Fasten your safety belts, butter beans, we're about to dabble in a little dangerous but delicious real estate schadenfreude.Back in early December 2007 Your Mama filed our most recent installment on the ongoing real estate saga of The Real Housewife of Orange County's glitziest reality tee-vee proselytizer Alexis Bellino and her husband Jim, a businessman of some sort who may or may not have committed some sort of white-collar crime.
At that time the blinged-out but (allegedly) cash-strapped couple faced losing a custom-built 6,900 square foot luxury mansion in Newport Beach, CA into the bitter maw of foreclosure. It may interest some of the children to know that the shingled 6 bedroom and 5.75 pooper property happens to be in the very same fancy gated enclave on Newport Harbor where current tabloid catnip Nic Cage owned a bay front home that he sold in 2007 for around $35,000,000.
In early August 2010, a Notice of Sale was recorded for Mister and Missus Bellino's property that called for an auction date of August 25th, 2010 with a minimum bid of $4,619,188. The Mercedes and BMW-driving Bellinos somehow managed to hang on to the house but, alas, this would not be their only turn on the dizzying merry-go-round of foreclosure. Indeed, on the 18th of November, 2010 a second Notice of Sale was recorded with an auction date set for December 10, 2010 in Santa Ana, CA. The minimum bid, according to the docs we saw, was now set at $4,677,635.
Three short days before the scheduled auction ownership of the property was transferred from Mister and Missus Bellino to Global Marine, Inc., a "business entity" of which Mister Bellino was the president. The company's lone asset: unsurprisingly, the Bellino's Newport Beach mansion. At some point Mister Bellino and his subordinate blond bombshell mommy-wife Alexis reportedly negotiated a loan modification with JP Morgan Chase (or whatever they're called nowadays) that staved off a third auction scheduled for January 10th, 2011.
It wasn't long after the mansion was transferred to Global Marine, Inc. in early December, 2010 that the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and on the 15th of March, 2011 Jesus Christ himself must have finally answered the Bellino's real estate prayers because the mansion transferred back from Global Marine to Mister Bellino who in turn–glory be–sold it the very same day but at a steep and terrifying discount.
According to public property records, in August of 2007 the oh-so-flashy Bellinos took a whopping $4,560,000 mortgage when they acquired the property and they first attempted to unload their money-hoovering white elephant in early 2009 when they heaved the beast on the market with a desperately optimistic asking price of $7,995,000. Over the years the property was de- and re-listed a number of times with ever shrinking asking prices. The last known price tag was $3,395,000 and property records show that that Bellinos sold the property for $3,000,000. That, hunnies, is an unimaginably bountiful basket of money by the financial standards of most folks but for Mister and Missus Bellino it was a mind-bending multi-million dollar bang to their (allegedly) deserted bank accounts.
Iffin we're being honest we'd admit that we aren't really sure where the Bellino's set up house after leaving Newport Beach. We suspect they're holed up in a large but less well-located an still expensive rental house waiting out the financial storm.
Wherever it is they alit, we'd like to sincerely offer Missus Bellino an entirely unsolicited word of advice: Listen here Glitter Kitty Glamor Puss, okay? Your husband, bless his heart, seems to be having some money troubles–he's not alone in the twist of this soured economy, of course–and you have three little blessings from God to feed and dress in designer duds so you got to milk this Housewife thing for all it's worth. Let's be honest doll-baby, this nitwitted I'm-a-dress-designer thing can only end in tears and embarrassment–can you say She by Sheree?–and it seems to Your Mama that you're not really qualified to do much else besides be a buxum reality tee- vee "star" with a sparkling set of veneers and a shiny mane of fake hair. What we're trying to say is you just keep shaking your toned and taut money maker on The Real Housewives of Orange County for as many seasons as Bravo will pay your sinful grown-up ass to act like a petty and falsely naive junior high school girl who thinks baby-talk is sexy and can't move her face due to an aggressive Botox regimen.
listing photo: The Stanaland Group
