Real Estate Wrap Up

1.
Philanderer extraordinaire Tiger Woods has been much in the celebrity real estate news lately. First there were rumors and reports that he leased an apartment in a second rate building in New York City's West Village. The scuttlebutt next turned to his main ex-mistress Rachel Uchitel who is widely reported to have dropped around two million clams for a 3 bedroom and 3 pooper condo in the Murray Hill area of the Big Apple.

Now there's the stunning news that just two days after his quickie dee-vorce was finalized Mister Woods took a staggering $54,500,000 mortgage on the Jupiter Island, FL compound he and the ex-wife have been building the last four or five years.

Speculation among all the celebrity and real estate gossips is that the massive mortgage has something to do with financial stipulations and considerations Mister Woods has to pay out to ex-Missus Woods as per the terms of their dee-vorce.

Mister Woods paid $44,500,000 in cash for the water front property that includes several very contemporary clean-lined structures, three swimming pools, and a gigantic gym.

2.
Are the children ready to get back on the Dave and Vicky Beckham real estate crazy train?
Your Mama sure hopes so because word is starting to slip slide down the real estate gossip grapevine that the superstar couple is looking to unload Beckingham Palace, their sprawling English spread located in a part of the U.K. called Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire. Don't ask Your Mama where that is on a map because we don't know and we didn't bother to look.

The soccer stud and the celery stalk thin former pop star turned fashion maven paid around £2,500,000 for the 1930s Georgian style mansion back in 1999 and recent reports indicate the 7 bedroom mansion is valued by savvy estate agents at £18,000,000. As far as we know there is not an official listing for the property available online but iffin any of the children should turn one up be sure to holler at Your Mama.

The peripatetic pair who have three boy children own several other homes including a chateau in France, a house in Dubai, and a mansion in Beverly Hills, CA that they purchased in the spring of 2007 for $18,200,000 after a long and tedious search that wore out all us celebrity real estate gossips. Although it's expected the Beckham clan will settle (semi) permanently in Bev Hills, the high on the hog livvin' couple are none the less reported to be looking for a townhouse in London to make as their base when in the U.K.

3.
Academy Award winning actor Nic Cage, who recently reached some sort of secret settlement with his former accountant and bizness manager Sam Levin who Mister Cage alleged led him down a garden path to financial ruin, famously and publicly lost his legendary mansion on Copa de Oro Road in the swank Bel Air section of Los Angeles to foreclosure in April of 2010.

Mister Cage had been trying to sell the mansion since sometime in 2007 when it was offered with a ridiculous asking price of $35,000,000. The property, formerly owned by Dean Martin and hirsute crooner Tom Jones, was put on and taken off and put back on the market a number of times and the asking price eventually dipped to $17,500,000. But alas, despite some serious interest and at least one near sale, no one bit the bullet and signed on the dotted line.

Shortly after the bank took possession the somewhat shabby 6 bedroom and 9 pooper property it was heaved back on the market with an asking price of $12,500,000. We say "somewhat shabby" because Your Mama managed to get a peep at the property with our very own eyeballs and despite some interesting bits and pieces and some obviously high quality craftsmanship, the house was, in our humble and meaningless opinion, a bit of a hot mess. And that's being nice, children because y'all should hear the choice words a few Bev Hills real estates have whispered to Your Mama about the property.

Anyhoodles poodles, the bank isn't having any more luck selling the place than Mister Cage had. The asking price now? $11,800,000 and still, apparently, no one wants it.

UPDATE: Well blow me down kittens because as it turns out the old Cage estate on Copa de Oro is in escrow. Glory be!

Now then, do any of the children want lay down a wager on what price the property will finally sell?

4.
The British tabs have been all abuzz the last week reporting that celebrity hypnotist Paul McKenna has expressed some interest in purchasing the opulently unrestrained Holmby Hills mansion where Michael "The White Lady" Jackson spent his final days.

The 7 bedroom and 13 pooper property is currently listed at $28,995,000 and the not always reliable tab The Daily Mail recently reported that Mister McKenna is considering paying £19,000,000 for the hotel sized house, an amount that Your Mama's currency conversion contraption indicates is just under full asking price at today's rates.

An alleged pal of Mister McKenna told the Daily Mail that, "Paul was blown away by the sheer elegance of the property. It is one of the classiest houses in LA." Listen chickens, Your Mama, who don't know a corbel from a Corvette might beg to differ with that characterization opting for words such as ostentatious, humongous, steroidal, and a wee bit garish, but real estate beauty is in the eye of the beholder and one person's classy is another's architectural punch to the gut. Kapeesh?

Back in January of 2008, Mister McKenna paid $6,600,000 for a house high in the hills above the Sunset Strip that had formerly been owned by showbiz types such as producer Chris Roberts, prolific songwriter Diane Warren, and a-list gay billionaire David Geffen.

Call us crazy, call us cynical, call us a Debbie Downer, but Your Mama thinks there ain't nuthin' hot air to this real estate rumor. But then again, we've been wrong before and will be wrong again.

5.
There aren't as many big deals going down as there used to be during the go-go real estate years of the mid-naughts, but recently dee-vorced Paramount Chairman and CEO Brad Grey managed to sell his Pacific Palisades estate for $21,500,000 according to the Wall Street Journal. Of course, as much moolah as 21 one and some million smackers may be, the 6 bedroom and 11 pooper house had been listed for $29,900,000, which Your Mama's bejeweled abacus tells us means Mister Grey settled for 72% of what he originally hoped to get.

The property was purchased by the President and CEO Douglas Emmett, a real estate investment trust with fingers in the commercial and multi-family markets in both southern California and Honolulu.

6.
Back in late July of 2010 Your Mama dissed and discussed the lavish but no longer wanted Chicago townhouse of Jamie Dimon, the New York based Chairman, President, and CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase. At that point the asking price of the financier's 5-floor, 26-room and 13,500 square foot mansion on Chicago's Gold Coast had plummeted from its original $13,500,000 asking price to $9,500,000. Mister Dimon and his wife, who paid $4,680,000 for the 8 bedroom and 9 full and 2 half pooper pile in the fall of 2000, must be getting pretty serious about dumping their former digs because they've just slashed the price by more than two point five million clams all the way down to $6,950,000.

Given that Mister Dimon reportedly earned around $36,000,000 in 2008, $41,200,000 in 2006
and heaven only known what in 2007 and 2009, we don't imagine many if any will have any sympathy for the real estate woes of Mister and Missus Dimon.

7.
The rich, famous, and curious in Los Angeles are following the contentious dee-vorce between Dodgers' owners Frank and Jamie McCourt like it was damn Dickens novel. The McCourts came from Boston and swept the local real estate world by storm snatching up high priced properties left and right.

First they laid out more than $20,00,000 for an estate in Los Angeles' hoity Holmby Hills 'hood–and reportedly spent another $14,000,000 or so on renovations–and they they bought the estate right next door. Then next set their real estate sights on Malee-boo where they paid $27,300,000 for a famed John Lautner designed house on Carbon Beach that they scooped up in July of 2007 from architecture nuts Courtney Cox and David Arquette. It wasn't long before they dropped another $19,000,000 for the house next door. Do the children see a pattern here?

Your Mama did a full run down of the McCourt's fat real estate portfolio back in October of 2009 and according to our entirely unscientific research we figured that Mister and soon to be ex-Missus McCourt have spent at least $167,050,000 to purchase and renovate their many private residences and at that time were servicing a stomach turning $59,700,000 in mortgages.

There has been a lot of public tussling and private clawing about whether the McCourts own the Dodgers together, if the team is "community property," or if the heavily leveraged franchise belongs only to Mister McCourt. However, the latest reports on the McCourt's disputatious dee-vorce doings reveal that soon to be ex-Missus McCourt proposed that she retain ownership of the couple's colossal private real estate holdings while the Mister could have the financially strapped Dodgers franchise. Smart woman? Maybe. But the question remains whether a dee-vorced Missus McCourt can afford to keep and maintain all those properties let alone service the titanic mortgages.

8.
And finally msnbc.com's Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Bill Dedman continues his fascinating and increasingly sordid reportage on the Byzantine financial affairs of the reclusive, mysterious, and wildly rich centenarian heiress Hugette Clark. We, like so many others, can't seem to get enough of this merry-go-round of a story.