Reports out of the U.K. suggest
newly wedded, (allegedly) preggers and Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon (
Walk the Line, Legally Blonde, and
Election), may have scooped up a new house in the uppity Bel Air area of Los Angeles. The real estate scuttlebutt from across the pond has
spread like wildfire in the States but, all due respect to our property gossip compadres, we're not convinced this isn't all just a bunch of hooey and hot air.
Yes, a new spouse and/or a new baby often presages a new house for the pampered and highly paid denizens of Tinseltown. But, Miz Witherspoon, despite spending more than $21,000,000 on her residential real estate portfolio, doesn't strike Your Mama as the type to uproot her family just because there's a new bun in her oven.
Since late 2003 Miz Witherspoon has owned and occupied a gated, 6,956 square foot mansion on a tight corner lot in a leafy, gated enclave in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles just north of Sunset Boulevard and below the gleaming Getty Center. She paid, according to the property records we peeped, $4,725,000 for the then almost brand new 5 bedroom and 6 bathroom mock-Med manse (shown above in 2004).
In May 2009 she dropped another $3,325,000, according to property records, to pick up a down-on-its-heels contemporary residence next door, since razed and replaced with terraced gardens and a small, gated parking pad.
The following August (2010) Miz Witherspoon, through the same trust associated with her Brentwood properties, quietly paid eccentric (and sort of frightening) actor Steven Seagal
$6,900,000 for a 2.53 acre estate tucked down a long, gated driveway in a perfectly private hollow in the bucolic (and expensive) Mandeville Canyon area between Brentwood and Pacific Palisades. At the time of the sale, the equestrian-friendly property encompassed stables, swimming pool, flat lawns, a riding ring, and an existing Spanish-style casa built, as per the L.A. County Tax Man, in 1937 with 7 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms in 6,125 square feet (above).
Miz Witherspoon also owns an almost 6,500 square foot faux-French Provincial residence in Nashville, TN (above, top) where she spent her childhood and where, as fer as we know, her parents still live. She also maintains
a stunning 7-acre ranch in Ojai, CA (above, bottom)—bought from
Million Dollar Decorator Kathryn Irelend in March 2008 for $5,800,000—where she and Mister Toth were married last year in an intimate ceremony attended by a considerable cadre of celebrities.
So what gives?
Iffin we had to hazard a guess—and it is, to be sure, only a guess based on little more than clouds of pink cotton candy—we'd guess Miz Witherspoon( and Mister Toth) have planned or embarked on some renovation or another to one of their several homes and merely visited the aforementioned, currently under-renovation residence in Bel Air in order to get a good look-see at samples of the handiwork of one or more artisans and/or contractors. Make of all this nonsense what you will but our money is on Miz Witherspoon et famille stayin' put.
photos: Pacific Coast News
