X Factor Real Estate Fake Out

We don't watch X Factor—or any of those other gawd-awful, long-past-their-prime televised pop music contests for that matter—but apparently, last night, the hopeful and over-excited X Factor contestants were invited to sing at one the four celebrity judges houses around the country.

Howevuh, kinderkins—as exposed by the celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ—turns out at least two of the extravagant homes shown were not even owned by the judges. Mister Cowell owns numerous luxury homes around the world including a sumptuous, custom-built mansion in the flats of Beverly Hills, a couple of low-slung mid-century moderns in the trendy Trousdale Estates 'hood, a large house in London's Kensington and a beach front getaway on the Lesser Antilles island of Barbados but, as far as Your Mama know, he does not owns any real estate in south Florida. In fact, the massive, über-modern Miami, FL mansion they claimed was sassy Simon Cowell's actually belongs to professional baseballer Alex Rodriguez who has it on the market for a stomach-churning $38,000,000.

Contestants who who were picked to perform at Britney Spears's house did so at a sprawling, six-plus acre bluff-top estate near the tail end of Carbon Mesa Road in Malibu (CA). Thing is, Miz Spears hasn't lived in Malibu for years...years, we tell you. She did live there back when she was married to Whatshisface, the  father of her children, and for a short bit after they split. But, after shacking up in Beverly Hills, Calabasas and Hidden Hills, Miz Spears currently resides in 10,000-plus square foot rented mansion behind the 24-hour guarded gates of the Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks.

Since we didn't see the show itself we can't say if the homes of L.A. Reid and Demi Lovato were their real homes but we suspect they, too, were not. For the record, until sometime in late 2010 or early 2011 the eminently likable but sometimes troubled Miss Lovato and her family leased a Spanish-style house in L.A.'s celeb-stocked Los Feliz area. The house is now owned, as it turns out, by actress Olivia Wilde who put it up for lease recently at eleven grand a month.

In late 2010 Miss Lovato dropped two-an-a-quarter million clams on a hillside compound in the more suburban L.A. community of Sherman Oaks that, in late 2011, she told gossip blogger turned budding media mogul Perez Hilton, she shared with her parents. Your Mama recently heard through the real estate gossip grapevine the former Disney darling may have decamped for a home of her own but—sorry, Charlies—we haven't got any inside intel on that real estate rumor.

As for L.A. Reid, we're not exactly where the influential music mogul actually lives but we do find evidence on the interweb that he and his Missus, Erica, own a 5,000+ square foot spread on Park Avenue in New York City, a multi-acre estate in super-swank Sagaponack (NY), and several residences in and around Atlanta, GA.

This X Factor real estate fakery shouldn't be all that surprising given that celebs do have a thing for protecting their real estate privacy and, more importantly, everybody with a goddamn brain ought know by now that most reality television involves a whole lotta smoke and mirrors meant to obscure what's really real.