SELLER: Ashlee Simpson-WentzLOCATION: Beverly Hills (Post Office), CA
PRICE: $3,699,000
SIZE: 7,100 square feet (approx.), 5 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The children should recognize that the celebrity real estate pickin's are slim as a super model's femur iffin Your Mama is–once again–dissin' and discussin' Ashlee Simpson-Wentz and the Beverly Hills, CA mansion she–once again–heaved back on the market earlier this week.
Once upon a time Ashlee Simpson-Wentz–the younger sister of recording artist turned apparel mogul Jessica Simpson–was a hot hot hot young "singer" and budding "actress" (7th Heaven, Melrose Place). Her "career," such as it was, has hit the skids and, some might say, fallen right off the cliff into the deep and dark end of the showbiz pool. It certainly ain't none of Your Mama's beeswax but we aren't even sure how Missus Simpson-Wentz cobbles together an income nowadays that's sufficient to pay her multi-million dollar mortgage and property taxes. We're not saying there's money problems for Miss Simpson-Wentz because we don't know nuthin' about the details of her finances, we're just saying we can't identify the source of any significant current revenue streams.
That's doesn't mean she isn't trying to turn her ship around. Miss Simpson-Wentz, who took some hard knocks for attempting to lip-synch on Saturday Night Live back in 2004 and was unceremoniously axed from the reprise of Melrose Place after just one short season in 2010, stated in an interview for Paper magazine that she was in the studio working on a folksy fourth album–whoop-dee-do!–and hard at work on a fashion line. Lowerd. Really? A fashion line? Gurl, pleeze. No. The absolute last thing the world needs is another fashion line "designed" by a straw-grasping dilettante celebrity. Are we right? Anyhoo, with her career in the crapper, Missus Simpson-Wentz is far more likely to show up on the blogs and in the tabs nowadays for (allegedly) hooking up with her estranged huzband's b.f.f. Craig Owens.
Property records and previous reports reveal that in January of 2007, on the lucrative tail of the release of two number one albums (Autobiography and I Am Me) she shelled out $4,500,000 for an approximately 7,100 square foot mock-Med mansion on a celebrity-lined street in the rugged backwoods of Beverly Hills, CA.
Shortly after settling in to her 5 bedroom and 6.5 pooper bachelorette pad Miss Simpson hooked up with rocker Pete Wentz, the the make-up wearing and boy-kissing bass player of Fall Out Boy who in short order put a bun in her then unmarried oven. The preggers parents-to-be had a shot-gun wedding in May 2008. He moved him into her big new house in the Bev Hills Post Office–he sold his Hollywood Hills bachelor pad in September 2008 for $1,600,000–and the stork brought baby Bronx in late November 2008.
The following year, in August of 2009, about the time the rumbles began about there being trouble in their relationship paradise, rumors came slip-sliding down the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that Missus Simpson-Wentz was fixin' to heave the couple's multi-level mansion on the market with an asking price close to five million clams. The house did not officially hit the open market until January 2010. After at least one price reduction and one failed deal the property was de-listed in late May 2010.
In early 2011 Miss Simpson-Wentz petitioned the court for a dee-vorce due to irreconcilable differences and just this week she re-listed her house in the Bev Hills Post Office with an asking price of $3,699,000. A few quick flicks of the well-worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that even if Miss Simpson-Wentz and her Real Estates pull a rabbit out of a hat and manage to pull in a full-price offer on the property she's looking at a heart stopping $800,000 loss not counting the fat real estate fees that could easily top $150,000.
The walled and gated house, once owned by comedienne Rita Rudner, has a Zen-inspired courtyard at the front and tumbles down the steep hillside at the back. The rather large house, built in the early 1990s according to listing information, includes a formal living with fireplace, wide-plank walnut floors and a cathedral-beamed ceiling, a dining room that the Simpson-Wentz's appear to have utilized as a tee-vee watching room and a galley-style kitchen with commercial-grade range and dining area.
The top level master suite includes his and her poopers and walk-in closets and opens to a terrace with panoramic canyon views. The remainder of the bedrooms share the lower level with a media/entertainment room that opens to the terraced back yard that includes a patch of grass and a swimming pool with adjacent two-story guest house. Now listen, poodles, there's little Your Mama loves real estate-wise than a guest house in which to stash guests but it's pushing punishment to expect them to clamber down several flights of stairs, cross the lawn, clomp down more stairs and squeeze by the swimming pool with their luggage. Your Mama's momma, a ladee who prefers not to break a sweat under any circumstances would probably choose to sleep in the backseat of her SUV-thing than to haul her hiney down all those gluteus maximus straining stairs.
Where soon to be ex-Missus Simpson Wentz plans to move next isn't known although ages ago someone snitched to Your Mama that the all but washed-up Miss Simpson-Wentz might be looking for something more modestly sized in or around Encino where her parents have long lived in a mansion a few blocks away from the (Michael) Jackson family compound on Hayvenhurst Avenue.
listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty
