Leeza Gibbons Tries to Sell, Leases, Buys, Buys Again, Tries to Sell Again, Sells, and Buys Again...

BUYER: Leeza Gibbons
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $7,690,000
SIZE: 7 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Over the years, starting with the late 2006 discussion of the West Hollywood compound she and her third husband, architect and inventor Stephen Meadows, then had on the open market with an asking price of $7,995,000,* Your Mama has often discussed the real estate doings of entrepreneurial and philanthropic t.v. personality and radio hostess Leeza Gibbons.

Miz Gibbons rose to Showbiz prominence in the mid-980s as the approachable host of the entertainment news program Entertainment Tonight. Since then she's popped up on a few game shows (Pyramid, Hollywood Squares) and television programs (Murphy Brown, Sunset Beach, The Simpsons) and hosted the televised 75th Annual Hollywood Christmas Parade. In the mid-Aughts she landed her own, eponymous (if short-lived) daytime chat show and in 2007 she secured a much-coveted (but also short-lived) spot on Dancing With the Stars.

She took home an Emmy last year for her hosting duties on the PBS series My Generation, currently hosts the long-running and well syndicated radio show Hollywood Confidential and co-hosts the also syndicated, news-related t.v. program America Now with reality television star/author/motivational speaker Bill Rancic. In the early 2000s she developed a mineral make-up line and founded a nonprofit, Leeza's Place, aimed at providing support to caregivers of people with memory disorders.

We last heard word of the real estate doings of Miz Gibbons back in July 2011 when she put a Beverly Hills faux-Tuscan mini-manse on the market with an asking price of $6.895 million. She bought the house only since June 2010 when she paid paid $6.6 million for the big but bland six bedroom and 5.5 bathroom residence on Tower Road.**

The following July (2011), shortly after she married her fourth (and much younger) husband, Steven Fenton,*** she hoisted the oppressively banal house back on the market for $6,895,000. Although it did not sell, it was taken off the market just a few months later because Miz Gibbons leased the property, according to tireless real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak, to entertainment advertising bigwig Steph Sebbag. It was less than half a year later, in early December, 2011, that Miz Gibbons and her new mister surreptitiously shelled out $5.2 million for what's commonly known by real estate people in Los Angeles as the Al Jolson Estate, a celebrity pedigreed two-plus acre estate in Encino (CA).

According to the fine fellas at Movieland Directory, Mister Jolson sold the house in the early 1940s for $28,000 to Oscar winner Don Ameche. Later residents include Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen (long divorced), Kirstie Alley and Parker Stevenson( long divorced), and Katey Sagal and Jake White (also long divorced). Anyways, the Gibbons-Fentons quickly caught a classic case of The Real Estate Fickle because Your Mama found digital evidence they flipped the celeb-pedigreed property back on the market less than a year later, in late September, 2012, with a significantly higher $6.5 million price tag. The price eventually fell to $5.995 million before it was taken off the open market in April 2013, although it still appears as an "active" listing on the digital portal of at least one of Beverly Hills' more lee-gendary lady real estate agents.

At the same time Miz Gibbons and Mister Fenton de-listed their fabled estate in Encino they re-listed the aforementioned faux-Tuscan on Tower Road for $6,995,000 and this time, butter beans and bean counters, they had Lady Luck on their side. Property records show the house in late August (2013) for $6.9 million to a corporate entity Yolanda swears is connected to a non-famous Israeli businessman.

Given alls real estate hurly-burly over the last few years Your Mama might have imagined that Miz Gibbons and Mister Fenton could have easily decided to stay put in Encino but no siree Bob. Thanks to good ol' Yolanda it's come to Your Mama's celebrity real estate attention that in late January (2014) Miz and fourth Mister Gibbons quietly coughed up $7,690,000 for a classy, clapboard-sided fixer upper on a much-coveted, tree-lined street in the flats of Beverly Hills.****

Official listing details don't show the square footage of the center hall traditional—the L.A. County Tax Man puts it at 4,294—but do indicate the well preserved (if wan) residence was built in 1927 and sits on a mid-block lot that's all but half an acre. As far as we can tell from a careful perusal of various digital marketing materials, there are a total of seven bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms divided between the main house and a detached guest house at the back of the property.

The tightly curved floating staircase, original moldings, and honey-toned wood floors in the bullet-shaped center hall foyer hint loudly at the architectural and decorative elegance easily pulled out and polished by an accomplished and highly compensated nice-gay or lady decorator.

Side-lit French doors in the foyer open into a spacious formal living room with street-facing bay window and fireplace and identical side-lit French doors on the opposite wall open into the step up formal dining room where angled, glass-fronted china cabinets flank a bank of multi-paned windows that stretch almost to the floor. A third set of side-lit French doors link the dining room to a clubby, wood paneled library with fireplace, leaded glass windows, and garden access through—you got it—French doors.

It's not going to win any style or design awards but the kitchen has, as per listing details, been updated. Your Mama notes perfectly ordinary white raised panel cabinetry, flecked dark grey granite counter tops, tile back splashes, and a full suite of high-grade appliances including a six (or maybe eight) burner commercial-style range.

In addition to the ones in the living room and library there are at least two more fireplaces in the main house, one an awkwardly off-center wart in one of the upstairs bedrooms and the other in an adjoining sitting room/sun porch with symmetrical built-in book shelves and at least three sizes of multi-pane windows.

The grounds look in listing photos to be gardener maintained if a bit, uhm, tired and encompass a trellis-shaded veranda, multi-level red brick terraces, a simple rectangular swimming pool—we did not spy a spa, and a rose garden planted with a few fig trees. A long driveway runs from the street to the extreme rear of the parcel where there's a car park area next to the aforementioned guest house that has yet another fireplace.

*Miz Gibbons and Mister Meadows, by then long divorced, finally sold the property in June 2010 for $4,795,000.

**In late 2011, about six months after she bought the Tower Road residence, Miz Gibbons shelled out $1.199 million for an unassuming micro-compound just off hotsy-totsy Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood. Listing details from the time of the purchase show the compact 5,000 square foot lot includes a two-story main house with 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms plus a detached guest house with living room, laundry, kitchen, another bedroom and bathroom. It's Your Mama's understanding Miz Gibbons uses—or at least used—the house as a base for her various business and philanthropic ventures.

**Miz Gibbons is currently married to her fourth husband, the 13 years younger Steven Fenton. We're not sure exactly what Mister Fenton does for work right now but at the time they were married he was most frequently identified as the former president of the Beverly Hills Board of Education. Incidentally, his father, a financial services executive, was also previously the president of the Beverly Hills Board of Education and was also, very briefly in 2008, the mayor of Beverly Hills. Anyways...

****It is Yolanda's opinion that the Gibbons-Fenton's new acquired residence is located on one of the best blocks on one of the best streets in all of the Beverly Hills flats. Some of the couple's nearest neighbors in Bev Hills now include lauded lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman, film and television producer Tony Krantz, model/socialite Christina Estrada Juffali—she once dated Prince Andrew and is the ex-wife of a Saudi billionaire Walid Juffali, philanthropic theater heiress Victoria Mann Simms, nail polish tycoon George Schaeffer, and Gabonese political power players Pascaline Bongo Ondimba and Paul Toungui.

listing photos (Beverly Hills Flats): Rodeo Realty

Word on the Celebrity Real Estate Street...

...is that hellion hip hop pop star Justin Bieber has done sold his mansion in The Oaks, an upscale and celebrity-approved guard-gated community in Calabasas, CA. The buyer was reported by gossip juggernaut TMZ to be soon-to-be-divorced reality television staple Khloe Kardashian, who, in case anyone cares, popped up as a celebrity judge on RuPaul's Drag Race this week.

Good grief, children, do any of these Kardashian women ever to anything that isn't an obvious and calculated attempt to curry attention from all the gossip glossies, celebrity-centric blogs and property gossips? No. They really don't go in much for that sort of thing, do they? Listen, Khloe Kardashian, you go on with your rich, badass self and snatch up all the multi-million dollar houses you want. Indeed, spend six or so million of your clams for The Beebs crib, one of the most infamous and over-publicized houses in all of Calabasas. But, gurl, if you don't think this cynical property gossip isn't on to your blatant, multi-million dollar real estate attempt to remain tits up, ass out and face forward in the tabloid media, well, you must think you're dealing with a moe-ron.

Anyways, at this point this burgeoning celebrity real estate brouhaha is all just rumor and gossip so we really can't say if soon to be ex-Missus Odom bought the property or how much she paid for the 9,214 square foot Spanish hacienda style mansion that The Beebs bought, much to the later chagrin of some of his neighbors, in April 2012 for $6.5 million.

Of course, The Beebs may have made alterations to the interiors but old digital listing details Your Mama dug up on the internets show that at the time of his purchase the 1.28 acre spread had a two-story main house with six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, half a dozen fireplaces, and two three car garages. A spacious, self-contained one bedroom and one bathroom casita near the swimming pool has—or had—a kitchen and a fireplace in the living room.

The Kardashian clan mostly kongregate in the hot as Hades far western suburbs of Los Angeles. Kimmie K. and her grimly pretentious baby daddy, Kanye West, are all set to move to a $9 million macmansion situated so far on the edge of Bel Air it might as well be in Encino. Momma Kardashian (and whichever of her Brady Bunch litter that still lives with her) resides in a decadently decorated house in the affluent equestrian-oriented Hidden Hills community and Khloe K.'s older sister, Kourtney, and her douchebaggy baby daddy, Scott Disick, are the peeps who paid upwards of $8.4 million for Keyshawn Johnson's 11,000+ square foot mansion in Calabasas that happens to be just around the corner from the house The Beebs allegedly sold to Khloe K for an as yet unknown amount of dinero.

It's been widely reported by celebrity and celebrity property gossips that young, tatted and erratic Mister Bieber—holed up on the spaceship-like Atlanta residence of music producer Dallas Austin— is looking for more isolated if no less luxurious digs around Thousand Oaks, CA, and Atlanta, GA.

aerial photo: Pacific Coast News

A Couple of Art World Bigwigs List Art-Filled Time Warner Aerie

SELLERS: Tobias Meyer and Mark Fletcher
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $16,950,000
SIZE: 2,632 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It was valued New York City real estate tattletale Steven Harris Brown who snitched to Your Mama that art world muckety-mucks Tobias Meyer and Mark Fletcher hoisted their not surprisingly art-filled aerie at the twin-towered Time Warner Center in New York City on the open market with an asking price of $16,950,000.

Mister Fletcher, according to his own website, is a curator, collector, advisor and private contemporary dealer with nearly three decades of experience. Until late last year, when he left "amid criticism," German-born Mister Meyer was an accomplished auctioneer and the worldwide head honcho of contemporary art at the venerable—if sagging and under attack—Sotheby's auction house. Interestingly—and quite possibly pointedly—Misters Meyer and Fletcher chose not to make use of a Sotheby's real estate brokerage when they listed their cosmopolitan crib and instead hired a couple of high-powered lady agents at Corcoran. ¡Es un escándalo inmobilaria! Anyways...

Property records Your Mama peeped show Misters Meyer and Fletcher purchased the 66th floor city-, river- and park -view spread in March of 2004 for $5,482,215. A few quick flick of the well-worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that should the high-power lady real estate agents manage to haul in a sale anywhere close to it's current asking price the high-cultured fellas could realize a mouth watering 300+ percent return on their decade-long ownership—not counting improvements, carrying costs and real estate fees, of course. Not a bad way to turn several million bucks into a small fortune in a relatively short amount of time but—and here's the rub, butter beans with big financial dreams—you gotta have the first several million in order to parlay it into many more.

It is Your Mama's admittedly uneducated decorative opinion that the overall vision of a well-dressed home should be summed up —or at least hinted at in a tantalizing manner—right away in the foyer (or entrance hall or what have you). Misters Meyer and Fletcher's Time Warner Center foyer, hunties and other children, does not disappoint for, indeed, it proudly and vigorously announces its thoroughly ebullient decorative cacophony right away in the foyer with super-graphic black and white stripe floor covering—it could be carpet or maybe marble—juxtaposed against low-grade plywood paneling on the ceiling and walls. A Matthew Barney diptych from his five-part and fab-freaky Cremaster series surmounts an 18th century giltwood console topped by a probably pricey and possibly pedigreed pair of rococo candelabra while an over-sized, gold-toned light up dollar sign by YBA art duo Tim Noble and Sue Webster leans ever so not casually against the wall.*

The boldly striped floor pattern and the art-centric decorative merry-making continues into the irregularly shaped combination living and dining room where floor to ceiling windows on two, obtusely angled walls provide soaring views of Central Park as well as the upper floors of the black-glassed (and slightly sinister looking) Trump International Hotel and Towers. On the back wall a decadently framed portrait by John Currin hangs above an gilt-trimmed 18th century commode in front of a frenetic, pop art-y wall mural that—word to the wise—doesn't shy way from nipples and pubic hair. The mural not only covers just about every available inch of wall space and at least one exposed structural column it also creeps creepily up on to the ceiling. The site specific mural was done, our research shows, by the Brazilian artist Eli Sudbrack, a principle member of the arts collective Assume Vivid Astro Focus.

The adjacent kitchen isn't particularly roomy but it does offer a dining area with built-in banquette seating in front of an entire wall of north-facing windows and is expensively equipped with vertical grained walnut (or maybe teak or cherry) cabinetry, marble counter tops and floors, and a stainless steel volume that holds Euro-style double ovens and two integrated refrigerator-freezers.

Listing photos show one of the two guest bedrooms decked out as an office/library with book-lined book shelves and a marble-topped desk in front of another full wall of north-facing windows. The second guest bedroom has another wall of book-stuffed book shelves and another wall of windows but this time in a western direction that allows for an almost unobstructed view across the Hudson River to the densely developed eastern shore of New Jersey.

The striped floors continue, finally, into the prow-shaped master bedroom where two walls of glass with panoramic (if not entirely unobstructed) north and west views. There are also a dressing area/entry vestibule, two walk-in closets—both, no doubt, lined with expensive suits, and a six-piece marble bathroom with frameless glass shower enclosure.

According to listing details the monthly taxes and common charges total $10,771 and cover, according to Your Mama's research, the full range of Time Warner's super-luxe amenities such as round the clock doorman, concierge and maid services. There's a giant Whole Foods market in the basement of the building—if that's your food shopping thing—as well as an on-site garage with valet services and a chauffeurs lounge. Also on the grounds are a full-service five-star spa and fitness center, a multi-story shopping galleria, and a couple of New York's best regarded and most expensive eateries, Masa and Per Se.

Although it does not appear to Your Mama that Misters Meyer and/or Fletcher now or ever owned them, Mister Fletcher's website indicates he recently but previously maintained a couple of quasi-public art spaces in New York City including one in a vaunted, 1977 Paul Rudolph designed penthouse in Midtown Manhattan and another a 19th century townhouse across from Washington Square Park.** He also has (or had) more private, by appointment only art viewing spaces in a severely-angled Daniel Libeskind designed residence in Connecticut and at the so-called Domus Solaris, an all but perfect, 1975-built Buff and Hensmen designed pavilion with one bedroom and 1.5 bathrooms on L.A.'s famed Mulholland Drive. (As it turns out the downright dee-voon Domus Solaris, owned by sports agent Michael Reilly, is currently on the open market and, as of this morning, in escrow with an asking price of $2.4 million.)

*Listing photographs Your Mama combed over with a fine toothed comb do not show the foyer but it does appear in March 2005 article about the obviously rich art-minded couple in W Magazine with the aforementioned finishes and artworks.

**The four-unit (rental) building on top of which the Paul Rudolph penthouse sits was listed for sale in late 2012 for $27.5 million. The price was lowered to $22.5 million before it was de-listed in May 2013. The building does not appear to have been sold. In May 2013 the high-glam penthouse once leased by Mister Fletcher popped up for lease at $14,000 per month and, after it was reduced to $13,700, rented to an unknown party in late March. The parlor floor space on Washington Square North that Mister Fletcher used as an art exhibition and project space was listed for lease in mid-January 2014 at $8,500 per month. It was taken off the market 11 days later but it's not clear to this property snoop if the 1 bedroom and 1.5 space was rented.

exterior photo of Time Warner towers: Christopher Bride for Property Shark
listing photos and floor plan: Corcoran

Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar Flipping out in Brentwood

SELLERS: Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $7,900,000
SIZE: 7,318 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It was only six short months ago, eagle-eyed celebrity real estate watchers will recall, that Hollywood veterans Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar paid $6.1 million for an East Coast-y mini-manse in the rustically swank (upper) Mandeville Canyon area of Los Angeles which they've flipped back on the market this week with a significantly (and curiously) higher price tag of $7.9 million.

Current listing details show the three-story, clapboard clad Colonial, partially hidden from the street behind a short stacked stone wall and a high hedge, has a total of six bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms in 7,318 square feet. A careful if quick comparison of current listing photos to those from the time of the couples' August 2013 acquisition suggest few (if any) alterations were made to the residence besides a trendy darkening the hardwood floors throughout the main floor, a little paint here and/or there, and the installation of their own comfortable if vanilla-flavored furnishings.

A double-height entrance hall with the same drippy crystal chandelier duo as when they bought the house links through to formal living and dining rooms, the former with with fireplace, wet bar, and wine storage room. A series of French doors framed by the same crimson curtains that hung there when the Prinze-Gellers bought that house last year open to a shallow veranda with verdant backyard views. There's a second fireplace in a cozy study and a third, cattywompus one in the spacious open-plan kitchen/eating/family room space that, like the formal living room, opens through a series of French doors to a trellis-shaded terrace.

There are a total of six bedrooms including a staff suite on the main floor and four guest/family bedrooms on the second floor. The roomy, second floor master suite has a soaring, sky-lit vaulted ceiling, a (fourth) fireplace, two sets of French doors that open to a small private terrace, and two fitted walk-in closets. The marble-tiled master bathroom also appears unaltered from the the Prinze-Gellers' 2013 purchase and (still) includes a pair of sinks, a windowed crapper cubicle, a soaking tub set in front of an over-sized window, and a separate marble-sheathed steam shower with convenient built-in bench.

Tucked up under the eaves on the third floor, as per listing details, there's a "bonus room" and a home fitness room where we imagine Mister Prinze, Jr. and Miz Gellar spend a lot of time keeping their bodies in HD camera ready condition.

The backyard isn't particularly large for a nearly eight million dollar home in an area of Los Angeles known for its horse-friendly estates but it is private and lush with several shaded terraces, a long and slender strip of well-watered lawn for the pooches and kiddies, a built-in barbecue station, and a free-from swimming pool and spa set into a flagstone terrace wedged between an ugly (if practical) child safety fence and a steep up slope.

Of course, Your Mama has no idea what Mister Prinze, Jr. and Miz Gellar's future real estate plans hold but it could be they'll decamp to whence they came, a 7,335 square foot residence in the same guard-gated Bel Air community where Kimmie Kardashian and her baby-daddy Kanye West own a lavishly renovated macmansion. Property records and other digitally accessed resources show the three-enshrouded residence has seven bedrooms and seven bathrooms and that they picked it up for $2.45 million way back in October 2001.

listing photos: Teles Properties