Listen up, y’all. We are writing about this house because Yolanda is always curious about how the kiddies are making money these days. We haven’t been young since the Industrial Revolution, you see, and it never ceases to amaze us how some of these millennials, confounding as they may be to us old fogeys, find new and creative ways to haul in the dough. For starters, did you know that that pushing buttons on a laptop in front of a huge crowd of boozed-up young fools could earn someone $66 million in 2014 alone?
Well, now you know.
Just above the world-famous Sunset Strip — in the Hollywood Hills — lies a sexed-up ultra-contemporary crib that was designed by noted firm Whipple Russell Architects and completed some years ago. The property clings to the side of an steep mountain with panty-dropping views of the city and was sold just last month for $5,050,000. The seller, interestingly enough, was Ali Jassim, who has been described as a “close adviser” of Sheikh Mansour, the bazillionaire United Arab Emirates ruler.
As you might expect, the house was acquired by a mysterious LLC that is controlled by an LA attorney. Yolanda just happens to know, however, that the buyers are a young lady named Nicole Christine Johnson — also known as Nicole Nightly — and a young man named Dan Morris. Both hail from sunshiney Florida.
We don’t know much about Mr. Morris, other than he is Ms. Nightly’s partner in business (and beyond, so it seems). But young Ms. Nightly — who like Mr. Morris may still be in her 20s — has an interesting life story. She first tried to make it big as one of those now-ubiquitous “beauty bloggers” on the YouTube. When that didn’t pan out, she switched to more behind-the-scenes work. She founded a company called SkinnyFoxDetox that is one of those new-fangled (and arguably quite pricey) detox/cleanse programs that are all the rage right now.
Ms. Nightly’s detox program is quite popular — it has over 400,000 followers on Instagram, after all. But it wasn’t until just recently that our gurl really hit the proverbial jackpot. Within the last couple years, you see, Ms. Nightly released a new product called SugarBearHair.
Now then. If y’all are regulars on the Instagram contraption (Yolanda is not), you’ve probably seen this product being endorsed by your favorite celebrity, model, or Instagram “influencer”. That’s because SugarBearHair pays substantial amounts of money to have folks with many followers endorse their products. Even folks like Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner — each of whom can easily command $300,000 per endorsement — have flaunted SugarBearHair on their respective Instagram pages.
So what is SugarBearHair? Well, kiddies, it is a jar of blue gummy bear vitamins that is only sold online. They contain all the vitamins and minerals for “stronger, healthier hair”, allegedly. And while they are certainly cute and sweet, certain folks have negative things to say about them, sadly. A few critics have lambasted the innocent bears for being overpriced (it’s $30 for a jar of 60 gummies) and have noted that the little guys don’t provide any extra nutrients than can be obtained in a typical grocery store vitamin. And obtained for a fraction of the price, at that!
So you might think that spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay celebrities to endorse an (arguably) overpriced and (possibly) silly product like blue gummy bear HAIR vitamins is an utterly ridiculous way to waste money, right?
But you would be wrong. And that, y’all, is why only a small percentage of folks are successful entrepreneurs. Who would think these gummies could make anyone wealthy? But so it is.
Not only do those blue bears sell like hotcakes, they are the #1 best-selling vitamin (in their category) on all of Amazon.com. Seriously! We swear. They are so popular, in fact, that despite the fact that the SugarBearHair company was founded only two years ago (in May 2015), they have already made Ms. Nightly (and Mr. Morris) a multi-millionaire who can afford to buy a $5 million house in one of LA’s most famously expensive areas.
How you like them apples?
The 4,200-square-foot crib sits hard up on the street with no windows out front, only a wooden front door flanked by black garage entryways for three luxury automobiles. The house drops mullet-style to three full floors out back. The main level up top includes a glassy great room with panoramic views over West Hollywood and Los Angeles. Snazzy gadgets include LED mood lighting, fingerprint entry, mobile controlled sound and automated shades.
The main level also contains a booth-style dining room table, a austerely contemporary kitchen with high-end appliances, an indoor firepit, and space for a mini dance floor. The home’s glitzy interiors were done up by Palumbo Design, which is the firm responsible for the interiors of many fancy contemporaries in the nearby Bird Streets ‘hood.
A glass-and-metal staircase leads down to the second level, where the master suite is located. Though the home sports a total of three bedroom suites, this is a pad clearly meant for a wealthy young bachelor/bachelorette or young couple (as in this case). At night, the master bed appears to be suspended over a magic carpet of twinkling city lights below.
Oh, by the way, Yolanda hates hates HATES that carpet (or whever it is) on the master bed’s floor. And we’re also not feeling the very black-and-grey wet bar setup. Something tells us that the original developer was going for a masculine look, but it just looks tacky to your gurl. You know what Dolly says about spending loads of money to look cheap and all that, right?
Anyway, listing materials for the property brag that the home is “low-maintenance”, which it may indeed be. As long as you, er, forget the window washing fees. But other than that, the steeply-sloped .15-acre lot has almost no yard, so we don’t think Ms. Nightly even need hire a gardener.
On the other hand, the listing also notes that “plans for a pool are approved and permits are shovel ready.”
Ahem. Excuse Yolanda’s ignorance, kiddies, but if we were forking over more than $5 million for a house in the Hollywood Hills, Yolanda would definitely expect — nay, demand — that there already be a cement pond installed. It seems a huge hassle to move in and then have construction workers traipsing throughout the entire house (you’ve gotta start at the top level to get downstairs to the backyard area) in order to build a costly infinity edged pool. And installing a pool on a steep hillside in the Hollywood Hills is a major expense. Major. Trust us! Yolanda knows.
But anywho. Some of Ms. Nightly’s new neighbors include Dakota Johnson and Jimmy Kimmel, who live a couple streets away on a road where Kendall Jenner just sold a house for $6.85 million. Next door to Ms. Nightly is a house owned by high-end realtor Brett Oppenheim, and on the other side of Ms. Nightly’s pad is a house owned by Nicolas Berggruen, the billionaire who recently bought a $40 million Holmby Hills estate. Directly across the street from Ms. Nightly (and Mr. Morris, lest we forget) is a large 1920s Spanish-style mansion that was once owned by Liberace and is today owned by producer Jeffrey Soros, a nephew of George Soros himself.
Listing agent: Stacy Gottula, The Agency
Mr. Morris & Ms. Nightly’s agent: Roger Perry, Rodeo Realty