It appears prodigiously talented and hugely compensated professional basketball player Chris Paul, traded last year from the L.A. Clippers to the Houston Rockets in exchange for seven — that’s right, seven — players, has come down with a raging case of The Real Estate Fickle. Just six months after he shelled out $6.362 million for an extravagant mansion in an exclusive, guard-gated golf course enclave on the exurban northern outskirts of Houston, Texas, he’s flipped it back on the market at $6.975 million. Built on speculation in 2014 on more than 1.5 landscaped acres that backs up to a manicured fairway of the Jack Nicklaus designed golf course that weaves and winds through the ritzy Carlton Woods enclave in The Woodlands, a master planned community of nearly 60,000 people about 40 miles north of downtown Houston, the semi-Tuscan Spanish/Mediterranean residential behemoth has a total of nine bedrooms and ten full and four half bathrooms in 18,717-square-feet of unapologetically lavish interiors.
A double-gated driveway sweeps across a vast expanse of lawn and circles up under porte-cochère before it tucks around to a secondary motor court with garaging for six cars. Extraordinarily tall, wrought iron accented glass doors set into a windowed archway open to a pretentiously immense combination foyer and formal living room is dressed to impress with theatrical Corinthian columns and a swooping, wrought iron railed sweetheart staircase and bridge that melodramatically traverses the cavernous, double-height space. The formal dining room comfortably seats a dozen or more with a wet bar and climate controlled walk-in wine cellar and a dark-paneled, double-height library has another fireplace and a curvaceous second floor gallery. Less formal but no less sumptuous family quarters include a great room with bookshelf-flanked fireplace and a colossal kitchen arranged around two, marble-topped center islands with a semi-circular breakfast bay and every culinary bell and whistle money can buy.
Guest and family bedrooms are all amply proportioned and en suite while the main-floor master retreat encompasses a ballroom-sized bedroom and sitting room with fireplace plus two fitted dressing rooms lined with glass fronted wardrobes and a marble-sheathed bathroom with “his” and “her” twin vanities, a garden tub set into a windowed bay and a glass-enclosed shower space. There’s also a notably spacious one-bedroom and one-bathroom guest apartment or staff suite with and an L-shaped open-plan living and dining room and a full kitchen.
The mansion’s indoor recreational and leisure amenities include a professional quality theater, a golf simulation room and a half-court basketball court under an elegant, barrel-vaulted ceiling with an adjoining lounge. A second floor family room opens to a gigantic, partly covered terrace that overlooks the swimming pool and golf course and even more outdoor living space is accommodated in a double-height poolside loggia and a massive lanai with and outdoor kitchen, fireplace and ceiling mounted television.
The six-foot-tall point guard, a two-time Olympic gold medal winner and one of the highest-paid athletes on the planet who Forbes estimated hauled in close to $31 million in 2017, previously owned a 12,000-plus-square-foot mansion in the guard-gated Bel Air Crest community at the western edge of L.A.’s Bel Air community he bought in 2012 from Canadian pop-rocker Avril Lavigne for $8.495 million and sold in September 2017 for $8.7 million. Earlier this year Paul also sold a large if otherwise ordinary five bedroom and six bathroom, vaguely Mediterranean residence in Woodland Hills, Calif., for $1.95 million after buying it about four years earlier for $1.775 million but nonetheless maintains a solid, multi-million real estate foothold in Los Angeles in the form of a 10,464-square-foot, multi-winged Mediterranean villa in the swanky Estates at The Oaks enclave in suburban Calabasas he picked up in late 2015 for $8.995 million.
Listing photos: Beth Wolff Realtors
