LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $12,995,000
SIZE: 11,750 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to a small army of eagle-eyed informants it's come to Your Mama's attention late on this Friday afternoon that Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon have hoisted their multi-winged, clapboard-sided mansion high above L.A.'s Bel Air area on the open market with an asking price of $12,995,000.
The multi-Platinum selling internationally recognized music industry supernova and the beaver busyproducer/presenter purchased the property in April 2009 for $6,975,000.Current listing details include a floor plan show show the quasi-Colonial style manse has a rambling (and almost incoherent) floor plan with seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms in 11,750 square feet.*
Less formal recreation and entertainment spaces include a center island kitchen with the most ordinary white painted raised panel cabinetry and an adjoining breakfast area with fireplace, built-in book shelves, French doors, and a round table surrounded by six wing back chairs covered in faux-French Country-ish red and white gingham fabric. (We think red and white toile would have been funkier and more fun but still working the same decorative vein, but what do we know, right?)
There's also state-of-the-art home theater just off the main foyer, a luxe-rustic family room/den with built-in bar, stone floors, and a massive fireplace—it's call and "Aspen Room" in listing description, and a separate game room. A lower level wing off the "Aspen Room" includes a fitness area, a double-height half-court basketball court, a music room and, oddly enough, a bedroom with attached semi-private bathroom.
The entire second floor was given over to private family quarters and include a shared bedroom and opulent marble bathroom for the couple's almost two year old fraternal twins, Monroe and Morrocan, plus an an adjoining master suite complete with sand-colored wall-to-wall carpeting, a fireplace, a private city view veranda, and a blurry and downright mortifying ceiling mural that looks more like water stains than clouds or anything else.** There are also, as per the floor plan, his and her walk-in closets—hers is larger, of course—and a spacious and luxuriously appointed if desperately beige and white bathroom with, we regret to inform, glitzy, club-style LED lighting along the ceiling.
There are three en-suite bedrooms on the main floor: one uncomfortably situated right off the formal living room; another just off the foyer that's done up with all the charm of a cheap motel (Uhm, can we get a bed skirt in here, pleeze?); and a third, super-sized second master suite with a fireplace and a roomy if strangely configured dressing area flanked by a pair of compartmentalized bathrooms.
Much of the vaguely hourglass-shaped three acre property isn't usable as it's rugged ravine but the landscaped areas that surround the heavily fortified house include high-hedged gardens, two separate gated driveways and motor courts, a tented courtyard area off the "Aspen Room" that connects through to a hookah lounge gazebo sort of thing that sets Your Mama's nerves on edge in the worst way possible, an extra-long dark-bottomed swimming pool and open-air cabana, a flat lawn large enough to pitch a good-sized party tent, and, set well below the house and yard, a putting green.
We're not sure if the couple plan to acquire new digs in Tinseltown but if this property gossip were the betting sort—and we're not—we'd eagerly wager both our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, they're in the mood for an even more opulent estate. As far as we know that high flying couple still own an ocean front compound on the guard-gated Windermere Island in the Bahamas as well as a New York City triplex done up around the turn of the century by The Prince of Chintz, Himself—that would be Mario Buatta—and photographed for Architectural Digest's November 2001 issue. Of course, it's quite possible, and perhaps even likely, Miz Carey has since had the place partially or entirely re-worked by Mister B. or some other name brand lady or nice-gay decorator but, honestly chickens, we just don't know.
*Based on the floor plan included with digital marketing materials, Your Mama counted six bedrooms spread throughout the rambling, three-floor mansion and a total of seven full and three half bathrooms plus at least half a dozen fireplaces.
**There's an essentially identical ceiling mural treatment in the twins' bedroom and it's equally muddled and, well, awful.
listing photos and floor plan: Rodeo Realty