Whitney Houston is in the midst of a comeback (complete with a new album and an appropriately contrite appearance on Oprah) and she's shedding the trappings of her old life including some real estate. The Real Estalker reveals that Houston has listed her home in Mendham Township, New Jersey. The five-bedroom contemporary home sits on a five acre lot with a pool, pool house and tennis court. The Real Estalker Mama says that Houston bought the home in 1987 and it appears very 1980s in its style with a circular theme that includes a domed sky light, semicircular walls of windows and a curved wall of art glass. The home is over 12,500 square feet of curving windows draped in lackluster swags, floors in neutral carpeting and pale terracotta tile and anonymous decor. In the master bedroom the bed is mounted on a dais facing a television and topped with more circles in the lighting fixture. It was probably the height of fashion at one point but now it seems a bit dated. It is listed at an even $2.5 million but Property Shark shows an assessed value of $5,640,700 and a tax bill of $87,609.

Usually our estate of the day celebrity Sundays take us to Los Angeles or New York but today there are two reasons to discuss Alpharetta, Georgia. The first bit of news comes from Celebrity Big Time Listings which reported that Whitney Houston sold her home in Alpharetta. She bought the home in 2003 for $1,388,888 and the home was on the market for $1,349,000. The home, which was used in the TV show "Being Bobby Brown" was sold in May at a loss.

Also looking to sell in Alpharetta is musician Usher. Usher, who recently married his soon-to-be baby mama who has three children already is probably in need of more space than this five bedroom, 8,022 square foot home can provide. The home is located in the Country Club of the South, a private golf course community. The Real Estalker reports that Usher paid $1,200,000 in December of 1998, buying the home from L.A. Reid. A story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution says that when Usher was a 13-year-old new face that he vowed one day the house would belong to him. The house has also been featured on MTV Cribs. The home itself has the necessary musician requirements such as a hair salon, an exercise room for working those famous abs, a hair salon and a billiard room. The pics are few and a wee bit bland. The Real Estalker Mama already commented on the foible in wood that is the cabinet in the living room. It's not a bad house, just a bit tame. The home is listed at $1.95 million. Will Usher get that price? I wouldn't bet on it but hopefully he will do better than Whitney did.

UPDATE: Two years later this home is still listed at $1.95 million.

From the LA Times Hot Property:
--Al Jean, an executive producer of "The Simpsons" has listed his home in Beverly Hills for $2.95 million. The four-bedroom house was built in 1933 and once belonged to actress Carroll Baker. It's even listed by a celebrity turned real estate agent, actress Leah Lail of the Brill Group. The listing is here.
--The Beverly Hills site of a home designed by John Woolf for Lauritz Melchior, a renowned Wagnerian tenor, has been sold for $9 million. The Woolf house was also home to actress Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan, and novelist Judith Krantz. A newer home was built on the site in 1988.
--A hilltop site once owned by Merv Griffin may be snapped up by a group of developers who will pay more than $100 million for the property and then resell it in smaller parcels.

From the NY Post's Gimme Shelter:
--A fashion change-up, Pierre Berge, the longtime partner of Yves Saint-Laurent, has sold his Fifth Avenue apartment to Valentino's lifetime partner, Giancarlo Giametti, for a $7.5 million. it was our estate of the day in December last year, check out pictures here.
--Heather Mills rented Nora Ephron and Nick Pileggi's six-bedroom home in Georgica Pond area of East Hampton in August for $200,000.
--Greg Norman's estranged wife, Laura, has closed on a recently built two-story home on Moses Lane in Southampton with a $4.35 million asking price.
--Mark Messier, sold his Upper West Side apartment for just more than $3 million last year and has just sold a one-bedroom apartment at the venerable Osborne building at 205 W. 57th St. for $580,000.

Also from Braden Keil of the NY Post:
--Tony Randall's co-op home has found a buyer. The home, which was listed for $17.5 million was bought by the late Mr. Randall in the '80s for less than $900,000.

From Berg Properties Big Time Listings:
--Whitney Houston has sold her five-bedroom, 8,022-square-foot house in Alpharetta, Ga. for $1,190,000, just months after it was headed for foreclosure.
CNN's Miles O'Brien sold a 1,975-square-foot unit at 222 Riverside Drive in New York, for $3.7 million (which was $200,000 above the asking price). He bought the unit in 2005 for $3,200,000 from actor Chris Meloni.
--The official sale price for Jason Priestley's Hollywood Hills home was $1.902 million.
--Actor Gary Anthony Williams of "Boston Legal" has sold his house in North Hollywood for $578,000 and purchased a home in Sherman Oaks for $1.4 million.
--TV director James Burrows has sold his Georgian-style mansion in Los Angeles' Bel-Air area for $10,500,000.
--Actress Anne Heche's Tudor-style house in Hancock Park area appears to have gone to contract after having been listed for $3,795,000.
--Matt LeBlanc has sold his six-bedroom mansion in Hidden Hills. for an undisclosed price after it had been on the market for $10,295,000.
--Actress Linda Fiorentino has sold her one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper West side for her $1,225,000 asking price.


From the NY Observer's Manhattan Transfers:
--The father of the governor of New York, Bernard Spitzer donated 11 apartments to the American Museum of Natural History in 2004 and 2005, many of the apartments have been flipped and have yielded $6,255,000 for the natural historians.
--New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has paid around $40 million for 1014 Madison Avenue, next to a home he bought last year for $45 million for his foundation. The two buildings can be combines as long as the facades remain the same.
--CNN talking head Nancy Grace has bought a third apartment on a high floor of The Revere condo on East 54th Street for $925,000. She needs the room, she recently married and is expecting twins.
--Actress and Hyatt heiress Liesel Pritzker, who sued her father and other powerful family members over pillaged trust funds in 2002 and won a reported $500 million settlement has spent $6.2 million on a 4,146-square-foot apartment at 455 Central Park West.

From the Real Estalker:
--Is Faye Dunaway renting her two-bedroom Hollywood home on Craigslist?
--Rumors are flying that David Geffen has been quietly shopping his famous 9.4-acre Los Angeles estate for $100 million.
--Usher has listed his home in Alpharetta, Georgia for $1.95 million. We will be looking at this home later as our estate of the day.
--Newly married Tobey Maguire and Jennifer Meyer have bought a stately brick home in Hancock Park for $11 million.
--Billy Baldwin and Chynna Phillips are renting a home in Beverly Hills for $14 million.
--Another person related to "The Simpsons," Dan Castellanata, the voice of Homer Simpson is selling his Santa Monica house. It is listed at $3.295 million. Explore the gorgeousness at the property website here.


From the Wall Street Journal's Private Properties:
--It's official, Paris Hilton has bought a nearly 7,500-square-foot Beverly Hills mansion in Mulholland Estates for $5.9 million. According to her uncle and broker, Mauricio Umansky of Hilton & Hyland she plans to convert the fitness room into a shoe closet.
--Former Arizona Diamondback player Matt Williams and his wife are asking $12.7 million for a not-yet-completed eight-bedroom home in the Phoenix area. They decided that the over 15,000 square foot home would be too large. The listing is with Walt Danley and can be found here (it is listed at $12.6 million). The purchase price includes the cost of finishing the home.
--A trust of the family of Los Angeles developer Richard Meruelo paid $18 million for a 1.6-acre oceanfront parcel listed at $24.9 million in Golden Beach, Florida in what is believed to be the biggest sale in the Miami area this year. The property was first listed for $26.6 million just over a year ago.

Oh Whitney, has it come to this? Singer Whitney Houston is divesting herself of more than just a troublesome husband and a few homes, she's also selling off a few possessions. Houston is clearly planning a more restrained future if her cast offs are any indication. Beaded Versace catsuits, an acrylic piano and some strange glass furniture are just some of the items which will be sold on January 9 in New Jersey. Hooray for Whitney for letting these hats go, that may be one of her best moves since ditching Bobby.

[via Gawker]

Whitney Houston may be free of Bobby Brown but her woes aren't over yet. Her New Jersey mansion is listed as being up for bid at a sheriff's sale on January 4 by the Morris County Sheriff's Office. She owes more than $1 million in back taxes and other charges. According to the Daily Record of Parsippany newspaper, the sale was scheduled on Tuesday and neither the mortgage nor taxes have been paid so far this year. Houston's estate is actually two lots and the lot for sale has been assessed at $889,300. The adjacent lot is worth more than $5.6 million and Houston bought both properties in 1987 for $2.7 million.

Whitney's not the only diva set to ditch the house following a big break-up. Britney Spears just put her Malibu house on the market for $13.5 million in the wake of her split from Kevin Federline.