LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $6,995,000
SIZE: 2,095 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Two years ago screenwriter and producer Ryan Murphy (Glee, Nip/Tuck, Eat Pray Love) signed a four-year deal with 20th Century Fox TV potentially worth up to $10,000,000 per year. As do many who find their bank accounts flooded with boo-coo bucks Mister Murphy soon went on a real estate spending spree.
In September 2010 he dropped ten million clams on a hacienda-style mansion in Beverly Hills, CA originally designed and built in the 1920s by architect Ralph Flewelling and restored by Oscar-winning actress Diane Keaton, one of Hollywood's most famous flippers of historically-minded residences.
The following summer Mister Murphy laid out another multi-million dollar bundle to buy another pricey property owned by another Oscar-winning actress, this time new single-mommy Charlize Theron. Property records and previous reports show the openly homosexual Hollywood hotshot paid Miz Theron $6,562,500 for her ocean-front getaway on Malibu's sandy La Costa Beach.
Just over a year after he signed on the deed's dotted line and acquired Miz Theron's real estate seconds Mister Murphy appears to have caught a case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle and this week flipped his beach front digs back on the (open) market with an asking price of $6,995,000.
Current listing information shows the two-story house sits—as most of them on the beach in the Bu do—cheek-to-jowl with the neighboring houses and sandwiched on a compact, .15-acre lot between the pounding surf and the typically traffic-choked Pacific Coast Highway. The well-maintained but modestly-scaled and somewhat non-descript house was originally built in 1930 and spans just 2,095 square foot with a total of with 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. One of the bedrooms and bathrooms can be accessed via an exterior staircase in the walled, gated and heavily secured front courtyard and as such makes for a perfect guest bedroom, staff suite or in-law quarters.r
Listing photographs reveal Mister Murphy made few (if any) significant alterations to the architecture of the dwelling but did have a nice-gay or lady decorator work the place over with a strong and very expensive looking semi-nautical streak meant, we imagine, to look and feel "masculine" in the way that professionally decorated rooms are sometimes designed to give off a nice-gay or lady decorators version of butch and manly.
Anyhoo, Mister Murphy did opt to cover the wood floors in the living room and adjoining lanai with a rope-y sort of sisal but did retain the bay window seat and shallow inglenook fitted with built-in benches and a flagstone-faced fireplace surround in the living room. In the lanai it appears he (and his decorating team) opted to keep Miz Theron's blue and white striped upholstery on the built-in bench seating that rings the ocean-side, window-wrapped room.
The sisal turns to grey slate tile—or some similar material—in the u-shaped kitchen where the custom, poured concrete counter tops and cabinetry still hold top-grade, commercial-style stainless steel appliances and the lower cabinets are fitted with wood doors painted jet black.
The (gay) ship's captain day-core downstairs continues up in the master bedroom—note the ship model on the mantel, the ship painting above the fireplace and the distressed, tufted leather wing back chair —finished with pale wood floors, a vaulted ceiling, wood-burning fireplace with contemporary concrete surround, built-in dressers tucked in to the eaves and direct ocean view. The attached master pooper has double sinks; a glass-enclosed shower lined with tiny, pale sea foam-colored tile; an over-sized soaking tub set into a bay with direct ocean view; and a second, tufted leather wing back chair where Mister Murphy can sit and clip his toe nails, lotion up his sun-baked legs or whatever.
In addition to the walled, street-side courtyard with its koi pond and blazing bougainvillea bush there's a sizable beach-side deck accessible through a wood-framed sliding glass door in the lanai. A glass rail along the deck's edge ensure unobstructed ocean views from the deck that's equipped with a built-in benches and dining cabana (with oh-so-nautical blue and white striped cushions), built-in fire pit, spa and outdoor shower. Private steps lead down to the beach.
The children may recall that last July Mister Murphy listed his two-residence compound high in the hills above Laguna Beach, CA with an asking price of $8,500,000. The hillside, ocean-view compound—with a main house worked over by sassy Million Dollar Decorator Mary McDonald—was de- an re-listed a couple of times before it was taken off the market in early December 2011.
listing photos: The Partners Trust