbrook. Mister Sassoon went to meet the great cosmotologist in the sky in the spring of 2012 and in early days of 2013 the all-glass house was sold for $16,500,000 to French luxury goods tycoon François Pinault. Anyways...

listing photos: Coldwell Banker

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Mish Mash for Thursday Afternoon

Last year Scarlett Johansson picked up a priddy, $2.2 million shingled cottage near the ocean in Amagansett, NY, and now comes word from the lady property gossip at the New York Post that Miss Johansson has been out peeping multi-million dollar digs in New York City that she'll presumably share with her handsome French fiancée Romain Dauriac. Miz Johansson already owns a terraced penthouse in sleepy Sutton Place near Midtown that she acquired in 2008 for $2.1 million.

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Last June recently married Tinseltowner Ricki Lake put her house in L.A.'s Brentwood area—the house she bought in 2002 for $5.6 million from Courtney Cox—on the market for $8,750,000. It was the long-legged blond gal at Trulia Luxe Living who first reported that the property sold for $8.45 million.

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Back on the west coast Your Mama heard word via late night covert communique from Felicia Navidad that highly compensated sitcom star Johnny Galecki of hugely successful The Big Bang Theory has been out having a look see at all the big and expensive properties in the star-soaked Los Feliz area of L.A.

Miss Navidad snitched that one of the properties toured by Mister Galecki is an off-market estate rumored in the 'hood to be be available off-market for around $8 million. The gated estate in question is surrounded by similar properties owned by Showbizzers like Kirstie Alley, Michael Balzary, a.k.a. Flea, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson not to mention Mister Galecki's cast mate Jim Parsons who just bought his house in the 'hood from Robert Pattinson for $6.375 million.

Mister Galecki currently owns a walled, high-hedged and gated residence next door to Cameron Diaz that he bought back in 2001 from Patrick Dempsey.

In other Big Bang Theory-related real estate news Kaley Cuoco and her new hubby are the much tongue-wagged about next owners of the Tarzana, CA, macmansion that divorcing tabloid staples Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom have on the market for $5,499,000.

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Back in the spring of 2011 CNN's big gay silver fox Anderson Cooper shelled out $1.7 million to buy the 2.4 acre spread next door to his longtime weekend hideaway os Aspatuck Creek in the little lauded Hamptons community of Quioguem near Westhampton Beach. He renovated the six bedroom residence and this summer, as was first revealed by the well connected lady property gossip at the New York Post, put it up for lease at $150,000 for the summer season, 30 grand for June, sixty for July and 80,000 big one for August.

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Given that he lampoons the ultra-PC hipsterdom that, for better or worse, defines Portland, OR, to much of the rest of the world, it only makes perfect sense that Portlandia creator/writer/producer/actor Fred Armison would buy a freshly rehabbed hillside bungalow in an up-and-coming out-of-the way cranny of Silver Lake, one of L.A.'s more established hipster-venerating nabes. As was first discussed by the folks at Zillow, property records show Mister Armison paid $763,000 for the three bedroom and two bathroom residence.

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Comedian and super popular podcast host Adam Carolla acquired a deluxely done new house last year in the leafily affluent suburb of La Cañada-Flintridge and now, so snitched the long-legged blond gal at Trulia Luxe Living, Mister Carolla's old house, a decoratively tired 5,700+ square foot courtyard Spanish perched on a high hill top above Lake Hollywood, has popped up for lease at $13,500 per month.

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In 2011, impossibly good looking male model Ben Hill—if you look at magazines or watch t.v. you'd know his meticulously scruffy face—paid $395,000 for a rural 12.27 acre spread with a private pond in the bucolic upper Hudson Valley community of Chatham, NY.

With is own bare and probably ludicrously handsome hands he revamped the house into a sophisticated, urban loft-inspired retreat in the woods. The properties three structures, all of which Mister Hill covered in (on-trend) charcoal paint, include a two bedroom honeymoon cottage, a detached two car garage with flexi-use space above, and a glass and wood entertainment/yoga pavilion that opens to a wide half flight of stairs that descends to a deck that hangs over the placid pond. As was first pointed out by the property gossips at the Daily News, Mister Hill has flipped the picture perfect property back on the market with an asking price of $1,295,000.

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The increasingly celeb-centric Architectural Digest recently highlighted the Vincente Wolf-designed Manhattan loft of Julianna Margulies and the ecclesiastical-inspired mansion that veteran rock 'n' roller John (Cougar) Mellencamp had custom built on South Carolina's scenic Daufuskie Island.

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Dustin Hoffman Quietly Unloads San Remo Triplex

SELLER: Dustin Hoffman
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $21,018,500
SIZE: (approx.) 8,000 square feet on three floors

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A variety New York property gossips reported last December that two-time Oscar winning actor Dustin Hoffman planned to unload his mansion-sized triplex at the famed San Remo building on Central Park West and now, thanks to a covert communique from Mister Wrinklebottom, Your Mama learned that Mister Hoffman did indeed and very quietly sell his multi-unit combination apartment in an off-market deal a few weeks ago to a mysterious buyer for, according to property records, $21,018,500.

Your Mama's research on the internets turned up evidence that Mister Hoffman, who has owned at the San Remo since the mid 1970s, attempted to sell his gargantuan triplex back in the fall of 2002 when it was floated with an asking price of around $25,000,000. According to reports from the time, the approximately 8,000 square foot spread is an amalgamation of at least three units covers about half of the 15th floor and all of the 16th and 17th floors and includes four bedrooms, six bathrooms and two terraces.

The Central Park facing twin towered Art Deco building was designed by the legendary Emery Roth and finished in 1930. The former rental building, built on the site of a hotel that was also called The San Remo, went co-op in 1972 and its well-heeled residents enjoy white glove services that include two impressive lobbies, 24 hour doorman, private and semi-private elevator landings, a residents only health club, communal laundry facilities, and storage rooms.

Since at least the 1970s the high brow building has been occupied by a bevy of high profile people including (but not limited to) Steven Spielberg, Donna Karan, Glenn Close, Steve Martin, Tiger Woods, Diane Keaton, Tony Randall, Demi Moore, and Steve Jobs who sold a penthouse pad he owned and renovate but never lived in to uni-named rock star Bono. Back in the mid-1980s, at the apex of her early fame, Madonna tried to buy a three bedroom spread (listed for $1.2 million) but was rejected by board. (So the scuttlebutt goes Diane Keaton was the only member of the board who voted to approve the Material Girl.)

As far as Your Mama knows (and can tell from property records) the decorated Tinseltown veteran's property portfolio still includes an expensive house in the natty Kensington area of London, of  a five bedroom and five bathroom contemporary residence on (quickly disappearing) Broad Beach in Malibu (CA) that he appears to have owned since at least the late 1990s, and, his primary residence in L.A., a four parcel compound of about two acres in quietly swank Brentwood that includes a 10,000+ square foot main residence, two additional residences (of unknown utility), extensive gardens and, a swimming pool and tennis court.

exterior photo (New York City): Christopher Bride for Property Shark

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Papa John (Schnatter) Lists Two St. Regis Penthouses

SELLER: "Papa John" Schnatter
LOCATION: Deer Valley, UT
PRICE: $30,500,000 (or thereabouts, for both units)
SIZE: 12,000-ish square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5 full and 2 half bathrooms (in total)

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: As was first reported by the Deseret News via (Zillow), Papa John's pizza mogul John Schnatter publicly listed a pair of penthouse condos atop the swanky St. Regis Deer Valley Residences in scenically spectacular Deer Valley, UT, for a combined $30,500,000 (or thereabouts).*

Mister Schnatter, in case that name doesn't ring any bells of recognition with the children, sold his beloved Camaro to start his fledgling pizza business in 1983 out of the back of his father's Indiana tavern. His business has since ballooned to more than 4,000 outlets in more than 30 countries and in 2009 he famously paid a quarter of a million dollars to buy back the Camaro. In 2012, some of the children may recall, Mister Schnatter caused a big, quasi-political stink when he loudly announced he would have to cut the hours of low-wage workers and raise the price of a $16 pizza pie by 10-14 cents to offset the $5-8 million his company would incur in annual increased healthcare costs due to the dreaded Obamacare.

Mister Schnatter reportedly purchased the penthouse pads, which together span the entire 11th floor of the St. Regis, as an investment in 2008. He only finished the build out of the larger of the two units. The smaller unit has just over 5,000 square feet and is listed for about $12.5 million and the larger, fully fitted and kitted penthouse has 6,800+ square foot penthouse and $17.999 million price tag.

Mister Schnatter and his long-time wife, Annette, had the larger penthouse custom fitted as a rustically velveteen ski/hunting lodge in the sky with five en-suite bedrooms and a total of five full and two half bathrooms. Entertaining spaces include large but hardly humongous formal living and dining rooms, bother with lots of carved wood and rugged stone accents and French doors framed by braided drapery so strange it makes Your Mama need a damn nerve pill.

Less formal but still pretentiously opulent family areas include an open concept kitchen/dining/family room area with an angled stone fireplace, a six-stool booze and beverage bar, an informal dining area, and a super-sized center island kitchen outfitted with elaborately carved wood cabinetry and premium grade appliances. A separate billiard-table equipped game room has a library nook lined with built-in book cases and a temperature controlled wine cellar has decorative wrought iron and glass doors.

Other features of note include a high-tech home automation system, a roomy master suite with adjoining, wet-bar equipped private office, private elevator access to a custom ski prep room, and somewhere around 2,000 square feet of outdoor living space that includes a mountain and ski slope view loggia with built-in ceiling heaters, a built-in barbecue, and a spa in front of a t.v. surmounted outdoor fireplace.

In addition to their Deer Valley penthouse(s) and a waterfront penthouse in Naples, FL, they picked up in 1996 for $2.65 million, Mister Schnatter and his family reside primarily on a 15+ acre landscaped estate near Louisville, KY, with a 24,000-square foot faux chateau, a 6,000-ish square foot guest house, an underground parking garage for 20+ cars (with car washing station and valet office), more than one swimming pool, and a private golf course.

*The Deseret News reported that if either unit sells at or near asking price it will set record price for a condo in the area and also that Mister Schnatter plans to keep whichever of the two units does not sell first.

listing photos: Summit Sotheby's International

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