A Real Housewife (Quietly) Unloads OC Mansion

SELLER: Terry and Heather DuBrow
LOCATION: Newport Coast, CA
PRICE: $16,450,000
SIZE: Unknown

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: There are those who can surely and successfully argue that The Real Housewives of... franchise jumped the proverbial Showbiz shark a long time ago. Maybe it has. None the less, Your Mama and the Doctor Cooter still faithfully tune in—well, we DVR it anyways—whenever those bejeweled blouse wearing beotches down in Orange County pop up on the boob toob. We can't help it. We can't.

Maybe after all these years we just feel loyal to all those over-Botoxed and faux-breasted women. Maybe we're simply sad, sheep-like creatures of t.v. watching habit. Maybe its a sick addiction we need Dr. Drew Pinsky to address. Or maybe—and most embarrassingly—we just can't get enough of all those grown-ass women wrapped in the glitzy trappings of wealth who may or may not actually be rich but still act like catty and entitled high school cheerleaders whenever they get a few cocktails in them. Whatever the reason(s), we can't resist them. We can't. We probably shouldn't admit that out loud but, there, it's done. Iffin any of the children don't want to hear about these Orange County vixens and vamps and/or their recent real estate activities, then we suggest you check back soon when we'll have moved on to a celebrity or "celebrity" more to your liking. Okay?

Anyhoodles poodles, Your Mama received a covert communique the other day from someone we'll call Tawny S. Kinh who told us that Heather DuBrow—who joined the RHOOC in mid-2012 for the 7th season and is slated to appear in the upcoming eighth season—and her prominent and clearly well-compensated plastic surgeon husband Terry DuBrow very quietly sold their custom-built mansion in the swanky and gated Pelican Crest enclave in Newport Coast, CA in the latter days of December 2012 for, according to property records, $16,450,000. The buyer is rich, of course, but not famous.

Sports minded real estate watchers may recall that Pelican Crest is the same pricey 'hood where L.A. Laker Kobe Bryant and his now ex-wife Vanessa were in the process of custom building a huge house when they split up and became the sold property of ex-Missus Bryant in early 2012 as part of their divorce settlement. But we digress...

As best as Your Mama can tell from a careful perusal of property records, Dr. and Missus DuBrow may have picked up the then-vacant parcel in September of 2004 for $3,275,000 and a couple years later taken out a whopping seven million dollar construction loan to pay for the custom erection of the existing mock-Med villa.

The DuBrow's mansion was not, as far as we can tell, ever on the open market so we weren't able to dig up any listing details about the house on the internets. Interestingly, property records are also frustratingly devoid of details so we can't even tell y'all how many square feet, the number of bedrooms or how many bathrooms the Orange County Tax Man thinks the house has because we didn't see them called out in any of the handful of data bases we accessed. All we really know is that their 2011 taxes came to just under $85,000 and that in the final days of 2012 Dr. and Missus Dubrow sold their luxurious Pelican Crest crib for $16,450,000.

Of course we saw bits and pieces of the luxurious and clearly quite large residence on season seven of The Real Housewives of Orange County. As our boozy memory recalls there's an impressive double height foyer sized like the lobby of a small hotel, a roomy and well-fitted eat-in kitchen and a spacious master suite complete with closets and dressing rooms that would make an average clothes horse simper with envy.

We also recall—and can surmise from aerial imagery readily accessible on the interweb—that there are several terraces and loggias on both levels at the back of the house that have broad coastline and ocean views. There's also a small formal garden centered around a fountain, a narrow but very wide and desirably flat swathe of grass and a gated driveway that leads to an underground parking area of unknown size. There is not, as far as we know, a swimming pool on the property unless there's one in the basement.

We peeked and poked around in various property record data bases but we were unable to figure out to where Dr. and Missus DuBrow have decamped. Did they downsize? Up size? Did they head inland or did they opt for something closer to the beach? Unless that cross-eyed reality t.v. exec and chat show hostess Andy Cohen gives Your Mama a ringy-dingy we may just have to wait until season 8 begins to get a bead on things. We tease, Andy. Your Mama luvs you like the dickens even though you never return our calls, texts or tweets.*

Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Bueller?

*Not that he would if we did but Mister Cohen never returns Your Mama's calls because we've never actually called, texted, tweeted or otherwise attempted to contact him.

aerial image: Google

Actor Aaron Paul Snags Fiancée and New House

BUYER: Aaron Paul
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,399,000
SIZE: 2,396 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Every now and again The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial query Your Mama about a property they believe to be owned or have been purchased by a famous person. Such was the case this week with a 1930s Spanish-style villa nestled inon a steep hillside on a quiet and little known cul-de-sac just above the Sunset Strip that sold last April (2012) for $1,399,000.

We didn't know who bought the house and property records show ownership is obscured behind a generically named trust. So, natch, we gave our exceedingly reliable friend and informant Lucy Spillerguts a ringy-dingy. Your Mama can't prove it but our Miss Spillerguts swears the city-view residence was purchased by the newly engaged actor Aaron Paul of the hard-edged AMC series Breaking Bad. Mister Paul, the youngest of five kids born to an Idaho preacher man, may or may not share the house with his documentary filmmaker/"girl-against-girl 'crime'" activist fiancée Lauren Parsekian.

Although Mister Paul (née Sturtevant) didn't get his big Showbiz break until 2007 when he was cast as a recurring character on Big Love he's been floating around Hollywood since the the early 2000s when he appeared as a contestant on The Price is Right, popped up in a couple of music videos and was seen on a number of commercials for products like chewing gum and breakfast cereal. His resume also includes a handful of mostly forgettable films (Help! I'm a Fish, Bad Girls from Valley High, Mission Impossible III) and a smattering of boob-toob appearances (CSI and CSI: Miami, X-Files, 3rd Rock from the Sun). But it is, of course, his plum lead role as the likable but screwed up drug addict and meth cooker Jesse Pinkman on the critically acclaimed Breaking Bad series that made him famous and earned him not just one but two Emmy statuettes.

Anyhoo, listing information we dug up on the internets shows the two-story house sits high above the street atop a tight two-car garage, measures 2,396 square feet and contains a total of four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.

At the street level, a curving retaining wall is painted in with graphic ochre and brick red horizontal stripes that are not only very reminiscent but very nearly identical to the horizontally striped retaining walls of Castillo del Lago, the fabled, 1920s Mediterranean compound perched privately high above Lake Hollywood and was once the L.A. hideaway of Bugsy Siegel. The 8 bedroom spread and was owned for a few years in the mid-1990s by Madonna Herself who sold it in 1996 for about $5.3 million to commercial director Joe Pytka who, in turn, sold it in the summer of 2010 for $7 million to fashion designer Leon Max. Fascinating as the history of Castillo del Lago may be, it is not the property we're here to discuss today.

The rustic wood front door of the Sunset Strip Spanish Mister Paul (allegedly) purchased opens into a stone tile floored central stair hall off of which is a opens a combination living/dining room with dark brown wood floors, wood beams across the ceiling, a hulking stone fireplace that almost but not quite looks like something ripped out of a French chateau and a dead on head on view of the perennially chic Chateau Marmont. We're just gonna look past the yellowish, sponge-painted (or faux finished or whatever) walls and assume that Mister Paul and Miss Parsekian had the decorative good sense to re-paint them.

On the other side of the central stair hall there's a compact but expensively equipped eat-in kitchen outfitted with high-quality commercial style appliances including a pair of side-by-side fridge/freezers. That adjoining breakfast room has a pitched and beamed ceiling and four wood-framed corner windows that allow for sweeping city and sky views.

The main portion of the house has three bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms including a spacious master suite with a window-lined sitting area and a very beige, suburban-looking attached bathroom. Once again Your Mama hopes Mister Paul and Miss Parsekian had the good sense to rip all that banal nonsense out and replace it with something more stylistically authentic to the 1930s Spanish style of the house.

The lower level of the house can, according to listing details, be accessed from inside the house or by way of its own exterior entrance and includes a living room area, wet bar, bedroom and bathroom. Obviously it's the perfect spot for a live-in domestic, home office or a surly teenager.

As far as we know this is the first and only home Mister Paul owns. Then again, what does Your Mama really know about anything.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty

California Burger Heiress Lynsi (Snyder Seawell Martinez) Torres Sells Glendora MacMansion

SELLER: Lynsi (Snyder Seawell Martinez) Torres
LOCATION: Glendora, CA
PRICE: $2,599,000
SIZE: 7,018 square feet (per listing), 6 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: There seems to be a lot of attention the international tabloid presses this week—including in the U.K.'s always dishy Daily Mail—about Lynsi Torres, the young, super low profile and arguably unconventional heiress to a Southern California fast foot fortune.

Thirty year old Miz Torres is the owner, by inheritance, of the privately held and money-minting In-N-Out fast food hamburger chain that was originally started in the late 1940s by Miz Torres's paternal great-grandparents Harry and Esther Snyder.

We're not sure if all the recent attention is because the folks at Bloomberg recently published a profile of and added Miz Torres to their growing list of billionaires that almost nobody has ever heard of before or if it has something to do with the ongoing fascination there seems to be about the wild and wooly history of Miz Torres's frequently feuding and tragedy visited family as chronicled in Stacey Perman's hard-edged and sometimes salacious unauthorized family biography, In-N-Out Burger (2009).

The children may recall that last September (2012) Your Mama discussed Miz Torres—a deeply religious drag race aficionado who was recently married for the third time and is the mother of young twins plus two step-children—after it had been brought to our attention by trusted tattletale Bradbury Barker that the publicity eschewing heiress quietly dropped $17,410,961 to acquire professional baseballer Adrían Beltré's rather garish, 16,600-ish square foot mansion in little-known but exceedingly affluent Bradbury, CA.*

Ever since she bought Mister Beltré's behemoth residence in one of the most expensive zip codes in the entire U.S. of A., it seemed to Your Mama only a matter of time before young Miz Torres would try to unload her old house, a big but banal and quintessentially suburban faux-Tuscan villa sort of thing set on almost two gated acres in the the guard-gated Gordon Highlands community in Glendora, CA.

Sure enough, puppies, thanks to our ever-intrepid source Yolanda Yakketyak, Your Mama recently learned that Miz Torres did indeed put her mock-Med(ish) Glendora macmansion on the open market, in mid-January (2013), with an asking price of $2,599,000. Property records show Miz Torres bought her approximately 7,000 square foot house in the Gordon Highlands enclave for $3,150,000 back in February, 2006. It doesn't take a math expert or even Your Mama's bejeweled abacus to see that the listing price is $551,000 less than Lady Hamburger paid for the property seven years ago.

The wildly wealthy young Miz Torres can certainly afford to lose half a million or more on the sale of this house, which is in currently in escrow according to online listings. Howevuh, Your Mama hears she may not be losing as much on the sale of this house as her purchase price ($3,150,000) and price tag ($2,599,000) might indicate. Although we can't verify or vouch for the intel, according to the always eerily well-informed Yolanda Yakketyak there were multiple offers on the property and when it finally closes the new owner will have paid more than the asking price.

Anyhoo, whatever it finally sells for, listing information shows the two-story residence has six bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms, garaging for four cars, front and back staircases, hand-scraped hardwood and marble floors throughout, monthly home owner's association dues of $504 per month and a $100,000-plus security system that the children can bet includes a slew of discreetly mounted security cameras.

A formal central foyer leads to the various public and private areas of the house that includes formal living and dining rooms and a spacious study/library/home office with built-in bookcases. The double island kitchen has a dark brown raised panel cabinetry, a couple different types of counters tops, top-grade commercial style appliances including a built-in coffee/espresso maker and a walk-in pantry. The kitchen opens up to a family room with fireplace and direct access to the loggia that wraps around three sides of a central courtyard. 

The courtyard overlooks a lower level area with a dark-bottom negative edge swimming pool and a raised semi-circular spa flanked by sunbathing terraces with long views over and beyond canyons and ridge tops to—on a clear day—the often smoggy San Gabriel Valley.

In addition to her new digs in Bradbury property records reveal Miz Torres also owns a five bedroom and five bathroom home in a gated community in Glendora, CA that she acquired in 2010 for $1,175,000. The house—according to Bradbury Barker—was acquired to house her second ex-husband, a former In-N-Out employee turned ordained minister and the father of Miz Torres's young twins. Yolanda Yakketyak swears—and there is plenty of evidence in various property record data bases—that Miz Torres and/or her family also owns a 100-plus acre compound in Northern California's rugged and scenic Shasta County but, in all honesty children, the property records are all screwy so we can't be totally sure.

*Yesterday the kids at Curbed re-posted a cache of photographs of the Miz Martinez's massive new manse sits on more than four landscaped acres and features—among other residential extravagances—seven bedrooms, 16 bathrooms, a separate three-bedroom guesthouse, a pool cabana with kitchen, tennis court, swimming pool and a rec room/batting cage.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker Top Team

Morning Morsel: Will Ferrell

Nobody loves a celebrity-owned home more than the well-dressed editors over at Architectural Digest. In the March (2012) issue not only did they publish a fawning article about the Beverly Hills mid-century modern Sir Elton John had worked over but good by Million Dollar Decorator Martyn Lawrence Bullard, they also have an article and cache of photographs of the New York City pied-a-terre owned by actor/comedian/screenwriter Will Ferrell and his Swedish auctioneer wife Viveca Paulin-Ferrell.

Mister and Missus Farrell—who live primarily in Los Angeles behind the electronic gates of semi-secluded Hollywood Hills compound they purchased in early 2006 from chat show queen Ellen Degeneres for nine million bucks—scooped up their nearly 2,699 square foot Greenwich Village loft in May 2010 for $4,200,000.

The bi-coastal couple hired designer/decorator Shawn Henderson to do up their Big Apple digs and do them up but good he did. He ripped out all the nonsense but retained the good stuff like the original rough-hewn wood beams on the ceiling, replaced the kitchen and bathrooms and painted all the walls white white white to harness sunlight and set off a small but serious collection of contemporary artworks—think Sol LeWitt and Roy Lichtenstein. The deft decorator created several sitting and dining areas including one centered around a minimalist fire box and flat-screen t.v. and furnished with a Hans Wegner Papa Bear chair and a grouping of variously sized boulder-like poufs and pillows that ought to remind anyone who knows a damn thing about decoratin' history of legendary California decorator Michael Taylor.

photo: William Waldron for Architectural Digest

Morning Morsel: Macauley Culkin

Ever wonder what the inside of former child star turned ironically-inclined arteest Macauley Culkin's 5,100 square foot Manhattan loft looked like. Frankly, Your Mama hadn't either until we ran across this eye-popping partly-pictoral nugget in the art/fashion/culture publication Bullett and is it ever a ding-dang urban hipster-dipster doozy of a place.

photo: Kelsey Bennett for Bullett

Morning Morsel: Courtney Sale Ross

According to the property gossips at the New York Post, philanthropist Courtney Sale Ross—the very rich widow of former Time Warner CEO Steve Ross—has floated her 5.5 acre Georgia Pond fronting estate in East Hampton on the market as a so-called pocket listing with a $75,000,000 asking price.

High end property watchers will recall that Miz Sale Ross sold her 20-plus room duplex co-operative apartment in New York City at the very high-nosed 740 Park Avenue last year for $52,500,000 to money manager Howard Marks who himself recently unloaded his fully renovated and landscaped 10-ish acre ocean front compound in Malibu (CA) for around $75,000,000.

aerial image: Bing

Afternoon Tidbits and Links: Elton John

Have a delicious look-see via Architectural Digest at what Million Dollar Decorator Martyn Lawrence Bullard did to the glassy, low-slung Beverly Hills (CA) contemporary that music industry icon Sir Elton John and his man-friend/baby daddy David Furnish bought last year for $7,250,000.

Sir Elton and Mister Furnish may have two young sons but they still live a globe-trotting rock star lifestyle and maintain a handful of decadent, high-maintenance digs around the world including in Atlanta, Georgia; in both London and Windsor in the U.K.; Nice, France; and Venice, Italy.

photo: Roger Davies for Architectural Digest