Burt Reynolds Downsizing in Florida

SELLER: Burt Reynolds
LOCATION: SE Federal Highway, Hobe Sound, FL
PRICE: $10,500,000
SIZE: 12,500 (approx.), 5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Extremely desirable, hard to find private three acre estate. Neighboring State Park, & directly located on Intrac. overlooking Jupiter Isl., large yacht dockage, private two bedroom guest house, billiard & cinema rooms.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Okay children, today we are discussing the home of a senior citizen, so Your Mama will try and be as kind and respectful as our nerve medication will allow. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that 71 year old Academy Award nominated and Emmy winning ack-tur Burt Reynolds has drastically reduced the price of his waterfront estate in Hobe Sound, Florida.

Mister Reynolds' estate, only about 15 miles north of Palm Beach was first put on the market in 2005 with a listing price of $15,000,000, which was stoopidly raised to $15,900,000 about a year ago before being chopped to $12,900,000 last summer and then slashed again to it's current asking price of $10,500,000.

According to Mister Reynolds' PR flak, who was interviewed by the gal who writes the always informative Private Properties column at The Journal, stated that the 1970s sex symbol was downsizing from the 12,500 square foot mansion because he no longer has use "for something so huge." The spokesman went on to say that Mister Reynolds intends to purchase something smaller in the area and at any rate, the WSJ article indicates, Mister Reynolds' primary residence is in Beverly Hills.

Back in 1980, when Mister Burt Reynolds was still a mustachioed piece of silver screen beefcake who sassily popped gum and posed nekkid as a hirsute jaybird in the glossy pages of Cosmopolitan, he scooped up this Hobe Sound hacienda for a mere $700,000. You read that correctly children, $700,000.

Presumably this is just one of several poorly decorated homes that Mister Reynolds shared with the seemingly ageless Miz Anderson. Your Mama happens to have a soft spot in our cold heart for Miz Anderson, who unfortunately hasn't changed her lacquered hair-do since her salad days on WKRP in Cincinnati. Burt's ex participated in a few real estate transactions of her own recently when she unloaded her disturbing mausoleum of 1980s era trad decor in Mulholland Estates and reportedly purchased a 4,300 square foot freshly built Montecito-style mini-manse in Sherman Oaks.

According to property records and listing information, Mister Reynolds' three acre spread butts up against a State Park, and the 12,500 (approx.) square foot Mediterranean style house features 5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, a billiard room, a cinema room and a 2 bedroom guest house.

Your Mama's stomach is weak today, so we're just going to sum up our two cents in as few words as possible and then we're going move on and let the children slice and dice the place. The setting is lovely (if you dig this part of Florida, which Your Mama does not) and the enormously long driveway, water side swimming pool, helipad, and dock space large enough for a big ol' yacht are all nice features in a high priced Florida getaway.

But Jeezis, Mary and Joseph the interior spaces are a hot mess and Your Mama would Cannonball Run outta that house as quickly as our little legs could carry us before our eyeballs burned up in their sockets from looking too closely at the decorating disaster that is Mister Reynolds residence. Please note the migraine inducing pink and paneled game room with the stuffed bear and also that snowball like dining room chandelier which probably hasn't been touched since Loni lived there and very well might still have a tuft of her shellacked hair clinging to it. Ugh!

Oh Burt. Your Mama is just so disappointed. We really hoped you would have gone the extra mile and used some of your deep pockets and big bank accounts to hire a nice gay decorator to update and do over your house with the restraint and style benefiting an aging film and television icon like yourself. Perhaps in your next and more modest digs you'll see fit to have someone help you edit your lifetime worth of memorabilia and shape it into a killer and coherent collection that succinctly reflects your long, long career rather than looking like piles of clutter and junk you're too lazy to take to the dump.

UPDATE: Simon Fuller

Your Mama hears from Junebug that the Simon Fuller house we discussed yesterday is actually quietly on the market. Junebug hears through the gossip grapevine that the house is being shopped at $8,500,000.

Junebug also reveals that Mister Fuller purchased the Tanager Way house as an interim property while his Bev Hills property was being renovated. That renovation is complete (or nearly complete), and Mister Fuller can finally move in to his Ridgedale Drive manse that's just a few doors down from Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman's compound which remains on the market with a fat asking price of $31,900,000.

Michael Jackson Saved From the Poor House?

Mister Roger Friedman who writes the Fox 411 column for Fox News always has the most up to date information about financially embattled former pop star Michael Jackson, and yesterday he reported that the monetarily challenged Gloved One finally finagled a lending institution (rumored to be HSBC Private Banking) into refinancing and restructuring his Grand Canyon sized debt.

According to Friedman, the deal may have put as much as $25,000,000 into Mister Jackson's handbag, which is a lot of money to most people. But not to Michael Jackson. Oh lawhd have mercy, The White Lady needs far more than $25,000,000 to get him anywhere near debt free and liquid. In fact, Mister Friedman speculates (and we always believe Mister Friedman) that Mister Jackson's immediate payments to settle debts and lost legal brouhahas could total as much as $20,000,000. Which leaves the Jackson four (and Miz Raymone Bain makes five) only five million clams to live on...and ya'll know Miss Thing can run through five million dollars like it was five dollars.

Presumably, Mister Jackson receives fat royalty checks from his Sony/ATV/Beatles music catalog, but Your Mama imagines that a substantial chunk of those royalties must be utilized just to service the payments on his spine tingling and reported $300,000,000 loan.

But we're here for the real estate, right kids? Mister Jackson's somewhat modest windfall will apparently do little to shore up his sagging and highly leveraged real estate portfolio. No word on whether this Jackson or one of the other Jacksons took the necessary steps to pay off the $16,000+ tax lien or satisfy the $4,000,000 (approx.) mortgage on the Jackson family seat on Hayvenhurst Avenue in Encino.

Mister Jackson still has a couple of weeks to right the pending foreclosure at Neverland Ranch, his former home in the Santa Ynez Valley where he has not officially lived since mid 2005. The lender on the property is calling in over $23,000,000, and based on Mister Friedman's mathematics, it would seem that Mister Jackson is not likely to have the wherewithal to satisfy that debt and the 2,700 acre property may (very publicly) slide into foreclosure.

What a damn mess. Listen to Your Mama now Mister Jackson. Just put Neverland Ranch on the market and let some rich guy from Dubai buy it, or sell it off to John Bersci or some other swanky developer who will de-juju the place, sub-divide it and sell it off as gentleman ranches.

And where is the unnaturally pale skinned Mister Jackson living now? Well Mister Friedman tell us that Mister Jackson was so strapped for cash that he and the kids (and we assume that krazy talking Miz Bain) were camped out in Las Vegas with his mama Katherine. Poor thing didn't even have the cash (or credit?) to afford a room at The Flamingo.

Listen Michael, you can't live whitcher mama the rest of yer damn life, and you still have a mega asset that you can sell off. So do it. Do what you know you've got to do. Sell everything, buy a nice house out in Santa Clarita and retire gracefully while your children attend school, make friends and learn how to live in the world without a gauzy piece of fabric draped over their poor little heads. We know you like that sort of high voltage performance when you shop at Barnes and Noble looking like Humpty damn Dumpty in a head scarf after they put him back together again, but did you ever stop to think your children might be damaged by that kind of shenanigans?

Anywoo, enough of that soap box children. Your Mama apologizes for the digression away from the real estate.

UPDATE: Parker Posey

Back in late October of 2007, Your Mama followed up on a report by Max Abelson in the NY Observer about indie movie high priestess Parker Posey's East Village apartment being sold. The top floor 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom apartment located in a lovely landmark townhouse on East 10th Street was on the market for $1,175,000 and by all accounts attracted heaps and scores of interested buyers.

Certainly the other famous residents of the purdy and well located building–Smashing Pumpkins' James Iha and Miz Posey's indie film grasshopper Chloë Sevigny–helped scare up ready, willing and able buyers eager to shell out well over a million clams to climb three or four flights of stairs in a non-doorman building.

Today, thanks to generous assistance from Joan of Arc, Your Mama offers the children a few more photos over which to drool and feast your celebrity home starved eyeballs. Note the above photographs have slight furniture and rug variations to the image(s) that were included on the real estate listing, so Your Mama imagines that the delightful Miz Posey had her decorator Rafael de Cárdenas come by periodically to mix things up.

Do the children notice that swirly gold side table thing? We. Love. It. And we'd bet one of our long bodied bitches Linda or Beverly that it's just some cheap gold spray paint from the hardware store too, which makes it even better. Be assured that come spring weather Your Mama will be out in the backyard of our beach house carving up a stump and spray painting it gold to add a bit of glitz and glamor to one of the guest rooms.

Here's what we said about Miz Posey's former abode previously, and we stand buy it:

"Your Mama is very pleased and impressed with Miz Posey's funky downtown decor. It looks like a pleasant and well curated mish-mash of items from the Avenue A flea, Las Venus (the old and wacky Las Venus on Ludlow Street and not the mid-century modern outpost), and any number of assorted thrift shops located in church basements around lower Manhattan. I don't care what anyone says, that gnarled wood coffee table is flawless, even if it is murder on the chins after a few drinky-poos at Parker's place."

Your Mama has not found evidence of this property transferring ownership yet, so we don't know how much it sold for or who purchased it...so don't even ask.

Wherever Miz Posey and her collection of second-hand furniture has landed, Your Mama wishes her all best.

It's the Birds for Simon Fuller

BUYER: Simon Fuller
LOCATION: Tanager Way, Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $7,650,000 (sale)
SIZE: 3,300 square feet (approx.), 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Soaring estate by Mark Schomisch Design perched on the most prestigious crest in the bird streets. Museum modern architecture with sweeping city lights and coastline views is a union of the sophisticated and sublime. Floor to ceiling glass walls create impressive volume and open to an expansive terrace with knife-edged infinity pool & spa. Remarkably private, the home boasts refined finishes, exotic wall coverings and state of the art Smart Home technology.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We're digging into our archives for this one children, so don't any of you bitchy brats be giving Your Mama no lip, sass or snotty email about how this purchase took place back in February of 2007. Don't you think we know that already?

Anyhoo, located high above Sunset Boulevard, this 3,300 square foot (approx.) slice of bird street bliss was given a big gay redo by Los Angeles based designer Mark Schomisch for a couple of Hollywood homosexuals with good jobs, fat paychecks and a penchant for animal skins, gold leaf and acres of black marble. The overhaul included freeing the exterior elevations from its previous life as a dated and shabby ranch house with killer views as well as reconfiguring, opening up and teaching the interior spaces to merge with the outdoor spaces.

Although we are inclined to swoon and moon over this house, don't fool your smart-alleck selves into thinking that Your Mama is in love with this interior decor lock, stock and barrel, because we're not. In fact we are quite sure we'd pee out pants from fright coming up on those statues flanking the fireplace in the darkened living room after a hard night of gin and tonics and reality television. We are naturally quite concerned the tufted sofa in the media room/library would knot our back up while watching a Project Runway marathon, and we'd most assuredly vomit out our intestines if we stepped bleary eyed out of our morning bed onto a fur rug like we see in the master bedroom. It is only Your Mama's humble and meaningless opinion, but whatever that piece of mink or fox or raccoon cost, it was too damn much.

We would never even hint at it to our lovely ladee therapist for fear of having to spend months parsing it's deeper meaning, but we are quite simply a sucker for a forbidding street facade like we see on Mister Fuller's Tanager Way house. We are also of the somewhat sound mind that the excessively manicured bushes have a charmingly quirky thing happening, and the pair of gold leaf screens, which not only provide decorative security, remind Your Mama of giant Oscar statuettes. Entering and exiting this house would provide the distinctly delightful feeling of walking down the red carpet at the Kodak Thee-a-ter every damn day.

We are also, much to our surprise, bent backwards with glee over the kitchen with all that black marble affixed to just about every flat surface. Black marble like this seems totally impractical and we're deeply concerned about constant water spotting on this material, but if Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter lived here we'd just have to resign ourselves into having Svetlana (and her sister-in-law Oksana) come in several days a week to deal effectively with that issue.

The vein-cut travertine flooring inside the house stretches out to the decently sized pool terrace that features a fireplace and a view expansive enough to silence even the most jaded queens and the most fervent Hollywood Hills real estate snobs. At least on a clear day. You Mama does not always care for a "knife-edged infinity pool" but we'll take this dee-lishus cee-ment pond without complaint or snark.

Listen up children, the photos here reflect the interior decor BEFORE American Idol creator and celebrity manager extraordinaire Simon Fuller purchased the 3 bedroom (plus library) and 3.5 bathroom aerie in February for 2007. Property records reveal the entertainment mogul paid $7,650,000 for the freshly rehabbed house that Your Mama presumes the London based millionaire uses as a pied a terre.

Y'all know who Mister Fuller is, right? In the off chance that you don't, here's a Reader's Digest rundown: Mister Fuller, who created the reality television phenomena that is American Idol– and all the other Idol programs for that matter–discovered the boozy mess that is Amy Winehouse, manages former supermodel Claudia Schiffer, Victoria Beckham and The Spice Girls as well as a large number of other big name celebs. He's the brainiac who engineered ball playing super stud David Beckham's unnaturally large $250,000,000 deal with the LA Galaxy, and, Mister Fuller's company 19 Entertainment has contracts with most of the noteworthy and money making Idol alums such as Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Clay Aiken and Will Young, just to name a few. So the children should be able to easily ascertain that the forty something year old man is stinking rich and wields an almost Svengali-like power over the entertainment bizness.

While he remains president of Entertainment 19, in March of 2005 Mister Fuller sold the group for a reported and jaw dropping $192,000,000, which in addition to his long list of royalties, syndication rights and current projects surely places him among the wealthiest of all the Hollywood bigwig types. The man can afford to live just about any way and any where he chooses and his real estate portfolio reportedly bulges with a dozen dee-luxe homes around the world including another residence on Ridgedale Drive that sits just a few doors down from the Bev Hills house that Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston used to call home. Mister Fuller also recently dumped $19,360,752 on two adjacent ninth floor condos at the yet to be completed condominium conversion at The Plaza Residences at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street in Manhattan.

Nearby neighbors to the Tanager Way house include ex Will and Grace rich behatcha Megan Mullally, who lives up the road and smack next door to the house the Tobey Maguire recently sold for $10,800,000. A little farther up from Miz Mullally lives Mister Keanu Reeves and his dirty clothes. Next door to Mister Fuller's pied a terre is the house that super songwriter Diane Warren bought from Miss David Geffen back in 1995 and is thought by many to be have one of the very best views in all of the hills.

Your Mama does not know Mister Fuller personally, so we really can't offer the children any valid reason why the man might want or need two lavish homes in Los Angeles that are only a few miles distance from each other, but who are we to question the real estate needs of the super rich entertainment mogul, right?