BUYER: Taylor SwiftLOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $3,550,000
SIZE: 3 bedrooms 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Reigning pop-country music queen Taylor Swift has gone and done it again, this time on a quiet canyon lane in The 90210.
In late 2009 the four-time Grammy winning whippersnapper paid around two million bucks for a duplex penthouse pad at The Adelicia in downtown Nashville, TN. Just a couple short weeks ago all the celebrity and property gossips went hog wild over the reports that Miss Swift laid out another $1,400,000 to buy a house for her family in an historic Nashville neighborhood.
In addition to all the jibber-jabber about Miss Swift's new Nashville nest(s), the celebrity real estate world has buzzed and salivated for weeks with anticipation over Miss Swift's much whispered-about acquisition of a west coast abode. The whispers turned to tabloid reports two days ago when the Page Six peeps at The NY Post quoted an unnamed source who stated that Miss Swift bought a house in Beverly Hills "so she doesn't have to stay in hotels when she is in LA."'
Since then Your Mama has been flooded with requests and demands from the children to provide more information on the most recent addition to Miss Swift's fast-growing property portfolio. As it turns out we recently and coincidentally received a covert communique from a señorita we'll call Vendela La Tienda who thoughtfully presented us with listing information for a secluded mini-compound tucked up into the Franklin Canyon area in the Beverly Hills Post Office that she claimed Miss Swift had just scooped up.
In all honesty, chickens, we don't know Srta. La Tienda. Therefore we performed our own independent "investigation" and contacted a number of our better-informed real estate insiders to see what sort of information we could scare up. So far no one besides Srta. La Tienda can (or will) confirm to Your Mama that Miss Swift bought this particular house. In fact, Your Mama also heard through the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine she had a hankering for Kevin Huvane's just-sold residence in the Bev Hills Post Office but that house was, in fact, purchased by someone else.
Records that Your Mama espied with our own eyes for the house fingered by Srta. La Tienda as Miss Swift's new crib show that the private property was purchased for $3,550,000 in the first week of April through a trust with a named trustee who happens to be a well-known country music industry business manager known amongst those who know these things to work with Miss Swift. Are y'all following along our winding road? What we're saying is that although Your Mama feels quite confident Miss Swift purchased this wee estate up in Franklin Canyon, at this point we have to get all Kathy Griffin on your asses and say she allegedly acquired the property.
Imagine, puppies, to be in your early twenties and have the financial resources to (allegedly) spend several million bucks on a house in a city where you don't even live just so that you don't have to bunk down in a damn hotel when you're there. Such are the real estate ways of the rich and famous, folks, even the very young ones.
Anyhoo, according to Your Mama's investigation, Miss Swift's (alleged) new pied a terre in the Bev Hills (Post Office) has a long gated driveway–charmingly and partly fashioned from railroad ties–that leads to an amorphous pea gravel motor court that separates the main house from the guest house and garage. There are only a small handful of sounds that make Your Mama squirm with delight and one of them is the aurally satisfying crunch created when a car rolls slowly over gravel. The soothing sound reminds us not only of the long curved gravel driveway at the Outintheboondocks, CA ranch of our beloved but departed Granny and Grandpappy but also of the driveways at our much-missed shingled farmhouse on the eastern tip of the North Fork of Long Island that Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter sold a few years ago when we packed up our long-bodied bitches Linda and Beverly and our mean ol' pussy Sugar and moved west.
Anyhoo, listing information for Miss Swift's (alleged) new Tinseltown digs shows the petite and private 1941 clapboard-sided Cape Cod Colonial–is that what this is, a Cape Cod Colonial?–sits on multiple parcels that total nearly 1.5 acres. There are 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms in the main house plus a detached one bedroom guest cottage with vaulted ceiling, fireplace and a compact but fully-equipped kitchenette.
The intimately-scaled rooms in the main house include a living room with fireplace, formal dining room with an terrarium-like floor to ceiling bay window, an office/library with built-in bookshelves and a cozy kitchen with wood floors, glass-fronted upper cabinetry, high-gloss butcher block counter tops, a wide farmhouse-style sink, three-seat breakfast bar and built-in housekeeping desk surrounded by open shelving.
The main floor master suite, according to listing information, includes a dressing room and dual bathrooms and walk-in closets while the upstairs offers two additional guest bedrooms–one with a pair of built-in canopied twin beds–that share a single facility.
Wood-framed sash windows provide bucolic canyon views and French doors open many rooms of the house to vine-draped pergolas that shade various balconies, porches and patios. A large, partially covered entertaining terrace at the back of the house includes an outdoor fireplace. A wide brick stair climbs up the thickly treed hillside behind the house to a lighted paddle tennis court that has a basketball hoop-thingy at one end.
Your Mama wonders if Miss Swift thought this upscale farmhouse in a rugged canyon behind Beverly Hills felt like a little like Nashville's scenic and gorgeous semi-rural outskirts; A little bit of country just a short hop into the center of the bustling city.
Although her (alleged) new crib in the Bev Hills Post Office may be the priciest property currently in her portfolio, it does not appear that Miss Swift–a nice young lady who writes bitter hit songs about ex-boyfriends and lovers–will pack up her gee-tars and bespangled cowboy boots and move from Country Music Capital, TN to Botox Hills, CA. She recently told night time chat show host Jay Leno that, "Nashville is home...[it's] where I live. I love it more than anywhere in the world."
listing photos: Prudential California Beverly Hills
