Despite the $49,000,000 asking price, the squeaky clean American Idol host drove a hard bargain and paid the reigning daytime chat show queen bee $37,500,000—or $36,500,000, depending on where you look—for the secluded, A-list celebrity-style compound tucked discreetly above Coldwater Canyon.
The biggest chunk of the dee-luxe estate (shown above), bought from Will & Grace co-creator Max Mutchnick in September 2007 for almost thirty million clams, includes a (roughly) 8,600 square foot, single-story main house once inhabited by jet-setting actress Joan Collins plus a fully-detached two-bedroom guest house and additional living space (somewhat preposterously) positioned directly underneath the radically and expensively engineered, negative-edge swimming pool and adjacent cabana.
Mister Seacrest's purchase also includes, as per the prop records we peeped, an adjacent parcel picked up by the Missus DeGeneres in December 2007. At the time of the $8,500,000 purchase the property had an undistinguished (and arguably ass-ugly) 1980s contemporary on it that, in short order, the ladies razed and replaced with an extended motor court and meandering, hilltop garden with private pond and city view.
Property records also show Mister Seacrest is also the new owner of a third, adjacent parcel with a 2,785 square foot residence the Missus DeGeneres scooped up in June 2008 for $5,000,000. The hillside house, just outside the compound's main driveway gates, makes for a perfect arrangement for a family member, over-nighting security staff and/or other live-in domestic personnel.
Our rudimentary mathematical calculations indicate the Missus DeGeneres paid (approximately) $43,500,000 for the various pieces of her property puzzle that she sold to Mister Seacrest. That means she absorbed a spine-straightening $5-6,000,000 loss, not counting carrying costs and improvements, such as razing one house and replacing it with a high-maintenance garden.
The Missus DeGeneres have another $5,500,000 tied up with yet another adjacent property picked up in July 2008 but did not, curiously and according to property records we peeped, sell to Mister Seacrest. So the celebrity real estate scuttlebutt that reached Your Mama goes, the Missus DeGeneres bought the house because it has oblique sight lines to some portion of her estate she did not want sighted. We're have no idea whether the Missus DeGeneres would like to sell and/or if Mister Seacrest might like to purchase said property.
Mister Seacrest still owns a gated Nichols Canyon estate bought from Kevin Costner in April 2006 for $11,500,000—and currently on the market for $11,985,000—and the Missus DeGeneres recently shelled out $17,400,000 to acquire a swinging, single story pad originally designed by Hal Levitt in the trendy Trousdale Estates section of Beverly Hills.
aerial photo: Pacific Coast News
