BUYER: Megan EllisonLOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $13,750,000
SIZE: 4 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama first caught wind of this here juicy real estate tidbit about Oracle heiress and budding movie producer Megan Ellison (True Grit) a few weeks ago from on our our Platinum Triangle insiders but forgot all about it until reminded of the matter the other day by The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial.
Miss Ellison, the lucky (and allegedly lesbian) lassie, was born with a proverbial silver real estate spoon in her mouth. Her tech industry tycoon father Larry Ellison–co-founder and CEO of software supernova Oracle–is a notorious trophy property collector with outrageous and sumptuous residences and investment properties all up and down the state of California and beyond. In San Francisco he's got a monumental modern mansion in upper-crust Pacific Heights and down the peninsula, in the sleepy upscale suburban enclave of Woodside, Mister Ellison bunks in a sprawling Japanese-themed compound so meticulously built with traditional and ancient Japanese building practices and materials–it was built, it has been reported, entirely without nails–that it'll make your hair stand right up on end.
Mister Ellison reportedly owns upwards of a dozen properties in Malibu, including five contiguous parcels on Carbon Beach, and the recently dee-vorced big-livin' billionaire recently made real estate waves in the desert where, in early 2011, he dropped a sanity wrecking $42,900,000 for Porcupine Creek, an astonishing 249-acre spread in Rancho Mirage, CA with private 18-hole golf course, an absurdly palatial 18,000-plus square foot main house, four detached guest houses, four more guest casitas and a swimming pool and entertainment complex that looks more like something a person might expect to find at a resort hotel in Scottsdale, AZ rather than in some one's backyard.
Mister Ellison's near-mythic real estate apple apparently did not fall far from the tree because, like him, his daughter has a penchant for pricey properties, particularly, it seems, for compounds. As of Tax Day 2011, young young young Miss Ellison owns three very contemporary cribs on three contiguous lots with unobstructed city views in the very desirable and celebrity-friendly Bird Streets neighborhood high above the Sunset Strip.
The first of Miss Ellison's three Bird Street aeries, a glitzy, glassy, sexy, sassy and quintessentially Steve Hermann-designed house, was acquired amid much fanfare and hoo-ha in early 2008. She, presumably with a financial leg up from her Big Daddy, paid $12,600,000 for the 3 bedroom and 4 pooper party pad.
The following year, in April 2009, she (presumably) used $6,500,000 more of her daddy's dinero to pay media mogul Byron Allen $6,500,000 for the 3,562 square foot house immediately next door. We make no claims as to its veracity, but Your Mama heard through the celebrity real estate grapevine that Mister Allen bought the 3 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom house for his drop-dead gorgeous but real estate fickle mother who decided–after her son had done signed the deed on the dotted line–she didn't want to live there. Your Mama does not know Miss Ellison nor do we run in the same sorts of social circles as she does, but we also heard from someone in a position to know that the reason Miss Ellison bought Bryon Allen's unwanted property next door to the one she already owned was because she wasn't thrilled with the lack of view from the courtyard swimming pool in the first house. Bam! How y'all like them real estate apples? That's just how the daughters of billionaires roll.
In 2010 Esquire magazine made use of a newly built modern mansion directly next door the second house Miss Ellison had already acquired on the block. They called it The Esquire House, natch. The suave magazine hosted parties and events and all the fabulous people came as well as all the people who just think they're fabulous. They strapped on their booze goggles, mingled to the beat of L.A.'s most in-demand DJs and hooked up in a willy-nilly fashion that many of them probably regretted the next morning when they did that awful early morning drive of shame with smeared lipstick, a dress that smells like vodka and a ratty hair-do that let's ev-er-ee-one know you did not sleep in your own bed or look in a mirror before high-tailing it for home from a stranger's house.
Anyhoo, in September 2010 The Esquire House went up for sale with an asking price of $18,900,000. According to listing information, the mini-compound includes a 4 bedroom and 7 pooper main house plus a detached two-story guest house with music room and recording studio. The over-the-top interior spaces have clean lines, walls of stacked stone, vast expanses of floor to ceiling glass for absorbing the panoramic view of all of L.A. from downtown to–on a clear day–the Pacific Ocean.
The main rooms of the gated mansion include a living room with a fire and water sort of fireplace/fountain sort of thing, a media area that looks far too much like the first class cabin on a damn airliner and a sleek kitchen open to a small dining area. The architects and designers peppered several built-in wet bars throughout the property so that one never need be more than 20-feet from a fresh gin & tonic. One of the wet bars is upholstered in leather and another has a rounded alcove outfitted with not one but three 32-inch flat screen tee-vees. A few of the other swankety-swank amenities of the highly stylized–and arguably over-designed–residence include a home office, high-tech fitness room, a state-of-the-art media room and a massive master suite with sitting area, fireplace, a long bank of floor-to-ceiling glass with city views, a multi-chamber spa-style bathroom, and a pair of custom-designed walk-in closets that look far more like a high-fallutin' boo-teek or haberdashery than they do a damn closet.
A wide, multi-level terrace extends off the back of the house. The expansive party-friendly patio runs along the steep slope that drops off in a vertigo-inducing manner and was–we're afraid to say–fashioned with two contrasting colors of stone pavers laid in a dizzying and unnecessary striped pattern that makes the whole thing feel like a hotel instead of a private residence. Slung around here and there on the terrace and around the house are several seating and dining areas, a built-in barbecue center, a patch of grass for the pooches, an infinity edged swimming pool with spa and a narrow and linear firepit thing that must be 30 feet long and looks it's aching to lick and char the fake-tanned skin of an "actress" in Lucite stilettos or maybe a douche bag in an Ed Hardy t-shirt.
Five months after appearing on the open market, the now de-consecrated Esquire House was sold for far less than the asking price and to the same corporate entity that owns the first house on the block that Miss Ellison acquired back in early 2008. The sale price, according to property records was $13,750,000, more than five million clams less than the asking price.
According to the steaming beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus, Miss Ellison has now forked over an unimaginable $32,850,000 for her dee-luxe compound of three very contemporary houses all in a row. According to Your Mama's rudimentary calculations based on the property records we accessed, the property taxes alone for Miss Ellison's three homes in The Bird Streets are well in excess of $250,000 per year. How do them real estate apples grab ya? Anyone else besides Your Mama flat on the floor in a puddle of flabbergast and disbelief? We don't begrudge Miss Ellison her nearly 33 million dollars in contiguous real estate. We just can't imagine what she could want or need with three luxe and louche homes all in a row? But, then again, if Your Mama has said it once we've said it 111,111 times before: Who are we to question or comprehend the capricious ways of the rich and famous?
listing photos: Luxury Style Photography for Hilton & Hyland
