paz vega

From the NY Post's Gimme Shelter:
--Heath Ledger's rental apartment in SoHo is already being quietly shopped around. Ledger had been renting the three-bedroom apartment for $22,000 a month and it is apparently being offered now for around $25,000.
--Clothing magnate Leslie "Les" Wexner, who founded The Limited and owns Victoria's Secret, Express and Henri Bendel has picked up a four-bedroom condo at 15 Central Park West for $13.1 million.He and his wife have a $50 million, 1,000-acre estate in Ohio.
--Heather Randall, the widow of Tony Randall, is also moving into a similarly sized four-bedroom apartment at 15 Central Park West.
--A $32 million sale at the elite 740 Park Ave. co-op building. The estate of Mosler Safe heiress Janet Coleman sold the 14-room duplex apartment to David Randall Winn and his wife, Tamara Sarah Winn.

From the NY Observer's Manhattan Transfers:
--New York City has presented finalists for its contest to design emergency temporary housing. The ideas include inflatable apartments, putting housing atop the sidewalk scaffold sheds that fill the streets of Manhattan, and lugging in buildings on tugboats. Ten were given $10,000 to further develop their designs.
--A peek into the life of Steven Green who in 1990 was named one of the NYC's 10 worst landlords, and spent almost a month in jail after not providing Queens tenants with hot water.Green later moved to Florida, started a charter airline and early last year failed to get back a $780,000 divorce settlement from his partner, who cited cruelty. He was then sentenced to nearly three years in jail for fraud and tax charges. In May, a month before jail, he was leaving a West Side club when a hit-and-run put him in a coma. Green is recovering from brain damage, and won't have to report to prison for another few months. His condo at the Essex House was sold off last month for $3 million. After using a a phony Social Security number to get a loan from Wells Fargo he was forced by a U.S. District Court to pay $4.11 million in restitution. So far he hasn't paid anything but the Essex House condo was highly mortgaged so likely the court will not get much money from the sale.
--Seagram liquor heir Edgar Bronfman Jr. bought his East 64th Street townhouse in 1994 for $4.375 million, and sold it to his Warner Music Group colleague Len Blavatnik, the oil magnate, for $50 million last October. Now he's hoping for another flip in a much shorter time frame. On Jan. 18, he paid $19.5 million for an 11-room sprawl at 1040 Fifth Avenue. On Jan. 25, without having done any work, he listed the apartment for $24 million, $4.5 million above his purchase one week earlier. Wow, if he gets it, that's one heck of a payday. The listing is here.
--The chairman of the Metropolitan Art museum's board, James R. Houghton, has sold his two-bedroom tower apartment in the Majestic on Central Park West last month for $4.9 million.
--Karen Assante, Armand Assante's ex-wife, has sold her two-bedroom apartment at the 20's-era co-op 118 Riverside Drive for $2.45 million.
--Listings for the Mark, the 1927 hotel at 25 East 77th Street, have hit the Internet. Corcoran shows 12 listings for the building including the $60 million penthouse, with 12 rooms, five bedrooms, eight baths, and a $35,477 monthly maintenance.

From the Nashville Post:
Singer/songwriter Michelle Branch bought a home in the Belle Meade area of Nashville, Tennessee, several months after selling her house in Calabasas, California. In 2006 she bought a condo in Nashville's Werthan Lofts.

From the Wall Street Journal's Private Properties:
--The widow of author Sidney Sheldon has listed their Palm Springs compound for $7.9 million, plus a house across the street for $4 million. Sheldon and his wife, Alexandra, owned a total of four houses in the Old Las Palmas neighborhood. The Sheldons lived in a midcentury modernist seven-bedroom home and also owned a six-bedroom Mediterranean-style guest house. A four-bedroom home with a glass-enclosed indoor pool and a poolside kitchen is also for sale for $1.45 million. Brook Ashley, Scott Palermo and Jim Sanak, all of Prudential California Realty's Estates division, have the listings (no pictures yet).
--Owners have cut the price of two apartments at New York's Plaza condominium, the redesigned Plaza Hotel. Fred Farago, the president of a fruit-flavoring company, is now asking $5.9 million for a one-bedroom apartment there, around the same amount he paid for the unit in July and Italian-born architect Teresa Sapey has trimmed $200,000 off the initial $10 million price for her 13th-floor unit which she bought for $6.9 million in July.
--At 15 Central Park West, Evan Cole, who co-founded ABC Carpet & Home, has agreed to sell his 15th-floor three-bedroom apartment there for over $9 million (he paid $4.83 million). In the same building,Michael Holtz, a travel-agency owner, recently signed an agreement to sell an identical apartment for more than his $8.5 million asking price.
--Actor Rupert Everett has listed his Miami Beach pied-à-terre for $1.15 million.

From the Real Estalker:
--Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has sold his Back Bay Boston condo for $5.285 million. Brady paid $4,125,000 for the 3,412 square foot condo in June 2004.
--Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck have been spotted house hunting again. Rumor has it they are looking in the $20 million range in the Holmby Hills area.
--(via the NY Daily News) Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner and his boyfriend Matt Nye have bought Teviot, a 69-acre estate in Tivoli, New York.
-- Australian actors Rebecca Rigg and Simon Baker sold their Santa Monica house in December of 2007 for $2,895,000 and purchased another Santa Monica home with six bedrooms that cost the couple more than $4.5 million.
--The estate of Leona Helmsley has put her Greenwich, Connecticut home on the market for $125 million, shown above. There is a great slideshow at the Greenwich Time that shows the home.
--Ricky Martin already has a home listed in Golden Beach, Florida for $22.5 million now he has relisted his Miami Beach home for $19.5 million. Both listings are with Pablo Alfaro.
--Michael Jackson has paid more than $600,000 in back taxes for the neverland Ranch. He still owes $23 million in loans on the home which is expected to go into foreclosure.
--via the NY Post, Veronica Hearst's Manalapan, Florida mansion, which has been sitting on the market for $27 million, is scheduled to be auctioned off on February 25th to pay off $45 million in mortgages.
--Megan Ellison, daughter of billionaire Larry Ellison has paid $12.6 million for a three-bedroom contemporary home
--via the Palm Beach Daily News, even in this tough real estate market the lavish Palm Beach home of Howard Gittis sold in around six weeks for a rumored $22 million, not too far away from the $23.5 million asking price.
--Famous restaurateur Peter Morton has put a Malibu home on the market for $6.795 million. The listing is here.

From Berg Properties Big Time Listings:
--Rick Allen, the drummer for the band Def Leppard, and his wife, Lauren Monroe, have paid $1,660,000 for a single-family house in Calabasas.
--Actress Paz Vega has paid $1,900,000 for a three-bedroom house in West Hollywood and has listed her Hollywood home for $1,149,000. The listing is here.
--Devo singer Gerald Casale has paid $2,000,000 for a Richard Neutra-designed house in the Hollywood Hills.
--Musician Joe Walsh has paid $4,500,000 for a three-bedroom home in the Beverly Hills post office area that once was owned by Monkee Mike Nesmith.

From the LA Times Hot Property:
--As was previously reported by Big Time Listings, Carlos Mencia and his wife Amy have bought the Encino home of actor Eddie Cibrian for close to its asking price of $4.4 million. The Mencias decided to keep their former home for his family.
Former UCLA head football coach Karl Dorrell has put his five-bedroom home in Stevenson Ranch home on the market for $1.25 million. The listing is here.
--Musician Robert Cray and his wife, playwright and filmmaker Susan Turner-Cray, have sold their Los Feliz house for nearly $3.5 million and bought a 5-acre Santa Ynez Valley ranch four around $2 million. Other real estate columns including Big Time Properties have suggested that Jason Lee may be the buyer of the Cray home.
--A Neutra-inspired home belonging to Dr. William Bondareff in Bel-Air is listed at $2.195 million. It is our estate of the day later today.


From AOL Real Estate and Home Improvements:
--How to make a bathroom bigger without remodeling.
--Seven smart home improvements
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From the NY Post's Gimme Shelter:
--Martha Stewart is eager to sell her Turkey Hill Farm property which has been on the market for a while. She is dividing the property into two two acre pieces and selling the part that includes the main house for $4.5 million. The listing is here.
--Russell Simmons has leased out his unsellable Liberty Street 7,000-square-foot residence to a Westchester couple and their children. Simmons first listed the 13-room penthouse in May 2005 for $11 million, and lowered the price to just below $6 million last year. Simmons may be buying a place in the West Village for close to $8 million.
--One of Newport, Rhode Island's famed grand mansions, the one belonging to publishing heir Gilbert Kahn will soon be sold. Fairholme, a 17-room Tudor-style mansion will be on the market as Kahn has bought homes in Palm Beach and Miami's Fisher Island.

From the NY Times Big Deal:
-- Brokers report that the January real estate market was particularly heated among the wealthiest buyers.
--Stephen M. Ross, the chairman of Related and the new chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York recently took title to the 8,900-square-foot, full-floor penthouse at 25 Columbus Circle, the south tower of the Time Warner Center. Mr. Ross was both the buyer and a principal of the company that sold the condominiums. He then sold his co-op at 965 Fifth Avenue for $10 million to Bruce A. Beal Jr., one of Mr. Ross's top lieutenants.
--Mikhail Kurnev, president of Coalco New York, has bought a loft-style, full-floor condominium in Loft 67, at 219 East 67th Street, the former offices of the Christie's East auction house. The condo in Loft 67 has 4,655 square feet of space, a 50-foot terrace and floor-to-ceiling windows and was sold as raw space.

From the New York Observer's Manhattan Transfers:
--The parlor-floor apartment in the Berwind Mansion co-op, listed for $9.495 million, has been sold to real-estate developer Howard Ronson.
--Writer-director Noah Baumbach and Jennifer Jason Leigh have paid $1.26 million for their next-door neighbor's co-op.
--Columbia University senior executive vice president Robert Kasdin and his wife have bought an eight-room apartment at 239 Central Park West for $3,485,000.
-- Daniel Snyder, the billionaire owner of the Washington Redskins, may have bought an Upper East Side townhouse for $4.8 million.

From Berg Properties BIg Time Listings:
--Smokey Robinson has listed his house at 1357 Opal Valley Street in Henderson, Nev., near Las Vegas, for $1.9 million. The listing is here. He has also reduced the asking price for his Chatsworth, California home from $10.5 million to just under $10 million.
--Hulk Hogan has put his Bellair, Fla. house back on the market for $17.9 million.
--Actress Paz Vega and her husband Orson Salazar have become first-time homeowners, paying $985,000 for a 1,410-square-foot house in Hollywood.
--Soap opera actor Paul Leyden has paid $865,000 for a recently remodeled, two-bedroom house in the Hollywood Hills.

From the Real Estalker:
--Ed McMahon has reduced the price on his six-bedroom house in Beverly Hills from $7.699 million to $6.75 million. The expansive flash tour for the home can be found here.
--Attorneys Jeanine and Albert Pirro are selling their Palm Beach vacation home for $795,000 and their Harrison, New York home for $4.295 million.

From the LA Times Hot Property:
--Helen Mirren and Taylor Hackford's Hollywood home is for lease for $40,000 per month.
--New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan has purchased a town house in Hermosa Beach for slightly more than $2 million.
--Gareth Davies, a producer of "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer," "Remington Steele" and other TV series, has put his Sherman Oaks home on the market at $1.95 million. The listing is here.
--Rapper Juicy J has closed escrow on a Sherman Oaks home for nearly its asking price of $2.2 million.
--The nearly-finished compound of a Saudi prince was sold under court order for $35 million. The home is on 25 acres and has 50,000 square feet of space.