LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $5,199,000
SIZE: 6,508 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to a covert communique from Our Fairy Godmother in Bel Air Your Mama has learned that low-key movie and television director Mark Waters and his low-profile and under-appreciated, stage-trained actress wife Dina Waters have put their elegant faux-French chateau in Los Angeles' historic and hoity toity Hancock Park 'hood up for sale with a $5,199,000 asking price.
Mister Waters is best known, perhaps, as a director for hire who steered the Showbiz ship for the quirky, low budget bomb The House of Yes with Parker Posey as well as a couple of successful pre-tabloid-trainwreck Lindsay Lohan vehicles (Freaky Friday and Mean Girls). More recently he directed the Jim Carry-comedy Mister Popper's Penguins and he's credited as the director of first season of the currently airing television program Made in Jersey, a series Your Mama has not seen with our own boozy and judgmental eyeballs but suspect may have missed Tinseltown's quickly fading obsession with all things New Joizee.
In addition to her theater credits that include the Broadway production of The Iceman Cometh with Kevin Spacey in the late 1990s, Missus Waters (nee Spybey) won a Daytime Emmy in 1993 for her starring role on Lifestories: Families in Crisis. Since then has appeared in—but not starred in—a slew of movies and television programs including Striptease, The First Wives Club, Remember WENN, Freaky Friday, Men Behaving Badly, Six Feet Under, Greg the Bunny and Just Like Heaven. Most recently Missus Waters lent her voice to the short-lived animated series Neighbors From Hell with Will Sasso and Molly Shannon.
According to our entire unscientific research on Redfin, the current, $5,199,000 price tag for Mister and Missus Waters' Hancock Park residence makes it the third most expensive property currently on the open market in the 90020 zip code, the most expensive being the fabled Dorothy Chandler estate that was listed since May (2012) at $11,250,000.
If a real estate rabbit gets pulled out of a hat and the Waters' house gets sold at full price it would only be the fourth most expensive property to sell in the 90020 zip code in the last three years, the most expensive being the 11,000-plus square foot mansion former sit-com star David Schwimmer sold in June 2012 for $8,865,000 and another being a 5 bedroom and 8 bathroom corner compound that oddball musical innovator Beck picked up in June 2007 for $6,750,000, foolishly listed a year later for $9,000,000 and finally unloaded in August 2010 at a dramatic loss for $5,600,000 to power house hospital drama-centric creator/writer/producer Shonda Rimes (Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice).
So—and sadly for Mister and Missus Waters bank accounts—while the $5,199,000 price tag is most certainly on the high side for comparable properties in the neighborhood it is, none-the-less, a purse-punching $400,001 less than the $5,600,000 property records show the couple coughed up for the fully packed if somewhat compact estate seven years ago, in August 2005, at the electrified apex of the most recent but long-ago-burst real estate bubble.
Current listing information shows the un-gated and stately, two-story faux-chateau was originally built in 1927, sits on a pancake flat .71 acre lot and measures a spacious 6,508 square feet with a total of 6 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms, plus a separate apartment privately located atop the attached two-car garage that's tucked discreetly down a long driveway at the side of the house and perfect for over-night house guests or live-in domestic worker.
The simple, unoffensive and fastidiously maintained landscaping at the front of the house is mirrored in the updated and upgraded but decidedly traditional interiors that include a grand, impress-the-guests-style double-height foyer with semi-glossy espresso-colored wood floors, white walls and a quietly theatrical curved staircase with tightly banister-ed wrought iron railing. The deep brown wood floors extend into the spacious formal living room with fireplace and soft gray walls set off against high-gloss white moldings, trim work and wall frames. Listing information indicates the Water's residence also contains a formal dining room and a wood-paneled library with built-in book cases and a second fireplace.
The horizontal strip wood floors change to a haughtier Parquet de Versailles pattern in the center island kitchen that's outfitted with white Shaker style cabinetry, speckled beige and brown granite counter tops and and expensive collection of top-grade, commercial-style stainless steel appliances. A wide but shallow archway separates the kitchen from the family room, also finished with Parquet de Versailles-style floors and outfitted with a third, corner fireplace plus a built-in entertainment cabinet and what appears to be—but may not actually be—a surround sound system.
The master suite occupies its own wing on the second floor and offers the homeowners a private sitting room and separate bedroom that overlook the backyard, a fourth fireplace and impractically pale gray wall-to-wall carpeting and lustrous, pewter and silver satin curtains on the over-sized windows and French doors that amp up the glam quotient and open to a wrought iron-railed Juliet balcony.
Several rooms on the main floor open to a covered loggia or multi-level entertainment terrace with pergola-shaded dining area, built-in outdoor kitchen and sun-exposed lounging area that butts up to but doesn't exactly overlook the lighted, north/south aligned tennis court. A wide sweep of lawn extends off the back of the house—and the side of the entertainment terrace—and around to the swimming pool and spa that's unfortunately, uncomfortably and somewhat inexplicably squashed into the rear corner of the property between a towering privacy hedge and an almost as high but far more penal-looking chain link fence that separates the slender sunbathing terrace from the basketball hoop-equipped tennis court.
Your Mama has no idea what Mister and Missus Waters' future real estate plans may be, and it seems unlikely they'll move their young family into a comparatively puny condo, but property records do reveal than in June 2011 the couple dropped $399,000 on a fairly contemporary, two bedroom and two bathroom, loft-style live-work condo in downtown Los Angeles, located just a few blocks from the shimmering, clover-shaped Westin Bonaventure Hotel and just around the corner from the perennially popular eatery Botegga Louie. It seems unlikely they'll move their young family into this comparatively puny and far more urban condo, but stranger things have happened, right?
listing photos: Coldwell Banker
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