LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $15,500,000
SIZE: 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A week or so before Your Mama left for a wee summer vacay in a semi-remote region of the Forty-Ninth State, we (dissed) and discussed the quirky New York City pied-a-terre recently picked up for $2.8 million by 27-year old high-tech heiress turned increasingly powerful indie film producer Megan Ellison. She, in case you somehow didn't know, would be trophy property collecting gazillionaire Larry Ellison's daughter. That explains, of course, how it is the ever-so-young but already Oscar-nominated young lady can maintain a residential real estate portfolio worth well in excess of $35 million.
Her purchase of a $2.8 million one bedroom bedsit in downtown Manhattan's perennially chic Police Building is hardly, however, Miss Ellison's only recent spin on the fast-paced upper end real estate merry-go-round. Like her father, Miss Ellison nurses a well-exercised penchant for the procurement of prodigiously pricey properties in desirable locales. In addition to her new digs in The Big Apple Miss Ellison owns three contiguous and uniformly contemporary residences perched near the edge of a vertiginous bluff high above the Sunset Strip in an area known by L.A. savvy real estate-o-philes as The Birds.*
The first Bird Street nest Miss Ellison bought and feathered, a sensationally sleek Steve Hermann-designed domicile, was acquired in February 2008 for $12.6 million and she unexpectedly picked up the glassy, also-Steve Hermann-designed abode next door in April 2009 for $6.25 million from media mogul Byron Allen. Even more surprisingly, in early 2011, the neophyte compound creator coughed up a back stiffening $13.8 million for the newly constructed mini-compound next door to the second one—the one she bought from Byron Allen—for $13.8 million. Her total outlay for the three contiguous cribs in The Birds? Nearly $33 million dollars, according to Your Mama's bejeweled abacus.
It seems, however, that three is more than enough for Miss Ellison who last April (2012) briefly made her first Bird Street acquisition available on the open market for an unknown price. The boxy but sexy residence was on the open market a scant four weeks but, as was pointed out to Your Mama by tipster Paulina Pointsitout, still appears on the listing agent's internet portal. The property does not, however and as far as we can tell, show up as an active listing on the Multiple Listing Service or any of the other two listing aggregators Your Mama briefly consulted.
Whatever the case, current digital listing details show the three bedroom and four bathroom residence carries a hefty asking price of $15,500,000. Listing details do not state the square footage but the L.A. County Tax Man puts it at 3,065 square feet. That seems to Your Mama a little small given the scale of the house as seen in listing photographs but, of course, what do we know? Nuthin', that's what. Listing details go on to explain that there are soaring 13-foot ceilings, custom Poliform kitchen and closets, whole house audio and security systems, and "outrageous views" through vast expanses of floor to ceiling windows, some of which telescope and disappear into the walls.
Other notable creature comforts and luxury amenities called out in listing details include an eight-foot wide gallery hallway, a warehouse-sized open-concept main living area with knee buckling city views, a state-of-the-art 20 seat home theater, and an interior courtyard with swimming pool and spa.
What's interesting, at least to a snarky property gossip like Your Mama, is that the publicly online marketing materials seem to make use of the exact same listing images as when Miss Ellison acquired the property residence back in 2008. Funny that, no?
Anyhoodles, poodles, as it turns out, this isn't the only multi-million dollar Sunset Strip house Miss Ellison has up for sale. A bit higher up in The Birds, at the tail end of an L-shaped cul-de-sac, Miss Ellison owns a low-profile ranch-style residence she quietly acquired in December for $1,800,000. This was, it would seem to the innocent bystander like Your Mama, a short term investment that Miss Ellison subjected to a contemporarizing gut renovation and flipped back on the market in November 2012 for $3,750,000. The price was later reduced—twice, actually—down to its current $2,990,000 price tag. The property, as per public listings, is currently in escrow—and has been since early April 2013—for an unknown price with an unknown buyer.
*All the streets in The Birds are named after birds. Get it? Robin, Thrasher, Warbler, and so on and so forth.
listing photos (Nightingale): Westside Estate Agency
listing photos (Swallow): Keller Williams Beverly Hills