BUYER: Jimmy and Jane Buffett
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, Calif.
PRICE: $8,250,000
SIZE: 4,322 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Jimmy Buffett, He-Rah of Margaritaville fame and fortune, enjoys a reputation among his legions of fans — Parrotheads, they call themselves — as an easygoing, thongs-wearing beach bum. And, maybe he is Mister Low Key but he’s also preposterously rich with a much-reported net worth of about $400 million bucks and a long-standing penchant for purchasing residential real estate in some of the world’s most immoderately expensive locales.
The two-time Grammy nominee and his longtime second missus, Jane, have long owned multi-million dollar homes and compounds in Palm Beach (FL), the Hamptons (NY), and St. Barts and, in April of this year, they quietly shelled out $8.25 million for a freshly and fastidiously rehabbed mid-century minded pied-a-terre in the Trousdale estates area of Beverly Hills.*
The seller, according to all the various property record data bases Your Mama consulted, was Hollywood theatrical marketing guru Matt Brubaker (of Trailer Park) who acquired the property from a non-celebrity couple in late December 2012 for $5.8 million. A look back over digital listings from the time Mister Brubaker bought the property show he gave the interiors a thorough cosmetic overhaul and flipped it back on the market in the early days of 2014 with an asking price of $8.399 million.
Originally built in 1963, the single-story home sits behinds a stainless steel gate that slides open to a teeny-weeny motor court and side-facing two-car attached garage with stainless steel doors. Another stainless steel gate opens from the motor court to a walled entry courtyard where a long and shallow water channel must be crossed in order to get to the all-glass front door. (It is just Your Mama who finds stainless steel driveway gates and garage doors to be an impressively expensive if depressingly passé, turn-of-the-21st-century architectural conceit?)
Polished terrazzo floors flow throughout much of the glass-walled residence that most recent digital listings indicate contains four bedrooms and five bathrooms in 4,322 square feet. A brief entrance hall bursts forth into an L-shaped open-concept living space that includes a “formal” living room with fireplace, back-lit built-in book shelves and a full wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and sliders. The floor-to-ceiling sliders wrap around to the adjoining family room where there’s a second fireplace and a built-in, four-stool wet bar that ought to make all the booze hounds like Your Mama pee their pants with glee.
The center island eat-in kitchen, conveniently just around the corner from the family room and wet bar, has loads of flat-fronted walnut cabinetry fitted with barely-there hardware, lots of charcoal-toned solid-surface countertops and backsplashed (of unknown material) and a full suite of top-grade appliances that include a full-height wine fridge, an integrated coffee maker and — we’re thrilled to report — a built-in microwave oven. A small office off the kitchen has built-in desk and cabinets with a sand-colored countertop (also of unknown material).
A third (marble or maybe onyx-faced) fireplace surmounted by a built-in flat screen television adds romance and heat (or whatever) to the master bedroom that also features a long wall of rich walnut paneling behind the bed and an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and sliders that link to the poolside terrace. Our research suggests the master suite has dual dressing rooms and two bathrooms, the larger with tootsie pleasing heated marble tile floors, a floating vanity with hair and makeup station, a spa-sized jetted tub and a glass-enclosed and marble lined steam shower.
The family room spills out through floor-to-ceiling glass sliders to a deep dining veranda that gives way to a flat if fairly small backyard with plunge-sized salt water swimming pool and inset spa. A narrow strip of what appears to Your Mama to be high-quality faux-grass runs around three sides of the swimming pool.
Other features noted in listing details include an oversized laundry room, an over-the-tree-tops view that extends — on a clear day — all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and a state-of-the-art home automation system that can be remotely controlled from anywhere in the world.
As Your Mama briefly mentioned earlier, Mister and Missus Buffett have long-owned a 7.13 acre, multi-residence bay front compound in the historic Hamptons community of Sag Harbor that property records indicate was purchased in 1993 for an unrecorded sum. The Buffett’s compound sits immediately next door to Strongheart, the six-plus acre, multi-residence bay front compound that Richard Gere and his estranged wife Carrie Lowell currently have up for sale on the open market with an asking price of $56 million.
We confess we know next to nil about the Buffets’ island hideaway on St. Bart but we do know they’ve long maintained a substantial residence in the blue-blooded and big money enclave of Palm Beach, Fla., where in 1994 they paid $4.4 million for a 1.6 acre ocean front estate on Ocean Boulevard with an 11,542 square foot 1920s Federal-style mansion designed by Marion Sims Wyeth. They sold the estate in May 2010 for 18.5 million to next door neighbor, surgical supply billionaire, trained architect and philanthropist Jon Stryker who, just this month, sold the estate — along with the house next door — to for $42.9 million to British insurance tycoon and part-time Palm Beacher Peter Wood. Mister Wood reportedly plans to break up the compound, re-sell Mister Styrker’s former home, build and sell a spec house on one of the vacant parcels and raze the old Buffett mansion and replace it with one more to his liking.
Mister Stryker has been high-end real estate gossip column catnip since last fall (2013) when he heaved his spectacular, 5,600 square foot duplex penthouse atop the heavily ornamented Beaux-Arts-style Prásadá building on New York City’s Upper West Side on the market for for $48,000,000. The penthouse — and its 3,500-plus square feet of landscaped terraces — sold in March to an as yet still-unidentified buyer for $42,000,000.
For photos of the property, click here.
