SELLERS: David and Yolanda Foster
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE $27,500,000
SIZE: 11,622 square feet, 11 bedrooms, 12.5 bathrooms (or maybe it's 6 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms)
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Remember last September, children, when Your Mama passed along some scuttlebutt about how Proteanly prolific producer/composer/songwriter/arranger David Foster and his Dutch-born fourth wife, formal model turned reality show denizen, Yolanda Hadid Foster, quietly made their meticulously maintained 3.25 acre bluff-top estate in Malibu available to those in the know as off-market listing with "an astronomical asking price of $27 million."*
Well, children, thanks to a covert communique from Eli Eagleyes, we've learned the Mister and fourth Missus Foster's custom-built ocean-view spread in The Bu—parts of which have been prominently featured on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills—has popped up on the open market with an official asking price of $27,500,000.**
Listing details describe the three-level mock-Med mansion as "Reminiscent of a romantic European villa" with 11,622 square feet that include—depending on where one looks—either eleven bedrooms and 12.5 bathrooms or six bedrooms and nine bathrooms. Inside there are extra wide plank recycled Bavarian walnut floors, head-roomy 12-foot ceilings, and generous rows of of glass doors that fold open to expose many rooms throughout the house to the sea misted sunshine and all but unobstructed ocean and sky views.
Situated on a high bluff directly above the world renown and not infrequently traffic choked Pacific Coast Highway, the blended Foster family's double-turreted stone and stucco manse is approached via a long, gated driveway that climbs its way up the hillside to a two-car parking pad as well as a much larger motor court with lattice-pattern brick inlay and an attached, three-bay garage.
A fully paneled and liberally pilastered library (with fireplace) just off the spacious center hall foyer has floor-to-ceiling book shelves mostly and artfully filled with framed photographs and antique-looking hardcover books, the sort of books that look to Your Mama like really more for collecting and showing off than actually reading. Anyways, what do we know? There's a second fireplace in the commodious combination formal living/dining room where wide bank of glass doors fold open to convert the comfortably luxurious room into an open air porch. As was seen during several snarky (and catered) dinner parties on R.H.O.B.H., there's a Grammy-laden grand piano in the center of the long room where talented Mister Foster often tickles the ivories when the eating is done.
Less formal family areas include an airy, ocean-view white and stainless steel kitchen with thick slab marble counter tops, a full suite of top-quality commercial-style appliances, and a custom-designed—and by now world-famous—glass-fronted and marble-lined walk-in refrigerator. An informal eating area connects the kitchen through to the spacious family room. Built-in book cases filled with more framed photographs and antique-looking hardcover books plus a few bits of animal statuary flank a third fireplace over which hangs a large flat-screen television. A room-wide bank of glass doors fold open to a heavily wood-beamed, pool- and ocean-view loggia with outdoor fireplace.
However many guest, family, and/or staff bedrooms the manse may contain—maybe it's six or maybe it's eleven—there is an impressively extensive upper floor master suite with, as per listing details, a wall-to-wall carpeted bedroom that's large enough to accommodate a suite of brown leather club chairs and sofa and has an entire wall of windows that fold open to a private ocean-view terrace. Over the fireplace there appears to be a photograph or painting of the lady of the house squatting on a water-side rock in her birthday suit. Even though the image stops way short of anything lurid or pornographic Your Mama still finds it an interesting choice not to swap out the photo/painting with something less exposed but who are we to judge, right?
The Foster's private retreat also includes a circular, ocean-view study lined with floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves filled with even more framed photos and decorative hard bound books). There are dual bathrooms and his 'n' her dressing rooms, his paneled like a high-end haberdashery and hers a light and bright boutique style affair with glass fronted wardrobes and miles of shelves that display Missus Foster's extensive collection of designer handbags and shoes, a single pair of which probably cost more the average domestic worker in Malibu pays in rent every month for his or her home in a probably distant and much less impressive zip code. But we digress...
A basement level finished as luxuriously as the upper floors includes a billiards room with a fully outfitted seven-plus stool wet bar, a state-of-the-art screening room with plush tiered seating, a professional recording studio—natch, and an extensive fitness/spa area that includes an exercise room and lounge, a multi-seat sauna, and a massage room with what very well may be a made-to-order capiz shell chandelier by bespoke lighting designer Gwen Carlton.
Outdoor entertainment and recreation areas include a couple of covered verandas—at least one of which has a fireplace and an expansive lawn that surrounds a built-in fire pit terrace with panoramic ocean and coastline views. Off the family room wing there's elegantly simple infinity edged swimming pool surrounded by a parking lot sized lattice-patterned (and high maintenance) concrete and grass terrace that ties in with lattice pattern brickwork in the driveway. An expensively terraced hillside orchard has citrus and avocado trees and a ass-busting stone stairway ascends and ascends and ascends from the poolside terrace to a hilltop lounge terrace with undeniably dynamite views that (almost) make the muscle building hike up the hill worth the effort.
NOTE: For scads of photos of the Foster home, go here, here or here.
*Full disclosure: Your Mama first heard the Fosters wanted $18 million. Then we heard it was $29 million. Finally the consensus came to $27 (or so) million.
**As of this morning the listing does not appear on the MLS but does appear prominently on the high profile listing agent's website.