One of the longest celebrity resident stalwarts in the Birds was super-talented actress Jodie Foster, who first bought in the neighborhood way back in the mid-1990s and resided in the same Spanish-style home for nearly 20 years.
Sadly, all good things come to an end. In summer 2012, Ms. Foster quietly upgraded her residential circumstances with the $11,750,000 purchase of a Traditional-style house up in the Coldwater Canyon area of Beverly Hills (proper).
And in April 2013, after months of rumors, she finally put her longtime Birdy house on the market for a rather unrealistic $6,399,000. Unfortunately for Ms. Foster, it took a change of real estate agents, several price chops, and 1.5 years before the house finally sold for just $4,995,000 in late 2014.
The buyer, according to property records, was a lady named Tamara Arnold. Our Ms. Arnold — who goes by Tammie — hails from that crazy place way down south. We’re talking about Newport Beach, CA. For more than 20 years, she was a bigshot managing director at PIMCO, a giant money management firm long helmed by billionaire baller Bill Gross. To give you an idea of PIMCO’s scale — it’s got more than $1.5 trillion in assets under management.
Her success in the corporate world has brought Ms. Arnold leadership opportunities at public events. She has been a featured speaker at the annual Milken Institute Conference, and until recently she was a board member of the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts.
Ms. Arnold retired from PIMCO in early 2013. But like most go-getters, she seems to be cursed with a endless work drive. Only a year after her “retirement”, it was announced that she had been brought in as a Partner at Generation Investment Management, another big money management firm co-founded and currently chaired by none other than Al Gore.
As part of her new Partner role — which we’d bet entailed a generous salary bump over her no-doubt already enormous PIMCO paychecks — it was announced that Ms. Arnold would be making the move from Orange County to her new home base of New York City.
Though she’s now an NY gurl, Ms. Arnold apparently wanted an LA compound for unknown reasons. And so she made Ms. Foster very happy when she came along and plunked down the aforementioned $4,995,000 in October 2014.
Ms. Foster, as everyone knows, is a very private lady. Unsurprisingly, the house she recently sold to Ms. Arnold is practically invisible from the street. Behind the tall hedges and the locked front gate is a small and forest-like courtyard that leads to the front door’s wide landing.
The front hall leads to a step-down formal living room with glossy wood floors, a wooden-beamed ceiling, and a stone fireplace. Also on the main level is the dining room, which features an outdoor dining terrace behind french doors.
The lower level, accessed off the living room, contains a large screening room with suede-covered walls. There’s also a separate bathroom and bedroom down there.
Back upstairs there are two more guest bedrooms plus a large and very brown/beige master suite that opens directly into the rear of the two-car garage. There’s also a very petite 1-bed, 1-bath guest house.
Although 6,000 square feet for under $5 million may seem like a very good deal for the Bird Streets, let us remind y’all that the house is sited on what is one of the lowest Bird Street street. Any view from within the residence is blocked by the tall hedges and the homes across the street — it appears one must clamber onto the roof if you’d like to get a look at Downtown.
Another downside is the parking situation. The house shares a very tight (and discrete) rear driveway with the next door neighbors’, and there is zilch off-street parking out front. Want to host a small private party at this place, but too cheap to hire a valet service? Y’all’s guests will have to hunt on the crowded street for a parking space and then carefully make their way up the courtyard steps to the front door. And take it from a booze hound like Yolanda — that there is a recipe for disaster.
Speaking of the house next door, records show it was long owned by celebrity attorney Mark Vincent Kaplan, who ran into legal problems of his own a couple years ago when he was very publicly popped for DUI on the Sunset Strip.
Poor Mr. Kaplan faced foreclosure several times on his Bird Streets property.He’s also had the property on the market several times over the past year, at prices ranging from $3,299,000 to $4,650,000.
Just when it looked like it was finally going to auction, Ms. Arnold raced in to save the day. Public records say she paid him $3,605,571 for the house this June (2016). That’s about $8,600,000 that she’s spent on these two homes, nevermind the costs involved in turning them into one cohesive compound (if such is her intention).
The two-story 1930s Traditional has 4 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms in 3,812 square feet of living space. There’s a wide and tree-shaded lawn next to a concrete terrace and below a brick-floored balcony. Ebony wood floors run throughout the main living spaces, there’s an upgraded kitchen with high-end stainless appliances, and the marble master bathrooms sports a rather fetching stone soaking tub.
Anywho, Ms. Arnold now owns .62 flat acres of Bird Streets land with a total of 9,872 square feet of living space. Who knows why an unmarried New York-based lady needs a nearly 10,000-square-foot compound in one of LA’s priciest neighborhoods, but whatevs. When you’re really rich, y’all can do crazy things like this.
A thorough search of property records reveals that these are not the only multi-million-dollar residences Ms. Arnold owns. Though she has not been based in Orange County for the past few years, she still owns a pale blue residence that’s literally right in the epicenter of downtown. Records show she forked out $2,226,000 for the house back in 2010.
Yolanda doesn’t get down to Laguna often, but we do happen to know that Ms. Arnold’s house there is located, literally, right in the heart of downtown and is perfect for anyone who desires a walkable neighborhood in the once-quaint-now-chi-chi beach town. It’s less than 5 minutes from Whole Foods and literally right around the corner from one of our favorite dinner-and-drinks spot in the OC, 230 Forest Avenue. If you haven’t tried it, you must. Fun place and not as exorbitantly overpriced as some of the Newport spots. But we digress.
We also assume Ms. Arnold has a home in New York City (that’s where she’s based, after all) but not for lack of looking, we weren’t able to dig up any evidence of her owning a place there. That does not mean she does not have one, it just means that Yolanda was not smart enough to ferret it out. Anyone know where Ms. Arnold lays her head in NY? Anyone? Anyone?! Bueller, baby…?