Real Estate Round Up: Travis Barker

Sometime last week–or maybe it was the week before, our boozy brain can't recall–The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial kindly floated Your Mama some 411 about heavily tattooed rocker and airplane crash survivor Travis Barker who recently purchased a perfectly quotidian if not exactly inexpensive home in a gated development in the Bel Air area of Los Angeles. We set the matter aside until yesterday afternoon when Your Mama was overcome with Nosy and started to peek peep and poke around in the public property records to see what we could see.

Mister Barker, the drummer for a slew of pop-punk and rock bands including Blink-182, +44 and Box Car Racer, has successfully parlayed his fame into a small fortune with other ventures that include a record company (LaSalle Records) and a clothing company (Famous Stars and Straps). Among the gossip glossy reading crowd he's perhaps best known for his famously volatile on-again-off-again marriage/relationship with tee-vee presenter Shanna Moakler, a hot-tempered former Miss USA who bore him two rug rats and who had a very public, very trashy and high-larious smack-down in the fall of 2006 with Paris 'the heiress' Hilton after her then-estranged husband Mister Barker was caught canoodling with Miss 'gets around town' Hilton a month or so earlier.

In the fall of 2008 Mister Barker was a passenger on a plane that crashed near Columbia, SC. Only he and friend DJ AM survived the hideous accident. DJ AM died of an apparent drug overdose in his New York City apartment the following year and Mister Barker's injuries were far more significant than first revealed to the public. Last week, in anticipation of the release of his debut solo album next week, it was reported that Mister Barker came damn near close to having his foot amputated and that he's endured 16 surgeries to put his Humpty Dumpty back together again. This probably sounds sappy from a cold-blooded cynic like Your Mama but we think Mister Barker's physical courage and psychic fortitude in the face of such awful adversity is to be commended and admired.

Anyhoodles poodles, let's get down to brass tacks, shall we? Our odyssey through Mister Barkers real estate journey begins in August of 2003 when property records show the then twenty-something year old skins pounder paid $3,150,000 for a very adult mansion with 7,620 square feet located within the guard-gated Bel Air Crest community in the mountains on the upscale but much less glitzy far western border of hoity-toity Bel Air. The 6 bedroom and 8 pooper property, which has an impress-the-guests-style entry with wrought iron dual staircases and a cozy backyard with swimming pool and mountain views, practically hovers over the always clogged up 405 freeway, an ever-present source of vehicular aggravation for many Angelenos.

Mister Barker quickly caught a case of that ol' Real Estate Fickle and flipped his Bel Air Crest beehawtcha back on the market. Records reveal it was sold in May 2004 for $3,500,000 and, as it turns out, the property is currently back on the market with an asking price of $4,495,000.

Even though he was quick to flip, Mister Barker must have liked living up in the Bel Air Crest because on September 2004, just a month or so before he legally hitched his wagon Miss Moakler, the tatted-up rocker went and paid $6,200,000 for a much larger 12,184 square foot mcmansion just around the corner from his previous house on Queensborough Lane. It was here, in this 8 bedroom and 9 bathroom beast of an abode, that Mister and Missus Barker filmed two seasons of a reality program called Meet the Barkers, a lame rock-n-roll version of the equally lame Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica.

September of 2004 was a busy real estate month for Mister Barker. Records show that in addition to snatching up a new mcmansion in Bel Air paid $480,000 for a 2,752 square foot tract house in the middle-brow resort community of Lake Elsinore, CA. Interestingly, information we dug up the interweb shows that a naughty notice of default was filed on the property in May 2007 but was quickly cleared up. Your Mama has not idea if Mister Barker used this house for personal use, an investment and/or as a residence for a family member.

In December of 2006 Mister Barker and Miss Moakler split up for the first of many times and in February of 2007 they sold their behemoth abode in the Bel Air Crest community for $8,000,000 to a prominent Los Angeles attorney. The attorney somehow managed to flip the mansion just three short weeks later for $9,500,000, a mind-blowing $1,500,000 profit before he even had to make a second mortgage payment. The buyer who lined the attorney's pockets with an impressive and, let's be honest, revolting $1,500,000 profit was none other than rebellious Canuck pop-puck princess Avril "The Spitter" Lavigne who occupied the large and lavish residence with her then huzband Deryck Whibley, front man of some band called Sum 41. That marriage, as anyone who reads the tabs knows, has done swirled down the terlit of Hollywood love.

At that same time Mister Barker sold his hu-mongo house in the Bel Air Crest community to the L.A.-based attorney in Feb. 2007 he bought a slightly smaller but still-titanic 10,198 square foot mansion within an exclusive gated enclave inside an affluent and also gated community in über-suburban Calabasas, CA. As far as we know–and we really know so very little–Mister Barker remains in residence at his Calabasas crib that happens to be located in the same double-gated enclave where pop superstar Britney Spears was living in a massive rented mansion until she recently decamped for and even larger leased estate in the celebrity-friendly equestrian community of Hidden Hills, CA.

Riverside, CA is about as far from the Tinseltown klieg lights as one can get but in January of 2008 Mister Barker shelled out $370,000 to acquire a fairly modest house in a banal tract development in the decidedly un-glam suburban city. For what purpose Mister Barker wanted this house is unknown.
Later in the year, Mister Barker was involved in the above mentioned aircraft accident and with better things to do than buy and sell houses Mister Barker kept his real estate checkbook in check until March of 2010 when property records reveal he whipped it out and paid $1,300,000 to purchase a large but very ordinary and architecturally sad 5,529 square foot house in Rancho Cucamonga, CA (above). Once again we have no idea what Mister Barker might want or need with a 5 bedroom and 5.5 pooper house way out near the flavorless city of San Bernadino in ur-suburban Riverside County.

Listing information shows the house sits on a gentle slope with 180-degree views of city lights and the surrounding mountains and includes garage space for four cars, 3 fireplaces including a massive freestanding number in the backyard, a technology alcove, library with custom cabinets and large gore-may kitchen that's open to a family room. A covered patio at the rear of the house protects people from frying themselves in Rancho Cucamonga's scorching summer heat. A built in barbecue center makes for year-round grillin' and chillin' and instead of a swimming pool and/or spa there's some sort of hybrid situation that listing information refers to as a "spool." As best as we can tell that's a plunge pool that can be heated up to a boil where Mister Barker and his guests can wallow in the water like they're a damn human stew.
Mister Barker's 2010 real estate activities continued apace in December 2010 with the $1,495,000 acquisition of a truly insipid 2,960 square foot mock-Med tract house situation in the Bel Air Crest community (above) , the same upscale development that the children who are paying attention will recognize as the same one in which he previously owned two much larger mansions.

Listing information shows the house includes 3-4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, a living room with extra-high ceiling and hardwood floors, and an eat-in kitchen with stainless steel appliances and granite counter tops. Although there's but a sliver of a front yard and an only slightly larger backyard, listing information from the time of the purchase indicates the landscaping was new and includes a spa and built-in barbecue.

Once again, Your Mama hasn't an iota why Mister Barker would want this house but if we've said it twice we've said it twice too many times before, who are we to comprehend the capricious real estate ways of the rich and famous

listing photos (Rancho Cucamonga): Prudential California Realty
listing photos (Bel Air): Nelson Shelton & Associates

Weekend Wrap Up – March 6, 2011

1.
You Mama just loves the part of this video that we first saw on The Real Deal when Oprah Winfrey's b.f.f. Gayle King tells nice gay decorator turned chat show host Nate Berkus that although she may go all around the country and all around the world and see houses bigger and nicer than her New York City apartment, she never feels that she wants to live in those bigger and nicer homes because despite the puny galley kitchen she likes her $7,000,000-plus penthouse pad just fine. Listen Miz King, you seem like a very nice ladee who loves her some Nate Berkus. You do. But bitch, pleeze. You might as well have told all those shell-shocked haus fraus in the audience to go eat some damn cake.

2.
There's a real estate cautionary tale being played out in the backwoods of Forsyth County, GA where former train conductor Hubert Humphrey and his wife Norma built their Barbie Dream House, a real hot damn doozy they dubbed La Rêve. Our French translator tells us that means 'the dream.' The focal point of the manicured 72-acre estate is the 47,000 square foot house that encompasses 82 rooms and is equipped with 65 security cameras, 62 televisions, 10 fireplaces, at least 9 full and 11 half bathrooms, 7 bedroom suites and 2 elevators. Just for recreational kicks there's also a movie theater that's a replica of Atlanta's Fox Theatre, a bowling alley, arcade, virtual golf room, Olympic-sized swimming pool, formal gardens galore, a private 18-hole golf course that can be played in multiple directions and a separate carriage house for guests or staff.

Just thinking about the electric and water bill at La Rêve makes Your Mama's head spin so terribly that we need a damn nerve pill and a stiff gin & tonic to put our feet back on the ground.

Most reports say it cost those crazy Humphreys fifty million bucks to build and furnish their steroidal estate located a not-particularly-upscale area outside Atlanta. But alas, the Humphrey's La Rêve has turned into quite the cauchemar.

Two short years after completing the hotel-sized monument to their wealth and success they attempted to sell their hyper-custom white elephant in 2008 with an asking price of $45,000,000. The asking price was reduced in big chunks until, apparently, they could no longer bear the massive mortgage and insanely high upkeep costs and eventually the bank seized the property. That's right, La Rêve is now owned by the bank, an "asset" we imagine they'd rather not have sitting on their books.

The property has been on and off the market a number of times since 2008 but the bank recently re-listed the country-clubby estate with a new and improved price tag of–hold on to your Jockey shorts children–$16,750,000. A few quick flicks of the beads on our bejeweled abacus shows that's a staggering and stunning $28,250,000 reductions; Put another way that's a shocking 63-percent reduction in price. Will it be enough of a slash?

Your Mama read on Luxist that the real estate agent representing the property for the bank recently went on the tee-vee and and stated that "now, our new strategy is, the house needs to go." Call us a cynic, but somehow we think that the pool of multi-millionaires who would could and would purchase this particular palace for $16 and some million is about as large as the number who were willing to pay $45,000,000 for it.

Has anyone called unrepentant real estate size queen Tyler Perry?

The moral of this story, Easter bunnies, is that those with super-colossal real estate eyes and even deeper pockets would be wise wise wise to show a modicum of restraint when spending an obscene amount of money to erect an elephantine and high-maintenance house. There really are so few people in the world who want (and can afford) an airport-sized residence and–think about this kiddies–finding just the right one who has the dough and the desire to live exactly where you've plunked your high-priced palace is exactly like finding a needle in a haystack. Just ask Candy Spelling who's had an price tag of $150,000,000 on her hotel-sized house in Los Angeles for years or couture-mad divorcée Suzanne Saperstein who's had her historically-correct mega-mansion in LaLa Land listed since the damn Dark Ages for $125,000,000.

3.
We question the wisdom of, confess to being more than just an itty-bitty bit embarrassed about and recognize we're deserving of all of y'all's scorn for what we're about to do: Remark on the "celebrity" real estate bizness of large-lipped V.I.P. hostess Rachel Uchitel who recently caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle. Miss Uchitel's sole claim to fame is, of course and perhaps, that she was once the main squeeze of super-philanderer and professional club swinger Tiger Woods. We're not really sure what she's doing now but we wonder if her agent and/or public relations flackety-flack is trying to get her on Dancing With The Stars. We don't care much for that saccharine show of twinkle-toes but that, butter beans, would be a tasty reality tee-vee morsel if there ever was one.

Anyhoodles poodles, in early September 2010, Miss Uchitel paid $1,625,000 for a 1,650 square foot condo with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms at The Griffon building on ho-hum stretch of Park Avenue just below the heavenly Grand Central Station. Beehawtcha must have thought better of the acquisition because just six months later her lightly remodeled spread is back up for sale with a price tag of $1,950,000. Your Mama don't know a beach umbrella from pixie stick so we just can't fathom how, even if this place were drenched in brand-spanking new hand-troweled Venetian plaster, it's gained $325,000 in value in just six months.

Listing information and previous reports on the matter indicate that Miss Uchitel is also willing to lease the 3 bedroom and 2 pooper place out for $8,900 per month. Of course she is. We have no specific knowledge of but previous reports also reveal that actor Chris Noth (The Good Wife, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Sex and the City) had a serious look-see at the apartment but in the end did not pull the real estate trigger.

In addition to her condo in the Big Apple, Miss Uchitel has real estate woes out in Sin City where she has a condo done up and did over like a damn nightclub on the market for $1,350,000. Missy Hoo-hoo Uchitel has been trying to unload that place since at least late 2009 when it was also listed at $1,350,000. Here's a little tiny tidbit of unsolicited real estate advice Miss Uchitel: If you really want to sell your condo in Las Vegas, try lowering the damn price. In case you did not know, the real estate market sucks in Las Vegas right now and if you couldn't sell it in 2009 for $1,350,000 there's a pretty good chance you wont sell if for anywhere near $1,350,000 in 2011 either.

4.
It was revealed this week that Mary J. Blige also caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle and flipped her 18,000-plus square foot beast of an abode in Saddle River, NJ on the market with an asking price of $13,900,000. The 9-time Grammy winning Miz Blige only bought the 25-room residence in the spring of 2008 when, according to property records, she paid $12,300,000 for the 8 bedroom faux-chateau that has a total of 8 full and three half poopers.

The gated quasi-rural 4.2 acre estate includes resort-style amenities that include a 14-seat movie theater, wine-tasting room, fitness facility, indoor basketball court, elevator, massive motor court, six-car garage parking and walk-out basement level that leads to the swimming pool and spa with adjacent full-service cabana.

Interestingly, current listing information for Miz Blige's crib uses the identical descriptive text as listing information from the time Miz Blige purchased the property. Make of that, children, what you will.

Rainbow fish

Made by students of grade 3

You need:

1. drawing sheet A5 size
2. ruler
3. pencil
4. colour markers

The students put the sheet in the width and draw from top to bottom pencil lines 1 cm apart. Good to practice measure skills!

Draw a fish and a sea bottom line. Colour the fish with markers keeping the same sequence of colors. We chose the order of the colours as they were in the box.
Fins, background and bottom should be coloured in the same order, but of course the colours here are staggered to those of the fish.

More Charlie Sheen Real Estate Crazy

SELLER: Mike Medavoy
BUYER: Charlie Sheen
LOCATION: Sherman Oaks, CA
PRICE: $7,495,000 (list); $6,999,999 (sale)
SIZE: 9,020 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: As our boozy b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau is want to say, "This can only end in tears, hunny, this can only end in tears."

For weeks now, crack pipe and prostie luvin' actor Charlie Sheen, who is currently "rehabbing" in his Sherman Oaks mansion, has been on a media blitz with interview after interview after interview of him rambling on and on and on about how he's healed his druggy ways and the sleeping arrangements with his pair of live-in "goddess" girlfriends. All of Mister Sheen's erratic and bizarre behavior is beyond fascinating, terrifically tragic and drips with schadenfreude. It is tabloid manna from heaven.

For weeks Mister Sheen has been yakking and gabbing to anyone with a camera who will listen about how he wants to buy a couple more mansions in the Mulholland Estates community where he lives, one for his ex-wife Denise Richards and another for his estranged soon to be ex-wife Brooke Mueller. Your Mama and anyone even remotely sane thinks that sounds like a stoopid real estate maneuver with disaster written all over it. Of course, what we think is of zero consequence and Mister Sheen is indeed (reportedly) pushing forward with his outlandish plan to turn the Mulholland Estates neighborhood into his own personal Hollywood style-polygamist compound where his ex-wives live in sister-wife harmony with each other and the harem of young porn stars and "models" shacked up with Mister Sheen .

Mister Sheen has two ex-wives (Donna Peele and Denise Richards), one estranged and soon-to-be ex-wife (Brooke Mueller) and one baby momma (Paula Profit). Altogether he has five children, a set of toddler twins with Miz Mueller, a couple of youngins with Miz Richards and a recently married 25-year old daughter with Miz Profit. Add in his coterie of live-in ladee friends and that's nearly a dozen people he has to keep living high on the hog. No wonder he's eager to get back to his million dollar-plus per episode job on the vapid and oppressively ordinary but enormously successful sitcom Two and a Half Men. The long-running show was put on hiatus last week after Mister Sheen made some rather unwise statements about the show and called its creator a "clown" and a "pussy." Nice, Chuckie-boy, really nice.

According to property records Mister Sheen paid $7,200,000 for his 7,924 square foot faux-Tuscan/mock-Med mansion in April of 2006. With some assistance from Babbling Babette, we managed to coax some ancient listing information out of the internets that shows Mister Sheen's house was built in 1992 and includes 5 bedrooms and 6.5 poopers.

The increasingly unhinged-seeming actor has (allegedly) opened escrow on a large mansion that's just around the corner from his house and egg-borrowing distance from celebutante Paris Hilton's crime magnet of a mansion. We don't know which of his ex-wives Mister Sheen wants to move into this house but we do know that the sellers of the mansion in question are Hollywood heavyweight Mike Medavoy and his wife Irena.

Listing information for the two-story recently renovated property shows it was last listed at $7,495,000, measures 9,020 square feet and includes 6 bedrooms, 9 poopers and an elevator any anyone too infirm or lazy to climb or descend a single flight of stairs. There's also a double-height impress-the-guests-style foyer with curving staircase with leopard print runner, formal living and dining rooms, study, library and large gourmet kitchen with all-new Bosch brand appliances. The upstairs master suite has a fireplace, flat-screen tee-vee, French doors that open to a private covered terrace with city lights and mountain views and a custom-fitted walk-in closet the size of a Manhattan studio apartment. The attached bathroom has a jetted tub, separate steam shower and plenty of counter space on the vanity for several thousands of dollars worth of La Prairie lotions and potions.

The decent-sized but far from large backyard is equipped with all the de rigueur accouterments expected in a seven million dollar home in a gated Los Angeles community: swimming pool, spa, large terraces, heated veranda, a patch of grass and a sunken bar/kitchen/barbecue center with counter top seating.

Mister and Missus Medavoy seem to have been stricken with a serious case of The Real Estate Fickle that they just can't shake. In September of 2009, after several attempts and several years, Mister and Missus Medavoy finally unloaded their 10,769 square foot East Coast-style mansion in Beverly Park, perhaps Los Angeles's most illustrious guard-gated community of steroidal mansions. They originally wanted $23,000,000 but in the end, according to prop records, they accepted a significantly lower sales price $12,500,000.

The Medavoy's moved to a low-slung, 6,200 square foot house in the trendy Trousdale Estates neighborhood in Beverly Hills that they'd bought for $5,850,000 and that Your Mama's feisty friend Trina Trousdale described disparagingly as "corporate Côte d'Azur." Ouch. The kitty has claws. Nine months later the peripatetic pair flipped the 4 bedroom and 7 pooper pad back on the market with an asking price of $7,495,00 and sold in late June 2010 to a Canadian concern for $7,500,000, five thousand smackers over the asking price.

In late September of 2010 Mister and Missus Medavoy closed on the house in the Mulholland Estates 'hood that they are now, reportedly, selling to Charlie Sheen. Property records show they paid $6,000,000 for the property that they flipped back on the market just 4.5 short months later for $7,495,000. No word–yet–on what amount Mister Sheen is (allegedly) paying for the property and no word–yet–on which ex-wife he wants to move into the house.

It seems doubtful that either Miz Richards or Miz Mueller would actually move into the Medavoy mansion; Miz Mueller has filed a temporary restraining order against Mister Sheen in an effort to shield their children from the ongoing chaos and Miz Richards is in the latter stages of an extensive renovation of her house in the horsey and gated Hidden Hills community out near Calabasas, CA. None-the-less, there are currently two other mansions on the open market in the Mulholland Estates, one a 9,000 square foot "Italian Mediterranean Villa" listed at $5,499,000 and the other a newly constructed mansion with a 14,000 square foot main house and a 3,000 square foot guest house listed just days ago with an asking price of $13,995,000 and one is tempted to wonder if Mister Sheen will make on offer on one or the other of those mansions too.

Besides Charlie Sheen, the Mulholland Estates is currently home to a number of Tinseltown types like Paris Hilton, Judith Light, Robbie Williams and Wheel of Fortune letter turner Vanna White. Previous residents of the upscale enclave include Christina Aguilera, Avril Lavigne, Paula Abdul, Tom Jones, Paul Anka, Loni Anderson, John Fogerty and Shaquille O'Neal.

Given the large number of current and post high-profile residents who pay high homeowner association dues–listing information shows the Medavoy manse has monthly fees of $1,000– and the 24-7 guarded entrance gates one would think that the Mulholland Estates is locked down like Fort damn Knox. But apparently that is not the case; The community has been a hotbed of celebrity-related crimes the last few years.

In late 2008 and into 2009 Paris Hilton's house was burgled numerous times by the so-called Bling Ring and in one early morning in August 2010 Miss Hilton's gun-toting man-friend Cy Waits confronted some wing nut armed with two large knives who was banging on the front door to her mansion. Not once but twice in 2010 Charlie Sheen rather bizarrely had an S-Class Mercedes stolen from his driveway, driven out of the guarded gates of the community and run off a nearby cliff.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker Beverly Hills South

Snow Sketching - 2

Feb. 2011: Little Skiing Vacation - 3 a photo by apple-pine on Flickr.

I had another great little snow vacation and did some sketching while at it :) This time I used felt-tip pen which did not freeze on me, I did no use waterbrush outdoors at all and added notes for color and value as well as notes about actions and added a bit of water and color action home.

The most interesting discovery was use of snow on my sketches. I am posting a couple below - on icicles it's hard to see as I did not press snow too much but you can see it really create a storm on other one :)









Click on images to see larger versions and some additional comments.

Notice anything different?

Sandy Gallin Flips Bel Air House With Steep Discount

SELLER: Sandy Gallin
BUYERS: Serge and Florence Azria
LOCATION: Los Angeles (Bel Air), CA
PRICE: $23,000,000 (list)

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Since the transaction we're about to discuss has yet to close–or at least online property records do not yet reflect a transfer–what we're about to tell the children is just rumor and gossip. You got that? We'd bet our long-bodied bitches Linda and Beverly, plus a year of the only so-so cooking and cleaning services of our sometimes impolite house gurl Svetlana, that our 411 is accurate. However, until prop records spell out the details of deal–or someone close to the transaction goes on the record with the press–it's all just rumor and gossip.

Anyone who follows the tawdry and glamorous high-end real estate scene in Los Angeles knows that Sandy Gallin, a former talent manager to superstars like Dolly Parton, Neil Diamond and Michael Jackson, has developed a lucrative avocation as a flipper of very high-end houses in both Los Angeles and the hoity-toity Hamptons.

In late May 2007 Mister Gallin, allegedly a charter member of Hollywood's so-called Velvet Mafia, paid $7,000,000 to purchase the stately but slightly down on it's heels Paul Williams-designed mansion in Bel Air that for 45 years had been the home of the late Emmy-winning actress Jane Wyatt. It had, in real estate speak, good bones and an excellent Hollywood pedigree.

Mister Gallin's team toiled like dervishes on a full-scale renovation; An entire new wing was added to the rear of the house and the grounds were re-landscaped and dramatically lit. Mister Gallin worked over and beat the interior spaces into decorative submission with his signature style of casually sophisticated if somewhat fussy and clean-lined but soft around the edges contemporary elegance. She'll probably want to scratch out our eyes for saying this but Your Mama sees Mister Gallin's decorative thing as Armani Casa meets Pottery Barn and together they rub up on Frette, frequent blue-chip art galleries and pass regularly through Hermès.

Mister Gallin first flipped the renovated residence back on the open market in June of 2009, just about a year after buying the property, with an astronomical asking price of $32,000,000. The pristine property was de-listed and re-listed and the price tag reduced several times before late September 2010 when it popped back up on the market with the far more realistic asking price of $23,000,000. By the end of January 2011 the property was marked "pending" on Redfin.

We've heard some tittering and scuttlebutt about the pending sale–including that the deal died during inspections but was later revived–but it wasn't until this week that we received a covert communique from a snitch whom we'll call Sister Robert Mary Joseph who tattled that the new owners of Mister Gallin's gut-renovated residence in Bel Air are Beverly Hills fashionistas Serge and Florence Azria.

After a quick contemplation of Sister Robert Mary Joseph's real estate scuttlebutt we snatched up up our worn-out but still bedazzled princess phone and gave our sassy and well-connected informant Kenny Kissintell a ringy-dingy to see if we could get an amen on the matter. Kenny, a fabulously well-to-do bon vivant and bone fide real estate freak who hears plenty of the delicious what's what about all the high-end property in the Platinum Triangle, told us that the deal went down for around $21,000,000 and that Mister and Missus Azria coughed up even more dough-re-me for some of the Mister Gallin's furniture. That number will certainly make any number of Beverly Hills property owners grin with glee but it's still a steep and perilous one-third less than Mister Gallin's bank account blistering original price tag of $32,000,000.

Along with being the brother of L.A.-based French fashion mogul Max Azria, Mister Serge Azria is the owner of various upper end ladies clothing labels including Joie and Equipment. Missus Florence Azria is a well-kept woman about the Beverly Hills charity and social circuit who is justifiably well-known among the fashion crowd as The Shoe Goddess.

Listing information for the .67 acre estate Mister Gallin re-worked and sold shows the renovated compound includes a total of 7 bedrooms, 12 poopers, at least 7 fireplaces and a brand-spanking-new infinity-edged swimming pool that stretches a mind-boggling 110 feet long, about a third of the length of a damn football field.

Mister Gallin retained some of the home's original architectural details such as the parquet floors and sensational and glammy circular staircase in the foyer. Some of the original wood floors were replaced with wide-plank reclaimed hardwood and the walls are hand-trowled with lustrous Venetian plaster. The public rooms include party-sized living and dining rooms, a second living "lounge," library, den and a cavernous kitchen easily capable of feasting forty. The lower-level, a day-light basement sort of set-up, includes a media area, billiards pub, glass-encased wine room and and home fitness facility.

The master suite has two private baths and each of the four guest bedrooms has en-suite facilities. Many of the posh poopers showcase one of Mister Gallin's favorite and oft-recurring decorative motifs: enough meticulously folded white towels stacked snugly in open shelves to adequately supply a busy bathhouse.

Mister and Missus Azria, who Your Mama heard have already or will very soon to move into their deluxe new digs in Bel Air, currently own a 5,977 square foot mansard-roofed mansion on a good street in an excellent section of the flats of Beverly Hills. Property records show they bought the gated property in November of 2003 for $5,500,000. Clearly the financially fortunate Azrias are trading up even as the fashion and retail economies were down the last few years. Bully for them.

In addition to his flip in Bel Air, Mister Gallin has also had a luscious 14-acre spread in the Hamptons on the market. Like the Bel Air residence, the Bridgehampton property was first listed in 2009 with the astronomical asking price of $32,000,000, a number that subsequently sank to $20,000,000. The Wall Street Journal reported in late January 2011 that the 3-parcel estate went to contract for "close to its asking price." Unfortunately we know nada about the details of that deal.

Here's a little extra, sort of related, Platinum Triangle real estate morsel for the children to savor:

If the children will put on their thinking caps they may recall that Hollywood honcho Mister Katzenberg set the Platinum Triangle real estate community on fire last year when he paid a truly shocking $35,000,000 to purchase the 6.34 acre hilltop estate of big-time defense contractor Si Ramo, the man often credited as the "father of the intercontinental ballistic missile."

What's most betwixting and bewildering to common folks like Your Mama is not that Mister K. shelled out thirty-five million bigguns for the estate but that he proceeded to immediately raze Mister Ramo's 8,705 square foot contemporary to make way for his own behemoth Beverly Hills Barbie Dream House. That's right, chickadoodles, Mister K. bought a $35,000,000 tear down. That, children, is how people with money to burn and cash to flush down the terlit do it.

Now here's the juicey-juice, lemon drops, our sassy informant Kenny Kissintell recently confided to Your Mama that word on House Flipper Street is that it's Mister Gallin who has been engaged to oversee the design and day-core of Mister Katzenberg's new crib.

It's just rumor and gossip, hunnies, rumor and gossip.

photos: Everett Fenton Gidley for Teles Properties and Westside Estate Agency