SELLER: Alan and Denise JacksonLOCATION: Franklin, TN
PRICE: $3,995,000
SIZE: 14,040 square feet, 8 bedrooms, 8 full and 2 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The Nashville, TN real estate community was electrified last year with mustachioed country music king Alan Jackson and his Christian book-writing wife Denise sold Sweetbriar, their super-luxe 135-acre estate with its 19,000 square foot mansion in rural Franklin, TN, to Willis and Reba Johnson for a teeth-chattering and record-busting $28,000,000. Mister Willis may not be a household name for most folks but he's a wildly wealthy man who made his three and some hundred million dollar fortune thanks to a publicly traded company called Copart that auctions wrecked cars for insurance companies.
According to Your Mama's southern real estate sources, specifically a gal we'll call Frankie N. Franklin, we've learned that when Mister and Missus Jackson decamped Sweetbriar they settled into another large but slightly smaller mansion in Franklin that property records reveal was acquired in June 2010 for $3,675,000. The towering three-story faux-Tuscan mansion was purchased through a business entity that links back to the same Brentwood, TN address where Mister Jackson's production company Real World Tours is located. Mister and Missus Jackson recently flipped their mansion back on the market less than one year after buying the damn thing with an asking price of $3,995,000.
Mister and Missus Jackson's new digs sit high on a rise in the 600-ish acre guard-gated community of LaurelBrooke about 12 miles south of downtown Nashville. The upscale enclave offers rich residents a 4,000 square foot clubhouse with fitness center and media room, a swimming pavilion with two heated pools (one for adults, one for toddlers), tennis facilities, basketball court, multi-purpose play field, miles of hiking and biking trails and several ponds stocked with fish.
Listing information shows Mister and Missus Jackson's mini-estate spans 2.05 rolling acres and includes a 14,040 square foot "villa" with 8 bedrooms, 8 full and 2 half bathrooms and garaging for six cars plus an attached workshop. According to Miz Franklin, the house was built on spec just prior to the recent economic slump in 2007 by a well-known local builder and sat vacant until Mister and Missus Jackson came along and snatched it up as a very temporary crib.
Electronic gates open to a stone-paved driveway that curves and climbs up the gentle slope to the front of the imposing stone-built house that rises three daunting stories with staircases and terraces lined with tightly-set stone balustrades. The front door is, technically, on the second level but a ground floor entrance makes it easy for the lazy to enter the house on the lowest level where they can ascend to the upper levels by way of an elevator.
The voluminous piazza-esque entry has stone floors, double-height ceiling, a dramatic curved floating staircase that any diva or divo would love to glide down. A glittery chandelier gives the grand but all-beige space a smidgen of necessary sparkle. The primary public spaces include a formal dining room and formal living room with massive carved stone fireplace, double-height ceiling and a second floor gallery that wraps around the earth tone bathed space.
More family friendly areas of the mansion include a colossal chef-equipped kitchen with wood-beamed ceiling and a lot of carved detailing on the cabinets. An adjacent breakfast room opens to a family room with fireplace. A series of tall windows and French doors open out to a loggia that stretches along the back of the house and a heated and cooled veranda with fireplace, outdoor kitchen and swimming pool facilities. The loggia and veranda both connect the house to the wide flagstone terrace that surrounds the salt water swimming pool and spa. The tree-ringed back yard also has a nice patch of perfectly-groomed lawn that Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's long-bodied bitches Linda and Beverly would love to get their paws on.
The humongous house also includes a large lower-level games room with built-in bar, a fitness room full of state-of-art body torture equipment, a wine cellar and a home theater with leather recliners and tiered seating for optimal viewing.
We're not quite sure where Mister and Missus Jackson will move when they leave their short-term villa in Franklin but somewhere along the way Your Mama recalls we were told by someone–we don't recall who–that the real estate size queens only settled her in this tall Tuscan in Franklin while they completed building another no doubt gigantic house. Now kids, we have no direct knowledge of or details about this house the Jacksons are allegedly building so for now that is just a bit of rumor and gossip. Got that?
What is not rumor and gossip is that Mister and Missus Jackson have been on a bit of a real estate roll lately. Not only did they sell Sweetbriar in 2010 and buy the Franklin mansion they now have on the market they also listed their four bedroom Key West-style cottage on the Intracoastal Waterway in Tequesta, FL with an asking price of $1,275,000, just five thousand more than property records show they paid for the place in June of 2004. The property remains on the market without a reduction in the asking price.
The Jacksons continue to own an ocean front estate at the southern tip of Jupiter Island, FL. The property was originally purchased in 2002 for about $3,500,000 and several years later the Jacksons razed the existing house to make way for an 8,724 square foot Mediterranean mansion with 7 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms.
Your Mama would like the children to note that while all this celebrity real estate bizness is fun and games, devastating floods have ravaged dozens of communities and cities along the Mississippi River and its tributaries, including Nashville and the surrounding suburbs. Your Mama urges concerned citizen-children to donate a few pennies to the Red Cross relief efforts. Visit www.redcross.org or call 1-800-RED-CROSS; you can also text the word "REDCROSS" to 90999 to make a $10 donation. Contributions may also be sent to local American Red Cross chapters or to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, D.C. 20013.
listing photos: Sotheby’s International Realty / Lipman Group
