Good gracious! Yolanda’s flip phone has been blowing up with news that the Grey Estate in Holmby Hills, listed less than two months ago with a hernia-inducing $77,500,000 asking price, is already in escrow. The potential buyer, we first heard from Our Mama at Variety, is billionaire finance guru Bruce Karsh, one of LA’s richest full-time residents and a guy with a well-documented love for lavish estates. But before we digress, a wee background on the property.

The Grey Estate sits on 2.15 acres of land on North Carolwood Drive, one of the most expensive pockets of town. Next door is Fleur de Lys, which was sold in 2014 for $88,300,000 cash to Russian billionaire Yuri Milner. Directly across the street is a 30,000-square-foot mega-mansion that was transferred in 2016 for $100,000,000 to American billionaire Tom Gores. Next door to Mr. Gores is the Carolwood Estate, which in 2014 was sold by Mexican billionaire Gabriel Brener for $74,000,000 to Chinese billionaire Zhang Jun.

Back in 2010, the now-deceased film producer Brad Grey paid $18,500,000 for the Holmby Hills estate in question, which at that time contained a historic home once owed by Frank Sinatra. In 2011, Mr. Grey and his second wife — cosmetics entrepreneur Cassandra Grey — were married in a lavish star-studded ceremony on the property.

In 2012, Mr. and Mrs. Grey controversially bulldozed the old Sinatra house to make way for their dream home. They hired Napa Valley-based architect Howard Backen to construct a dream compound in the elegantly rustic style for which he is known.

If y’all have never heard Mr. Backen’s name prior to this, better start bookmarking it. Yolanda can virtually guarantee you will be seeing it much more in the future. Our boy Mr. Backen is pretty much the hottest new architect in town, and his projects have begun setting neighborhood records all over the place. He’s already made his mark, you see, on the Westside.

In 2016, a Howard Backen-designed farmhouse in Brentwood’s Sullivan Canyon sold for a fat $18,300,000 to Texas-based billionaire Dan Friedkin, a record amount for the neighborhood and more than $3,000 per square foot.

Last year, Krista Levitan — the ex-wife of Modern Family creator Steve Levitan — sold her Howard Backen-designed farmhouse for a record-breaking $41,082,000 to billionaire heir Kevin Washington. The sale remains the biggest-ever residential deal on the Westside of LA (or west of the 405 freeway, at least).

But Mr. Backen’s most elaborate project in LA (thus far) has been the Holmby Hills complex he designed for Mr. & Mrs. Grey, the one we are discussin’ today.

Unfortunately for Mr. Grey, he only got a few months — at most — to enjoy his Backen compound before he passed away last year after a long battle with cancer. He was just 59 years old (RIP!).

A long gated driveway leads a multi-winged main house of approximately 13,000-square-feet with design by Atelier AM. Rustic vertical wood slats on the outside belie the ultra-contemporary trimmings within, and olive trees and lush gardens surrounding the house soften the home’s hard edges.

The living room is so large that it could easily be transformed into a ballroom, should all the furniture be cleared out. As is, the room converts into a professional-grade screening room at the touch of a button. A more intimate den/family room offers a wet bar and floor-to-ceiling glass walls overlooking the estate grounds. An expansive library sports bookshelves filled with real books.

The rather austere professional-grade kitchen is clearly not meant for lookin’ pretty — this thing is mean to work and cater to the dietary needs of hundreds of guests. A bridge over a shallow ravine links the swimming pool area to a striking two-story recreation pavilion wrapped in rigorously spaced horizontal slats of wood and houses what listing details describe as “twin gyms”, both of which are equipped with glorious walls of glass overlooking the yard.

There are five bedroom suites in the main house, and another two in the 1,000-square-foot guest/staff house. The master includes his-and-hers bathrooms with lovely white oak flooring. Naturally, there are views out over the verdant backyard.

The estate’s exquisitely manicured grounds were designed by British landscape architect Miranda Brooks. Sprawling lawns are bordered by mature imported trees, the swimming pool and spa are set into an open area, and a sheltered outdoor dining spot is bordered by an organic vegetable and herb garden.

Our boy Mr. Karsh is the co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, one of LA’s largest hedge funds by AUM (assets under management). According to Forbes, homeboy gets by with a net worth of $1.93 billion, making him one of LA’s wealthiest full-time residents. As such, Mr. Karsh and his feisty wife Martha Karsh maintain an already baller-style real estate portfolio.

Back in late 2014, the Karshes — who have three adult children, for what that’s worth — quietly shelled out $33,721,500 for a rather gorgeous Traditional-style spread on what is often considered the most prestigious street in Brentwood: Oakmont Drive. The sale remains the second-largest ever in Brentwood, behind only Dr. Dre’s $40 million splurge.

Interestingly enough, the property was sold to the Karshes by Howard Marks, who is Mr. Karsh’s longtime business partner and a co-founder of Oaktree. The compound has approximately 10,000-square-feet of living space spread out over multiple structures on 1.9 flat acres, and the interiors were done up by Obama’s White House decorator Michael S. Smith.

Before buying in Brentwood, the Karshes long resided at an estate in the Benedict Canyon area of the Beverly Hills Post Office. They paid $12,000,000 for the rambling 3-acre tennis court estate way back in 2000. Though they purchased their new Brentwood compound more than 3 years ago, records show they have not sold the B.H.P.O. pad.

Mr. and Mrs. Karsh may be best-known to real estate gossips for the years-long crusade they have waged against their 90210 next-door neighbor, Saudi Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud. Back in 2011, Martha Karsh was furious when she learned that Prince Abdulaziz had purchased a 3-parcel vacant property next door and was planning to build a 85,000-square-foot mega-compound.

The Karshes hired a team of lawyers and personally mobilized all their neighbors to fight the project. Though the prince eventually agreed to downsize his plans to a 60,000-square-foot estate, that was not enough for folks and a court eventually ordered a complete halt to the construction. As of today, as far as Yolanda knows, the prince’s property remains essentially vacant land.

Records also indicate that the Karshes own an 8,300-square-foot mansion on 7.7 very private acres up in fancy (and unfortunately mudslide-ravaged) Montecito (CA) as well as a vacation estate in Hawaii.

Listing agents: Stephen Shapiro, Westside Estate Agency; Linda May, Hilton & Hyland

Listen up, dudes and dudettes. Yolanda unfortunately can’t stick around to dilly-dally with y’all this evening. We’ve got bills to pay, people to slap, and on top of that we are babysitting our adorable but bratty grandkids. They definitely do not approve of Yolanda typing out all this nonsense. They want to be at the movies. Thus we’re keeping today’s tale short and sweet. Any questions or concerns, please reach out to our manager — he will be sure to read your complaint before deleting it from his inbox. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to this blog! We promise to never spam y’all or beg for donations.

Brentwood Park is easily the most prestigious — and expensive — area in the lovely Brentwood section of town. So when a large compound smack-dab in the middle of the neighborhood quietly sold for $14,689,000, Yolanda was all curious about the buyer’s identity. Although the person’s name is concealed behind an LLC, we can tell y’all it is a businessman named Trevor Bezdek.

Yolanda had never previously heard of Mr. Bezdek, but a little internet research reveals that he is a co-founder and co-CEO of GoodRX, a website that specializes in tracking prescription drug prices and offering drug coupons to US-based consumers.

This isn’t any average website, of course. Though the site was only founded back in 2011, it now receives more than 4 million hits per month. That’s a lot! Certainly enough to make Mr. Bezdek and Doug Hirsch (his co-founder/co-CEO/business partner) very rich men.

Our Mr. Bezdek, who is 40 years old and married with children, is a Stanford graduate and previously founded Tryarc, an information tech consulting firm with offices in LA and SF. After four years growing the company to more than 100 employees, Mr. Bezdek sold the firm way back in 2007 for an undisclosed (but likely substantial) amount.

In addition to whatever dough he made through the sale of Tryarc and what he rakes in as a CEO of GoodRX, our research shows that Mr. Bezdek and his longtime wife Jana are both licensed real estate agents and active real estate investors with a plethora of multi-family rental properties and apartment complexes that they have bought and sold across LA over the past decade or so.

We profess ignorance as to Mr. Bezdek’s exact net worth, but we think this guy must really be loaded. Yolanda finds no evidence of a mortgage on his new $14.7 million compound.

Speaking of Mr. Bezdek’s new house, the sale went down completely off-market. Unfortunately, that means Yolanda does not have any current photos of the property to share with y’all. We do know, however, that the estate was originally built in 1929 and was extensively renovated in 2005 before being sold in early 2006 for $10,750,000 to celebrity talent manager Jimmy Miller and his wife Cheryl Nakao.

Even though it was essentially a new house at the time of the purchase, Mr. Miller and Ms. Nakao straightaway gave their new pad another comprehensive renovation — actually more like a cosmetic overhaul — in 2007. That’s probably a good thing, Yolanda thinks. Some old listing photos of the house from the 2006 transaction continue to survive online and they show the house outfitted with some rather ghastly interior decor choices, including a family room/study painted almost entirely in carnation red.

Good heavens! An all-red room. It looks like something you’d expect to find in a 1980s Chinese buffet restaurant or on the set of The Shining, not conservative ol’ Brentwood!

Anywho, the Mediterranean residence is completely walled and gated for the utmost privacy. The compound has a 5-bed, 5-bath main residence of approximately 6,500-square-feet, plus not one but two detached guest houses of unknown square footage, each with at least one bedroom suite of their own.

The unusually deep .84-acre lot sports a smallish rectangular pool and a very large grassy area that could easily accommodate a children’s soccer game or multiple games of Spikeball.

We don’t know if the Bezdeks have actually moved into their new home yet, but recent permits show they are filling in the current pool and adding a new one — probably larger and in a different position.

Some nearby Brentwood Park homes from which the Bezdeks could ostensibly borrow a cup of sugar include the $20 million mansion of Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff and the $14 million mansion of South Park creator Trey Parker.

Lastly, records show that Mr. and Mrs. Bezdek are not new to the area — they have long resided in Brentwood, in a 3,386-square-foot house that they bought for $3,600,000 way back in 2007. The 4-bed, 3-bath structure is just a 5-minute drive from their new, far less modest Brentwood Park mansion.

She is currently ranked as the world’s fifth-richest woman, which is fortunate because her spending habits could easily break a lesser billionaire. But with a net worth that is widely reported to hover around $20 billion, Laurene Powell can afford to be wildly extravagant. Her latest splurge — which we shall get to in just a moment — went down just last week in San Francisco.

Ms. Powell is, of course, the widow of the late and great Steve Jobs. Our Mr. Jobs met his untimely death back in 2011, but it is only within the past three or four years that Ms. Powell’s spending has really shifted into high gear.

A few days back, a mansion-sized house in San Francisco’s pricey Russian Hill neighborhood sold (after just one month on the market!) for $16,500,000 in cash, the second-highest price paid in the city so far this year. The seller was leading venture capitalist Danny Rimer, who paid $12,375,000 for the house back in 2013.

The interesting thing about this transaction, y’all, is that the buyer’s real estate agent was not a San Francisco local but rather a Malibu-based SoCal man. Naturally, the nosy Yolanda was all too curious about who from Malibu would be cuttin’ such a fat check up north.

Well, lookie here. Though the buyer’s identity is screened behind a strangely-named LLC with a Palo Alto (CA) address, Yolanda happens to know it is none other than our very own Ms. Powell — a well-known Malibu aficionado. But we digress.

The four-level, 6,100-sq-ft residence was originally built in 1902, but y’all can tell that it has been extensively remodeled over the years — most recently in a contemporary manner with interior design by noted San Francisco-based decorator Steven Volpe, a favorite of the Silicon Valley crowd.

Some of the house’s coolest features are a two-car garage — a very rare thing in SF — and a real, usable backyard. Look! There’s a firepit, an outdoor dining area, a garden and everything.

Indoors is a very cool, contemporary yet comfy situation. An open floorpan blends the formal areas together into one giant room and includes a chic kitchen with marble countertops and high-end appliances. The dining area features French doors opening to a balcony with views of the bay.

There are three guest/family bedrooms on the home’s second level, but the real showstopper is the master suite, which encompasses the entire top floor. The glassy space contains a private balcony with panoramic views of the city and various landmarks. A private bathroom is slathered in marble and contains a glassy shower plus a soaking tub.

Speaking of views, you’ve got them galore. Russian Hill may not be quite as prestigious as SF’s Pacific Heights ‘hood, but there’s a pretty park only a block from Ms. Powell’s new house. And the local In-N-Out is only three blocks away, if she finds herself craving a late-night snack!

And here are some floorplans for all you fun folks.

This San Francisco acquisition caps off — or maybe it doesn’t — Ms. Powell’s $100+ million real estate shopping spree that she began only a few years back.

In late 2014, Ms. Powell paid $16,300,000 for a 10-acre equestrian estate in tony Los Altos Hills (CA).

The property is equipped with state-of-the-art equine facilities including a massive 13,000-square-foot barn with 12 stalls, full-size riding ring, pastures, and the only residential structure on the property: a 2-bed and 1-bath caretaker apartment.

In April 2015, Ms. Powell dropped a dumbfounding $44,000,000 in cash on an unfinished bluff top compound that looms over Malibu’s sublime Paradise Cove neighborhood. Two years later, as Yolanda first told y’all, she forked over another $16,500,000 to buy the little house next door, which she is combining with the larger parcel to create one mega-estate.

For all you beancounters, that means Ms. Powell has already spent $60,500,000 in Malibu. And that does not include the many millions she is spending to create a customized multi-acre spread up there. Last time Yolanda drove by on PCH, the place was still under major construction.

In 2016, Ms. Powell spent $15,300,000 on a 3-acre estate in the equestrian-oriented (and wealthy) Palm Beach County community of Wellington, Florida.

The Florida estate happens to be directly across the street from a much larger compound owned by Bill Gates. Coincidence? Nope! Ms. Powell’s daughter Eve is an accomplished equestrienne and frequently competes with Mr. Gates’ daughter Jennifer in tournaments and such.

Back in California, Ms. Powell is at long last building her late husband’s dream compound in the low-key but high-priced community of Woodside. Mr. Jobs envisioned the $20 million spread before his death but did not live long enough to see the parcel become anything more than vacant land.

Proposals put forth by Ms. Powell when applying for permits and such show a compound measuring a total of nearly 16,000 square feet. However, it’s not a mega-mansion that she is planning to build. Rather, the future estate will be centered around a main residence of a very modest 3,706 square feet. Then, as best Yolanda can tell, there will be at least 8 smaller buildings on the site: two guest houses, a yoga studio, a sauna building, a wine press building, an olive press building, a garden shed, and a relatively small “garden” barn. For more information on the fancy yet decidedly bucolic and rustic project, which was designed by architect Chris Garrick, go here.

While they await completion of the new Woodside compound, the Jobs family bunks up at their longtime home in Palo Alto.

The English Country-style house, 5,678 square feet with 7 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms, sits on a corner lot in a particularly leafy and mansion-packed area of town.

In addition to her $130+ million worth of residential real estate, Ms. Powell also lays claim to several other big gurl toys. These include at least two Gulfstream jets — one of them a $65 million G650 — and a $100 million superyacht co-designed by her late hubby and christened “Venus”. Last year, Ms. Powell was spotted vacationing on her floating mansion with her boyfriend of the past several years: former Washington D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty.

We can’t forget to mention that Ms. Powell is one of the world’s leading philanthropists — though most of her giving is done on the DL — and has also become an major investor in varied industries, including sports, magazine publishing, and education.

Listing agents: Neal Ward & Malin Giddings, Compass
Laurene Powell’s agent: Justin Block, JMBRE Inc.

It’s certainly no secret that the far-flung San Fernando Valley communities of Calabasas and Hidden Hills have become somewhat of a residential mecca to celebrities from the music and pro sports industries. Yolanda can’t say for sure why that is, but we do know that Calabasas is one of LA County’s newest cities. And the homes there — for the most part — were all built in the mid-90s or later. So the tidy and quintessentially suburban streets are lined with newish mansions, all with carefully manicured lawns and hedges. You won’t find any derelict teardowns out here. And then there’s the upscale Commons area, which provides a variety of luxe dining and shopping options.

A large house in the Mountain View Estates guard-gated community recently sold for $3,800,000. Though the buyer’s identity is cloaked behind an LLC, Yolanda happens to know it is former NBA star Al Harrington and his longtime wife Michelle.

Our 6’9″ Mr. Harrington played professional basketball for all of 17 years, which is quite a tenure in the world of professional sports. What Yolanda finds even more eye-popping, however, is that the itchy-footed Mr. Harrington played for seven different teams during that time. Holy mackerel! That’s a lot of jumping around.

Since his 2015 retirement, Mr. Harrington has been living the good life in Calabasas — specifically in The Oaks, the city’s most prestigious guard-gated community. But it seems as though he felt like switching things up by bidding adieu to The Oaks and saying hello to nearby Mountain View.

Oh, we should also mention that Mr. Harrington has kept busy in the years following his retirement by attempting to become a marijuana mogul. Yes, y’all — weed. Mr. Harrington’s company Viola Extracts is named after his grandma, a chronic pain sufferer who found relief through the green. That’s sort of sweet, we suppose.

Mr. Harrington’s new Calabasas home is a classic ’90s Mediterranean McMansion with 6,733-square-feet of living space and 7 beds/6.25 baths. The property itself if among the most private in the Mountain View community, as it is tucked into the end of a cul-de-sac on a .9-acre lot. The generous parcel size gives the property privacy and space for recreational amenities such as a lagoon-style pool and a full-size sport court. Views take in the mostly barren surrounding hills.

The interiors were recently redone by the non-celebrity sellers — a European couple who recently upgraded to a larger house in nearby Hidden Hills, in case y’all are curious — and some of the formal rooms have an Asian-style flair. Check out all the red countertops, walls, and backsplash. Yolanda also spies some chintzy chinoiserie goin’ on up in that dining room. At least the kitchen has top-of-the-line Viking appliances, and the hardwood floors look nice.

The commodious family room is equipped with a fireplace and opens via French doors to the various outdoor entertaining areas, which include a full outdoor kitchen and dining area next to an outdoor fireplace.

The upstairs master suite has a private balcony overlooking the backyard, a built-in soaking tub, and a sitting area with a fireplace. Yolanda cannot explain the photos of those creepy-looking skeletons — maybe it’s the cool thing for the kids to be into these days — but it gives your gurl the chills somethin’ awful.

Some of Mr. Harrington’s new neighbors in Mountain View Estates include reality TV star Kendra Wilkinson and her ex-NFL star hubby Hank Baskett, current NFL star Kenny Britt, retired NBA star Mark Jackson, and musician Frankie Vallie.

As luck would have it, Mr. Harrington successfully unloaded his former Calabasas pad just a couple days back. Though we do not yet see the sale recorded in public records, the MLS says the Oaks house went for $4,620,000 — nearly $800,000 more than he paid more than three years ago! Congrats.

The 6,797-square-foot Mediterranean McMansion was built in 2007 and — just like his new house — is located on a cul-de-sac with views overlooking the surrounding hills. The .7-acre property features an infinity-edged pool plus a half-size sport court and a full outdoor kitchen. Sound vaguely familiar?

Other famous residents of The Oaks include a couple of those krazy Kardashian sisters, Michael Jackson’s momma Katherine, reality TV star Tamar Braxton (who is reportedly facing foreclosure on her $10.5 million mansion, yikes!), big-time music producer Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith, and rapper Iggy Azalea, who is currently leasing a house just a couple doors down from the house Mr. Harrington has now sold.

Yolanda does not know why Mr. Harrington would trade the Calabasas house he owned for only three years for another similarly-sized (but much older) Calabasas abode that is barely cheaper and is located in an arguably less prestigious gated community, but folks with money to burn can be silly about these things. Maybe he just wanted a change of scenery. Or maybe he got tired of the Kardashians asking to borrow sugar?

Listing agents (Mountain View Estates): Peter Radd, Dana Olmes & Jeff Biebuyck, Compass
Selling agent (Mountain View Estates): Howard Zuckerman, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices
Listing agents (The Oaks): Howard Zuckerman & Meirav Leibovici, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices
Selling agent (The Oaks): J’Naiya Ermon, Rodeo Realty

Last November, soccer star Jermaine Jones posted a bitter rant on Instagram. In it, he complained about all things American soccer: the games, the coaches, and even (oh, horrors!) the fans.

That this rant came just days after the LA Galaxy team declined his contract option was a fact not lost on folks, most of whom derided his complaints as petty and immature. “The saltiest man in Los Angeles” one scathingly christened him.

Despite the fans’ assumptions, Yolanda wonders if Mr. Jones’s angry lash-out had less to do with his contract option than the fact he had just spent a very large sum of money on a new house in Calabasas. After all, Mr. Jones can easily go play somewhere abroad, but moving his family — his wife and his five children — is a completely different story!

A few months back, Yolanda’s longtime friend Vlad The Revealer at the Celebrity Address Aerial website reached out to inquire about a large new spec-mansion that had just sold for $4,875,000 to a mysterious blind trust. The property is situated in a new gated community in Calabasas filled with several large hillside lots: this particular property has nearly 12 acres of land, a massive amount for anywhere in LA.

Eventually Yolanda discovered that Mr. Jones and his former beauty queen wife Sarah Gerth were the new owners.

The new Jones homestead is located in the Country Ridge Estates gated community and tucked into the base of the Santa Monica Mountains just off Mulholland Highway. The sprawling Neo-Spanish Revival estate has a generous 7-car garage plus nearly 7,500-square-feet of living space with 6 beds and 8.5 baths.

As you’d expect of a nearly $5 million spec-manse, the interior boasts trendy dark hardwood floors and a host of luxury features. The massive great room has a vaulted ceiling and a row of disappearing glass panels that open to the backyard patio. The family room is equipped with French doors and a ceiling fitted with faux-exposed wooden beams.

Also exceptionally large is the kitchen/breakfast nook area, which sports every conceivable high-end appliance.

The most unusual feature of the property — besides the 12 acres of land — is that the house contains not one but two separate master suites, one upstairs and one downstairs. Yolanda assumes without any direct knowledge that Mr. & Mrs. Jones sleep together (hey, we’re just saying) so maybe the five Jones kids will have to duke it out over the other master? Yikes!

Anywho, both master suites are gigantic and contain private balconies and marble-filled bathrooms with sitting areas. (Really, how ridiculous. Who wants to lounge in a bathroom?)

Yolanda unfortunately does not have any photos of the home’s backyard, but we know there it is fully equipped with an outdoor kitchen, shaded loggias, a large rectangular swimming pool, and a separate flat pad of vacant land that could be used for horses or a new sports court.

As the LA Times snitched some months back, Mr. and Mrs. Jones once owned a Mediterranean McMansion in Encino that they bought in 2011 for $2,500,000 from that crazy lady Tori Spelling and her philandering hubby Dean McDermott.

Records peeped by Yolanda show the Joneses recently sold the Encino property in an off-market deal to local real estate agent Craig Knizek. The sale price was $3,200,000 — still a modest profit for them, but far less than the $4.5 million they originally wanted.

We digress. Although we have no idea whether Mr. Jones is planning to sell his big new Calabasas estate, we can only assume based on his repeated comments that his days in America are severely numbered. Right, Mr. Jones?

Listing agents: John Herkenrath & Craig Knizek, The Agency
Jermaine Jones’ agent: Chris Cortazzo, Coldwell Banker

The Malibu real estate market is notoriously sluggish in comparison to hot in-town areas like the Platinum Triangle. But a string of increasingly pricey off-market mega-sales over the past couple years has left all onlookers dumbfounded, Yolanda included. Frankly, y’all, when is it gonna end?

First it was Jimmy Iovine with his $60 million splurge above Paradise Cove. Then came Hong Kong heiress Karen Lo with her $70 million in cash. Right on the heels of Ms. Lo was Dodgers owner Mark Walter, who slammed down $85 million on Carbon Beach. (That transaction and an $18 million Pacific Palisades compound purchased for Mr. Walter’s close business associate Alexandra Court are currently being investigated by the SEC. But that’s a story for another day, we digress…)

Mr. Walter’s purchase was the highest price ever paid in the sleepy beach city. But then Canadian billionaire Daryl Katz tied up the score just months later, with his $85 million throwdown on a Brutalist-influenced compound.

Those transactions were all massive, to be sure. But lo! For the last week or so, Yolanda has heard distant rumblings indicating that yet another mega-deal is incoming, one that shall shake the LA real estate community to its core and make all those other sales look like real estate child’s play. Rumors of the sale were first reported online by our wily friend over at Variety magazine, and also by The Real Deal. 

Okay, so maybe that description is a bit dramatic. But still. We hear from all sides that this sale will be record-breaking. And if y’all have noticed that Yolanda has been a bit brief in this week’s postings, it’s because we have been working tirelessly, night and day, to compile information about this transaction. Yolanda does full-time and overtime duties for you precious cherubs.

So here’s what we know and what we do not know. The deal involves an architectural compound on Malibu’s Carbon Beach, aka Billionaires’ Beach. Although the sale does not yet appear to have been officially recorded in public records, we hear it is done-done-done in every other respect. And while we do not yet have an exact sale price, multiple sources say it is going down for north of $100 million — somewhere right around $110,000,000, give or take a few milli.

That’s ludicrous! Indeed, should the house sell for anywhere over $100m, it will be the most expensive residential sale in Southern California history. And Yolanda knows the identities of both the seller and the buyer, and the names of the agents who represented the seller. What we do not know is the identity of the buyer’s real estate agent(s). If anyone out there knows — and we know damn well you are out there — be a dear and let us know so we can properly credit him/her/it/them on this McWhopper of a deal.

The seller of the house was Hard Rock Cafe/Hotel founder Peter Morton, who hired acclaimed yet #MeToo-tainted architect Richard Meier to design him the custom compound way back in the early 2000s. Our Mr. Meier dreamed up a contemporary confection with unique teak “shutters” that open and shut on the home’s exterior at the touch of a button. The two-parcel property encompasses about .65-acre of land stretching from Pacific Coast Highway to the sand.

Two separate structures make up the estate: one an L-shaped two-story main residence with 4,618-square-feet of living space with 4 beds and 4.5 baths, and the other a two-story guest structure with another 3 beds and 3.5 baths in 2,316-square-feet of space. That’s a total of 7 beds and 8 baths in nearly 7,000-square-feet of house, for all you beancounters.

Indoors, the luxurious yet muted interior furnishings were designed by Obama’s White House decorator Michael S. Smith. But since this was a totally off-market sale, there are no pictures of this house sitting in the MLS. However, a little internet browsing reveals that the property has been photographed on numerous occasions, including for W Magazine back in 2006. 

It was in the W article that Mr. Morton revealed that he employs a full-time “oiler” whose sold job (apparently) is to keep the high-maintenance teak exterior of the house looking nice and shiny for the peasants who pass by. Well, hot damn! How would y’all like to be Mr. Smith’s personal oiler?

Now then, here’s the fun part. Who is the billionaire buyer? Well, y’all, let us tell you. At first Yolanda thought it might be Larry Ellison — after all, he clearly wants to buy up all of Carbon Beach and he owns the homes on either side of this compound.

But nope. It’s not him. Larry likes to get his Carbon Beach homes at a discount, like the $38 million one he just bought from Joel Silver (the original asking price was nearly $60 million).

Then we heard it might be gambling tycoon Sheldon Adelson. But nope, not him either. Our Mr. Adelson also loves Malibu — he’s the biggest landowner in The Colony guard-gated community, after all — but he doesn’t seem to have any interest in owning on Billionaire’s Beach.

It turns out the buyers are far more low-profile than either of those two fellas. Yolanda happens to know for a fact that they are natural gas billionaire Michael S. Smith and his longtime wife Iris.

The Smiths, who will soon be celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary and have two grown daughters, were longtime residents of Denver, Colorado. For the last decade or so, however, the family has been based here in LA. But we digress for now — more on that in a moment.

Mr. Smith is an oil and gas mogul, the Chairman and CEO of Freeport LNG. Based in Houston (Texas), Freeport is estimated to be worth $3.4 billion — and Mr. Smith still owns nearly 60% of the company. The Smiths also preside over Blue Spruce Capital Corporation, a private investment firm with offices in three states. Blue Spruce appears to mainly function as a management firm for the Smith family’s enormous wealth and their numerous investments. the couple are also major philanthropists.

Y’all may want to steel yourselves with a stiff drink, because while $110 million may be an unfathomable amount for 99.99% of us to think about spending on a house, it represents just another day at the real estate market for Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Scarcely two years ago (in early 2016), the Smiths coughed up — ready for this? — exactly $110,000,000 for an oceanfront compound in the Hamptons.

Yes, everyone, that is the exact same price they are rumored to be spending in Malibu. Their Hamptons compound spans three parcels and is located on super-prime Lily Pond Lane. For reference, their Hamptons splurge was the second-biggest sale ever recorded in New York, topping even Michael Dell’s $100.5 million penthouse purchase. The seller was hedge fund honcho Scott Bommer.

Just a few months before buying big in the Hamptons, the Smiths warned New York with a prelude of sorts: a $30 million penthouse acquisition in NYC’s trendy Tribeca neighborhood.

However, the Smith family does not mainly reside in New York — that $140 million was just for vacation home purchases. Their main residence is right here in the 90210. In the star-studded Beverly Hills Post Office neighborhood, in fact.

Speaking of star-studded, the Smiths bought their B.H.P.O. estate back in 2006 from none other than loca singer Ricky Martin. According to reports at the time, Mr. Martin’s house had not been available for sale — not even as a pocket listing. The Smiths and their $15 million cash offer appeared unsolicited and out of nowhere, supposedly. But we are certain that Mr. Martin is glad that they did — he sold them the house for $4.1 million more than he had paid only two years prior.

Some of the Smiths’ nearest neighbors in the 90210 include Dr. Phil, Tony Pritzker, and Sandra Bullock.

As for the Smiths’ two adult daughters — Tara and Kaily — they are both married to men in the entertainment industry. Tara is hitched to Tony Award-nominated producer Brian Swibel, and Kaily recently tied the knot in a lavish ceremony to Adam Westbrook, Mr. Swibel’s producer partner.

Back in July 2015, Tara Smith paid $9,626,000 for the Brentwood home of Steve Burke, President and CEO of NBC Universal.

In 2016, Kaily Smith coughed up $11,000,000 for a newly-built spec mansion in the desirable Pacific Palisades Riviera neighborhood.

That’s all she wrote, everyone. Yolanda is going on vacation up north this weekend. So behave, say “please”, and within a few days we should be able to see the final sale price here.

And if y’all didn’t know who Mr. & Mrs. Smith are, now you know.

Listing agents: Branden & Rayni Williams, Hilton & Hyland

Everyone needs a break, so Yolanda thought that it might be fun to briefly detour from our normal yaks and digressions. Instead, today we bring y’all a compound from up north, located in the low-key yet enormously expensive Silicon Valley community of Woodside, CA. The 3+ acre property was just listed with an asking price of $8,250,000.

Why would Yolanda choose to write about this home, when it is not owned by a high-profile individual? We’re glad you asked! It belongs to our longtime friend Woodside Woody, whom we have previously mentioned on this blog (he’s the guy who tipped us off about Michelle Pfeiffer’s Woodside estate recently becoming available for purchase).

Woody is generally not an attention-seeking fellow, but he knows as well as we do that all publicity is good, blah blah blah. So after some hemming and hawing, we convinced him and the missus to let us gab about their spread. We know that a substantial portion of our real estate base hails from LA, but perhaps one of y’all might be willing to give up drinking the smog-accentuated Kool Aid for the fresh tech-infused Woodside air. But if this is not your particular cup of real estate tea — different strokes and all that — just sit tight and we’ll have some juicy morsels for you shortly.

Property records show that Woody and his lovely wife Tanya used an LLC to pay $4,476,000 for the property in 2013. It doesn’t take a math expert to calculate that the current $8.25 million pricetag is nearly double what they paid five years ago, a fact that Woody openly acknowledges. However, y’all, the Woodies have upgraded and updated the house in a light and bright contemporary manner since their purchase. And fact is that prices in general are substantially higher now than they were then.

Woody says he is very serious about selling the house and will gladly entertain any offers that start with an 8 and have two commas. And that price — per Woody — would include most (if not all) of the home’s furniture. Provided the new owner takes a shine to it, of course. And trust us, there are some very nice mid-century and contemporary pieces up in here. Name brand stuff. The Woodies don’t shop at Bob’s Discount Warehouse (no shade at our boy Bob, we’re just saying).

The low-slung pad was built in 1980 and has since been remodeled into a contemporary confection. Accessed via a gated driveway — much of the house is invisible from the street out front — the mini-compound appears deceptively modest but actually weighs in with more than 5,000-square-feet of living space.

There are a total of 6 bedrooms and 3.5 baths, including the detached one-bed/one-bath guest house that sports its own kitchen, great room, and patio.

Inside, the house is a mix of contemporary and mid-century elements. There are vaulted ceilings, fluorescent light fixtures, and marble countertops in the kitchen. The kitchen also contains a variety of top-notch appliances — Themador, SubZero, etc — and the hardwood floors that flow throughout the main living spaces are polished to a lustrous dark brown hue. Naturally there are formal living and dining rooms.

Also in the house is a family room centered around another fireplace, a master suite with a spa-style bathroom that includes a glassy shower and a built-in soaking tub, and several guest/family bedroom. The aforementioned guest house is decked out with its own variety of hardwood floors and includes a generously-sized kitchen (for a guesthouse) plus an eating area.

A major selling point of the property are the 3+ acres of lush landscaping it provides. The property does not currently have a pool, but the rendering Yolanda posted above demonstrates how the site could easily accommodate one, along with a full-size tennis/sports court and a vineyard, should the new owner be a booze fiend.

According to the listing, the two-parcel estate may also be eligible for a lot split that would allow the new owner to either sell off a portion of the land or potentially use one portion for a commercial office, a very rare and valuable feature in the small town of Woodside.

And yes, though Woodside is a very small town — just over 5,000 residents per the latest US census — it has long been one of the wealthiest residential communities in the entire US of A. Thus our boy Woody rubs shoulders with many high-profile folks. One of his nearest neighbors is billionaire tech entrepreneur Evan Williams — the former Chairman and CEO of Twitter — who in 2014 quietly shelled out $17,250,000 for a large contemporary estate that he is completely rebuilding.

Right next door to Mr. Williams’ new pad is an even larger estate that has been owned since the 1990s by multi-billionaire Texas oil tycoon Robert Bass and his longtime wife Anne. According to Yolanda’s intel, that compound is mainly occupied by the couple’s daughter Margaret Bass, a Stanford graduate.

Also in the neighborhood are billionaire GoPro founder Nick Woodman, Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell, and real estate-crazy bajillionaire Larry Ellison, who reportedly spent an unfathomable $200 million to construct his Japanese-themed Woodside compound, his main residence. And then there’s SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, whose $117.5 million splurge on a Woodside compound remains the most ever paid for a home in California.

As for their future real estate plans, Mr. and Mrs. Woody have already purchased a new estate at an exclusive golf club gated community in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where they plan to live six months of the year. Once their Woodside estate is sold, the Woody couple will begin looking for a smaller “winter property” some place down south, far removed from those Wyoming chills.

Woody has said he and the wifey will probably buy something fancy in Arizona, but Yolanda is trying to persuade them to check out Malibu or Laguna Beach instead. Frankly, y’all, we need a beach house to work on our tan and a caretaker position suits us just fine. Ever since our vindictive third ex-husband Randall forbade our use of his black AmEx, we can’t even afford a damn rental on the sand.

Listing agent: Greg Goumas, Sotheby’s International Realty – San Francisco

Good ol’ Vlad the Revealer at Celebrity Address Aerial couldn’t resist asking us about a house in the San Fernando Valley’s Studio City neighborhood that recently sold for $2,200,000 to a mysterious blind trust. The nosy Yolanda was all too glad to oblige and after about a minute of research, we can tell y’all that the new owner is a very rich 22-year-old woman named Bethany Mota.

Our Miss Mota grew up as a normal girl from a middle-class Modesto, California family. Well, mostly — the exception to “normal” is that she was homeschooled. Her parents yanked her from public school after Miss Mota experienced extensive bullying. Some mean kids went to far as to make a Facebook group dedicated to bashing her looks! How rude. But perhaps Ms. Mota should be thanking those kids — without them, she might not be the multi-millionaire she is today.

During her 2009 summer break at home, a bored 13-year-old Miss Mota decided to make a YouTube video dedicated to her latest cosmetics purchases. The video — which Yolanda watched in the spirit of research — features a very shy teenage gal showing off her new mascara and such. But it is this unlikely video that launched an empire. A global audience found her relatable and began subscribing to her YouTube channel (“Macbarbie07”) in droves.

Fast forward nine years, and Miss Mota is now not only one of the most famous YouTube celebrities of them all, she is the bonafide most popular online “beauty guru” on the entire planet. Her YouTube channel sports more than 10 million subscribers, and she has more than 5 million followers on the Instagram contraption. Her online fame afforded her a spot on a recent season of Dancing With The Stars (she finished in a respectable fourth place).

The vast majority of Miss Mota’s subscribers are teenage girls, a facet that makes her extremely valuable to savvy, youth-oriented fashion retailers. Said retailers are constantly looking for new and creative ways to market their products to millennials, and thus Miss Mota gets paid big bucks to endorse cosmetics on her YouTube channel. Very big bucks.

To give you an idea of how much money the barely-legal Miss Mota hauls in, Business Insider estimated that she makes more than $40,000 per month from her YouTube ad revenue alone — and that doesn’t include her cosmetics endorsement contracts, of which she has plenty. One skincare company recently paid her $325,000 to fly to Hawaii and film a video at the beach applying their products. Our Ms. Mota also had a clothing line at Aeropostale that generated more than $50 million in sales.

Not bad work if y’all can get it, huh? We would not be the least bit surprised if Miss Mota can actually afford a lot more house than this $2.2 million pad. But really, how much property does a 22-year-old gal need? Or want?

In doing research for this posting, Yolanda stumbled over documentation that shows Miss Mota’s production company — Bethany Mota Entertainment — recently paid more than $130,000 in cash for a brand-new, fully-loaded Range Rover Supercharged. For what that is worth, of course.

So it appears that the young Miss Mota not only lives in style — she drives in it, too.

The two-story Traditional-style house was spec-built in 2015 by a developer and sold that year for $2,070,000 to David Gaillot, a Hollywood producer. In late 2017, during the height of the #MeToo movement, Mr. Gaillot was accused of rape by three different women. As you might expect, Mr. Gaillot got the heck outta Dodge (Studio City) and quickly dumped this house to Ms. Mota at a very modest profit.

Yikes! We hope those allegations aren’t true. But if they are, let Yolanda give Mr. Gaillot some unsolicited advice: don’t go around raping people and your life will be much easier.

Anywho, the listing swears that the property is “NOT your typical spec house” and is “exquisitely customized“. We can’t attest to that, but we do know that the house is situated on a .15-acre flat lot with a two-car garage and grassy front yard. The backyard area contains a rectangular swimming pool with inset spa and an outdoor kitchen/BBQ area plus a covered sitting/dining area.

Oh, and the garage features a built-in electric car charger, in case Miss Mota cares to add a Tesla to her stable.

Wide-plank hardwood floors run throughout the main level. Naturally the 3,888-square-foot house features an open floorpan for maximum space utilization. The family room opens to the kitchen, which is done up swanky with marble countertops and high-end stainless steel appliances (Wolf and such).

The home features a total of 5 bedrooms — all of which have en-suite bathrooms — plus an additional full guest bathroom, for a total of 6 baths. The upstairs “5-star hotel style” (per the listing) master suite has a vaulted ceiling, a sitting area, and a fireplace. The master bath contains a claw-footed master bath, a party-sized shower, and dual vanities.

As far as Yolanda knows, this is Ms. Mota’s first-ever home purchase. Not too shabby, hmm?

Listing agents: Scott & Lisa Sorrentino, Rodeo Realty
Bethany Mota’s agent: Zach Goldsmith, Hilton & Hyland

A large property in the guard-gated Mountain View Estates community in Calabasas recently sold for $4,900,000. The buyers, surprise surprise, are “Straight Outta Compton” rapper/producer turned mega-wealthy headphones entrepreneur Dr. Dre and his longtime wife Nicole Threatt (AKA Nicole Young).

The good Doc has owned a whole collection of luxury homes across LA, so we don’t see any reason why the couple would need or want this house. But Dr. Dre has three adult children from three prior relationships (all of whom are in the their 30s or late 20s), so maybe this place is for one of them. And with Ms. Threatt — to whom he has been married for more than 20 years — he has a 21-year-old son and a teenage daughter. Not to mention Ms. Threatt’s adult son from her previous marriage, who was primarily raised by her and the Doctor.

So maybe this place is for one of them?

Whatever the case, the couple have added to their portfolio, so let’s take a quick peek.

The classic ’90s McMansion (it was built in 1997, fyi) has a cream-colored exterior with a terracotta roof and a couple white columns for added grandeur. The listing says the home’s garage can accommodate eight vehicles, surely a boon for the Bentley- and Rolls Royce-driving Dr. Dre.

The .76-acre lot is one of the largest and most private in the gated enclave, with additional space on top of that number provided by an easement secured by the original homeowner from the community developer. The yard contains a large free-form style pool, a fountain, an enormous grassy area, a sports court, and several mature palm trees.

The 9,378-square-foot mansion is clearly meant to impress with the double-height entryway and vaulted ceilings throughout the main living spaces. Yolanda certainly appreciates the lustrous hardwood floors and the attempt at a coffered ceiling in the formal dining room, but overall the color scheme and general feel is a bit too late-90s for our particular taste.

There is absolutely no question this house was designed for a party-lovin’ owner — the family room sports a sophisticated surround sound system, and check out that lurid home theater. Egads! How frightening. Looks like the sort of place with invisible laser beams ready to zap intruders. We would be far too chicken to ever enter that shit, but it looks like the sort of thing that kids would love.

Elsewhere there is a mirrored gym, a cavernous library, and even a potential home recording studio.

There are 6 beds and 5.75 baths under roof — this includes the master suite with its all-beige bathroom. Elsewhere is another bedroom with an indigo-colored carpet and yet another with a giant gun canvas hung above the bed as wall art.

Odd interior decor choices aside, privacy is one of the key components to this end of cul-de-sac property — and there it excels. The house is very well isolated from the rest of the neighborhood. One of Dr. Dre’s few nearby new neighbors is ex-NBA star Al Harrington, who purchased the house immediately next door only a couple weeks ago.

Anyway, whether or not he intends to occupy this house himself, Dr. Dre is certainly no stranger to the San Fernando Valley area. Way back in 2012, he and Ms. Threatt coughed up $10,500,000 for a vacant 5+ acre double-lot in Hidden Hills.

The couple supposedly intended to build a custom mega-estate for themselves, but those plans never materialized and the vacant land was flipped just last year (2017) for $12,500,000 to makeup mogul Chris Tawil (Mr. Tawil’s sister Linda then paid $12.55 million for the mansion immediately next door to the lot). Yolanda has heard that Mr. Tawil plans to construct a mega-mega-mansion with a 30-car garage on the property, but we digress.

Also in the San Fernando Valley is Dr. Dre’s former main residence in the Woodland Hills guard-gated community of Westchester County Estates.

Though he has not lived here in some years, the 14,000-square-foot manse has not been sold and Yolanda wonders if perhaps some family members are currently occupying the property.

In late 2011, Dr. Dre paid $15,400,000 in an off-market deal for a house located in the high-priced “Bird Streets” area of the Hollywood Hills. Though he never actually moved into the residence — it was used solely for parties and events — and made few if any changes during his ownership, records show he sold the house only three years later for $32,000,000 to billionaire Alex Soltani.

Yes, kiddies, the house more than doubled in value in just three years.

In 2014, Dr. Dre and Ms. Threatt forked over a whopping $40,000,000 for the Richard Landry-designed Brentwood Country Estates mansion of Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen. This spread, as far as Yolanda knows, has been the Dre family’s main residence for the last few years.

Dr. Dre’s $40 million splurge remains easily the most ever paid for a home in Brentwood.

And like many exorbitantly wealthy Angelenos, Dr. Dre and Ms. Threatt also have a house at the beach. Records show that way back in October 2000 the couple paid $4,750,000 for a nearly 9,000-square-foot on Malibu’s super-pricey Carbon Beach, aka Billionaires’ Beach.

Some of their neighbors out on the sand are endlessly rich folks like Larry Ellison, Michael Milken, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Michael & Iris Smith.

Listing agents: Marc & Sara Shevin, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices
Dr. Dre’s agent: Jim Cavanaugh, BrokerIn Trust

A large Mediterranean-style mansion in the LA seaside neighborhood of Hermosa Beach recently sold for nearly $8.2 million, one of the highest prices ever paid for a home in the laid-back beachside community. Naturally, Yolanda was curious about the spendy new owner’s identity. A quick spot of quick research reveals that they are a not-famous local couple who have long lived in the area.

That’s all well and good, but then Yolanda noticed that the property immediately next door to the mansion — which currently sports a far more modest house — quietly sold last year for $8,000,000 to a mysterious blind trust. Somehow Yolanda (and everyone else, for that matter) completely missed this transaction when it went down, probably because it occurred totally off-market. That happens sometimes — we strive to be thorough, but things still fall through the cracks.

Anyway, Yolanda soon discovered that the buyers behind the blind trust are none other than Jimmy Kimmel and his (second) wife Molly McNearney. That should not be particularly surprising to anyone — after all, the Kimmels are longtime Hermosa Beach fans. And this is actually their third home in the neighborhood. More on that a little later.

At the time of sale, the large (for the neighborhood) property contained a 2,110-square-foot, two-story cottage that was built in the 1940 and is of no particular architectural significance. Yolanda thinks this place is the epitome of an obvious teardown, particularly since the off-market listing provided many photographs of the view but nary a photo of the plain-jane home’s interior.

And since this transaction closed way back in January 2017, Yolanda wondered if perhaps the Kimmels have already razed the structure and begun building a dream home.

But nope. Yolanda’s research reveals the little old house is still standing, and in fact is currently occupied not by Mr. Kimmel and Ms. McNearney, but rather by a local young artist named Lorien Stern.

We don’t know much about Ms. Stern or fully understand her connection is to the Kimmel clan, but she certainly seems to be either a close family friend or maybe even a relative. A little investigatin’ reveals that Mr. Kimmel, his kids, and Ms. McNearney all follow Ms. Stern on the Instagram contraption.

Whatever the case, we have to assume that Ms. Stern’s living situation is temporary and that the house will eventually be demolished once plans are drawn up for a luxury structure that maximizes the value of the prime hilltop property.

The property spans .42-acres — a very rare amount of land for tightly-packed Hermosa. Located in the coveted Hill Section and at the end of a quiet cut-de-sac, the house has clear views of the Pacific Ocean, Catalina, and the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

The current humble abode has 4 beds and 2 baths, but the listing makes a point to call out that the lot can potentially accommodate a 20,000-square-foot custom mega-mansion.

Since 2004, when he bought it for $2,175,000, Mr. Kimmel’s main residence in Hermosa has been the 2,200-square-foot house above. The house is conveniently located only one block from the beach.

Some of Mr. Kimmel’s high-profile Hermosa neighbors include billionaire In-N-Out Burger heiress Lynsi Snyder and billionaire Rockstar energy drink founder Russ Weiner.

In September 2014, Mr. Kimmel shelled out $2,250,000 for a duplex structure in Hermosa. The property is occupied by his sister-in-law Kelly McNearney (she’s his wife’s younger sister, FYI). Records show that Mr. Kimmel deeded the house over from his blind trust to Ms. McNearney’s name in 2015.

When they are not in Hermosa Beach, Mr. Kimmel and Ms. McNearney’s main residence is a two-parcel, two-house compound located on a famously star-studded street in the Hollywood Hills, just above the legendary Chateau Marmont. Our Mr. Kimmel purchased the contemporary complex in two separate transactions a few years back, for a total outlay of $7,100,000.

Listing agents: Robb Stroyke, Stroyke Properties

We know everyone loves reading about Beverly Park. Anytime we write about it we get loads of clicks — clicks up the wazoo, in fact. So a post about the biggest and baddest Beverly Park estate of them all should be a fun diversion from our normal routine, right?

For those of you unfamiliar with the big B.P., let Yolanda give a brief overview. The 250-acre gated community began development in the 1980s and sits way high up in the mountains above Beverly Hills, in an area known as the Beverly Hills Post Office. All B.H.P.O. homes have the coveted 90210 zip code but are technically located in the city of Los Angeles, which means they must make do with city of LA services and utilities.

Though there are hundreds of gated communities across Southern California, Beverly Park is almost certainly the most exclusive and expensive. The price of admission begins at $15 million or so for the smaller houses and ascends rapidly from there.

In the years since its formation, the area has become notorious for a few unique features. The first (and the most obvious) is the exceptional size of the homes. According to Yolanda’s count, there are 72 separate estates behind the gates of Beverly Park, three of which are currently little more than vacant land. Although the smallest home is approximately 8,000-square-feet, the average square footage of houses in the community is about 15k, Yolanda would guess. Damn — those are some big ass mansions!

The community is also known for its many famous residents. Hollywood celebrities such as Denzel Washington, Eddie Murphy, Sylvester Stallone, Kimora Lee Simmons, Rod Stewart, Samuel L. Jackson, Magic Johnson, Vanna White, Jami Gertz, Paul Reiser, Dr. Simon Ourian, and Mark Wahlberg are all homeowners there.

Beyond the celebs, the area is also rich in high-profile owners of a different strain — royalty. Saudi royalty, to be precise. According to Yolanda’s count, there are at least a half-dozen estates in the enclave that are owned by various Saudi princes and princesses.

Lastly, in addition to the celebs and royals, the area is also known for being quite popular with foreign businesspeople, many of them low-profile billionaires. And indeed, Beverly Park is exceptionally diverse, even for LA — there are fabulously rich residents there from Indonesia, Mexico, China, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Israel, Lebanon, Dubai, Pakistan, and even little-known countries like Kazakhstan and Africa’s Côte d’Ivoire. 

Due to the exceptionally wealthy nature of its residents, Beverly Park has become something of a residential Fort Knox. For starters, there are three separate 24/7 guard-gated entrances. Then there are 24/7 community security patrols that monitor the whisper-quiet streets. And many of the billionaire homeowners hire their own (armed) private security to patrol. Not to mention that each estate is behind its own electronic gate, and the enclave is equipped with hundreds of security cameras.

To put it simply — no matter where y’all are in the 250-acre community, there are probably at least a couple pairs of eyes watching and analyzing your every move.

But we digress. Y’all might be surprised to learn that the largest and most lavish estate in Beverly Park — recently made available off-market with a $165 million pricetag — is not owned by a Hollywood celebrity, a royal family member, or even a foreign bajillionaire. Rather, the owners are just a regular ol’ American businessman named Steven Udvar-Hazy and his longtime wife Christine.

Of course, “regular” is a relative term whenever we are discussing Beverly Park. This particular businessman happens to have a net worth of $3.9 billion (according to Forbes).

Mr. Udvar-Hazy, now in his 70s, was born in Hungary but emigrated to the USA with his family as a young boy. Though poor, he showed interest in aviation at a young age. Upon his graduation from college, he essentially created the aircraft leasing business. With his partners, he co-founded International Lease Finance Corp. — the world’s largest aircraft lessor by value — which was sold to insurance giant AIG in 1990 for $1.3 billion. The entrepreneurial Mr. Udvar-Hazy has since founded another large aircraft lessor — Air Lease Corporation. Air Lease has since gone public.

With his wife Christine, to whom he has been married for several decades, Mr. Udvar-Hazy has four adult children — two sons and two daughters. The couple are major philanthropists. Perhaps their largest donation to date was the $65 million they gave to the Smithsonian — that cash created the massive Udvar-Hazy Center.

For anyone who might be curious, the Udvar-Hazy family are Mormons. In fact, Yolanda believes that yes they may be the wealthiest LDS (Latter Day Saints) family in the whole wide world.

Anywho. In late 1993 — about three years after his giant AIG windfall — the Hazys coughed up several million dollars for about 12.5 acres of vacant land in North Beverly Park. They then spent five or six years (and according to records, tens of millions more) to construct a gigantic estate compound.

Designed by William Hablinski — a prominent LA architect responsible for several of Beverly Park’s largest mansions — Villa Firenze (as the estate is known) is meant to evoke a 16th or 17th century Italian village. And regardless of whether you believe the architecture accomplishes that goal, the compound is certainly large enough to qualify as its own village.

Per property records, the main house weighs in at a colossal 28,660-square-feet of living space. Then there is a detached garage, a two-story guest house of nearly 3,000-square-feet, and three additional guest houses/cabanas surrounding the pool. Yolanda would guess that the total living space on the property comes close to 35,000-square-feet.

The three-parcel compound has three different addresses and is accessed from its own private street. A suitably large front gate allows entry to the palatial motorcourt. Naturally there are mature canary palms and formal gardens.

Though the house was undeniably designed to impress — the twin staircases access separate wings of the hotel-sized residence — there are some cute homely touches, like the potted plants and the framed family photos on the entryway table.

Elsewhere on the grounds are a full-size tennis court, an additional sports court, and parking for dozens of vehicles. A paved walking/running trail rings around the entire estate.

For reasons unknown to Yolanda, the Udvar-Hazys have quietly been acquiring additional property in the area surrounding Beverly Park for several years now. Way back in 2000, they paid $2,000,000 for a lot accessed off Mulholland Drive that happens to overlook the entirety of Beverly Park. They razed the site and are completing a contemporary-style compound with an infinity pool.

Just last year (2017), the family coughed up another $2,000,000 for the modest ranch house next door.

In 2004, the Udvar-Hazys paid about $1.5 million for a house on another Mulholland Drive ridge overlooking Beverly Park. This property is notably for previously being home to Marlon Brando and for being the site of a 1990 murder. Our Mr. and Mrs. Udvar-Hazy quickly demolished the former house on the site and custom-built the 7,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style mansion above.

When they are not in Beverly Park, one can often find the Udvar-Hazys sunning themselves at their Orange County (CA) vacation home. Located in the ritzy Ritz Cove guard-gated community in Dana Point — just south of Laguna Beach — their custom-designed blufftop mansion overlooks the sea. Property records show that the Mediterranean-style mansion sprawls across three price lots and weighs in at nearly 15,000-square-feet of living space. It is easily the largest home in the Ritz Cove community.

This ain’t your typical beach shack.

Now let us discuss Villa Firenze‘s $165 million asking price. No doubt, that is a huge number. And while we expect this estate to set a new neighborhood record once it is eventually sold, keep in mind that nothing in Beverly Park has ever transferred for more than $40 million. That is less than one-quarter of what Mr. & Mrs. Udvar-Hazy want, y’all. Talk about an enormous discrepancy.

But speaking of the Udvar-Hazys: they are very, very rich. And somehow we suspect that they are also the type of people who do not discount their shit. If you want this house, y’all will have to meet them near their asking price. Either they get their nine figures or they are not gonna move.

Yolanda has not the faintest idea about who is shopping in the 90210-adjacent area for a $100+ million mega-estate. But whoever they are, they certainly have plenty of choices. In addition to Villa Firenze, there is Petra Ecclestone’s The Manor, which has been sagging on the market for months now with a $200 million pricetag. Then there is that Bel Air spec-build known rather pretentiously as Billionaire, recently reduced to $188 million and still majorly overpriced.

Then there are a whole sea of off-market (but very available) properties: Bel Air’s Chartwell estate, Jeff Greene’s infamous Palazzo di Amore, and Owlwood in Holmby Hills.

What Villa Firenze has that those other estates do not is a gated community and an arguably more prestigious address. After all, Bel Air and Beverly Hills contain a bunch of sub-neighborhoods, some with small and (relatively) affordable homes. But for better or worse, there is only one Beverly Park.

Listing agents: Richard Hilton & Jeff Hyland, Hilton & Hyland

Kiddos, Yolanda unfortunately does not have time to play today. We have lots of Stuff to do. For starters, we are babysitting our grandkids today — oh, those precious little brats. And then there are new episodes of Jerry Springer and Judge Judy to watch, plus we have our speedo-clad pool boy coming over today at 4pm. Obviously we don’t have time to stay and dilly-dally. We apologize in advance to y’all and to Ms. Banks, whose new house deserves far more ink than this abridged summary. We’ll make it up to y’all.

So here goes. Way back in December 2015, a large gated house in the Sherman Oaks foothills was listed with an aggressive $6,995,000 asking price. The property entered escrow the following February (2016), but for some odd reason the sale did not close for more than two years, until just a couple weeks ago (April 2018).

Yolanda has not the faintest idea why a house would be in escrow for over two years, but we digress.

Though the buyers’ identities are concealed behind a blind trust, Yolanda happens to know that they are actress/director Elizabeth Banks and her longtime hubby Max Handelman. The couple, who have been coupled since their college days, have been hitched for the last 15 years (wow, an eternity in Hollywood!) and have two young sons.

Our Mr. Handelman is a blogger and part-time film producer, but it appears to Yolanda that the breadwinner in this relationship is clearly Ms. Banks. She has appeared in a whole slew of films — Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy(2002–2007), Seabiscuit (2003), The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008), and The Hunger Games film series (2012–2015) — just to name a few, but she might be best-known for her roles in the successful musical comedies Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2. (The latter film was also directed by Ms. Banks!)

As of last year, Box Office Mojo ranked Ms. Banks as the 41st-highest grossing actor, and the fifth-highest grossing actress of all time. So obviously homegirl has the money to afford a nearly-$7 million pad.

The 6,218-square-foot structure was originally built in 1941 but has clearly undergone at least a couple substantial renovations in the ensuing 70+ years. Though single-story, the large house crams in 5 beds and 4.5 baths under roof. The interior living spaces are cozy while still plenty spacious.

A open-plan kitchen has top-of-the-line appliances, there are three “antique French stone” fireplaces on the premises, and most rooms are blessed with 280-degree views of the San Fernando Valley. Other nifty gadgets and gizmos include a high-end camera surveillance system, a Crestron home automation package, and solar panels for efficiency. There is a large pool/spa combo, and the lot size is a very generous 1.18-acres.

Prior to Ms. Banks’ purchase, the house had been owned since 2005 by local advertising exec Benedict Coulter, a guy who unfortunately appears to have faced foreclosure activity on this property but finally succeeded in unloading it to the celebrity couple. Whew!

Our Ms. Banks and Mr. Handelman currently reside in nearby Studio City, where they have owned a mid-century-era house since 2007. Property records show that they picked up the 3,200-square-foot structure (via blind trust) for $1,625,000.

Off we go. Yolanda promises to be back in better form tomorrow.

Listing agent: Ginger Glass, Coldwell Banker
Elizabeth Banks’ agent: Richard Ehrlich, Westside Estate Agency

An oceanfront house in Malibu’s most fabled guard-gated community — that would be The Colony enclave — sold a couple weeks back for $11,000,000. And as any avid real estate watcher worth their mettle should have already suspected, Yolanda quickly discovered that the home was purchased by multi-billionaire Vegas-based gambling tycoon Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson.

Our Mr. Adelson loves Malibu, and particularly The Colony. He has owned a part-time residence there for over 20 years, but it is only just recently (within the last five years) that he has begun acquiring additional properties within the gates at a downright feverish rate.

According to Yolanda’s count, Mr. Adelson now presides over a portfolio of seven Colony properties, five of them oceanfront and two located on the less-desirable “land-side” of the community. He has now spent a total of about $52 million acquiring the properties, though Yolanda believes that the total value of his holdings is now some $70 million or so.

— A 5,018-square-foot oceanfront house, custom-built by Mr. Adelson and completed in 1998 (he later sued his contractor over a pesky mold problem)
— A 2,746-square-foot oceanfront house, bought for $11,000,000 in 2018 (subject of today’s story)
— A 4,225-square-foot oceanfront house, bought for $9,980,000 in 2015 from the estate of Barbie doll inventor Ruth Handler
— A 3,755-square-foot oceanfront house, bought for $10,400,000 in 2015 from Mega Millions lottery winner Kevyn Ogawa
— A 3,295-square-foot oceanfront house w/ swimming pool, bought for $12,000,000 in 2013 from Lee Phillip Bell
— A landlocked lot featuring little more than a tennis court and a chain link fence, bought for $1,750,000 in 2013 from Lee Phillip Bell
— A landlocked lot with a 936-square-foot cottage and parking for six vehicles, bought for $6,800,000 in 2017 from the estate of Jerry Perenchio (the one we are discussin’ today)

Though the 84-year-old Mr. Adelson grew up sleeping on the floor of a one-room Boston tenement, the completely self-made fellow is now the world’s 21st richest person (according to Forbes). He is Chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands, America’s largest casino corporation. And he banked billions by betting that Asia’s Macau would become a mecca for international gamblers.

Our boy is probably best-known in the US for his steadfast support of the Republican Party. He is the largest (and very likely the most influential) donor to the American Right. Essentially, he is to Republicans what George Soros is to Democrats. Sort of.

Anyway, here is a quick look at what Mr. Adelson’s $11 million hath bought.

If this house looks vaguely familiar to some of y’all longtime readers, that is because Yolanda wrote about it in late 2016, when it was leased out to singer/performer extraordinare Pink. Check out that story for a more in-depth description of the structure.

Property records reveal the house was sold to Mr. Adelson by an entrepreneur-slash-real-estate-investor named Howard Leight. Our Mr. Leight, for what it’s worth, primarily resides in the Malibu Rocky Oaks Estate, a hulking stone manor house that he custom-built in the rugged mountains above the seaside city. It is here where Mr. Leight and his son Junior maintain a 10-acre winery and vineyard . (That property, for what it’s worth, was on the market a few years back for a still-too-optimistic $43,000,000, reduced from an eye-popping $49 million.)

When he’s not living in Malibu (and not traveling), the still-spry Mr. Adelson resides in a colossal mega-mansion in a swanky guard-gated community on the outskirts of Las Vegas. The red brick Georgian-ish-style behemoth was custom-built by our boy, completed in 2013, has 20 bathrooms and its own private water park, and reportedly weighs in at nearly 44,000-square-feet of living space.

Well, hot damn. Yolanda would call that thing almost ludicrously enormous! It’s so big that the house takes up three parcels of land, each of which could easily contain a “normal-sized” mansion. And just think of how much money it must cost to heat and cool that beast out there in the desert, kiddies. Not that a guy worth nearly $40 billion has to worry about utility bills.

Listing agent: Lance Strumpf
Sheldon Adelson’s agent: Chad Rogers, Hilton & Hyland

The headline-grabbing LA real estate news as of late is that $110 million Malibu home sale, naturally. Not only is it the largest transaction ever in the beachside city, it is the biggest ever in the entirety of SoCal.

A little further south, however, is the scene of another record-breaking transaction that closed in late February (2018). Although mostly overlooked and rightfully overshadowed by the big Malibu deal, this is no less of a big deal to the real estate community in the South Bay region of Los Angeles.

But get this: this massive sale went down in an unlikely location. Though the blufftop property was marketed as being in Redondo Beach (and has a Redondo Beach mailing address) it is geographically situated in the decidedly middle-class community of Torrance, which is definitely not the most desirable place in South Bay.

Property records reveal that the two-parcel spread sold for $22,750,000. Not only is that the most expensive sale ever recorded in the Torrance/Redondo Beach area — by far — Yolanda believes this is also the biggest ever recorded in all of the South Bay, which includes far swankier communities like Manhattan Beach — the scene of that big $21 million deal last year — and Palos Verdes Estates.

Cripes! So who is the cash-heavy buyer?

Well, the compound was acquired by a mysterious corporate entity that links back to a nondescript P.O. box in Houston (Texas). Though it took Yolanda a couple months of investigatin’, we finally discovered that our secretive new owner is a 30-year-old Texas oil billionaire named William Bruce Harrison. And yes kiddies, that is not a typo. The billionaire Mr. Harrison really is only 30 years of age.

Our Mr. Harrison also seems to be a shy fella — Yolanda cannot locate a single photo of this guy on the interwebs, and not for lack of lookin’. But anyway, young Mr. Harrison became very, very rich back in 2004, when he was just 17 years old. It was then that his 54-year-old daddy — Texas rancher/billionaire Bruce Harrison — unexpectedly died on his ranch, allegedly killed by bee stings. Bee stings!

The Harrison family is very old Texas oil money. Their original fortune was created in the early 1900s by Mr. Harrison’s great-grandfather — legendary Texas oilman and land baron Dan Harrison. As a side note, young Mr. Harrison’s uncle — Dan Harrison III — recently joined the billionaire ranks. Legal records show that William sued Uncle Dan over control of his late father’s trusts a couple years back.

Anyway, before we begin to dissect the Torrance/Redondo Beach property photos, a wee caveat: Yolanda is not a fan of this compound. We just wanted to get that outta the way. While the setting and views are gorgeous, the house itself leaves us feelin’ blue. If we did not know this place was built in 2005, we would have guessed it dates to the late 80s or early 90s. Homegurl looks dated, and not in a good way.

This is also most definitely not a place where we would picture a 30-year-old billionaire dude. If it were up to Yolanda, we would pluck Mr. Harrison from this pad and drop him into a sexed-up contemporary crib in a more fashionable area of town. But alas! Well, there is always hope for a teardown. May our dear Rabbi Hedda will it to be so.

The walled and gated 1.44-acre compound contains a main house of 10,200-square-feet and a “second house” of 5,528-square-feet (is it a guest house? It kinda seems too big for a guest house). The Porsche-driving Mr. Harrison will appreciate the estate’s seven-car garage.

We would call the architectural style here a weird sort of Spanish Revival meets Mediterranean mishmash. The houses appear strangely squat from the street out front, but they both drop down mullet-style to two full floors out back.

As we say, the spread was built in 2005 by Dotcom-era network entrepreneur Jeff Prince.

Spectacular outside views take in the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Catalina Island, and the Santa Monica bay. Too bad the interior views fail to match up — the kitchen is a sea of boring brown hardwood (the floors, the cabinets, the window trim, the faux ceiling beams, the chairs). And the home theater has a downright ugly leopard-print carpet. Did Charo do the decorating up in here?

Good gracious, there is that carpet again. And in the gym! Just say no. Yolanda is all for people taking decorative risks, but not at the cost of our stomach. The main home’s master suite has a private balcony (but no view?) and a bathroom with a glass-walled shower, rainfall showerhead, and a built-in soaking tub w/ fireplace.

The second house has a vault leading to a “secret” wine cellar.

Out back Mr. Harrison can splish-splash in a lagoon-style swimming pool. Too bad about the hokey slide/waterfall thing.

Listen kiddies, Yolanda hates to be so critical here. So check out that awesome view! And the sloped backyard has a long, twisting set of steps that lead down to a gazebo and your own private sand volleyball court. The court is gated off from the public beach surrounding it, so the downtrodden public can enviously stare at Mr. Harrison and his guy and/or lady friends playing in his $23 million backyard.

Speaking of the public, the compound sits right next to the public parking lot for the unfortunately-named RAT Beach. Odd location for a $23 million compound, but different strokes and all that.

Now then: Yolanda does not profess to know young Mr. Harrison’s net worth, but based on his real estate spending habits we can only assume he is well into the billionaire ranks. This Torrance/Redondo Beach pad is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg in his property portfolio.

Less than one year ago — September (2017) — Mr. Harrison purchased an 83,368-acre Colorado ranch that had been listed at $105 million. He simultaneously became one of the state’s largest landowners.

Cielo Vista Ranch, as it is known, contains dozens of mountains, creeks, dense forests, and even several lakes. The property has a fairly colorful history — it was owned by a lumberman named Jack Taylor for more than 30 years, until late 1990s. Records show that Mr. Taylor sold the ranch — then known as the Taylor Ranch or La Sierra —  in two separate transactions for a total of about $23 million. The buyer, y’all might be interested to know, was the notorious Lou Pai, he of Enron fame and shame.

Our Mr. Pai became Colorado’s second-largest landowner with this purchase, but he only held onto the property for a few years. In 2004, he sold the whole caboodle for $60 million to a group of Texas investors. It was these investors who changed the name to Cielo Vista and put the giant spread up for sale at $105 million. Along came young Mr. Harrison, who scooped it up in 2017 for an undisclosed (but no doubt enormous) price.

For loads more breathtaking photos, visit the listing website.

Also worth noting is that the ranch is home to Culebra Peak, a 14,053-foot peak that is apparently the tallest privately-owned mountain in the whole wide world. If any of y’all feel like indulging your inner cowboy/mountaineer, Mr. Harrison will allow you to traipse over his land and scale Culebra for the low price of $150 per head.

So if you have the cash, pay up, hike, and then brag to friends that y’all climbed the tallest private mountain on the globe. Click here for the ranch website.

Listing agent: Chris Adlam, Vista Sotheby’s International Realty
William Harrison’s agents: The Altman Brothers, Douglas Elliman

Every once in awhile, Yolanda gets a juicy tip delivered to our inbox outta nowhere. Call it manna from heaven or whatever you will. Regardless, y’all might recall we recently discussed a behemoth Beverly Park spread that was quietly made available for sale with an ask of $165 million. Our post included a description of the house and named all the nearby celebrity neighbors.

Not long after we posted that tale, we were contacted by a mysterious individual who refused to give his/her name. Deep Throat Jr told us there is another “big celebrity” that very recently and quietly moved into the hallowed Beverly Park community, though he/she would not divulge the celebrity’s name or even their house address. “Figure it out,” they unhelpfully told us.

Naturally Yolanda got on the horn and opened up an old-fashioned real estate investigation. That info ain’t much to go on, but we figured the “big celebrity” must be leasing in B.P., as opposed to have purchased a property. The names of owners who have bought in the community over the past few years are known, and none really qualify as a “big” celeb.

After some extensive digging and a few false starts, Yolanda thinks we know who the new Beverly Park residents are: media mogul Steve Harvey and his longtime wife Marjorie.

The Harveys, who have now been married for more than a decade, are a blended family: he has four adult children from his two ex-wives, and she has three adult children from her two ex-husbands, one of whom is alleged drug lord Jim L. Townsend. Although Mr. and Mrs. Harvey have no children together, they have both repeatedly said they are “parents to seven,” meaning that Mr. Harvey considers himself a dad to Mrs. Harvey’s kids, and vice versa.

One big, happy family.

Though our longtime friend Wiki Pedia claims that “Harvey and his family divide their time between Atlanta … and Chicago”, Yolanda is gonna have to disagree with Ms. Pedia on this one. A peek at Mr. Harvey’s Instagram and Mrs. Harvey’s Instagram reveals that they spend nearly all of their time here in LA, at least for the past year or so.

Speaking of the Instagram contraption, Mr. and Mrs. Harvey have both posted dozens of photos and videos that were clearly taken at a particular estate in Beverly Park. The estate in question popped up for lease last April (2017) with a whopping ask of $125,000 per month. Records show the property was leased out for $110,000/mo after only a few weeks on the market.

This timing also coincides with a statement made last year by Mr. Harvey: “My wife came out [to LA] and got a house. That was the challenge for me, ’cause my wife doesn’t shop on a budget. So she got the house she wanted and I have to pay for it.”

Well, my goodness. Celebrities are prone to exaggeration, but Mr. Harvey was certainly not jokin’ around — there are very few houses in LA that cost more than $110,000 per month. Yolanda can attest to that. Our Mrs. Harvey certainly has expensive taste!

To put it simply, Yolanda cannot prove that the Harveys are leasing this Beverly Park house. The names of lessees are not included in public records, after all. But if they are not leasing this spread, Yolanda will gladly eat our Ann Maree Willett-made hat. And film it, too. That is how positive we are.

Anyway, to give y’all an idea of how much Mr. Harvey is paying, the couple have now been living in Beverly Park for almost exactly a year. That means he has already shelled out at least $1,320,000 in rent alone, not counting utilities or any other expenses. Hot damn! Somehow $1.3 million in rent shocks Yolanda more than a $30 million house purchase.

Oh, but in case y’all are worried about whether Mr. Harvey can actually afford this place, rest assured. He definitely can. Though now in his 60s and more than 30 years into his career, the comedian/TV host/radio host/Miss Universe pageant ruiner/actor is now raking in more than ever before. According to Forbes, in just one 12-month period (June 2016 to June 2017), Mr. Harvey was paid a hefty $42.5 million.

Ka-ching!

The “Hamptons-inspired” Traditional-ish mansion was built in 2000 by heavyweight Hollywood producer Mike Medavoy and his vivacious socialite wife Irena Medavoy. The couple first attempted to unload the pad in 2007, when it carried an asking price of $23.5 million. Unfortunately for them, the house did not sell until September 2009, at the height of the global economic recession. Records reveal the house transferred for “just” $12,500,000, barely half of what the Medavoys originally wanted.

The 2009 buyers were an extravagantly rich couple from Mexico named Isaac & Victoria Oberfeld. The Oberfelds own multiple other homes in the 90210 area — as well as in Mexico City and other places — so Yolanda is uncertain as to whether they actually moved into this house. For the last few years, the property has been extensively renovated, inside and out.

Now then, an 11,769-square-foot house would qualify as a huge mansion in almost any neighborhood. But in supersized Beverly Park, believe it or not, this place is actually one of the smaller structures. (In case y’all were wondering, the average size of homes in B.P. is about 15,000-square-feet or so.)

A large gate slides open to the generous motorcourt, which can easily accommodate a dozen (or more) vehicles, not to mention the four-car garage.

Yolanda appreciates that this home is not overbearing like many of the mega-mansions in Beverly Park: the front door opens to a graceful staircase with hardwood steps and white risers. Elsewhere there is a very large living room w/ fireplace and a family room w/ fireplace that features French door access to the backyard.

Speaking of the backyard, the 1.8-acre estate features a generously sized grassy lawn and a long swimmer’s pool, plus a spa.

Perhaps the most striking feature of this house is the kitchen, where all the cabinets are painted a daring shade of cobalt blue. As we have previously said, Yolanda always encourages folks to take decorative risks, and we actually love this color scheme. Somehow the blue, the stainless appliances, and the burled walnut floors all work for us, though it might be the sort of thing we are over in a week.

A formal dining room looks out over the pool area, and a contemporary library/sitting room has floor-to-ceiling bookcases.

The house has a total of 5 beds and 8 baths, and the Harveys’ master suite sports its own private balcony overlooking the grounds. And check out that bathroom! That shit is bigger than Yolanda’s whole apartment, the one that our rich third ex-husband was forced to buy us after the divorce. Cheap bastard.

When they are not in Beverly Park, the Harveys might be in the 9,000-square-foot Atlanta, Georgia mansion that they purchased in 2010 for $3,375,000. Or they might be ensconced in their 7,430-square-foot mansion in Little Elm, Texas — just outside Metropolitan Dallas.

But anyway, back to Mr. and Mrs. Harvey’s rental house. The pad is located in a particularly posh section of Beverly Park. Practically every one of their closest neighbors is a billionaire! In addition to the Udvar-Hazy family across the street, the Harveys’ next door neighbors are Iran-born billionaire Neil Kadisha and his longtime wife Dora, a member of the multi-billionaire Nazarian clan. Their other next door neighbor is Indonesian billionaire Peter Sondakh, and the house behind theirs is owned by billionaire Tom Gores and his wife Holly. Next to the Goreses are a whole row of mega-mansions owned by various Saudi royal family members.

Yolanda strongly encourages the Harveys to quite wasting their money on rent and just buy a Beverly Park mansion. Of course, there are only three B.P. mansions on the (open) market currently. One is a spread owned by a Taiwanese woman that is being marketed as a $24 million teardown, so that’s out. Then there is a estate owned by Dubai-based businessman Danny Rupert that is asking $42 million. That house looks pretty cool, but it is located in South Beverly Park, which is less desirable than the North section where the Harveys currently live! Heavens no — that would never do.

And finally, there is a house in the North section asking $47.5 million. Although this place is still technically owned by Vanna White, it has long been occupied by her ex-hubby George Santopietro. Anyway, the pad is definitely overpriced.

Our advice to Mr. Harvey is to make the Oberfelds — who are now in their 70s — an offer they cannot refuse. Surely they would not turn down a $20 or $25 million offer for this pad we just showed y’all. And trust us, Mr. Harvey has the money.

And really, wouldn’t buying in Beverly Park — the most exclusive gated community in LA — be the ultimate come-up for Steve Harvey? After all, he was homeless for several years in the 1980s.

Listing agent: Joyce Rey, Coldwell Banker

Last year, our friend Vlad the Revealer from Celebrity Address Aerial requested Yolanda’s help in identifying the owner of a large LA-area mansion that recently transferred for $7,200,000 to an enigmatic blind trust. Unfortunately, Yolanda was preoccupied at that time with our busted bunions (no more Jimmy Choos for us) and our annoying third ex-husband Randall, who was determined to clawback our jewelry that he gave us! Sadly, we completely forgot about this house until just the other day.

Well, better late than never, right? Yolanda finally did some research on the property, which is situated in the wealthy oceanside city of Manhattan Beach. The big M.B. has long been home to scads of professional athletes. Some very fit people live out there! Just check out the boardwalk next time y’all are in town.

Lo and behold, Yolanda discovered that the buyers are a young(ish) couple named Luke and Bre Walton.

But when we imparted this info to Vlad, he naively asked if the Waltons are Walmart heirs! Oh Vlad, you silly goose. Although Mr. and Mrs. Walton do share a surname with the Walmart family, they are not related, at least as far as Yolanda knows. Rather, Mr. Walton is a former professional basketball player turned successful pro basketball coach. He currently helms the LA Lakers. And he is a very big deal in the NBA: he played something like 10 seasons for the Lakers (and secured two championships) and his dad Bill Walton is a retired NBA hall of famer. Poor Vlad — maybe basketball is not a big deal in Romania?

Only kidding, Vlad! Yolanda loves ya, baby.

Anyway. It was natural that Mr. & Mrs. Walton would want to upgrade their residential circumstances — they have now been married five years and have two young sons, after all. The couple clearly has love for Manhattan Beach, because their old house is located there, too. More on that in a moment.

The listing calls this house “one of the finest estate properties in Manhattan Beach,” and “a magnificent 10,000 ft French Riviera villa.” And there is no doubt the house is one of the largest in the city — 10,000-square-foot mansions are very rare in this tightly-packed beach town. The .34-acre lot is also relatively generous.

Also noteworthy is that this place is actually not particularly close to the beach (it is probably a 10-minute drive with moderate traffic), nor does it have an ocean view. Rather, the house is located in a woodsy, inland area of M.B. near the end of a private road. But if the Waltons were looking for a large family home with privacy that still gets those ocean breezes, it probably ain’t get much better than this.

The three-level structure was built in 2003 and last sold in 2006 for $5,860,000 to John Macaluso, the former CEO of Wizard Entertainment. Two two-car garages flank the gated walkway to the home’s front door, which swings open to a grandiose entryway equipped with a Subaru-sized chandelier and one of those infamous bridal staircases.

The kitchen is newly remodeled, per the listing, and sports dark brown oak floors, marble countertops, and all the expected high-end stainless appliances. The breakfast nook was also redone with those same floors, but for some reason the formal dining room does not appear to have been updated. Yolanda thinks it could use a reformatting to more cohesively match the other spaces.

According to the listing, the mansion sports 6 beds and 6.5 bathrooms, though Yolanda actually counts 7 beds and 7.5 baths. There is a maid’s bedroom suite in the full basement, a mother-in-law suite on the main level, and five family bedroom suites upstairs.

But anywho, the master suite has a fireplace, a balcony overlooking the backyard, and rather a lot of beige everything. Just off the master is a full-size gym equipped with lots of workout equipment. Ya gotta stay trim if you wanna live down in Manhattan Beach.

The basement level sports a huge theater w/ a kitchenette, and a wine cellar with rouge-colored walls. Outside, the mini-estate offers plenty of entertainment options: lounging in the shade, swimming in the large pool, frolicking on the grassy lawn, eating/drinking by the full outdoor wet bar and pizza oven, or having a family meal under the bougainvillea-shaded trellis.

And for all you folks infatuated with floor plans, here are some drawings to ogle.

To be perfectly honest, Yolanda is not certain whether Mr. and Mrs. Walton have moved into their big new Manhattan Beach mansion, though they purchased it more than a year ago (back in March 2017). But in any case, they do/did not have far to move — the couple are both longtime M.B. locals. Since 2007, when Mr. Walton bought it for $2,750,000, the couple have owned a 5,100-square-foot Manhattan Beach house that is perhaps a 3-minute drive from his new pad.

Yolanda fully expects the Waltons’ old mini-mansion to soon become available for purchase. For now, however, the house remains unlisted and unavailable (publicly, at least).

Listing agents: Kathrin Nicholson & Michael Grady, The Agency

A decidedly louche residence in the highly desirable Beverly Hills neighborhood of Trousdale Estates recently sold for $12,000,000 to an offshore corporation with an address in the British Virgin Islands. As y’all might expect, Yolanda was curious about the new owner’s identity. Soon we learned that he is a young man named Omar Mangalji, also known by his altar-ego Ronnie Bacardi.

We are not sure why Mr. Mangalji sometimes goes by the Bacardi name. Yolanda is not particularly fond of it, personally. Sounds kinda like the name of a slimy used car dealer from New Jersey — and it also reminds us of Cardi B, neither of which is a good thing. And Mr. Mangalji’s real name sounds so deliciously exotic!

Anyway, the rakishly handsome Mr. Mangalji is 33 years old and the only son of hotel tycoon Majid Mangalji, owner/operator of the massive Westmount Hospitality Group chain. Therefore the Mangalji family is fabulously and enormously wealthy.

Our Mr. Mangalji has lived primarily in LA for at least the last few years and is friends with many other wealthy local young people his age. One of his BFFs is actress Nina Dobrev, with whom he recently celebrated at a lavish joint birthday party. He also famously dated the lovely Slumdog Millionaire actress Frieda Pinto for several years. (They may still be together?)

But do not assume that Mr. Mangalji is just some spoiled young bum. This dude is very highly educated and accomplished in his own way.  Raised in the lush countryside of Surrey, England, the decidedly cosmopolitan Mr. Mangalji attended a prestigious boarding school in Massachusetts before matriculating to (and graduating from) Cornell, one of them Ivy League universities.

Upon his college graduation in 2008, Mr. Mangalji joined Goldman Sachs as an investment banker but eventually broke away from banking to pursue entrepreneurship. He currently serves as Managing Director of global investment vehicle Cap-Meridian Ventures LTD. And he maintains a relationship with his alma mater (Cornell) and has even been invited back as an alumni speaker.

The Bentley-driving Mr. Mangalji is also a professional polo player who now has nearly 15,000 followers on the Instagram contraption. But speaking of Bentley, the car company finds him so fascinating that they profiled him in one of their “extraordinary Bentley owners” feature stories.

“Entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Omar Mangalji is a modern day global citizen and renaissance man with a need for speed, power and precision when it comes to every facet of his life,” is how Bentley described our boy. Yolanda does not disagree!

And yes, we know that getting paid (or at least being asked) to race a horse against a Bentley on a polo field might seem like an absurd waste of time to y’all. But do not laugh — Yolanda knows damn well that each of you would also jump at the opportunity, were y’all in Mr. Mangalji’s shoes. Come on, it seems fun!

In fact, Yolanda drives a candy-apple-red Cadillac Eldorado and we would gladly volunteer to pull a similar stunt for Caddy. But we suspect that if GM was lookin’ to profile a grey-haired old bag of an owner who types on her 1998 Macintosh all day long, they would have already asked us.

Ah, well. We digress.

Mr. Mangalji’s new Trousdale sex kitten is located at the very end of a swanky cul-de-sac midway up the neighborhood hill. Though the classic mid-century modern was originally built in 1961, it was recently overhauled by contemporary-minded architect Michael Marquez.

Guests arriving at the residence view an electronic front gate that guards the motorcourt and the attached two-car garage. The all-glass front door (which looks directly through to the backyard and view) will surely impress all newcomers, and the enormous great room is a perfect bachelor pad setup. The circular court has plenty of space for any lady friends (or guy friends for that matter) that Mr. Mangalji may invite over.

Yolanda is unfortunately not well-versed in art, but we do like the painting of pitted melons (???) that adorns the wall of the dining area and adds a pop of color to the residence. The eat-in kitchen sports designer appliances and a large center island. Nearly all the public areas of the home have unobstructed city views.

The master bedroom also has glamorous views via the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the master bath has dual vanities and a built-in soaking tub next to a big window. There are four additional bedroom suites.

The outdoor areas are kept suitably minimalist with a rectangular pool w/ inset spa, a covered sitting area, a firepit, and an outdoor bar and BBQ area tucked over to one side. At night the property lights up Christmas-style — no need for excessive gizmos and gadgets to appreciate the coolness of this spot.

Our Mr. Mangalji’s new house is next door to a similar-lookin’ vacant pad owned by entrepreneur Jared Pobre and former wrestler Stacy Keibler, though the couple have not lived there in some years. That house is currently asking $17.5 million, but it is only marginally larger than Mr. Mangalji’s $12 million home, and on a smaller lot! Oh dear — we think the Keibler-Pobres may need to reduce their ask if they are serious about getting that thing sold.

Anyway, records show that Mr. Mangalji still owns his “starter” house: a multi-million dollar crib in the Bird Streets area of the Hollywood Hills.

Records show that Mr. Mangalji paid $3,200,000 for the 2,721-square-foot contemporary in October 2015, and the house is not currently available on the open market. But as they say, it is only a matter of time.

Listing agents: Branden & Rayni Williams, Hilton & Hyland
Omar Mangalji’s agent: Robert Grandinetti, Compass

The Brentwood hills are alive with the sound of rain — green rain. Yes, rich folks are making major money moves in the foothills just north of Sunset Boulevard, particularly in one neighborhood pocket where we have seen a whole spat of eight-figure sales over the past couple years. Heck, even Justin Bieber is reportedly considering a fancy house in this particular ‘hood.

And if this area is good enough for the Biebs, it must be good enough for anyone, right? Right.

A large contemporary mansion that sits directly across the street from an even larger structure owned by celebrity music manager Scooter Braun recently sold for $12,500,000 in a quiet off-market deal. Though the buyers’ identities are well-shielded behind a corporate entity, Yolanda eventually discovered that they are Canada-based couple David Cohen and his longtime wife Diane. Our Mr. Cohen is a mining tycoon — meaning he literally owns gold mines and stuff — who is also one of Canada’s most successful oil and gas entrepreneurs.

The Cohens, who have been married for several decades and have two grown children, were both born and raised in South Africa (as were their kids). Actually, the family did not move to Canada until 1994. While in Canada (British Columbia, specifically), Mr. Cohen co-founded Gold Wheaton Gold Corp, which was sold in 2011 for $1 billion and he also co-founded Northern Orion Resources Inc., which was sold for in 2007 for $1.5 billion. He has since founded a bunch of other companies. Yolanda does not know what Mr. Cohen’s net worth is, but suffice to say that this guy has a lot of money.

Now then, a $12.5 million house in Brentwood is not a particularly unusual thing. But there were a couple facts about this sale that Yolanda found a bit odd. For one, the house only has three bedrooms. And a $12.5 million three-bedroom house is a very, very unusual thing, y’all. Even for LA.

The other oddity is that this house sold for $7.2 million only four years ago (in late 2013), and Yolanda happens to know that the woman who bought it then — LA-based heiress/art dealer Maggie Kayne —  changed very little, though she did have it photographed for Architectural Digest in 2015. So at first blush, it seems as though the Cohens overpaid for this property by several million dollars.

But whatever, Yolanda thought. This is LA, and people happily overpay for stuff all the damn time. The Cohens are super-rich — maybe they just fell in love with the house and had to have it at any price.

Not so quick. Turns out, kiddies, there is more to this tale than meets the proverbial eye. As we were researching the Cohens in preparation for our story, we discovered that the couple have a famous adult daughter named Yael Cohen. As it turns out — and as some of y’all may already know — Miss Cohen was married in 2014 to none other than Scooter Braun. The couple now have two young sons.

Get it now? We think the Cohens did not necessarily overpay for this property because they were obsessed with it. The primary reason, more likely, is that they wanted to live across the street from their grandkids (and daughter and son-in law, for that matter). Plus, like we say, a few million dollars likely means very little to people of their financial firepower.

Good gracious! Yolanda knew that Scooter Braun was a very rich man — after all, he manages the careers of superstars like the Biebs, Ariana Grande, and until recently Kanye West — but we had no idea that his wife came from such a wealthy family. But so she does.

By the way, Mrs. Braun is quite obviously very close with her parents. Before meeting and marrying Mr. Braun, she was already famous for starting a charity provocatively named Fuck Cancer after her mother — that would be Diane Cohen — was diagnosed with breast cancer. Our Mrs. Cohen eventually made a full recovery, thankfully.

Time for a look at grandma & grandpa’s baller new architectural house! Note: photos circa 2013.

According to property records, the contemporary crib was originally built in 1952. Yolanda thinks it may once have been just a regular ol’ mid-century modern, but in 2001 it was completely overhauled and expanded by Michael Palladino of Richard Meier & Partners Architects. If that firm name rings a bell, y’all may recall that this is the same architecture company that built a contemporary Malibu house that recently sold for a record-shattering $110 million.

Yolanda dug up an old listing from the time this place was last sold, back in late 2013. The listing gushes about the “Stunning architectural on lush grounds,” but also warns that “There are only 3 bedrooms in the house so it is ideal for the art collecting couple that has style.”

We do not know if the Cohens are art collectors, but they certainly seem to have to have style. Their new house sits on nearly a full acre of land — and yes, the grounds are incredibly lush. A gated driveway leads to the motorcourt and garages, and out back is a long swimmer’s pool. Yolanda loves it, but we would advise the Cohens to change the color of the water — green is just so icky. But we digress.

The mansion-sized 8,627-square-foot structure has a large library, fireplace-equipped living and family rooms, walls of glass, and wide expanses of white walls. Pefect for some modern art, eh?

An ultra-slim corkscrew staircase leads to the second floor.

As it turns out, the master suite comprises the entire upstairs and includes a bedroom with sitting area, fireplace, and walls of glass. The bathroom has dual vanities, the closet can easily accommodate a collector’s designer wardrobe, and there is even a second living room (below).

Maybe the Cohens like to entertain in their boudoir? Hey, no judging.

Also on the premises is a gym. Various French-style doors and disappearing walls of glass lead to the home’s spacious balconies, one of which has a tree growing right through it. Well, we never!

Perhaps Yolanda’s favorite part of the estate are the park-like grounds, which encompass a wide swath of grassy lawn, secluded stone pathways, maze-like hedges, and various hidden sitting areas. Damn, the Cohen grandchildren are gonna be so spoiled growing up here. We still have fond memories of visiting our grandma’s house as a child — we cannot fathom how cool it would’ve been if she owned this place!

We digress. In addition to their daughter and son-in-law, some of the Cohens’ nearest new Brentwood neighbors include actor John Travolta, NBA star LeBron James, and makeup mogul Jamie Kern Lima.

A thorough scrub through property records reveals that this is not the only LA-area property owned by Mr. and Mrs. Cohen. Back in late 2014, records show they used an entity called “Black Pine Property LLC” to pay $8,400,000 for an oceanfront home in Malibu. The small (yet exorbitantly expensive) pad has 3 beds and 3 baths in just 1,899-square-feet of living space and is located on coveted Malibu Road, home to a glorious stretch of dazzling sand.

Yolanda’s calculations show that the Cohens have now spent a gasp-worthy $20,900,000 on their two luxury California homes. And remember, y’all, these are not the only properties owned by the couple. According to reports, the couple also maintain multi-million dollar homes in the bustling city of Vancouver, British Columbia and in the ski resort town of Whistler.

It was at the Cohens’ Whistler home, Yolanda believes, where Yael Cohen married Scooter Braun in a lavish ceremony attended by Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, Sophia Bush, Ed Sheeran, Carly Rae Jepson. And, of course, the Biebs — who blessed us all with a song.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, y’all. We hope everyone has some fun plans for the remainder of the day! A rich friend of Yolanda’s very generously invited us over for a lazy afternoon in the sun, and apparently there is already a margarita with our name on it waiting poolside. But before we rush off, work comes first. Of course we were not to anyone leave anyone hangin’.

Now then — if the house we are discussing today looks vaguely familiar to some of you avid real estate watchers, that may because it was sold last year for $2,200,000. At the time, it was reported that the buyers were rocker Benji Madden and his wife, recently retired actress Cameron Diaz.

Yolanda thought it odd that Mr. Madden and Ms. Diaz would want a $2.2 million house in Studio City when they already own (and reside in) an A-list-style $10 million compound in a famously star-studded 90210 enclave. But Mr. Madden is indeed listed on the Studio City home’s deed — as trustee of the blind trust that purchased the property. Whatever, Yolanda thought. Celebs do weird stuff all the time. Maybe they bought this place for a less financially-fortunate family member?

Anyway, we promptly forgot all about the house until earlier this week. But then, out of nowhere, Yolanda was contacted by a tipster named Billie Sue. Our boy kindly whispered to us that the house was acquired not by Mr. Madden or Ms. Diaz, but rather by an English woman named Jessica Cornish. Our gurl Miss Cornish is probably better-known by her pop star stage name Jessie J.

A quick spat of internet research reveals that Miss J is kind of a big deal in the industry. Her songs “Do It Like a Dude“, “Price Tag“, “Domino” all went top 10 in various countries around the globe. And her most recent big hit — 2014’s “Bang Bang,” a collabo with Nicki Minaj and Ariana Grande — went to #1 in the UK, #3 in the USA, and sold millions of copies internationally. Additionally, in case anyone was curious, she has nearly 7 million followers on the Instagram contraption.

Oh, and the reason Mr. Madden’s name shows up on Miss J’s deed is because he is her business manager.

Miss J — who is a very attractive lass, we must say — was born and raised in London, but in 2014 she announced her decision to relocate over here to LA. According to Miss J, “In America they see me as a singer whereas [in the UK] I feel that people don’t appreciate my voice. I’ve dedicated my life to singing and I want to be taken seriously. [In the UK] it seems that all people want to know is what I’ve had for breakfast and who I’m sleeping with.”

Mmhmm. Yolanda feels ya, baby. Apparently some folks have been asking our friends about Yolanda! Lots of nosy personal questions, too. C’mon y’all, leave your gurl alone. We just wanna blab about houses make some quick cash to pay the rent on this crappy apartment. Yolanda is so broke that our checks do not just bounce — they go into orbit. Sucks!

The 2,483-square-foot casa was originally constructed on spec and styled in a classic, swingin’ mid-century modern manner. In 1964, when she was still a newborn babe of a house, the ol’ gurl was sold for — ready for this? — just $53,500. Damn. Those were the days.

Anywho, the original owners held onto the property for more than 50 years, until 2016. In February of that year, the property was sold for $1,210,000 to developer Jordan Bakva of MODERN BUILD. Our Mr. Bakva thoroughly renovated the structure in a sexy contemporary manner, while respecting the integrity of the mid-century architecture.

Speaking of value, it appears that at least a couple prospective buyers were sold on it. The $2.2 million sale price is actually $50,000 more than Mr. Bakva was asking, indicating Miss J faced competition for this property.

The .3-acre lot sits in the Studio City hills, in a quiet mid-century development known as The Doñas that is conveniently located just off busy-busy Laurel Canyon Boulevard. (Think of The Doñas as Studio City’s much less expensive answer to Beverly Hills’ Trousdale Estates neighborhood). A gated driveway leads to a motorcourt and a two-car garage.

Both the front and back yards are landscaped in a minimalist-minded and low-maintenance manner with beds of pea gravel, a couple large evergreen trees for privacy, wee patches of grass out back, and three mature juniper trees out front for looks. Yolanda hearts the (almost) windowless front facade.

The double front doors open to an open-concept living area with pricey French oak hardwood floors flowing throughout. The great room encompasses a dining area, living area, a very contemporary kitchen with a waterfall-style stone island and high-grade appliances, and a fireplace that may or may not be hewn from grainy black marble.

Sexy, endless sheaths of disappearing glass walls overlook the classically-shaped oval swimming pool and the surrounding hills.

The structure additionally sports 4 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms, and the master suite has its own glass wall. The master bath includes a glassy shower with rainfall showerhead and dual vanities.

Lastly, Yolanda knows that starting life afresh in a different part of the world can be a singularly lonely experience. In case Miss J is indeed feeling lonesome, she can rest easy knowing that many of her musician peers are just a quick jog away. Other homeowners in the Studio City hills include Bruno Mars, Lana Del Rey, Gwen Stefani, and Linkin Park’s Brad Delson.

Toodles, everyone. Drink responsibly!

Listing agents: James Harris & David Parnes, The Agency
Jessie J’s agent: Brett Lawyer, Hilton & Hyland

Though real estate prices on the Eastside of Los Angeles cannot compare to the eye-popping figures we see on the Westside, the area is nonetheless sizzlin’ hot in a way that would have been unfathomable a few years ago. Stoking that fire, perhaps, is the fact that many celebs — particularly younger celebs — are eschewing their traditional haunts way out west and migrating in droves ever further east.

In fact, since famous folks almost always use blind trusts to purchase property here in LA, Yolanda can tell y’all where we see the most celebrity purchases. The vast majority of celebs are setting down roots in either the San Fernando Valley or the Eastside (Beachwood Canyon, Los Feliz, Silver Lake, and so forth). Pretty amazing since many of those neighborhoods were near the height of undesirability only a decade or so ago.

And high-profile peeps keep pushing the boundaries, too. Just a couple weeks ago, a “private creative oasis” in the still-somewhat-gritty-yet-rapidly-gentrifying Echo Park neighborhood sold for exactly $2,000,000 in an all-cash deal. The sale is one of the highest on record for the area, and there was a fierce bidding war over the property: the new owner paid $405,000 more than the asking price. And the buyer, of course, was a mysterious blind trust.

For reference, the most expensive transaction ever recorded in Echo Park went down last year for $2,275,000. The buyer of that house, in case y’all were curious, was a lady named Jessa Sherman. Our Miss Sherman is a psychotherapist who is also the daughter of prominent Denver-based oil and gas lawyer Harris Sherman, the former Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment, as appointed by Barack Obama during his presidency. But we digress. 

Yolanda quickly launched an investigation and we discovered that the proud new owner of the recently-sold $2 million house is none other than model and current It-Girl Emily Ratajkowski.

Born in London but raised primarily in San Diego, the now 26-year-old Ms. Ratajkowski first came to attention in 2012 when she posed fully nude for the cover of Treats! magazine, an “artistic erotica” publication. That photo attracted the attention of Robin Thicke, who offered her an unsolicited starring role in the 2013 music video for his controversial (but mega-successful) “Blurred Lines” hit. Though the video engendered controversy with its purportedly misogynistic content, it is responsible for Ms. Ratajkowski becoming the star she is today. And y’all should already know that a spoonful of controversy and a dash of sex appeal can actually be the perfect recipe and launch pad for a career.

In the past five years, homegurl has walked runways at some of the biggest international fashion shows. She has become the spokesperson for major global brands such as DKNY, The Frye Company, Kerastase and DL1961. She showed off her acting chops in the hit 2014 film Gone Girl, and in a Buick Super Bowl commercial during Super Bowl 50. And, of course, she is now the subject of millions of teenage boys’ fantasies, thanks to her multiple Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue appearances (in addition to her myriad other scantily-clad photoshoots and magazine covers). Plus she boasts a whopping 17.5 million followers on the Instagram contraption.

Lest we forget, Ms. Ratajkowski shocked the world when — in late February (2018) — she wed her boyfriend Sebastian Bear-McClard after a whirlwind romance of a few weeks. Yolanda knows very little about Mr. Bear-McClard’s background, but we can tell y’all that it does not appear he financially contributed to this home purchase. The property was acquired through a trust created by Ms. Ratajkowski prior to their relationship, and she had been looking for a home in this price range for months prior to this transaction.

Anywho, to give y’all an idea of how much Echo Park prices have jumped over the past few years, the seller of this property — indie musician Blake Sennett — paid just $335,000 for this place back in early 2010. Imagine that! Our gurl Ms. Ratajkowski just paid him six times what he shelled out for this house eight year ago. And while Mr. Sennett changed up the home’s interior decor and features, he did not alter the structure itself. Ka-ching!

The oddball post and beam mini-compound consists of two separate structures connected by a breezeway. The first is a 1,022-square-foot, two-story “main house” with 2 beds and 2 baths; the other is a tiny 360-square-foot “spare cottage” with one full bathroom and space for a potential third bedroom, a studio, or a gym.

A careful examination of records reveals that the “spare cottage” was built long before the main house — 1946 versus 1963. Since the cottage was not originally configured with a bedroom, Yolanda would guess that this property originally served as some sort of recording studio or storage facility before being converted into a residence in the 1960s.

There does not appear to be a garage on the hillside property, but the listing claims off-street parking for up to three vehicles. A wooden fence and a rolling electronic gate surround the .15-acre lot.

Inside the main house are vaulted ceilings and a 15-foot brick fireplace in the living room. The kitchen has a unique plywood cabinetry and a slim plywood island, plus on-brand stainless appliances. The upstairs living spaces include the master suite and a loft/den area. For its part, the spare cottage is all one room and currently appears outfitted as a guest bedroom with a low-profile bed and convenient French door access to the backyard.

Speaking of the terraced backyard, it sports a riotous array of rather dense foliage for privacy purposes. There are also mature fruit trees, a “succulent garden”, an above-ground hot tub, and a patio area for dining/BBQ-ing.

The property lies just around the corner (literally) from the lovely hillside hiking paths in Elysian Park. But the ultimate benefit to this Echo Park location — especially for a baseball fan like Ms. Ratajkowski —  is that it is also walking distance from Dodger Stadium. Y’all know that parking lot gets crazy!

Anyway, Ms. Ratajkowski currently resides in an art-filled and eclectically-decorated Downtown LA loft. Yolanda thinks she is renting the loft, which would make the Echo Park pad her first-ever home purchase. Wise choice, Ms. Ratajkowski. To invest in real estate, we mean. Look how it paid off for Mr. Sennett!

And really, that is the moral of today’s story. Remember kiddies, beauty always fades. And love eventually burns itself out. But real estate — that is forever. Unless, of course, it is oceanfront real estate.

Listing agent: Tori Horowitz, Compass
Emily Ratajkowski’s agent: Gia Casty, Compass