LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $125,000/month
SIZE: 7,237 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It has come to Your Mama's attention via a covert communique from Our Fairy Godmother in Bel Air (OFGBA) that Hollywood honcho Steven Spielberg has quietly put his Craftsman-style beach front compound on celebrity lined (and quickly disappearing) Broad Beach in Malibu (CA) up for lease for the 2013 summer season at $125,000 per month.*
Your Mama's brief and unscientific research on the internets indicates the three time Oscar winner (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List) acquired the larger of the two parcels that comprise the ocean front estate in October 1989 for $3,375,000. Property records show he picked up the adjacent property in April 2002 for $3,191,000. A couple of quick and rudimentary calculations on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows Mister Spielberg coughed up a total of $6,566,000 for both properties that combined encompass 1.08 acres with more than 150 feet of quickly dwindling beach frontage.**
Listing details kindly provided by OFGBA shows the main house measures 7,237 square feet with a total of seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms. There are four bedrooms on the ground floor and three more on the second floor, as per listing details, including a spacious, ocean-view master suite complete with private study/library and a massage room. Additional living space is accommodated in a detached two bedroom guest house and a flexi-use "bonus space" that could be used as an art studio, fitness room or meditation lounge.
The main house wraps around a wind-protected courtyard with multi-level decks and a small swimming pool and spa. Other amenities, according to marketing materials, include a screening room—natch, two fireplaces (living room and master bedroom), a three car garage, and a top-flight security system.
It might seem strange that someone with pockets as deep as Mister Spielberg might choose to lease out one of his luxurious homes but it might be that he's looking to recoup some of the excessive fuel costs he'll surely incur this summer while he takes his $200 million yacht, the 282-foot long blue hulled Seven Seas, on an around the world cruise with stops in exotic locales such as Shanghai, Sri Lanka and Hawaii.***
Despite its ever-shrinking beach, Broad Beach is lined with homes owned by entertainment industry movers and shakers. The Spielberg-Capshaw beach estate is just a couple doors down from the double-lot spread owned by Pierce Brosnan and listed last summer for least at $250,000 per month. Other Showbiz homeowners on Broad Beach include Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, Steve Levitan, Dustin Hoffman, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman, Ray Romano, Avi Arad, Jami Gertz, and Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gourmet—here they are putting their special spin on Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun.
Award show super-producer Ken Ehrlich, who bought his East Coast-y beach front Cape Cod in early 2010 from investor (and Milwaukee Brewers owner) Mark Attanasio and, as it turns out, has it up for lease at $100,000 per month for the 2013 summer season. Other big business types who maintain homes on Broad Beach include Chicago-based real estate magnate George Novogroder and tool and die tycoon—and big-time real estate baller—Eric Smidt. The late insurance mogul Burton Borman's Frank Gehry-designed domicile popped up on the open market last week with a—uh—hopeful $57,500,000 price tag.
Make no mistake, chickens, despite their low-key, of-the-people image Mister Spielberg and Miz Capshaw are red-blooded real estate baller with a fat portfolio of pricey, high-maintenance properties. In addition to their deluxe digs in Malibu their Los Angeles holdings include a 5+ acre multi-residence hillside compound on a hillside in the ritzy upper Riviera area of Pacific Palisades and an expensively equipped multi-acre equestrian facility tucked back into rustic Sullivan Canyon below Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner's Pacific Palisades estate.
Mister and Missus Spielberg-Capshaw also have a solid real estate foothold on the east coast. As far as Your Mama knows—thanks to a heads up by one of the helpful children—they still own a 6,000 square foot, two unit Gwathmey Siegel-designed combo coop at the star studded San Remo building on Central Park West where other high profile residents/owners include Demi Moore, Dustin Hoffman, Donna Karan, Steve Martin, and Paul Hewson—the rock star otherwise known as the unimonikered Bono.
And finally, they maintain Quelle Farm, a nearly 10-acre Gwathmey Siegel-designed compound on Georgica Pond in East Hampton, NY, with extensive equestrian facilities. The property is close enough for the Spielberg's scullery maid to borrow sugar from Time Warner widow and philanthropist Courtney Sale Ross who recently heaved Cody House—a 5.42 acre pond-front spread on Georgica Pond—on the open market with a tongue wagging $75,000,000 asking price. Mister Spielberg also owns three vacant lots directly opposite Quelle Farm. Your Mama assumes he bought the lots in order to preserve his view. A couple years ago he donated conservation easements the three lots that come to almost 7.5 acres to the Peconic Land Trust, a tax benefitting maneuver that will protect the land from development in perpetuity.
Property records indicate that in late 2007/early 2008 the redonkulously rich couple dropped $20,000,000 on a 3.3 acre Georgica Pond fronting estate that's located on the same swanky lane as their compound but isn't contiguous. We're not sure what their long term plans for the property are but it appears to Your Mama they've already razed the early 20th century singled cottage that stood on the property when they bought it.
*listing details suggest a longer term rental may be possible.
**Since 2008 when storms damaged a number of homes in Malibu, radical and expensive measures, including a 4,100 foot long revetment and towering walls of sandbags, have been taken over the years to protect the multi-million dollar homes on Broad Beach.
***Those with the dough can charter Mister Spielberg's super-luxe yacht that comfortably accommodates 12 in seven staterooms and is staffed by two dozen crew. In 2011 the ship sized boat was available at a skin peeling $1.3 million a week.