SELLERS: Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi-DeGeneres
LOCATION: Los Angeles, Calif.
PRICE: $7,495,000 and $8,495,000; $15,990,000 (total)
SIZE: 8,071 square feet (combined), 4 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms (all together)
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: No one in Hollywood does real estate more fascinatingly — or cray-cray, depending on one’s point of view — than ground-breaking comedian-turned-internationally beloved chat show queen Ellen DeGeneres and horse-loving actress Porta De Rossi-DeGeneres. For the last half-decade, the famously itchy-footed Tinseltowners have rarely been absent from the property gossip columns for more than a couple of months, and last week it was reported by many of our celebrity real estate compadres that the forever packing and unpacking couple is on the move again, for the third time in less than a year. And, they are: They’ve put a pair of recently acquired condos in a swank building along L.A.’s Wilshire Corridor on the open market for a combined $15.99 million and, as Your Mama told y’all about six weeks ago, the Sapphic sweethearts somewhat surreptitiously snatched up a house across town that Miz DeGeneres had previously owned. And they did. More on that in a minute but, first, let’s have a quick recap of the couple’s most recent real estate doings…
In the last days of 2013, the perpetually peripatetic pair paid $39.888 million for a lauded and recently rehabbed Holmby Hills estate that they flipped in an off-market deal just six or so months later to Internet tycoon Sean Parker for $49.5 million. In immediate need of a place to hang their designer sneakers, the couple quickly shelled out a widely reported $16 million for a pair of spacious and adjacent but uncombined condos that together encompass the entire 12th floor of the newly erected Beverly West tower on Wilshire Boulevard. Together, as per listing details and other online marketing materials, the two condos span more than 8,000 square feet. The smaller, half-floor unit, now priced at $7. 495 million, has two bedrooms and three bathrooms in 3,813 square feet, while the larger unit spans 4,158 square feet with two bedrooms and three bathrooms and carries an asking price of $8.495 million.
Each unit has deeded garage parking for two cars, direct-entry elevator access plus a separate service elevator and expansive walls of glass that provide extensive views that sweep from the San Bernadino Mountains to Catalina Islands. Both units are impeccably and expensively fitted and finished with hand-cut stone and wide-plank oak floors, custom paneling, Italian-brand kitchens with stone countertops, high-grade custom walk-in closets and home automation systems that control the lighting and electronic shades via iPad. The 35-unit building offers its pampered residents a 24-hour staffed lobby, 24-hour valet parking services, high security, a conference facility, fitness center, Pilates room and a saltwater swimming pool, spa and communal outdoor lounge and barbecue area.
Now then, let’s get back to the meaty part of this particular celebrity real estate ditty. Last week, as Your Mama told the children back in mid-November, celebrity property gossips around the globe reported the couple re-re-purchasd a L.A.’s Nichols Canyon property that Miz DeGeneres previously owned and sold in 2007 for $10 million to a deep-pocketed heiress to a Washington State window manufacturing fortune. The 2007 sale price reflects the combined sale price of two homes, a larger, low-slung ranch-style residence reworked by Marmol and Radziner and a smaller, vaguely boomerang-shaped mid-century era ranch house next door that was recently rehabbed by Ellen’s former girlfriend Alexandra Hedison, currently married to Jodie Foster, once romantically linked, so we’ve been told, to the window manufacturing heiress.
Most of the reports Your Mama read identified the smaller, Hedison-rehabbed property as the one recently repurchased by the DeGeneres-De Rossis but, as this property gossip reported in late July, the window-manufacturing heiress sold off the smaller residence this summer for $3.161 million not to Ellen and Portia but rather to a blind trust that always on the money real estate yenta Yolanda Yakkeyyak swears is controlled by Emmy-winning actor-writer-producer Stephen Merchant (“Hello Ladies,” “The Office,” “The Ricky Gervais Show”).
In fact, what property records show — or at least strongly suggest — is that the house Missus DeGeneres and De Rossi-DeGeneres actually purchased via blind trust in an off-market deal for an as yet undisclosed amount is not the smaller boomerang-shaped house but rather — as Your Mama told the children in November — the sprawling Marmol and Radziner designed ranch house that the L.A. County Tax Man’s records show sits on 1.63 gated acres and measures 3,994 square feet with five bedrooms and three bathrooms.
Only time will tell if Ellen and Portia have finally found their slice of real estate paradise or if, as they typically do, they’ll quickly catch a raging case of the Celebrity Real Estate Fickle. Over the years of their near ceaseless move-about Miz DeGeneres bought at least two multi-million dollar homes from Emmy-winning and house-proud sitcom writer-producer Max Mutchnick. One of them is now owned by Ryan Seacrest and another by Will Ferrell. Wouldn’t it just be de-voon in its unabashed celebrity ridiculousness if DeGeneres made Mutchnick and his husband an offer they can’t refuse for their big Bev Hills Manse? Don’t laugh. Stranger things have happened.
As far as our research indicates, the pampered pair continue to own a lavish 10-acre-plus spread with a 10,522-square-foot John Saladino-designed mansion in the swank seaside community of Montecito, Calif.,that they picked up in May 2013 for $26.5 million.
Listing photos: Westside Estate Agency
