LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $40,000,000
SIZE: 12,000 square feet, 13 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Last night, whilst we perused some of the newest listings in and around Los Angeles we stumbled across a 48-acre compound tucked up in the L.A.'s Mandeville Canyon that's just popped up on the open market with an asking price of $40,000,000. That's right, puppies, that's 48 contiguous residential acres in the middle of goddamn Los Angeles.
Although ownership of the compound is through a trust, no fewer than three of Your Mama's beloved coterie of canaries previously told us the unusually expansive property in urban-rustic Upper Mandeville Canyon is owned by wealthy widow and philanthropist Glorya Kaufman.* The bulk of Miz Kaufman's vast fortune comes from her late husband Donald Kaufman who, with business partner cum art world super-patron Eli Broad, founded the home building behemoth Kaufman & Broad, now known as KB Home, and went to meet The Great Contractor in the Sky in 1983.
We're not actually sure when Missus Kaufman acquired her Mandeville Canyon mega-estate but it was not after 1992 and all of y'all can all be assured she paid only a fraction of its current forty million dollar asking price.
Custom electronic gates swing open to a quarter mile long tree-lined driveway that swoops up, around and over a short bridge that spans a narrow finger of a multi-acre private lake to a parking lot-sized circular motor court at the front of the main mansion, an approximately 12,000 square foot two-story ranch residence originally built in 1964.
Listing details show there are 13 bedrooms and 7.5 bathrooms but, to be honest, chickens, Your Mama isn't sure if those figures reflect the number of bedrooms and bathrooms in the main house only or if they also encompass any bedrooms and bathrooms located in the other half dozen structures on the property that include a separate guest house, a caretaker's apartment, a pavilion that overlooks the lighted tennis court and a substantial maintenance building.
The acreage immediately around Miz Kaufman's house and its satellite structures is landscaped with such meticulous abandon that Miz Kaufman surely employ at least one full-time groundskeeper to keep all those shrubs, flower and trees looking 5-star resort worthy.
Miz Kaufman has decided to downsize and two of Your Mama's better informed sources whispered that last May (2012) the elderly but still vivacious and socially engaged philanthropist shelled out $18.2 million for a very private single-story villa in Beverly Hills that she purchased from Las Vegas-based media mogul Carl Parmer, owner of the Robb Report, a glossy publication dedicated to the luxury lifestyles of the rich and super rich.
*Uh oh. At least one former employees is mad as a hornet and has lots of less than flattering things to say about Miz Kaufman and the authenticity and motivations of of her numerous philanthropic endeavors, specifically as they relate to her eponymous Glorya Kaufman Dance Foundation. that recently endowed an new school of dance at the University of Southern California.
listing photos: Mark Singer Photography for Keller Williams Beverly Hills