LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $15,500,000
SIZE: 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Few multi-millionaires or even billionaires collect exorbitantly expensive and high-maintenance trophy properties the way perma-tanned tech-tycoon Larry Ellison does and, apparently, the real estate apple didn't fall far from the tree in the Ellison family.
From February 2008 through April 2011 Mister Ellison's budding movie producer daughter Megan (True Grit, Catch .44, Main Street and rights holder to the Terminator franchise) spent a bone-chilling $32,850,000 to buy three newly-reworked and brazenly contemporary residences perched contiguously on a precipitous slope in the The Birds neighborhood above the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, CA where all the streets are named after—you got it—birds.
The Oracle heiress's first high-priced purchase in The Birds came in February 2008 when she—then only in her very early twenties—dropped a stupendous $12,600,000 to acquire a sleek, Steve Hermann-designed single story residence that just this week popped up on the market with an asking price of $15,500,000.
Current listing information for the quintessentially L.A. and architecturally á la mode property does not indicate square footage but does reveal there are 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, an 8-foot wide gallery corridor, airy 13-foot high ceilings throughout, a 20-seat home theater, and a score or more of vast wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling glass curtain walls with downright cinematic views across the twinkling lights of Tinseltown from (beyond) downtown to—on a clear day—the Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island.
A long and wide hall extends from the front door to the main living/lounging/entertaining space, a cavernous, airport lounge-scaled space equipped with multiple seating areas, unobstructed city views, built-in floating shelves and cabinets, and a clean-lined Poliform kitchen outfitted with integrated and Euro-style appliances, and a massive center island with six-seat snack and booze counter.
A void at the center of the structure creates a somewhat compact courtyard with free-form swimming pool and elevated spa set in to the center. At least two sides of the courtyard's perimeter are lined with built-in bench seating and fire pits that make it look like a fantastic place to a throw a chic and trés-L.A. sort of par-tay but there is not, unfortunately any view of the city from the courtyard, which is—let's be honest, butter beans—a little bit of a bummer. The only outdoor area that allows for an unimpeded view, as far as Your Mama can tell, is a nerve-wracking terrace that runs along a slender strip of land between the house and the near-vertical slope that drops off dramatically just a few feet from the back of the house.
Unfortunately we really can't say with any authority whatsoever if Miss Ellison has altered the structure or redecorated in any way since current listing photos are curiously identical to the 2008 listing photos, down to the bed linens and bath towels.
Just over a year after she bought the house she now has back on the market, Miss Ellison snapped up the—as it turns out—also Steve Hermann-designed house immediately next door. Property records and previous reports on the matter reveal she paid media mogul Bryon Allen $6,500,000 for the 4 bedroom and 4 bathroom house he bought—so the story goes—in June 2005 for his uncommonly beautiful mother who—as it turns out—wasn't so smitten with the rakish Bird Street aerie and never even moved in.
Miss Ellison's genetically hungry real estate appetite reared up again two years later, in February 2011, when she tripled-down and dropped another $13,750,000 to buy a newly constructed mini-compound located directly next door to the one she'd bought just two years earlier from Byron Allen. That acquisition gave her three luxury homes all in a row on the same street in one of Los Angeles' trendiest and most expensive neighborhoods.
Listing information from the time of the sale shows the third property includes a 4 bedroom and 7 bathroom main residence with state-of-the-art media room, high-tech fitness suite, and massive master suite with boo-teek-style dressing room(s). A detached, two-story guesthouse on the other side of the swimming pool complex from the main house includes a music room and recording studio.
Based on listing information, property records, and some admittedly rudimentary and entirely unscientific calculations performed on our bejeweled abacus we've determined young Miss Ellison's quasi-compound row of three abodes in The Birds contain at least 11 bedrooms and 15 bathrooms. Given those double-digit numbers we assume Miss Ellison is required to retain at least two full-time minimum wager workers whose only responsibilities are to deal with the bed linens and scrub the terliting and bathing facilities 'til they shine and shimmer like a beauty queen's pageant gown.
We're not entirely sure what's behind Miss Ellison's mood to divest and shrink her residential property portfolio but we do know the current listing of one of her three Bird Street properties isn't her only recent foray in to the real estate merry-go round. Last December (2011) Miss Ellison finally unloaded a secluded estate set on a peninsula-like hilltop in the hippy-dippy (and topographically gorgeous) Topanga enclave above Malibu (CA).
Property records show Miss Ellison acquired the 10.41 acre estate with its 3,823 square foot contemporary residence, tennis court, and swimming pool in August 2007 for $4,250,000. Less than a year later, the semi-remote spread was back on the market. It took 3.5 (long) years and numerous price chops but eventually the mountaintop estate was sold for $2,650,000. Your Mama did a few quick calculations and figured out that's a substantial $1,600,000 punishment to Miss Ellison's pocketbook not counting carrying costs, improvements and real estate fees that combined surely ran into the many hundreds of thousands. However, gauche, crass and/or cynical as it may make Your Mama to say out loud, given that Miss Ellison's daddy Larry's pockets are about as deep as they come—he's reported to be the fifth (or so) richest man on the planet with a net worth in excess of $35 billion—we don't expect there will be many children who will cry for Miss Ellison's real estate Argentina, you know?
Miss Ellison also, so we've read, also maintains a part-time residence in Malibu, in the same beach front cottage crib owned by her father where—as it turns out—Jennifer Aniston lived in the couple years following her divorce from Brad Pitt.
listing photos: Westside Estate Agency
