SELLER: Avril Lavigne and Deryck WhibleyLOCATION: Los Angeles (Bel Air), CA
PRICE: $9,500,000
SIZE: 12,184 square feet, 8 bedrooms, 10 full and 1 half bathroom
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Truth be told, puppies, Your Mama wouldn't know an Avril Lavigne song if it sidled up and scratched us on the arm. We do know, however, from a lot of years in the celebrity real estate game, that soon after high-profile couples return from the court of dee-vorce their once convivial conjugal crib often goes up for sale.
Canadian pop-punk princess Avril Lavigne hitched her angsty wild-child wagon to Sum 41 front man Deryck Whibley in July of 2006 in a surprisingly and disappointingly traditional wedding where the blushing bride wore a big white Vera Wang-designed wedding dress. Her trés trad trousseau was a far cry from the tutu-wearing and bird-flipping gal known to spit on a pap or two like an angry llama.
Not long after the young and shockingly rich rockers said their I dos they splashed out a very grown-up $9,500,000 to purchase a beefy mcmansion in the Bel Air Crest, an upscale guard-gated community in Los Angeles perched above the traffic-choked 405 freeway between Bel Air and Sherman Oaks. Mister and Missus Lavigne–she was without a doubt the pants wearing part of the pair–bought their marital mcmansion from rocker Travis Barker and his then wife, volatile beauty queen turned reality tee-vee star/hostess Shanna Moakler who currently hosts the dreadful and depressing Bridalplasty program. All the MTV watching children will recall that Mister Barker and Miz Moakler filmed their reality program Meet the Barkers at this very house.
Anyhoo, wedded bliss proved elusive to Mister Whibley and Miz Lavigne who separated about three years after getting married and finalized their dee-vorce in the last months of 2010. We have no idea what happened to Mister Whibley but Miss Lavigne quickly moved on to reality tee-vee star Brody Jenner. Think about this for a moment, pets. Brody Jenner is the step-brother of the shameless publicity-seeking Kardashian clan. That means, of course, that pouty and foul-mouthed Miz Lavigne spends family time with giant-assed famous person Kim Kardashian. What do the children think those two talk about? Make-up? The weather? Current geopolitical power dynamics?
Your Mama knew deep in our snarky gut that it was only a matter of post-divorce time before Mister Whibley and Miss Lavigne put their Bel Air mcmansion on the market and, sho enuf, the hulking 12,184 square foot beast popped up on the open market yesterday with an asking price of $9,500,000, the exact same amount they paid almost four years earlier.
Listing information shows the bulky mock-Med mcmansion was built in 2003, sits high and tight on a squeezy .59 acre lot and includes a total of 8 bedrooms and 10.5 poopers, big numbers that ensures Miz Lavigne and Mister Whibley had a part-time minimum wage gurl whose only responsibility was to iron bed linens and scrub terlits.
Glass and scrolled iron front doors open into a cavernous double-height entry that spills into the formal living room, furnished with black leather club and hood chairs, a gilded rococo coffee table–which we kind of j'adore in a drag-queen-goes-to-the-Salvation-Army sort of way–and a blood red velvety sofa thing with over-scaled tassels. It looks to Your Mama like Miz Lavigne–or her nice gay decorators or perhaps a team of stagers–aspired for the day-core to look like the louche lobby a Goth-inspired boo-teek hotel. However, as the children can plainly see, it's difficult to make that particular look work in a large and luxurious but architecturally ordinary mock-Med mcmansion. Velvet drapes that pool on the ground like blood, clearly, do not a Gothic castle make.
The main floor of the Whibley-Lavigne mcmansion includes dual offices, a guest suite with private pooper and a formal dining room where an unfortunate faux paint treatment on the walls and ceiling was probably meant to give some Old World patina to the Venetian plaster walls. The large and well-equipped center island kitchen opens across a breakfast bar to a breakfast/family room. The family room has a carved stone fireplace and is furnished with more black leather wing-back chairs and another velvety and tasseled sofa in another half-hearted attempt at decorative darkness. Hunnies, not even that black glass chandelier over the super high-shine breakfast table can turn this faux-Tuscan mcmansion into a Gothic princess's palace or a celeb-friendly Hollywood nightclub. It looks to Your Mama like Miz Lavigne might have been angling for but fell far short of the moody and multi-dimensional interior day-core similar to what recently divorced pop music superstar Christina Aguilera's decoratin' demons did for the Beverly Hills mansion she has on the market with a $13,500,000 price tag.
Upstairs four family bedrooms each have a private pooper. One of the bedrooms was all done up and did over in an incongruous peach and pink accented Shabby Chic style with floral print curtains, child-sized vanity table and a Barbie-pink trunk placed at the foot of the bed. It looks like the bedroom of a little girl but as far as we know neither Miz Lavigne nor Mister Whibley have children. Also upstairs a massive master suite features a fireplace, kitchenette, terrace, custom-fitted walk-in closets and dual bathrooms.
The lower level, a vast basement-like space has a wine cellar and tasting room with built-in booze cabinets, a large gym with wet bar and sauna, a heated and cooled 10-car garage, laundry facilities and staff quarters.
Many of the rooms on the main floor open to the backyard. An outdoor living room tucked into the blocky residence is outfitted with a fireplace and flat screen television and connects the interior to the exterior, a mostly flat area that stretches back to a steep ravine behind the house and has an unobstructed view of surrounding mountains and canyons. The back yard has all the necessary accoutrement for indoor/outdoor California living including a swimming pool and raised spa, outdoor kitchen and built-in barbecue center and a flat lawn for naked croquet. A couple of canopied sun beds at one end of the pool coupled with the dearth of personal effects makes Your Mama think that either Miz Lavigne's decorating skills are only as finely honed as her fashion sense or that the mcmansion was given the once over by Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota.
We don't know to where Miz Lavigne will (or has already) moved but iffin we were the betting type–and we are decidedly not–we'd wager she's fixin' to move in with boyfriend Brody Jenner and make babies. But then again, what does Your Mama really know about anything?
listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Beverly Hills South
