Bel-Air

For Nicolas Cage the internet seems to full of some good news and some bad news today. First the bad, TMZ has documents that show that Nicolas Cage's current total owed to the IRS is now a steep $6,257,005. But here's the good, he may have finally unloaded his Bel-Air Tudor home. The home which once belonged to singer Tom Jones and to Dean Martin was for sale for as high as $35 million back in 2006. A sealed bid auction was scheduled for September 24 with the minimum opening offer set at $9.95 million. The MLS now has the home as "looking for backup" which means an offer has been made, and hopefully will stick. Cage paid around $6.5 million for the home in 1998. Cage also recently sold his New York City apartment which had been listed at $9.75 million.



He still has four homes on the market in the U.S.:
His Las Vegas home is listed at $9.49 million.


His Rhode Island home sits at $12 million.


One of his New Orleans homes is listed for $3.45 million.


The other, the haunted LaLaurie mansion is still listed for $3.55 million.

Actress Meg Ryan is testing the real estate waters once again, putting her Bel-Air home back on the market. Ryan had first put her Spanish-style home on the market a year ago for $19.5 million. Finding no takers she withdrew it from the market in February. But as the LA Times Hot Property column reports it's back again and with a lower price. The six-bedroom home was purchased for $8.995 million in 2000 and is now listed at $14.2 million.

Listing information says that the home, which was built in 1931 has had a "museum-quality" restoration that includes wood floors and ceilings, elegant tilework and graceful curved arches. Covered outdoor seating offers views of Los Angeles in the distance. It's been moderately well-staged but there are a few off notes including the placement of large photos on the kitchen counter. The property includes a pool and guest house.

Nic Cage really wants to unload his Bel-Air home. The LA Times reports that home, which was most recently listed at $17.5 million will be auctioned in a sealed-bid sale scheduled for September 24. The house, which was once listed as high as $35 million can be had for as low as the minimum bid of $9.95 million. Cage bought the home over 10 years ago for around $7 milllion.

There's lots to love about this home. The 1940 mansion is Old Hollywood at it's most grandiose and has also been owned by Tom Jones and Dean Martin. It has six bedrooms, a theater, wine cellar and library. An acre of grounds includes a swimming pool and an outdoor kitchen with a brick oven.

L.A. talent manager Sandy Gallin, who has represented divas like Dolly Parton, Barbra Streisand and Michael Jackson, has listed his mansion in Bel-Air (above) for $32 million. Gallin, a serial property flipper, intended for this, his 42nd house project, to be "a place to wind up and stay," but found the estate "too big and too lavish for me," he tells the Wall St. Journal. The mansion was built in 1936 by architect Paul Williams, and Gallin purchased from the estate of award-winning actress Jane Wyatt two years ago for $8 million.

He planned to tear it down and build a modern monstrosity but the city refused to grant permission. Instead Gallin restored and enlarged the existing house boosting the square footage to 12,000 with seven bedrooms and 12 baths. The Real Estalker adds that there's an entire wing devoted to a master suite with dual baths, and the living room opens onto a "living lounge" with a covered porch, cobblestone floor and fireplace. Also inside are a billiards pub, a glass-encased wine room, a media room, a gym, a yoga studio, steam room and a swimming pool.

Times being a trifle tough these days, that $100 million mansion in Beverly Hills may be a bit beyond your reach. The next best thing has got to be Jeffrey Hyland's new 400-page volume The Legendary Estates of Beverly Hills, a meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated history of 50 magnificent estates in three world-famous enclaves of the ultra-wealthy - Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, and Holmby Hills. The $250 tome is a definitive history of the area's most famous estates - "the architecturally spectacular homes and lavish grounds that have been home to countless celebrities and the world's richest families for almost a century."

Aside from the purely visual pleasure of the photographs both old and new, Hyland explains the history and architectural importance of each estate, and tells the fascinating stories of the many famed owners, from their "passionate involvement in the design of these costly properties, to their intrigues, triumphs, calamities, and romances." The estates run the gamut from historic Beverly House, the sprawling 1920s Mediterranean estate inhabited by William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies and briefly listed a while back at $165 million, to modern classics like the notorious Fleur de Lys in Holmby Hills (above).

The 15-bedroom Fleur de Lys, which is currently on the market for $125 million, was built by Texan billionaire David Saperstein and is now owned by his ex-wife Suzanne - whom he ditched for the childrens' hot Swedish nanny. The five-acre estate is home to a 41,000-square foot French limestone mansion inspired by France's magnificent Vaux le Vicomte palace outside Paris. Surrounding the mansion are rolling lawns, ornamental gardens and mature trees, a 3,000-square-foot manager's house, staff quarters for ten people, a spa and pool with a pavilion and its own kitchen, a championship tennis court, and a lavish garden folly.



Also featured in the book: Bellagio Road in Bel-Air, built for studio mogul Sol Wurtzel in the 1930s along the lines of the villas found on the hillsides near Florence, Italy; Casa Encantada in Bel-Air, a "modern Georgian with Grecian influences" built in the 1930s by a former nurse from New York who married a much-older multimillionaire glass manufacturer, then took up with her chauffeur after he died; and the storied St. Cloud Road estate which was owned by a string of luminaries including It Happened One Night director Frank Capra, Warner Bros. stars Dick Powell and Joan Blondell, director / producer Mervyn LeRoy, and MGM founder Louis B. Mayer. See the gallery for pix.

It seems that in Southern California saying a home was inspired by Richard Neutra is becoming the equivalent of saying a home is Frank Lloyd Wright influenced in other parts of the country. The LA Times Hot Property column brought my attention to this Bel-Air homed which was once owned by Irene Kassorla,"the psychologist and author once described by Merv Griffin as the 'shrink to the stars'" and is currently owned by another student of the mind, Dr. William Bondareff, a professor of psychiatry at USC's Keck School of Medicine. Bondareff and his wife Rita are headed up the coast to Carmel so this Neutra-inspired three-bedroom home is on the market. The home has beautiful outdoor space including a custom pool with a "wall of stone and water" which helps create a tranquil garden setting. The home's rich wood interior includes a study/library. I like that it has maintained its 1960s-1970s sensibilities and it seems a lot cozier than most Neutras I've seen. It is listed at $2.195 million.