LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $26,000,000
SIZE: Huge with 8 bedrooms, 11 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Buckle your safety belts, butter beans. As already reported by gossip juggernaut TMZ earlier today, L.A.-based businesswoman Adrienne Maloof of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills fame and her Bev Hills plastic surgeon husband Paul Nassif have hoisted their humongous, gilt-trimmed Richard Landry-designed faux-French chateau in the guard-gated Beverly Park community on the market with an engorged asking price of $26,000,000.
Tabloid readers and reality tee-vee watchers aren't surprised by this real estate turn of events since the always bickering in front of the cameras couple have split up and are currently in the early stages of a divorce that's already turned bitter and ugly.
Property records we peeped reveal the quondam couple purchased the unapologetically palatial property in May 2004 for $12,708,000. It doesn't take a mathematics savant or a even functional calculator to see the Maloof-Nassifs hope to double their money less carrying costs, improvements, renovations, maintenance and upkeep, real estate fees, and the various other expenses related to owning a residence and property of this magnitude.
Listing information available online does not currently indicate the square footage of the obviously immense and conspicuously opulent faux-chateau but does show the hulking house sits on almost two, painstakingly manicured and expensively maintained acres with 8 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms. Public records, for the record, show the incorrigibly palatial pile has 7 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms in 12,882 square feet.
Now children, before we really dig in and get our claws dirty, let's have a wee caveat, shall we? Despite her lurid allegations of physical brutality, Your Mama happens to think Mister Nassif comes off on the boob-tube a lovable galoot of a guy and in spite of her (too) tiny feet and terrifying maquillage we find Miz Maloof to be a charmingly nervy and savvy entrepreneur/television personality but we are, even still, utterly confounded to the point of gut wrenching mortification at their wildly extravagant decorative proclivities.
Is it just Your Mama or are there others who also have extreme difficultly getting past the ludicrously palatial and comically ostentatious day-core? Are we more per-turbed by the statue of two hugging children (and small dog) on the park bench near the front door that may or may not be a Seward Johnson situation or more dis-turbed by the several portraits of Miz Maloof sprinkled throughout of the house? For the life of us we can't figure out if we're most particularly and distressingly drawn—like a driver to a mangled roadside car wreck—to the oil painting of Miz Maloof dressed in a ball gown and admiring herself in a hand held mirror or the one above the fireplace in the family room in which she's depicted nearly prostrate on a sofa with a small child—presumably one of her own—perched upon her belly.
Furthermore, we can't decide what is more equilibrium upsetting: the white and gold baby grand in the formal living room that only Liberace could (and should) love or the truly vexatious rocking chair like object set awkwardly in front of the fireplace? Are we more concerned with the ego of someone whose capacious master bedroom looks like it was decorated by the pope himself or do we fret endlessly about the psyche of someone who installs shiny, blood red leather reclining chairs in their home theater? What makes Your Mama's decorative skin crawl more? The frilly floral window treatments in the colossal, two-island kitchen and breakfast room, the gold and tassel trimmed blue brocade drapery extravaganza in the formal dining room, or the red velvet swagging above the windows in the poker-playing room?
The double-gated, high-maintenance grounds are comparatively sedate compared to the faux-Baroque/Rococo decor—there's not a stature of David to be seen in listing photographs—and include a circular fore-court connected by a swooping driveway that wraps around to a second motor court and four-bay garage on the side of the house. Out back there's a soccer pitch-sized lawn, numerous terraces and covered patios, an outdoor kitchen/barbecue center, extensive swimming pool and spa complex, tennis court, and detached guest house converted at least partially to a sports memorabilia-festooned, multi-purpose work out facility.
The $26,000,000 asking price is hardly rare for the hoity-toity 'hood where at least one house once had a terrifically optimistic fifty million dollar price tag but recent sales have come in significantly lower. Comedian/actor Martin Lawrence unloaded his gaudy, 13,855 square foot mansion in June of this year (2012) for $17,200,000. An unusually contemporary, 13,081 square foot residence on 3.5+ acres a couple doors down from Miz Maloof and Mister Nassif's spread—most Beverly Park mansions are steroidal versions of Tuscan villas and Mediterranean manor houses (or whatever)—was sold in January of this year for $21,750,000 and Miz Maloof's castmate Lisa Vanderpump sold her equally opulent and similarly scaled mansion directly across the street last September (2011) for $18,800,000.
As an aside, Miz Vanderpump's former mansion was severely damaged in a fire in late June (2012) and it's not known—at least by Your Mama—whether the new owners plan to repair and renovate or raze and start all over again.
We don't normally mention real estate agents around here—we think they prefer we leave them out of the equation—but it's notable that Miz Maloof and Mister Nassif have chosen Beverly Park honcho Mauricio Umansky (at The Agency) who happens to be married to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' cast member Kyle Richards.
listing photos: The Agency