Buckle yer real estate safety belts, butter beans, because Your Mama now hears that after more than eight years on and off the market wealthy divorcée Suzanne Saperstein's palatial limestone château in the Holmby Hills, dubbed Fleur de Lys and currently listed off-market as "The Most Celebrated Estate in Los Angeles" with a stomach churning $125 million price tag, is quietly in escrow for $85 million with a super-rich Chinese businessman. (Rumor and gossip, kids, rumor and gossip.)
Miz Saperstein and her Texas-based ex-husband, David Saperstein, custom built the proudly immoderate 35,000+ square foot residence that, so the stories go, was inspired by the 17th century Château Vaux-le-Vicomte, about 50 miles southeast of Paris near the commune of Melun. When it was completed in 2002 the Saps filled the hotel-sized house with 17th and 18th century antiques, some of which were sold off in an April 2012 auction that brought in more than $8 million. The Sapersteins divorced 2005 after he hooked up with their Swedish-born nanny—who is now his third wife—and haute couture collecting Second Miz Saperstein was granted ownership of the grandiloquent estate that sprawls across more than four painstakingly manicured and maintained acres.
Current digital marketing materials for the wildly ostentatious property states the nearly five acre estate has a zig-zagging tree-lined driveway nearly a half mile long that passes through a pair of pillars into a motor court almost as large as the Place Vendôme in Paris. A smaller secondary motor court provides access the estate's garages.
As per listings and previous reports, Fleur de Lys has 12 bedrooms and 15 bathrooms, a count that may or may not account for staff quarters and separate guest accommodations. There are vast formal living and dining rooms, a two-story library with hand-carved book cases, a multi-level wine cellar and tasting room, a state-of-the-art 35mm digital movie theater, and a gilt-trimmed ballroom that can accommodate upwards of 300 people. The are several kitchens on the property including a commercial grade catering kitchen capable of churning out petit fours and hors d'oeuvre for 1,000 or more party guests.
The fully landscaped grounds include flat lawn larger than a soccer pitch, extensive formal gardens, a world-class fitness facility and spa, a lighted tennis court and a swimming pool complex that includes a pool house larger than most people's entire houses.
*Although we heard from several sources the Singleton mansion, currently listed on the open market for $75 million, was in the process of being bought by Tinseltown mover and shaker Jerry Bruckheimer, we now hear that's not the case. According to Peter Propertyseller the house is actually being bought, as we were first told by Our Fairy Godmother in the Holmby Hills, by a fella from London for somewhere in the lows sixty millions. We shall see, butter beans, we shall see.
**The name that keeps popping up in relation to the much tittered about (alleged) sale of Owlwood is real estate investor Richard Weintraub and his wife Liane. The couple currently own La Villa Contenta, an extravagant, six-plus acre bluff top spread in Malibu that they first listed on the open market back in 2010 with an asking price of $75 million. The asking price has since plummeted to a still sky-high but much lower $54 million. The 12,000+ square foot main residence on 1.62 gated and landscaped acres is also listed separately from the remainder of the estate with an asking price of $23.8 million and the estate's positively Baroque onyx- and shell-encrusted natatorium is also listed separately with an asking price of $22.5 million.
listing photo: Westside Estate Agency