LOCATION: Nashville, TN
PRICE: $299,0900
SIZE: 3,045 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama heard word from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial that, last November (2012), epically powerful cross-platform media maven Oprah Winfrey—through a trust every property gossip on the globe understands to be linked to her—quietly coughed up $299,900 for a well-maintained if perfectly ordinary suburban home in a well-kept if architecturally homogenous development about 7.5 miles from miles northwest of The Main Library in downtown Nashville, TN.
No, puppies, Miz Winfrey did not buy this ho-hum house for herself. At least Your Mama can't fathom she purchased it for herself because this place is a little—uh—middle class compared to how Miz Winfrey rolls when it comes to her personal residences.
The self-made multi-billionaire may have come from severely restricted economic circumstances but, as anybody who's ever picked up a gossip glossy knows, nowadays the lady lives as high on the hog as a person can live. She is, to be sure, a real estate baller of the highest order and she most certainly lives in a money-is-no-object manner commensurate with her nearly three billion dollar-plus fortune. (More about her major real estate holdings in minute.)
Your Mama don't know a camel from a canoe, of course, but we have to presume Miz Winfrey purchased the suburban property for a friend, a staff worker or, most likely, a relative. It could be for her father, long time Nashville resident Vernon Winfrey, or it might just be for Vernon's soon-to-be ex-wife Barbara Winfrey, the two of whom have been engaged in a messy and public divorce that involves scandalous allegations infidelity and attempted murder.
Whatever the case, Miz Winfrey's fat property portfolio now includes a fairly modest house in Northwest Nashville that listing details Your Mama scared up out of the interweb show was built in 2006 on a .27 acre lot that backs up to an undeveloped forested open space. The 3,054 square foot brick-built two-story—uh—transitional-style** residence has four bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms according to marketing materials.
A pair of arches separate the central foyer and stair hall from the intimately scaled "formal" dining room. Both the dining room and the foyer open to a living room at the back of the house that has wood floors and a (gas) fireplace surmounted by a flat-screen t.v. and flanked by built-in book cases. Either French or sliding doors—we're not sure which—allow for direct access to the backyard from the living room. The tile floored eat-in kitchen with step-in pantry adjoins the living room and is outfitted with hickory (or hickory-toned) raised panel cabinets, black granite counter tops, and medium grade stainless steel appliances.
The main floor master suite opens directly off the living room and includes a 22-foot long bedroom with a wide bay window, a high tray ceiling, and wall-to-wall carpeting the color of wet sand. The attached bathroom has more raised panel cabinetry topped with some sort of inexpensive looking solid surface material, two sinks, a make-up vanity, and a separate tub and stall shower. In addition to the two upstairs bedrooms that share a single hall bath, there's a decent size den/lounge on the upper floor with angled ceiling, wall to wall carpeting, and a Palladian-esque window.
The backyard isn't particularly big and it lacks any landscaping besides an essentially flat lawn. Although it's private at the rear as it backs up to a dense forested space, the backyard lacks any privacy from the sides where the iron fence shown in listing photos might keep Fido from escaping but it certainly won't stop the neighbors from gawking when The Big O swings by for some sweet tea on the patio.
Miz Winfrey has owned a slew of luxury properties from coast to coast and in many places in between but her primary residential real estate holdings currently include a multi-unit duplex penthouse atop Water Tower Place in Chicago (IL), a 23,000+ square foot mansion on 40+ landscaped acres in Montecito (CA), and a large and growing swathe of farmland near Kula in on the Hawaiian island of Maui.***, ****
By our last calculation of Miz Winfrey's Hawaiian holdings—in June 2012—she then owned more than thirty separate (and not all contiguous) rural parcels that combined encompass nearly 800 acres. She'd shelled out, according to property records and Your Mama's bejeweled abacus, well over $40 million and perhaps as much as sixty million for her sprawling Hawaiian hideaway that has more houses and farm buildings than Your Mama has fingers and toes.
Your Mama can't confirm it but late last year (2012) we heard word from a usually quite reliable source who snitched that Miz Winfrey (allegedly) dropped eight figures on a macmansion sized pied a terre apartment at the high-fallutin' Montage hotel and residences in downtown Beverly Hills, the same exclusive complex where East Coast-based Judge Judy Sheindlin recently dropped $11.7 million for a posh pied a terre of her own.
*There are multiple reports on the internets that Papa and Step Momma Winfrey's LaurelBrooke home was sold but none o' the property record databases Your Mama peeped yet reflect a recent transfer of ownership. Make of that what you will.
**We use the vague term "transitional-style" to describe an otherwise undistinguished and/or indistinguishable architectural vernacular.
***Miz Winfrey recently did a photo shoot—for her essentially eponymous lifestyle magazine O, natch—on her working Hawaiian farm. For one of the photos she donned a wide-brimmed straw hat and pushed a wheelbarrow laden with luscious, leafy greens. Your Mama laughed a day over that nonsense. How often, hunties, do we think Miz Winfrey actually pushes around a damn wheelbarrow laden with a whole bunch of leafy greens? Pleeze.
****Back in 2006 Miz Winfrey had the O photographers over to Hawaii to snap perfectly posed pictures of one of the many residences on the farm for the Summer 2006 issue.
listing photos: Realty Trust Residential