Any body who knows any thing about celebrity real estate knows that when a rich and famous person gets married, makes a baby or heads for the court of dee-vorce the old marital house usually gets traded in for a new bachelor or bachelorette pad. Now that superstar Jennifer Lopez has kicked her salsa singing husband Marc Anthony to the curb Your Mama imagines at least one of their several luxurious residences might be sold off.
Now, puppies, have some common damn sense here. Miz Lopez did not ring Your Mama on our bedraggled and bedazzled princess phone and tell us with her own lip-glossed lips that she plans to sell any of her homes and/or buy a new one. For all we know she and her wire-thin soon-to-be-third ex-huzband are going to stay living up under the same roof. Who knows? Not Your Mama, that's who. We are simply guessing on the what might happen based on our entirely unscientific and otherwise useless long-term study of the fickle real estate habits of the rich and famous. Miz Lopez in particular has come under our celebrity real estate microscope because she's a wildly wealthy showbiz phenom who buys and sells real estate about as often as she gets in to and out of long-term relationships and marriages, which is–let's be honest hunnies–fairly frequently.
There are three fancy-pants pads in that Mister Anthony and Miz Lopez share, at least there are only three we know about. There were oodles reports in the fall of 2010 that they'd peeped a penthouse pad at the controversial mixed-use Paseo Caribe complex in San Juan, Puerto Rico but we have no direct 411 about whether or not they moved forward with a purchase on La Isla del Encanto.
photo: Icon BrickellWe do know that sometime in 2009 Mister Anthony bought a minority stake in the Miami Dolphins football team and in September of the same year he told the peeps at People that he'd bought a condo in Miami. He went on to say that when the decoratin' was done the condo would be "the sexiest place in town!" Your Mama was unable to parse the property records to reveal the details of said purchase but most reports from the time state they picked up a penthouse at the newly constructed Icon Brickell (shown above), a glittering 10 acre forest of 50-story smoked glass and steel towers that cleave to the edge of Biscayne Bay. In October of 2009 it was revealed by a blogging Miami real estate agent that Mister Anthony and Miz Lopez placed 10–yes, hunnies, ten–additional units under contract at the Icon Brickell but iffin we're being honest–and we always are–we'd confess we really haven't any idea if that's accurate or not.
Mister Anthony and Miz Lopez both previously owned property in the Miami area. In October 2003, shortly before he divorced former Miss Universe Dayanara Torres Delgado–mother of two of his five children–he laid out $750,000 for a 4 bedroom and 3 bathroom mock-Med inside the gates of the Doral Country Club. Mister Anthony quit-claimed the property over to his ex-wife in 2005 and she sold it in late 2009 for $750,000.
In May 2002, about the time she bailed on her second marriage to former back up dancer/choreographer Cris Judd and famously hooked up with actor Ben Affleck, Miz Lopez dropped $9,500,000 on a lavish water front mansion on Miami Beach's celebrity-lined North Bay Road. Miz Lopez's massive Miami mansion was originally built in 1929, sits on more than 1 acre with 200 feet of bay frontage and has a waterside swimming pool and private boat dock. It was here where she reportedly holed up in the fall of 2003 after she and Mister Affleck called off their highly anticipated and much ballyhooed wedding in Santa Barbara, CA.
Miz Lopez floated her Miami manse on the market in late 2004 and sold it in March 2005 for $13,900,000, a substantial $4,400,000 profit not counting renovation, decoration, carrying costs and real estate fees. The buyer was health care industry tycoon and venture capitalist Mark Gainor and his wife Elyse. As it turns out Mister and Missus Gainor, who gave the estate complete and very expensive overhaul, have the magnificent mansion on the market with a staggering asking price of $34,500,000.
But we digress. Back on the west coast...
The 10-acre Calabasas, CA estate where Miz Lopez and Mister Judd were married in September 2001 was recently quietly placed on the market with an asking price of $8,850,000. Miz Lopez did not, however, own the lush suburban spread. It's our understanding she merely leased the deluxe digs for her nuptials.
As far as Your Mama knows–and we really know so very little–the first house Miz Lopez owned in Los Angeles is a sprawling 9,000-plus square foot contemporary privately situated at the tail end of an approximately 250-foot long gated drive in the 24/7 guard gated (and celeb-friendly) Summit community perched in the rugged mountains that tumble down to the flats of the San Fernando Valley.
Property records indicate Miz Lopez snapped up the posh, low-slung pad in February 2000 for $4,297,500. Presumably she unleashed a squadron of smart architects and nice, gay decorators on the property because she managed to flip the airy California contemporary at a significant profit. In October 2004, shortly after making it official in the eyes of God and government with Mister Anthony, Miz Lopez sold the sleek residence to hotelier/restaurateur/nightclub impresario Sam Nazarian for $10,950,000. A few flicks of the well-worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows the former Fly Girl–here she is doing her thing in a pair of mom jeans–took in a heart stopping $6,652,500 profit not counting renovations, decorations, carrying costs and real estate fees.
photo: Sotheby's International Real EstateMister Nazarian, for those who might be curious, held on to the 4 bedroom and 6.5 bathroom house only until August 2006 when he sold to rockstar/fashion maverick Gwen Stefani and her musician man-mate Gavin Rossdale for $13,250,000. At the time he sold to them the property included an infinity edge swimming pool, tennis court, screening room, and–natch–state-of-the-art security systems. The photo above shows the house as it appeared when Mister Nazarian sold it to Miz Stefani and Mister Rossdale who recently completed a massive renovation of the entire property that included the addition of an additional structure that may (or may not be) a guest house, staff quarters, recording studio, home office space and/or etc.
When the salsa singer–a winner of two Grammys and three Latin Grammys–married the entertainment industry juggernaut that is Jennifer Lopez in June 2004, h already owned a secluded estate about 30 miles outside Midtown Manhattan in the high-brow Long Island enclave of Glen Head (NY), sometimes referred to as Brookville. Property records Your Mama perused indicate Mister Anthony paid $3,700,000 for his 6.25 acre spread in Glen Head and Nassau County tax records show the tree-shaded estate features a 16-room red brick Colonial built in 1941 that measures 10,084 square feet and includes garage parking for at least 6 cars, 7 fireplaces and an unlucky 13 terlits in 8 full and 5 half bathrooms.
Of course we don't know an A-bomb from and iPhone but presumably Mister Anthony occupied the genteel residence at least part time in the early 2000s when he was married to and making babies with former Miss Universe Dayanara Torres Delgado. Mister Anthony and the beauty queen reportedly split in October 2003 and finalized their divorce just days before he married Miz Lopez in June 2004 in a secret ceremony at her Beverly Hills home.
At the time Mister Anthony Miz Lopez married she still owned a giant house up in the Summit community, the one now owned by Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale. However, since this was where Miz Lopez lived during her ill-fated and much-publicized affair with Ben Affleck, we highly doubt it was at her house in the Summit where she and Mister Anthony were married.
We seem to recall that the star-crossed (and ultimately ill-fated) lovers were married at a massive mansion in Beverly Hills, CA that, as it turns out, was just heaved on to the open market with an astonishing $40,000,000 price tag. We also seem to recall reading that Miz Lopez once leased the house but–and this is a huge but, children–we have no confirmation other than previous reports that Miz Lopez ever had anything to do with the house in question.
What we do know about that house–for what it's worth–is that it occupies two lots in a prime section of the flats of Beverly Hills. Silver screen legend Jimmy Stewart lived in a large but comparatively modest mansion on one of the two lots but his house was knocked down in the late 1990s to make way fora lavish 13,885 square foot Mediterranean mansion that contains a total of 9 bedrooms and 13 bathrooms divided between the main and guest houses. Records shows the owner as a mysteriously named corporate entity that links back to Mary Ann Sigler, the CFO of billionaire Tom Gores' multi-billion dollar Platinum Equities. However, the owner, as per two of Your Mama's impeccable tattletales is neither Miz Sigler nor Mister Gores but rather mergers and acquisitions honcho Johnny O. Lopez, a founding partner at Platinum Equities.
There we go digressing again...
Mister Anthony proved the exception to Your Mama's celebrity real estate theory about how rich and famous folks tend to trade properties when they trade spouses and/or procreate. It seems that Mister Anthony bucked that trend and simply packed up the beauty queen's pageant gowns and tiaras and moved in Miz Lopez's gold records and booty shorts.
photos: www.thomfelicia.comSoon after they hitched their wagons, the newlyweds hired nice, gay decorator Thom Filicia to replace Dayanara's day-core with the sophisticated and shiny decorative dreams of Miz Lopez. Mister Filicia, those y'all tee-vee watchers older than 35 surely recall, appeared on the boob-boob in the mid-Noughts as one those sassy Fab Five gays on Queer Eye who used to race around New York City in an SUV saving heterosexual men from making bad fashion choices and installing foos ball tables in their living rooms.
Mister Filicia bathed the elegant and pleasantly pared down interiors with crisp white walls in the formal living room and entrance hall where we swoon for the abstract landscape hanging on the wall. He preserved or installed rich wood paneling in the cozy and more masculine-vibed library and wrapped the formal dining room with some sort of shimmery gold, silver or platinum leaf. A doorway on one side of the fireplace gets perfectly balanced by an architecturally to-die-for arched niche with scalloped apse.
She may be a gal with a ghetto-fab booty from the Bronx but beehawtcha has a bazillion professional irons in the fire, knows how to turn it out like a real damn celebrity and, dontcha know, Miss Thing has an Andy Warhol soup can lithograph hanging on the wall in her gleaming Long Island kitchen. And it's probably the real damn shit, too, not some poster crap you can buy at the MoMa gift shop.
photo: Real LIIn 2008, right about the time rumors and reports of marital friction surfaced over Miz Lopez moving her momma Guadalupe in to their Long Island mansion to help take care of newborn twins Max and Emme, the spicy Puerto Rican sensations spent $2,050,000 for an adjacent 2.24 acre estate.
We really haven't an iota what was done to or with the property but at the time of purchase it included a stately but undistinguished 5 bedroom and 4.5 bathroom clapboard-sided center hall Colonial (shown above) perfect for housing (Grand)Momma Lopez, domestic staff and/or security personnel. The purchase was reportedly (and logically) motivated by security and privacy concerns since the two estates share a single entry gate and a short stretch of of a long Belgian block-lined bluestone drive way. Your Mama would bet our long-bodied bitches Linda and Beverly the entry gate has since been fortified Fort Knox-style and is probably manned by an firearm-brandishing sentry in a seriously bad mood who will unceremoniously turn any moe-ron right around who has the hair-brained audacity to slowly roll their hoopdy up the sleepy lane towards the gate.
Back on the west coast...
In January 2005, half a year after their June 2004 wedding, Mister and Missus Lopez dropped $6,250,000 on an English country-house style mansion on nearly three-quarters of an acre tucked behind fortified gates and high hedges on supremely swank St. Pierre Road in the the trés hoity-toity Bel Air 'hood in Los Angeles, CA.
photo: Sotheby's International RealtyThe couple hired L.A.-based interior decorator/designer Michelle Workman to work the place over into a rustic-fancy French farmhouse (shown above) with casually elegant interior spaces that married (and juxtaposed) the patinated sophistication of a 18th-century chateau, the romance of a country cottage, the glamour of Old Hollywood and the kick up your feet comfort of Shabby Chic. We do love all the luscious textures and the pair of table top chandeliers in the foyer are dee-voon but the pervasive muted pastel palette and the proliferation of self-consciously distressed bits and pieces feel a bit over-femified for Your Mama's personal taste in day-core.
About four years after buying Miz Lopez and Mister Anthony listed their Bel Air spread with an asking price of $8,500,000, which was later slashed to $7,900,000. Listing information from the time indicates the property encompasses a 7,357 square foot main house with 4 bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms surrounded by extensive mature gardens, swimming pool with adjacent pool house and an additional guest house/studio. Property records show Miz Lopez and Mister Anthony sold the property, which backs up to the sometimes very busy North Beverly Glen Boulevard, in early December 2009 for $6,200,000. That's a fifty thousand dollar loss not counting renovation and decoration, carrying costs, and real estate fees. They sold, as per prop records, to a hedge hogger named Mark Spitznagel who runs a so-called Black Swan fund and is reported to be making money hand over fist during this period of intense stock market volatility.
photo: Pacific Coast NewsWith their house in Bel Air on the market and two twin babies in tow, the Lopez-Anthony's went on a house hunt in 2009. They finally settled on a massive bi-winged mansion in the swish suburban equestrian enclave of Hidden Hills (shown above) where the bucolic streets are lined with large mansions owned (and leased) by a large number of high profile Hollywood types.
Melissa Etheridge owns a home in the gated community where until recently she lived with ex-wife Tammy Lynn Michaels and their brood; Britney Spears leases one of the largest estates in the Ashley Ridge section of the community; And agéd rock star Ozzy Osbourne and his very ambitious manager/wife/chat show hostess Sharon own a sprawling Martyn Lawrence Bullard designed mansion they recently heaved on the open market with an asking price of $12,999,000
Property records reveal Mister Anthony and Miz Lopez paid $8,200,000 for their Hidden Hills residence in mid-January 2010 and listing information from the time of purchase shows the behemoth brick-faced mansion sits on two lots that total 3.04 acres, wraps around a massive rear motor court and measures in at a whopping 17,129 square feet with a total of 9 bedrooms and 11.5 bathrooms. Mister Anthony and Miz Lopez, feeling the house needed a few decorative nips and tucks once again brought in L.A.-based decorator/designer Michelle Workman who did the whole thing up in a nearly monochromatic pastel palette of blues, grays, pinks, and peaches that exudes a sleek old school Tinseltown brand of Silver Screen glamour.
photos: VerandaPhotos of Miz Lopez and Mister Anthony's Hidden Hills house recently appeared in Veranda magazine (shown above). Images show a double height entry with white walls and dark wood floors where a curving staircase wraps itself around a lunette settee and drool-worthy cocktail table on top of which sits a vase with a spray of pussy willows. According to a recent cover article in Vanity Fair, the nearby powder pooper is outfitted with hand towels monogrammed with an "M" for Muniz, the actual last name of Mister Anthony and his children.
The formal living room–which she confessed in a recent cover article in Vanity Fair that she rarely uses–pushes cool elegance towards classic showbiz camp with a white grand piano. White pianos are just never good, children. They always seem like a gimmick and a good old-fashioned ebony Steinway would have been a better choice in our book. Then again, this wasn't our book to write. The blush pink dining room gleams and glimmers with a boxy chandelier crafted from super-sparkly cystals and a cozy book-lined library has rich wood paneling in the library.
We have no idea if Miz Lopez or Mister Anthony actually cook. We suspect they say they do when asked by the press but probably still employ a well-paid private chef. Either way the commodious eat-in kitchen was outfitted with every bell and whistle to make a chef's knees turn to jelly including a faboo black and brass Aga range that Your Mama can assure the children cost more than an American minimum wager worker earns in an entire year. The Tiffany blue raised panel cabinets are topped with glossy milk-white counter tops and the breakfast area looks more like the opulent private dining room in a swank eatery than the sort of place where twin toddlers eat Cheerios and slurp up SpaghettiOs.
On the second floor, in addition to their expansive master suite and hallway hung portraits of various Tinseltown icons, there is what Vanity Fair called a "spa" area that Mister Anthony had installed for Miz Lopez as an anniversry gift. The "spa" includes "two massage tables with glittery pillows" and a gigantic closet/dressing area lined with full-length mirrors, rows and rows of color-coordinated shoes, and racks filled with red carpet worthy clothes. Mister Anthony's man-cave portion of the mansion occupies a separate wing and is reported in Vanity Fair to include a bar, 20-seat screening room, recording studio and a mini-putting green.
The three-acre estate has panoramic views over the horsey community and in addition to tons of off-street parking where their extensive retinue of family, friends, staff and hangers-on can park their cars, the property includes double-gated drive way, a swimming pool and spa encircled by one of those awkward but necessary child-protection fences, several outdoor living areas and covered patios, a built-in barbecue station, expansive tree-ringed lawns and, where a tennis court once was, a multi-hole putting green with sand trap that doubles as a sand box for the kiddies.
Jenny may have come from the block in the Bronx, butter beans, but, to co-opt the parlance of The Jeffersons, she done moved on up to the proverbial East Side. Yes, hunties, she most certainly did. No matter what you think of her easy to digst pop songs about Christian Louboutins, the flood of downright awful rom-coms in which she starred in the early Naughts–Gigli? Maid in Manhattan? Uhm, no. Just, no–or the near-ceaseless merry-go-round of her romantic life that gets played out in the pages of all the gossip glossies, the lady is here to stay. She has a new album out entitled Love? with at least one well-performing single, she's got a couple of (not very promising sounding) movies in the hopper, she inked an unprecedented deal with mass-market retailer Kohls that will put an estimated $7-10,000,000 in her pocket for the next 21 years and she's reportedly signed on for another (exceedingly lucrative) season on American Idol.
What all that means to Your Mama and the children is that newly single Miz Lopez probably has another half dozen or more luxe and lavish homes to buy, renovate, decorate and sell on to the highest bidder. We can barely wait for her to get started.
As for Mister Anthony...a little celebrity real estate snitch told Your Mama that he's leased an approximately 10,000 square foot ivy-covered Italianate mansion just above the Sunset Strip that was listed with an asking price of $23,800 and made famous as one of the houses featured on mock-reality boob-toob program Entourage.
