Your Mama Hears...

...That budding country music superstar Taylor Swift has gone and bought her family a million dollar-plus mini-mansion in Nashville's historic Whitland neighborhood.

Your Mama first heard this celebrity real estate tidbit yesterday from a professional gossip with whom we're acquainted and earlier today we read a slim-on-the-facts bit about Miss Swift's alleged real estate generosity on the blog of a second professional gossip not of our acquaintance. As these sorts tantalizing kernels of real estate rumor often do, they compelled Your Mama to swiftly conduct our own investigation on the Swift matter. Within minutes we were able to identify the house Miss Swift (allegedly) acquired but determination and confirmation of ownership has proved a far more daunting, elusive, time consuming and unsatisfying task. Your Mama would bet our long-bodied bitches that Miss Swift did purchase this property and probably purchased it for her parents. None the less records reveal that the deluxe digs were actually purchased via a vaguely-named trust that may (or may not be) controlled by Miss Swift and/or her parents.
Information about the brick-built residence that Your Mama horse-whispered out of the interweb shows that the somewhat staid but not particularly imposing residence (above) with its sensuous low-profile eyebrow dormer was at listed for $1,595,000. Property records reveal it was sold, way back in September 2010, for $1,400,000.

The residence Miss Taylor is rumored to have purchased for her parents, according to listing information, was built in 1925, measures 4,929 square feet and has 4 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms–or 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms depending where online one looks–including a main level master suite with dual en suite facilities.

A circular drive rolls by the front of the house that at first glance reads a bit plain if pleasantly distinguished, solid and trustworthy. The arched driveway continues around the house to an original concrete-reinforced two-care garage on the basement level. Still waters sometimes run deep and the pretty-ish but mostly banal exterior hints little of the exquisite architectural detailing on the interiors that include wonderfully patinated original hardwood floors, custom woodwork and several magnificently ornate hand-crafted plaster ceilings. In the formal dining room, plaster pilasters line the walls and a shallow barrel-vaulted ceiling is thick with hexagonal plaster rosettes that resemble the surface of the moon.

The original 1925 architecture and the exquisite plaster work installed after the home was built have successfully been married to and integrated with the upscale and up-to-date luxuries and conveniences installed in a recent expansion and renovation. The lavishly long kitchen has a large eating area with a bank of extra-tall windows that offer private and pastoral views of the rear terrace and backyard. A vaulted ceiling with exposed trusses unites the breakfast area with the commodious kitchen well-equipped with white Shaker-style cabinetry, high quality commercial-grade stainless steel appliances, marble counter tops and back splash and an over-sized copper exhaust hood.

A flat lawn plenty wide and long enough to toss a big stick for a large-sized pooch extends from the back of the house but the main outdoor entertaining area is actually located off the side of the house where a large walled garden has blue stone terracing, a water feature and a free-standing outdoor fireplace.

The Swift clan's new Nashville residence is no less luxurious but far smaller than the family's long-time homestead in historic Hendersonville, TN. Property records we accessed indicate that Mom and Pop Swift purchased the 8,396 square foot lake front mansion about 20 miles northeast of downtown Nashville in March of 2004 for $790,000.

Previous to moving to suburban Nashville, property records also show that Mom and Pop Swift owned plain looking but well-located water front residence in the beachy community of Stone Harbor on New Jersey's Cape May that they sold in February of 2005 for $2,425,000, five-times the $485,000 they paid for the place in June of 1997.

Some of the children may recall that in late 2009, at the dewy and tender age of 20, whip-thin and curly-tressed Miss Taylor forked out around two million clams for a glassy penthouse bachelorette pad of her very own at the Adelicia, a newly-constructed luxury apartment complex in downtown Nashville. Her 4,062 square foot crib features a double height living room, four bedrooms each with private pooper, a second level media room, an open plan kitchen and a narrow balcony with city lights view that wraps around two sides of the penthouse's lower level.

listing photos: French Christianson Patterson and Associates