LOCATION: Windermere Island, Eleuthera, Bahamas
PRICE: $5,500,000
SIZE: (approx.) 4,000 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: For more than half a century privacy-seeking celebs, deep-pocketed plutocrats and various British royals—including the late Princess Diana—have holidayed on Windermere Island, a slim, semi-remote sliver of powdery pink-hued sand off the Bahamian island of Eleuthera accessible only by private helicopter or a short, guard-gated bridge.
5-time Grammy- and 31-time Billboard Music Award-winning American pop music superstar Mariah Carey—a dedicated vocal acrobat with a piercing, laser-sharp four octave vocal range— has done a little vacaying on Windermere Island since at least 2007 or 2008 when she bought a secluded, beachfront compound called Villa Sea Lily.
Your Mama can't be certain exactly what the parabolically curvaceous Miz Carey coughed up for Villa Sea Lily but scads of reports from the time of her purchase show she shelled out somewhere around $5,000,000 for the estate that was last listed—as far as we can tell from our entirely unscientific research—with an asking price $4,900,000.
She and comedian cum musician turned tee-vee presenter Nick Cannon were hitched at the seaside estate in a secret ceremony, in May 2008, after less than two months of (public) courtship. Contrary to the odds in Vegas and romance cynics (like Your Mama), Mister Cannon and Miz Carey remain married and last year produced a set of twins. In April they renewed their nuptial vows in a small ceremony in Paris with a night-time view of the Eiffel Tower.
However, while it appears these two will be keeping each other for the foreseeable future they are looking to dump their Windermere Island hideaway that we discovered—thanks to a real estate leg up from an informant we call Chatty Charlie—is up for grabs with a $5,500,000 asking price. In fact, children, listing information we peeped indicates the property has actually been on the market undetected since early June...of last year. In 2011!
Current listing information is understandably somewhat parsimonious about the details of the property but an old (lease) listing Your Mama dug out of our (chaotic and incomplete) archives revealed, at the time of Miz Carey's purchase, the private, (approx.) 3-acre seaside compound comprised four pavilions (and two garages) arranged in a tight cluster around an interior courtyard with approx.) 4,000 square feet of air-conditioned interior living space and (approx.) 3,500 square feet of marble walkways, terraces and covered, outdoor living areas.
A pair of almost identical pavilions flank the kitchen and service quarters and house the compound's 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, according to current listing information. Each of Villa Sea Lily's three bedroom suites, as per listing information we peeped, offers a marble bathroom and—thank heavens—a wet bar. At least one of the bedroom suites has a private living room area.
The airy, main outdoor living/dining area—just above the swimming pool with sweeping dune, beach and ocean views obstructed only by swaying palm trees and blinding sunshine—juts forward from between the bedrooms pavilions and includes a stone fireplace, built-in barbecue and—as noted in the listing photos—lots of wicker chairs and a slew of slip-covered sofas in bright white and turqwahze colors.
The 40-foot long swimming pool, nestled into scrubby dunes and surrounded by marble sunbathing terraces, sits between the main outdoor living pavilion and the slender strip of pink(ish) sand that Jacques-Yves Cousteau (allegedly) declared one of the most beautiful in the world.
A beach side ramada tucked into the dunes offers Miz Carey, her kids and their entourage a convenient spot to escape the punishing Caribbean sunshine. It does not, however and as far as we know, have a facility so anyone with a bladder full of booze or seawater will have—as we see it—only three options: find a semi-hidden spot in the dunes; cop a squat over a bucket while your minimum wage housegurl or best gay girlfriend holds a towel up around you and hands you a tissue; make the short but mildly arduous climb up from the beach to the residence. Which option do the children think Miz Carey would choose? We know what we'd do. How about Mister Carey? But we digress...
Miz Carey and Mister Cannon—who, Your Mama revealed earlier this week, have been spending some time this summer at a pricey rental pad in the Hamptons—owns several other luxury properties including a gated estate in Bel Air once owned by Farrah Fawcett, a Mario Buatta-designed triplex penthouse in New York City and—so we've been told—a villa on Capri, a scenically stunning resort island in the Tyrrhenian Sea just off the western coast of Italy (and the location of the ridiculously remote and incomparably magnificent Casa Malaparte, seen here in in stills from the 1963 Jean Luc Godard film Contempt with Brigette Bardot).
listing photos: Ocean Villas Group