...Long-time Malibu, CA residents and vocal environmentalists Pierce Brosnan and Keely Shaye have (somewhat surprisingly) put their recently-completed ocean-front compound on Malibu's (quickly disappearing) Broad Beach up for lease at $250,000 per month for July and August (2012). They will be away, it seems, while the Irish 007 star makes his next picture.

Mister Brosnan and Miz Shaye purchased the extra-wide property way back in 2000. Rather than remodel they knocked down the existing residence to make way for a massive, U-shaped mansion—done up in a Thai-Bali-inspired-style and dubbed Orchid House—that commands a 120-foot wide ocean front lot, spans around 13,000 square feet and includes a total of 4 bedrooms and a dozen full bathrooms. No puppies, Your Mama did not make a silly, boozy mistake. Marketing materials do indeed show Orchid House contains twelve, presumably low-flow terlits, a bloated number sufficiently high enough to require the Brosnan-Shaye family employ a part-time, minimum-wage gal whose sole responsibility is to clean crappers with a myriad of chemical-free cleaning products.

Besides all the expected public and less-public rooms that connect through walls of glass to scads of courtyards, terraces and decks, Orchid House's extra-added interior amenities include a chef-style kitchen, library, art studio, music room, private screening room with bar, full-sized fitness facility and an indoor Japanese spa with soaking tub, infrared or traditional sauna, steam room and cold plunge.

Outdoor amenities include a gated driveway and motor court capable of parking 10 cars; a wind-protected entry courtyard around which the house wraps; expansive, multi-level stone terraces and decks that extend off the side and back of the mansion; an algae-green but not-doubt meticulously maintained saltwater swimming pool and spa with nearby cabana; lush, tropical landscaping; raised sunbathing deck; and an ocean-side dining terrace with full-height glass wind shield.


Avid celebrity property watchers will recall that back in June 2010 Mister B. and Miz S. put their previous and much-more-modestly-scaled Malibu home on the market with an in-hind-sight-optimistic asking price of $3,900,000. The gated Mediterranean, which backs up to and borders busy and often traffic-chocked Pacific Coast Highway finally sold in December 2011 for $2,600,000.



If a quarter million a month for the Brosnan-Shaye's Orchid House comes in a bit too steep for your pinched pocketbook, all-but-retired sitcom star Paul Reiser's ocean front getaway in Malibu Colony is also up for lease with a much lower but—let's be honest—still sky-high price tag of $95,000 per month. But, of course, it only has 3.5 bathrooms.


listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Malibu West

It was a week or more ago now that Your Mama received a brief and covert communique from Our Fairy Godmother in Bel Air who relayed to Your Mama that scuttlebutt on the Platinum Triangle real estate street is that high-profile, Los Angeles-based (former) restaurateur and hotelier Peter Morton dropped just shy of $25,000,000 for an off-market fixer-upper perched prominently on a long promontory high above the back fairways and greens of the Bel-Air Country Club.

Mister Morton, of course, co-founded the heavily merchandised Hard Rock Café chain (sold in the mid-1990s for $410 million), opened the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas (sold to Morgans Hotel Group in 2006 for $770 million) and, for nearly 3 decades, owned one of Tinseltown's most popular and difficult to get in to power lunch hot spots, Morton's (shuttered in 2007).

Property records, at least the ones we peeped, do not yet reflect a transfer of ownership of the Bel Air estate in question but they do show the 1.5 story, many-dormered mansion—it might (or might not) be French Provincial—was originally built in 1936, measures 7,692 square feet and contains 7 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms. Those numbers may (or may not) accurately reflect the current size and configuration of the existing residence.

Other bits and pieces of information about the property we gleaned during our interweb research shows the house has a double-gated, parking lot sized motor court; a flat lawn that wraps around three sides of the house; various covered and open-air stone terraces and walkways; a swimming pool with adjacent cabana; and a waterfall of terraced gardens and sterling views over Los Angeles from downtown to the ocean. 

Some of the nearby mansions are owned by smoldering-eyed fashion designer Tom Ford, Tinseltown legend Clint Eastwood, boo-toob bigwig Darren Star (Sex and the City, Beverly Hills, 90210—the original one—and Melrose Place), and former rom-com queen Meg Ryan who has—so the story goes—just about sold her rambling Spanish-style mansion she's on the market for some time.

Again, children, property records do not yet reflect a transfer of ownership so for now this is just some high end real estate rumor and gossip. There isn't, however, a dedicated Platinum Triangle property watcher who should be the least be surprised by the alleged purchase since Mister Morton regularly shakes up his property portfolio, and with all that shaking he's hardly a been stranger to the property gossip columns.

The children may recall that in February 2010 Mister Morton—not to be confused with his son Harry who owns a couple of epic-sized Mexican eateries luridly-named Pink Taco and also trades expensive Los Angeles area properties at a whiplash pace—sold a dour and musty-looking Tudor-style pile in Beverly Hills for $22,950,000 to superstar actress Sandra Bullock. He bought the hilltop spread in September of 2006 for $18,500,000 and was said to have big plans to do it up big but, as far as we know, never moved in.

Since early 1996, Mister Morton's in-town residence has been a rather spacious and spectacular, gated estate in the north-of-Sunset heart of Holmby Hills bought from entertainment industry exec Robert A. Daly for $9,250,000, according to property records. The 1.3+ acre estate has a main house originally erected in the mid-1930s that measures, as per tax records, 13,423 square feet with 8 bedroom, 8 bathrooms, and 5 fireplaces. He scooped up the next door neighboring property (for unknown reasons) in August 2010 for $3,750,000.

More recently, in February 2012, he sold an ocean front house on Malibu's star-lined La Costa Beach for an unknown amount of money to a couple from Phoenix. Lest anyone worry Mister Morton might be without a beach house this coming summer should know that in addition to at least one other ocean front residence in Malibu (near Big Rock), records show he continues to own a downright incredible, very contemporary, custom-built Richard Meier-designed compound situated on a double (or maybe triple-) wide lot on Malibu's billionaire-strewn Carbon Beach.

As it turns out, a 1930s, Paul Williams-esque residence in the quietly swank Little Holmby 'hood (near Westwood) owned by Mister Morton—and long occupied, according to Our Fairy Godmother in the Holmby Hills, by his ex-wife Tarlton—is up for sale with an asking price of $4,495,000, recently lowered from $4,795,000. Property records we perused show Mister Morton bought the property (shown above in listing photos) from Hollywood scion and Vanity Fair contributing editor Wendy Stark Morrissey in January 1998 for an undisclosed amount of dough. The purchase appears to have been part of their (famously acrimonious) divorce.

Much to our surprise Your Mama uncovered and discovered evidence during our rudimentary and unscientific pore though digital property records that in mid-March of this year (2012) Mister Morton shelled out $4,100,000 for a dated but dynamic and potentially spectacular mid-century modern in the trendy Trousdale Estates neighborhood.

Of course we don't know a pin prick from a bullet hole but it seems to Your Mama that Mister Morton thought he saw an opportunity to make some easy money, or maybe he just caught an almost-immediate case of The Real Estate Fickle. Thirteen days after the property transfer documentation and deed was recorded the property (shown above in listing photos) popped back up on the open market with an asking price of $4,395,000. As of yesterday, the property was in escrow.

Current listing information shows the swinging-sixties single story pad has 4,110 square feet with 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, vaulted ceilings, vast walls of glass, over-the-rooftops city and sky view, dark bottom free-form swimming pool and really porn-y spa set upset into an raised deck over the hillside to take best advantage of the city views.

Will Mister Morton decide to flip the Bel Air spread he (allegedly) just acquired? Could be. Would anyone be surprised? No. Such are the mysterious and sometimes wacky real estate ways of the rich and/or famous, right?

listing photos (Little Holmby): Westside Estate Agency
listing photos (Trousdale Estates): Coldwell Banker / Beverly Hills North

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listing photos (above series): Westside Estate Agency

SELLER: David Schwimmer
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $8,650,000
SIZE: 11,336square feet, 9 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES (UPDATED 8/14/12): Late last year, after it was shopped around off-market for a little bit, Friends actor David Schwimmer listed his grandly-scaled house in Los Angeles's affluent Hancock Park 'hood with an asking price of $10,700,000. The price eventually dropped to $10,200,000.

In May we heard from someone in a position to know, let's call her Penny Pincher, who snitched to Your Mama that Mister Schwimmer's residence had been eyeballed by at least one big name celebrity and that we should expect the house to soon be sold for a good deal less than the last asking price. Low and behold property records reflect the mid-city estate was sold in late June 2012 for $8,865,000 to a generically-named blind trust that shields the identity of the buyer.

Naturally we did some asking around with some of our better informed informants in the cut-throat world of high-end real estate and it wasn't long before two separate sources identified the buyers of the deeply discounted Schwimmer estate as filmmaker (and Tinseltown scion) Eric Eisner—his papa is none other than Hollywood power player Michael Eisner—and fashion designer Stacey Bendet Eisner, founder of the lighthearted, uptown-girl-goes-downtown Alice + Olivia label. However, it should be noted a representative of Missus Bendet Eisner contacted Your Mama to let us know that our informants were dead wrong. Well, she didn't say it like that, she was far to professional to say that but that's, in effect, what she said but in a much more friendly fashion.

Listing information from the time of the sale shows Mister Schwimmer's hulking, 11,000-plus square foot main mansion has 9 bedrooms and six bathrooms (plus a pair of powder poopers), five fireplaces, and a state-of-the-art screening room. Additional, loft-like living space with living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom—perfect for guests, live-in domestic(s) and/or irritating house guests—sits atop a detached three-car garage.

The meticulously groomed 1.02-acre grounds—walled, gated and well-screened for celebrity-style security and privacy, natch—encompasses a rear motor court, flat lawns, parterre garden or two thick tropical landscaping, resort-style swimming pool and spa, and a properly-aligned (north-south) tennis court with viewing pavilion.

Some of the high profile peeps who own homes in the immediate vicinity include Jason Alexander; (Seinfeld); Sean Hayes (Will & Grace), who unsuccessfully attempted to sell his manse in 2008 with an asking price of $8,950,000; writer/producer Shonda Rimes (Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice) who bought her fully-updated and upgraded mansion for $5,600,000 in March 2010 from indie music superstar Beck; and sitcom superstar Patricia Heaton (Everybody Loves Raymond, The Middle) who, Your Mama hears through the celebrity property gossip grapevine, will allow her estate to be shown with a $12,000,000 (or so) price tag through one of Hancock Park's most successful Real Estates. Just more celebrity real estate rumor and gossip.

We queried our exceedingly smart Fairy Godmother in Bel Air on the matter and although she was entirely unaware of the Eisner's (alleged and denied) acquisition of the Schwimmer estate in Hancock Park she was quite certain a home the Eisner's own in the Bird Streets area above the Sunset Strip is currently on the market with a (greatly reduced) asking price of $3,495,000. Now, we ask that y'all use yer noggins: Ownership of residence is obscured behind a generically named trust so Your Mama can't say for certain the house in question (below) is owned by Mister and Missus Eisner. However, it's worth nothing, Our Fairy Godmother in Bel Air is not, nor has she ever been, in the habit of providing Your Mama with inaccurate real estate information.

listing photos (above series): Sotheby's International Realty

Anyhoo, current listing information we perused shows the recently renovated contemporary-Spanish residence was built in 1970 and last purchased in April 2000 for $1,575,000. There are 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms in the single-story residence that angles around a flat backyard with flagstone terraces, built-in barbecue station, swimming pool and elevated spa. The bedroom wing also opens up to deep terraces nestled between the house and the thickly-planted property perimeter.

The day-core is dizzyingly vibrant with hard punches and electric pops of primary colors and a willy-nilly layering of textures and eye-spinning patterns. The guest bathroom with the floral wall covering and black and white tile flooring definitely makes a bold, exuberantly graphic and maybe even garish decorative statement but it's so vexingly insane we can hardly bear to turn away. We'll probably take a bullet or two from the children for saying so but Your Mama finds it unusually refreshing and commendable for someone really go at it with such a fearless and joyful abandonment of the sometimes strict confines of decorative "appropriateness," even if the result can be a more than a little chaotic and, at moments, questionable.

As it turns out, this isn't the only house in Los Angeles (allegedly) connected to Stacy Bendet Eisner that's currently on the market. As has been reported here, there and everywhere including by the kids at Curbed both recently and in years past, Missus Eisner and quirky musician Moby co-own a quintessentially L.A., 1926 Hollywood Regency-style residence above the Sunset Strip designed by the late-great John Elgin Woolf and previously owned by high-sterical, high-camp comedian Paul Lynde.

listing photos (above series): Sotheby's International Realty

Online resources show the funny house was last purchased in February 2008 for $2,950,000 and about a year later the high-glam pad popped up on the rental market at $15,000 per month. Missus Bendet Eisner and Mister Moby first and unsuccessfully attempted to sell it in June 2010 with a $3,495,000 price tag. Since then it's been de- and re-listed a few times and showed back up on the open sales market with a higher asking price of $3,695,000. Our friend and informant Lucy Spillerguts tells us the house is or was recently leased (for an unknown amount) to a trendy, high-end sneaker-shoe designer. We don't ask how she knows these things, she just does.

Current listing information shows the two-and-some story villa measures 3,700 square feet with a total of 3 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms, a count that may or may not take into account the separate guest house located at the bottom of the steeply pitched hillside property where there's also a nearly secret, gated back entrance and a detached two-car garage.

Inside the decadent main living spaces have both black and white checkerboard marble or Parquet de Versailles style wood floors under foot and 12 foot ceilings over and towering windows with canyon and city views. The ceiling of the dining room has an appetite-suppressing, gridded and mirrored ceiling along with a petite table for four that looks like it came through the looking glass. The eat-in kitchen is comparatively blank with its white, raised-panel cabinetry, white and grey-veined Carrara marble counter tops and back splashes, and usual complement of high-grade stainless steel appliances.

At least two of the bedrooms in the main house are master suite worthy with bleached (or pickled or otherwise whitened) hardwood floors, pretty canyon and city views and bathrooms that feel a bit beige and Beijing 4-star hotel suite sleek for the clunky, colorful and haphazardly elegant house.

The nearly all white interiors act as a gleaming canvas for courageous and invigorating (if dizzying) finishes and day-core that include striped wall coverings, garish artworks, a pair of cheap-looking Louis the something (or something) reworked in monochromatic blood red, and a silvery rococo mirror propped drunkenly in front of an exterior door in the kitchen, It's colorful and rebellious and not at all correct but it's way more amusing and provocative to look at than perfectly pristine and mannered sorts of decor that typically falls within the range of "good taste," whatever that is.

There's a mouth-watering slew of listing photos here and here.

Since we've meandered so far astray already, let's cover all the real estate bases in regards to the parties involved in today's roundabout real estate story.

Moby, who maintains one of the the most charming and intimate blogs about Los Angeles real estate, paid nearly $4 million in March 2010 to buy Wolf's Lair, a castle-like compound perched proudly atop a perfectly private ridge with panoramic views over Beachwood Canyon and Lake Hollywood. He bought the place from now broken up music executive Jay Faires and television hostess/correspondent Debbie Matenopoulos who originally wanted $7,500,000 for the quirky lair.

The New York Times reported last year Moby spent another two or so million on an extensive restoration and renovation of the idiosyncratic aerie that includes a main house, pool/guest house, an incongruous but thrilling John Lautner-designed guest house and, tucked deep into the towering stone ramparts, a secret tiki-bar lounge Moby plans to turn in to an invite-only magic den (to which we can assure the children Your Mama will not be invited).

A pair of 35th floor apartments at New York City's ludicrously expensive and seriously status-conscious 15 Central Park West building—one of which was leased a couple years ago by Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez*—recently hit the market with a psyche-brutalizing price tag of $95,000,000.

*Mister A-Rod has recently hoisted his bay front mansion in Miami Beach with a $38,000,000 price tag.

Fifteen Central Park West is the same building, the children will surely recall, where Russian chemist turned multi-billionaire potash potentate Dmitry Rybolovlev paid financier Sanford Weill an astronomical $88,000,000 for substantially larger, terrace wrapped penthouse—atop the shorter of the complex's two towers.

Other well-heeled owners of apartments at 15 Central Park West (15CPW) include celebs like Denzel Washington and Sting and Trudy Styler as well as a slew of Wall Street fat cats like Goldman Sachs CEO/chairman Lloyd Blankfein (who paid $27,000,000 for his roost), hedge hog Daniel Loeb (who paid $45,000,000 for his 10,700 square foot two-unit combo crib).

Anyhoo, both of Mister Schecter's apartments at 15CPW are owned by octogenarian steel tycoon Leroy Schecter who, according to The New York Times, paid $18,900,000 for the two separate apartments in April 2008. The two units are currently in the process of being combined into one 5-6,000 square foot aerie with a desirable and rare, triple exposure (east, south, and west) and monthly common charges, according to listing information, of $7,349.

Lickety-split with the ink barely dry on the deed's dotted line(s) Mister Schecter leased the larger, three-bedroom and 3.5 bathroom unit at $40,000 per month to hotel/car rental/real estate brokerage tycoon Harry Silverman and the smaller two-bedroom and 2.5 bathroom unit to A-Rod at $30,000 per month.

As it turns out this isn't the first time at the real estate rodeo for Mister Schecter who unsuccessfully attempted to sell the then still-uncombined units in 2010 for a combined $55,000,000. He claims to have turned town an offer for $48,000,000—and probably he did, we don't know—opting instead to proceed with a combination that he and his Lady Real Estate believe makes it worth forty million more dollars than it was in 2010 as two separate apartments. And maybe it is, what do we know?

Current listing information indicates when the combination efforts are complete the full-floor tower condo will include four or five bedrooms (depending on use) and five full and two half bathrooms.

The floor plan included with current marketing materials reveals the planned combination isn't without its awkward moments and shows the public entertaining spaces include a compact foyer that gives way to a central, park-view library/reception room flanked by formal living and dining rooms, all with panoramic park an city views.

Double doors open directly from the dining room into the sizable center island eat-in kitchen. Your Mama thinks a proper butler's pantry/service kitchen and a God damn window would be customary in a nearly one hundred million dollar apartment but this kitchen, as per the floor plan, appears to lack both. The suburban mini-mansion sized apartment also does not have a single square foot of terrace space but it does have an two laundry rooms, one just off the kitchen equipped with a slop sink. We do love a slop sink, especially one on the 35th floor of a high-luxury high-rise.

One of the two bedroom wings stretches back behind the kitchen and contains two side-by-side bedrooms, each with private bathroom and urban western views through the surrounding towers towers and over to the mighty Hudson River.

An oddly-shaped gallery space lined with a trio of coast closets and a second half bathroom extends south from the foyer and connects to another series of corridors and vestibules off of which are the multi-room master suite—more on that in a second, a den with built-in wet bar and views to the south and west, a second laundry closet and a fourth bedroom with private en suite and walk-in closet. The den has an attached bathroom and could be closed up to create an actual fifth bedroom. That's a great option for someone who wants or needs a fifth bedroom but it also means the nearly 100 million dollar apartment wouldn't have an informal family living room. Your Mama and The Dr. Cooter are not and never will be in the market for a $100,000,000 residences but for that much money we want five bedrooms and a damn family room. We also want a terrace, at least a wee one. Sorry, but we do.

Anyhoo, a privacy-enhancing vestibule separate the public corridor from the master bedroom via a south-facing private sitting room flanked by a spacious park- and city-view bedroom and an bedroom-sized dressing room with bay window. A second vestibule separates the dressing room from the two-compartment master bathroom complete with double sinks, enclosed cubby for the crapper and separate soaking tub and shower.

Mister Schecter, as it turns out, also has an opulent (and arguably gaudy) 21,746 square foot, bay front villa on Miami's private, gated and ridiculously exclusive Indian Creek Island on the market with an asking price of $45,000,000. Property records we peeped indicate Mister Schecter paid Spanish language media entrepreneur Raul Alarcon Jr., $18,650,000 for the almost two acre, high-maintenance estate with its 7 bedroom and 11 full and 3 half bathroom estate in May 2006.

listing photo and floor plan: Core Group