SELLER: Ryan SeacrestLOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $14,950,000
SIZE: 10,000+ square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Late last night, while perusing all the new real estate listings in Los Angeles, Your Mama discovered that too tan and meticulously manicured radio and television tycoon Ryan Seacrest hoisted his Los Angeles, CA mansion on the market with an asking price of $14,950,000.
Mister Seacrest started up his ladder of fame as a radio dee-jay who quickly made a segueway into hosting events like the International Hawaiian Tropic competition and a myriad of reality television clunkers like Radical Outdoor Challenge and Ultimate Revenge. In 2002, Mister Seacrest found his professional pot of gold as the host of the long running (and ti-erd) reality television phenomena American Idol.
In addition to his duties on American Idol–he is now not only the host but a producer–the bizzy as a beaver Mister Seacrest hosts the American Top 40 program on the radio–that's Dick Clark's former gig–hosts and produces scads of red carpet celebrity suck-up fests on E! where we get to learn such important things as what kind of shoes the stars are wearing, and produces a growing list of really awful but really successful reality tee-vee programs such as Keeping Up With the Kardashians, Denise Richards: It's Complicated and the shameful Bromance.
Although he often battles rumors and insinuations that he's a homosexual, fastidiously groomed Mister Seacrest has been linked to a long(ish) list of ladeez including Teri Hatcher, Sheryl Crow, and former Miss USA Tara Conner, the silly-billy who got busted for doing dope and kissin' on Miss Teen USA Katie Blair. (She retained her title, iffin anyone cares.) The 35 year old is currently gettin' bizzy with 22-year old former Dancing With The Stars dancer turned wannabe country music queen Julianna Hough who for years–reportedly and rather ironically–thought Mister Seacrest was a friend of Dorothy before he finally convinced her to hook up with him.
Anyhoo, whatever the deal is with Mister Seacrest's private proclivities they ain't nobody's bizness and have nothing to do with his real estate so let's move on. Property records and bazillions of previous reports reveal that Mister Seacrest picked up his private property in the Hollywood Hills near the top of Nichols Canyon in April of 2006. The property, with its gated celebrity style driveway and hulking Mediterranean mansion, was purchased from 2-time Oscar winning actor Kevin Costner for $11,500,000.
Your Mama first discussed Mister Seacrest's hillside estate back in December of 2007 on the heels of its debut in the January 2008 issue of Architectural Digest.
Current listing information shows Mister Seacrest's manse, originally built in 1974, measures 10,000 square feet and includes 6 bedrooms and 6.5 poopers while the Los Angeles tax man shows the house has 5 bedrooms and 4 poopers in 8,172 square feet. We're not sure why the numbers don't jive but it might have something to do with the detached guesthouse located over by the detached garage where Mister Seacrest keeps his small fleet of cars that include a sassy and somewhat sinister blacked out Bentley Flying Spur sedan and a couple of sleek and sporty Aston Martins.
Shortly after purchasing the property–which he dubbed Casa di Pace (House of Peace)–Mister Seacrest worked it over with the assistance of accomplished and in demand interior designer Jeff Andrews who has also done up some day-core for radio personality Eleanor Mondale (the daughter of former vice-president Walter Mondale), patriotically named actress America Ferrera (Ugly Betty), and actor Michael C. Hall who convincingly plays a sexy serial killer on Dexter.
Mister Andrews reportedly worked from Mister Seacrest's desire to give his digs a feeling of timelessness and peace and created a decorative scheme that Architectural Digest called, "A contemporary Mediterranean mélange" with "rich, masculine colors." Your Mama, who tends to be a bit less diplomatic about such things, would describe Mister Seacrest's crib as a not particularly punctilious mishmash of men's club meets 1940s Hollywood glam meets an Italian noble's country house.
Mister Andrews has certainly created a series of comfortable if somewhat fussy looking, picture perfect and magazine ready tableau. But, quite frankly, butter beans, it looks to Your Mama like every yard of fabric, every stick of furniture, every piece of tile, and every damn knick-knack and paddy whack was purchased specifically for the re-do of this house. It looks oddly impersonal to Your Mama and lacks the personality, pop, and intimate layering that occurs when a person (or their decorator) incorporates items into their day-core that they've collected over the course of their life. More often than not, going out and buying all new things to fill a house–even if they're antiques–tends to make a home look like a hotel. We love hotels. We just don't want to live in one.
But that is, perhaps, irrelevant given that someone will buy Mister Seacrest's house and not his couch. The house itself, a rambling affair with generously scaled rooms that open to terraces and wide city and canyon views, includes a double height rotunda entrance hall, a formal living room with beamed ceiling, fireplace, and Mexican paver tile floors, and a formal dining rooms with a pitched beamed ceiling, antique light fixtures, a massive carved wood wall thingamabob. Other more private spaces include a den, library, family room with fireplace, screening room, natch, and fitness facilities for keeping Mister Seacrest's hairless chest puffed up like a 25-year old rooster-stud.
Mister Seacrest's boo-dwar, with a very high wood paneled ceiling and a gigantic bed with wooden canopy, has a fireplace, hardwood floors, a couple of leather and striped cloth club chairs, a couple of banks of tall French doors and, we presume, a closet/dressing/pooper complex that would make lesser celebrities weep with envy.
The nearly one acre grounds include the aforementioned long gated driveway, a circular motor court, a long lap pool sunk directly into a flat, tree-ringed grassy pad, and a lighted championship tennis court.
Your Mama has a theory about when a big-ass celebrity like Mister Seacrest–who is a big-ass celebrity whether you like him to be or not–has their home photographed for the glossy pages of a glossy shelter publication like Architectural Digest: We think they're looking for some free publicity because they're considering selling their house. We hear from at least two reliable sources that those who have their residences photographed for Architectural Digest are contractually obligated not to list their home for at least one year after the pictures of their pad are published. Mister Seacrest waited nearly three but none the less, patience proves our theory correct.
Given that Mister Manicure earned $38,000,000 last year according to the fine folks at Forbes and is on track to earn many tens of millions more over the next several years, we're guessing that Mister Seacrest wants to be moving on to bigger digs in a more impressive part of town. Don't get Your Mama wrong chickadees; there ain't nuthin' wrong with living up in Nichols Canyon. Plenty of high profile (and not so high profile) peeps own homes in Nichols Canyon including Ian Ziering, Clive Robertson, Leona Lewis, Renee Zellweger, J.K. Simmons, Marin Landau, Tim Allen, and Kirsten Dunst who sold her house in June of 2010 for $1,375,000 after first listing it a year before for $1,700,000. We're just saying that Mister Seacrest makes a-list money now and as such we'd bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly that he wants a hardcore a-list address to go with his increasingly bulging bank account.
photo: Pacific Coast News
