LOCATION: Miami Beach, FL
PRICE: $10,750,000
SIZE: 9,944 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5 full and 3 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen children, Your Mama and Sister Woman (and clan) drove out to Big Daddy's ranch the other day morning in the goddamn middle of nowhere where not only isn't there any available WiFi service but there isn't, believe it or not, any internet service at all. We thought about popping into Tinyville to see if we could scare up some WiFi at the dinky diner but we got distracted by a Christmas tree catastrophe—don't ask—and before we knew it it was time to head back to civilization...
Anyhoo, on Thanksgiving, before we left for Big Daddy's, in a glorious haze of tryptophans and gin, we received a covert communique from Betty Butterball who let us know that Dr. Lenny and Lisa Hochstein have their Miami Beach, FL mansion on the market with an asking price of $10,750,000.
Missus Hochstein, in case her name does not ring your celebrity bells, is a former nude model who appears in all her plasticine glory on the second (and current) season of The Real Housewives of Miami and Doctor Hochstein is a well known and highly successful Miami-based plastic surgeon who specializes in facial rejuvenation and boob jobs. Presumably it's Doctor H. who's responsible for Missus H.'s super-sized and very unnatural looking bazooms.
Turns out the Moscow born and New Jersey raised plastic surgeon and the substantially younger and balloon chested former Playboy model have had their house on the market since March 2011—when it was listed with an asking price of $10,750,000—and a few minutes on the interweb tells us we are hardly the first property gossip to discuss the waterfront mini-estate that's located on the northern shore of the northernmost isle of the swank and pricey four-island Sunset Island neighborhood located in the Biscayne Bay just north of South Beach.
Property records show Doctor Hochstein, along another man and woman with the same Hochstein surname, first purchased the property in April 2005 for $4,350,000. They proceeded to custom-build the existing mock-Med manse they dubbed Palacio del Eden and sometime in 2007, right about the time the house was completed, Doctor Hochstein bought out his same-surnamed partners and became the sole owner of the palatial abode where the nipped, tucked and Botoxed couple married in October 2009.*
Current listing information and property records show the essentially symmetrical and decidedly showy domicile sits tightly on just over half a landscaped acre and has five bedrooms and five full and three half bathrooms in 9,944 square feet of gaudy interiors dressed to impress with elaborate frescoed ceilings, intricate vine-like wrought iron railings, solid marble columns and archways, heavy carved wood furniture and cabinetry by the boat load, damask wall coverings and dozens upon dozens of arched windows and French doors.
The meretricious manse was prominently featured on the second season of The Real Housewives of Miami and was the scene of a couple of spectacular and downright tawdry cat fights during which one sassy queen pushed another mouthy queen into the swimming pool and one "housewife" smacked another across the face. There is, of course, absolutely nothing redeeming in behavior like that but ain't none of y'all will convince Your Mama that was not high-larious to watch a bunch of rich and "rich" people who claim to be high brow members of Miami's affluent social circuit screeching like drunken banshees and acting like wild eyed trailer trash.
Anyhoo, a gated driveway paved with herringbone pattern brick passes between two detached two-car garages and into a central motor where a pair of towering palms stand on either side of the main entrance. For reasons Your Mama can not fathom or recommend, there are dense thickets of potted plants placed under the twin floating staircases in the gilt-trimmed double-height foyer. Overhead there's a 14-foot diameter stained glass dome that back lit for maximum architectural (melo)drama.
Ample public spaces for large scale entertaining surround and open to a piazza-sized central courtyard and include formal living and dining rooms and a billiards room fitted with a heavy carved wood built-in buffet and display cabinet, a frescoed groin vaulted ceiling and an unapologetically lurid red and gold brocade sofa that sends shivers up and down Your Mama's delicate decorative spine.
Less formal spaces include a colossal center island kitchen with a soaring barrel vaulted brick ceiling, unnecessarily florid carved wood cabinetry and an adjacent family room that opens through a series of arched french doors to a deep loggia and back yard. The lack of decorative restraint reaches its apex, perhaps, in the thirteen seat gold and blood red home theater. Beyond the oppressively—ahem— sumptuous day-core, who puts puts thirteen seats in a home theater? We don't know who cleans the Hochstein's humongous house but Your Mama and The Dr. Cooter's deeply superstitious house gurl Svetlana would have a violent and destructive conniption if we so much as asked her to step into let along tidy up a room with thirteen of anything. Other necessities of the luxe life include a wine cellar and a home fitness room.
The second floor water-side master suite is certainly sizable but who could sleep peacefully in a room that garish? Plus, Your Mama knows it gets hot and icky humid in Miami in the summertime but, still, why didn't anyone think to purchase a rug to cover up the acre of tile flooring in there? And the big ol' master bathroom, well, let's just say a bathroom that decoratively vulgar binds Your Mama right up.
The courtyard and the back of the house open to a mostly stone-tiled waterside back yard where there's a massive, Versace-style mosaic tiled negative edge swimming pool and an open air poolside cabana with built-in barbecue and crapper that means no one needs to traipse through the house soaking wet from a dip in the pool. A row of palm trees along the 100-plus feet of bulk headed shore line where there's a private dock and boat lift.
Property records we peeped show the Hochsteins officially picked up their Star Island estate in late 2011 for $7,200,000 in a long, complicated and somewhat mysterious foreclosure situation.
The one-plus acre, wedge-shaped spread has, according to various online resources, 205 feet of Biscayne Bay frontage, a somewhat run-down 1920s three story Spanish Colonial style main mansion with 8,117 square foot plus three additional guest/staff residences for a total of eight bedrooms and seven full and three half bathrooms.
The house was used as the home of Al Pacino's iconic character Tony Montana in the 1983 movie Scarface.
*Other than her mammoth mammaries that are quite obviously surgically enhanced we really have no idea what if any other surgical or injectable alterations may or may not have been undertaken by Missus and/or Mister Hochstein.
listing photos (Sunset Island): Coldwell Banker Previews
listing photos (Star Island): Alex Shay
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