...That New York City-bound sitcom star and rom-com queen Jennifer Aniston is moments away from selling the Beverly Hills, CA mansion she dubbed Ohana.
Miss Aniston acquired the house in November 2006 for $13,500,000 from prolific contemporary art collector and art industry tour de force Rosette Delug. She spent the next four years on an expansion and complete overhaul of the 10,000-ish square foot residence originally designed in 1972 by noted modernist architect Hal Leavitt. Almost as soon as the paint was dry Miss Aniston had a real estate change of heart and listed Ohana–which means extended family or some such thing in Polynesian-speak–in March 2011 with a sky-high price tag of $42,000,000, a dizzying number that caused more than a few real estate watchers to gasp with horror and indignation at what they thought was an audacious and unrealistic asking price.
We first heard the scuttlebutt about the possible sale of Miss Aniston's Ohana from Bev Hills real estate insider Nina Knowsthedirt who snitched to Your Mama a few weeks ago that Miss Aniston had received two offers for her supah-swank city view estate, both over $35,000,000. At that point, according to Nina, Miss Aniston's top-producing Real Estate put word out to the small group of folks in Tinseltown who can and do sell forty million dollar houses that if they had any possible buyers for Ohana they should get them into the house lickety-split because Miss Aniston was eager to accept an already on the table offer. Disbelief reigned amongst all the economic Chicken Littles who insist the real estate sky is still falling.
One week after Nina dropped her celebrity real estate 411 in our inbox Your Mama received a covert communique from trusted informant Crawzuhdeen from the Shawlza who whispered that word on the Platinum Triangle Real Estate Street was that Miss Aniston's estate had been put into escrow by ridiculously rich Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and his much younger arty-farty baby momma Dasha Zhukova, herself an heiress to a substantial oil and arms fortune. When we went back and queried Nina on the matter, she told us that the Real Estate of the notorious trophy property collector denied her Russian multi-billionaire clients are the buyers of Ohana. Make of that what you will, puppies.
This week Your Mama received additional intel from a third source, a foreign gal in the Lala Land real estate game whom we'll call Upinda Everyonesbizness. Ol' Upinda, who is not Jewish but is none-the-less a devoted real estate yenta of the highest order, swears on her momma's life that Ohana is indeed in escrow–for $38,000,000 give or take a million–and that she too hears through the gossip grapevine the buyer is, "that Russian with the big boat."
At first we thought maybe Ol' Upinda might be referring to Russian fertilizer magnate and billionaire Andrey Melnichenko who caused considerable kerfuffle and around which swirled scads of real estate prattle and chatter last fall when he had is huge and sinister-looking boat A anchored off the coast of Venice.
Given that sorting out the details of a not yet completed transaction is a lot like the telephone game where details easily become distorted and/or muddled to the point of inaccuracy in their retelling, the "Russian with the big boat" could easily be Mister Melnichenko. To complicate matters Your Mama was also told that the buyer of Ohana might be a New York City financier. However, all signs and most sources with whom we consulted continue to point directly at Mister Abramovich who, as many of the children surely know, owns a gargantuan private yacht called Eclipse about the size of a damn oil tanker.
Official listings still show Ohana as available with an asking price of $42,000,000 and while somewhat misleading we suspect the listing will remain marked as "active" and available until this (alleged) deal is done done done like a Thanksgiving turkey.
Miss Aniston, who reportedly plans to relocate to New York City, continues to own a far more modest home high above the Sunset Strip she purchased in early 1993 for $751,000 so she'll be far from west coast homeless after she sells her Bev Hills house. The actress, who grew up in the N.Y.C., recently closed on two small but hideously expensive adjacent apartments in a prime pre-war edifice in New York City's West Village. One, a high-floor one bedroom, cost her $2,069,084 and the other, an itty-bitty one-bedroom penthouse directly above, scooped another $4,950,000 from her deep pockets. Your Mama hears through the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that Miss Aniston is also currently in contract to purchase a third one bedroom apartment in the building adjacent to the two million dollar one bedroom and listed with an asking price of $1,995,000.
The unlucky in love actress–who, quite frankly, seems far happier about her life than the tabs portray–has said in the past that a desire to simplify her life is part of the reason for her selling her big ol' Beverly Hills house and looking east. Of course it ain't none of our beeswax and certainly Miss Aniston could give a fat crap what we think about diddly squat but it just doesn't seem very damn simple to Your Mama for a person to spend nine or so million dollars for three wee apartments that will require many millions more and a couple of years to properly reconfigure and transform into a still modestly-scaled penthouse duplex outfitted and all did up proper for showbiz royalty.
Your Mama wonders where Miss Aniston with reside after she sells her house in Beverly Hills and before the completion of her new duplex in New York City. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
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