LOCATION: Tarzana, CA
PRICE: $3,550,000
SIZE: 9,200 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The bad news for Charlie Sheen's third ex-wife Brooke Mueller is that she's back in the tabloids and back in rehab...for the 19th time. The occasional actress and Paris Hilton pal was rushed to the hospital last week, so the stories go, due to an over-dose of Adderal, a name-brand psychostimulant most commonly prescribed to treat ADHD, with which—it seems—Miz Mueller suffers.
The good news is that notoriously erratic Miz Mueller, who grew up privileged in Palm Beach (FL), is well known amongst celebrity real estate followers for flipping high-priced properties in the Los Angeles area and has just about sold the Tarzana, CA mansion she bought less than a year ago from former Spice Girl Mel B and her movie producer hubby Stephen Belafonte (Bad Lieutenant, Thank Your For Smoking) for $3,000,000. After the addition of some glammy wall treatments, Miz Mueller flipped the property back on the market about a month ago with an asking price of $3,550,000 and two weeks later it was put into escrow with an unknown buyer for an unknown amount.
Not counting carrying costs, renovation expenditures and real estate fees, Mel B and Mister Belafonte took a $159,000 financial bath when they sold the the privately situated, .62 acre mini-estate in an affluent area of the quintessentially suburban community that they bought in September 2009 for $3,159,000.
Current listing information describes the property in all capital letters as "STUNNING, CELEBRITY GATED COMPOUND!" with four bedrooms and six bathrooms in approximately 9,200 square feet. The scandalized Los Angeles County Assessors office puts the house at a much smaller but still substantial 6,737 square feet. Your Mama's best guess—and it 'tis just a guest, dearies—is that the additional square footage indicated on current listing information is made up for by the detached guest house/games room/state of the art movie theater.
The double front doors, tucked into a shallow porch immediately and inelegantly adjacent to the attached three car garage, open into a macmansion sized double-height foyer outfitted with a curved Scarlett O'Hara-style staircase, a jazzy Swarovski crystal chandelier and shimmering gold-toned walls. The formal living room has a floor-to-ceiling carved stone fireplace and a wide bank of French doors that swing open to a narrow covered veranda. There are milk chocolate colored hardwood floors in both the formal living and dining rooms as well as animal print area rugs.
Listen people, Your Mama can really get behind a good animal print rug. We adored the idiosyncratic animal print shenanigans installed throughout Templeton, socialite Cornelia Guest's stately estate in stiff-lipped and old money Old Westbury, NY. The wide, celery-colored corridor with the worn leopard print wall-to-wall carpeting, potted geraniums and gilt-framed paintings strikes Your Mama as the very height of East Coast blue blood decorative chic. It may not be to everyone's preference or palatte but that does not mean it's not absolutely correct.
Anyhoo, the formal dining—lined with smoked mirrored glass panels meant, we imagine, to glam glam the room up—connects directly to a blood red den/family room with another carved stone fireplace, a ho-hum suite of distressed leather club chairs and sofa and direct access to the back yard entertainment areas through a pair of French doors.
The adjoining kitchen—unquestionably large and well-equipped—is a prototypical suburban center island eat-in situation tarted up with a Swarovski crystal chandelier, high grade appliances that include a commercial-style six-burner range, slab marble counter tops and wood cabinets finished in what may be the most unnatural yellow-beige color we have ever seen.*
The main level also includes, as per listing information, a coupe of "JUNIOR SUITES," an "PHENOMENAL OFFICE," laundry facilities and a separate stairway to a spacious fitness room lined with floor to ceiling mirrors on at three walls that ensures that each and every flabby this and cellulite-d that is remarkably and painfully visible ad infinitum from every angle. No thank you.
The upstairs master suite encompasses a plum-colored bedroom the size of a ballroom with fireplace, two bay windows and a lot of open space under yet another decadent Swarovski crystal chandelier. We're not sure if Miz Mueller just never got around to furnishing the room or if she maybe she likes the open space so she can do yoga and/or turn cartwheels on the big bone-colored shag rug. The master suite also includes a roomy walk-in closet custom fitted for function over style and an all-beige tile slathered bathroom with two sinks, make up vanity, separate soaking tub and glass enclosed shower.
The fully developed and landscaped areas around the house include a party-sized motor court at the front and a meandering terrace at the back of the house with a built-in fire pit fully realized outdoor kitchen and lounge set up with snack counter and massive stacked stone fireplace. Around the side of the house, overlooked by a covered veranda on both the first and second floors, is a large rectangular swimming pool with a slightly elevated spa and tanning terrace. We love that the pool appears to be set into a the tree tops but we're not so fond of the ticky-tacky child safety fence that surrounds it. We understand their utility and all that, they're just usually so visually incongruous, intrusive and, well, ugly.
The entire property has been expensively equipped with top of the line surround sound throughout and CAT 6 high speed wiring and—natch—a state of the art security system.
We really don't know what Miz Mueller's post-rehab real estate plans are but, given that she's a bit of a house flipper, we expect she'll soon enough snap up another expensive house in the Los Angeles area that she won't live in or own very long. In May 2005 she—along with her wealthy socialite mother—paid $1,525,000 for a glassy mid-century modern up in Nichols Canyon that they turned over with a nearly $800,000 profit—not counting costs– in August 2007 for $2,317,000. Shortly thereafter, in November 2007, she paid $2,575,000 for an especially appealing 1927 Mediterranean in the Los Feliz area that she listed in June 2009 and finally sold in October 2011 for $2,900,000 to actor Simon Helberg (The Big Bang Theory).
*Of course, the cabinets may actually be the most gorgeous shade of yellow-beige we've ever seen and it's just a shortcoming of the photograph that makes them appear the color of dog vomit.
listing photos: Keller Williams Realty
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