SELLER: Celine Dion and René Angélil
LOCATION: Ile Gagon, Laval, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
PRICE: $29,655,500 (Canadian)
SIZE: approximately 24,000 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6 full and 3 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to a kind Canuck we’ll call Jeremy Justthoughtyoushouldknow Your Mama has come to understand that booming song stylist Celine Dion and her husband-manager René Angélil have put their unabashedly baronial private island estate on the suburban outskirts of Montreal on the market with an asking price of $29,655,500. That’s $29,655,500, Canadian.

A quick few clicks on Your Mama’s currency conversion contraption indicates that’s $29,248,900 (American), £18,428,200, €22,995,700 and—just in case—₯7,835,790,000.

We’re not sure when Mister and Missus Dion acquired the 19-ish acre island retreat, but listing information indicates the imposing, four-floor stone mega-hoose was, “custom built in 2001 by one of the worlds most illustrious entertainers and her family.” Listing information goes on to show the approximately 24,000 square foot French Normandy-style chateau contains total of 6 bedrooms and 6 full and 3 half bathrooms, just enough terlits to require employment of a part-time terlit-gurl.

Miz Dion and Mister Angélil may not actually be members of the royal family but their aspirations to live like they are seem quite clear to Your Mama’s boozy eyeballs from the downright palatial, high school gym-sized entrance hall complete with soaring, double-height ceiling; heavy-duty moldings and towering pilasters; inlaid marble floors; and a monumentally-scaled, high-drama staircase that wraps around the room and up to a second floor gallery.

Can any one else besides Your Mama perfectly envision Dolly Parton coming down that winding staircase in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and/or Celine Dion gliding down in a beaded frock, pounding on her chest and belting out that swooning and ballooning theme song to Titanic?

Public rooms are many and include, according to listing information, a large formal living room with floor-to-ceiling windows on two opposite walls and a ceiling partially and, in our meaningless opinion, unwisely painted like a cloudy sky; a banquet hall-like formal dining room that seats 18; wood-paneled library and family room with fireplaces and built-ins; a sun room; and elongated office completely paneled with some sort of expensive-looking burled wood and lined with built-in display cabinets where Miz Dion may (or may not) stash her 5 Grammys, 12 World Music Awards, 7 American Music Awards, 7 Billboard Music Awards and on and on and on….

The kitchen, colossal and decidedly dramatic, has dark wood cabinets with La Cornue insets and plenty of carved corbels and other details; three Chevy-sized, floating work islands; a pair of menacing pot racks dripping with copper pots; some sort of old-timey espresso making contraption that probably cost more than your car; a very chic and expensive La Cornue range; and beige marble floors set on the bias with black market insets. It looks like the sort of kitchen two chefs, three sous chefs and one minimum wage dish washer could concurrently and comfortably work.

The master suite—more aptly described perhaps as a multi-pronged complex—somewhat curiously comprises his and her master bedroom suites. We’re not talking separate bathing and dressing facilities like in an ordinary mega-mansion, we’re talking connected but completely separate his and her suites, each with “sumptuous ensuite bathrooms, spacious walk-in closets, Juliette balconies and oversized doors and windows overlooking the water.”

The lady’s suite—that would be C.D.’s innermost domestic sanctum—has a bedroom with canopy bed; separate, double-height boo-dwar; a “vaulted marble shower”; and a soaking tub set privately in a wrought iron railed loft overlooking the boo-dwar. We’d stake our fat ass that Miz Dion’s “ultimate walk-in closet” is bigger than Your Mama and The Dr. Cooter’s entire house.

The 2-bedroom children’s wing contains a separate contempo-styled den (above, upper left) with “integrated media components and custom hi-lacquers built-ins.” A “spacious guest suite” and fitness facility with state-of-the-art equipment are tucked up under the roof on the third floor and down in the basement there’s a wood-paneled games room (above, upper right) with built-in wet bar and stone-vaulted wine cellar with tasting room (above, bottom left).

Stone terraces and balconies extend off all sides of multi-winged megamansion and most take advantage of the all-around water views and “natural forested environment.” Set well away from the main house there’s an in-ground swimming pool with nearby pool house “equipped with its own kitchen and built-in grill.” Although listing information doesn’t specify, we imagine (and hope) the pool house also has a changing room and bathroom or two otherwise you know at least some of the pool users would tuck behind a tree for a tinkle before they’d make the trek across the lawn to the main house.

The private island, accessible only by helicopter or gated bridge, is wired to the gills for sure with fully integrated sound, satellite and lighting systems and a high-tech “surveillance system throughout within and around the house.”

Marketing materials state the price includes “almost all of its contents” including “all the furniture (most antiques); artwork; decorative accessories; Persian rugs; linens; china; glassware; flatware and more (a full list will be provided to the prospective purchasers).”

That means, of course, that some person with somewhere close to thirty million dollars can live out their fantasy of living exactly like Celine Dion. That’s all fine and fantastic and we imagine there are bajillions of Celine Dion fans (and fanatics) that would choke a defenseless animal for the opportunity to touch her hem or own a tiny piece of Miz Dion’s decorative opulence. But, seriously, how many people with thirty million to spend on a fully-furnished and high-maintenance mega-mansion in suburban Montreal do the children think there really are? We’re not knocking Montreal. We think it’s a fantastic city. We’re just sayin’…

 Marketing materials also include a YouTube accessible video of the property appropriately set to operatic music. 

Mister and Missus Dion reportedly plan to look for another house in their native Canada but circumstances have them spending more time at their homes in the United States. Since the early 2000s Miz Dion has had a seriously lucrative gig singing her heart out at some casino-resort in Las Vegas where she and her Mister own a 2(ish)-acre, three-parcel estate that backs up to a golf course in an upscale, gated development in Henderson near Lake Las Vegas.

The first two parcels were purchased, according to property records we peeped, in two separate transactions in 2002 and 2003 for a combined $6,231,256. The slightly smaller .75 acre parcel has a gated, single-story mansion with 5 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms in just more than 6,600 square feet; swimming pool, and deep shaded terraces. The larger, .79-acre parcel has an almost 2,000 square foot structure of undetermined utility set in a large large area and a gated, tennis court-sized parking pad with 4-car carport. Just last month (April 2012) Miz Dion and Mister Angélil added to their desert spread with the $150,000 shelled out to buy an adjacent, .55 acre vacant lot.

It wasn’t so long ago Miz Dion and Mister Angélil were cat nip with all the property gossips and mouthy real estate magpies over the water park-like swimming pool they installed on their multi-acre, ocean front compound in Hobe Sound, FL that also, baller style, has a separate, very simply rectangular swimming pool on the ocean side of the house.

listing photos: Sotheby’s International Realty
aerial photo (Montreal): Bing 
aerial photo (Hobe Sound): Pacific Coast News

SELLER: Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas
LOCATION: Westport, CT
PRICE: $27,500,000
SIZE: 8,617 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 4 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We first caught wind of this a couple weeks ago from Westport Willie but didn’t have any meat on the matter until yesterday when both Westport Willie and Westport Wanda let us know iconic former chat show pioneer Phil Donahue and That Girl wife Marlo Thomas heaved their very East Coast-y waterfront estate in Westport, CT on the open market with an asking price of $27,500,000.

Property records we peeped aren’t entirely clear but it appears to Your Mama that Mister Donahue and Miz Thomas picked up the two (or more) parcels that make up their now-for-sale estate in February 2006 for an undisclosed amount of dough.

Listing information is somewhat slim on the details but does indicate the Donahue-Thomas’s waterfront spread spans 6.56 acres and has a gated, 420-foot long driveway that cuts through the sylvan property and leads to front and rear motor courts where there’s garage space for 4 cars. The main house, an 8,716 square foot cedar-shingled rambler built brand new in 2007, has 5 bedrooms, 4 full and 2 half bathrooms and at least 3 fireplaces. An octagonal guest structure up near the entry gates houses a fitness facility and a gazebo down by the water’s edge is probably a nice place to sit back with a big bag of penny candy and a Percival Everett novel.

Other amenities listed on marketing materials include an elevator, security system, wet bar, multi-zoned heating and cooling systems, skylight(s), 9-plus-foot ceilings, office/computer room, partly finished full basement and second floor master suite with fireplace, hardwood floors, walk-in closet, whirlpool tub and vaulted ceiling. Taxes are shown on listing information at a mouth-drying $211,330 per year.

Mister Donahue and Miz Thomas used to live in the 17-room Tudor-style mansion next door which they sold to financial and political worlds mover and shaker Herbert M. Allison Jr. in spring 2006 for, according to property records and previous reports, $25,000,000.

Other residents of the swanky seaside lane include Harvey Weinstein, billionaire hedge funder Marc Lasry, legally embattled financier Rajat Gupta, and controversial radio shock-jock Don Imus who’s had his waterfront mansion on and off the market for years with asking prices as high as $30,000,000 and as low as it’s current price tag of $19,900,000.

listing photos: Nicholas Fingelly Real Estate

Buckle your real estate safety belts, butter beans…

On the heels of knee-buckling news that legally blind casino tycoon Steve Wynn dropped a staggering $70,000,000 on an almost 11,000 square foot duplex spread on New York City’s swank Central Park South comes new news about an as-yet unidentified buyer agreeing to pay between ninety and $100,000,000 for the not-yet-finished, nearly 11,000 square foot duplex penthouse that sprawls across the 89th and 90th floors of One57, a gleaming 1,000-foot tall tower going up at 157 West 57th Street designed by Moroccan-born and Paris-based architect (and 1994 Pritzker Prize winner) Christian de Portzamparc.

The Midtown tower’s developer Gary Barnett, president of Extell Development Corporation, told The New York Times the penthouse was not sold to someone from Russia, the Ukraine or “‘any other part of the former  Soviet Union.’” He went on to hint the obviously very rich buyer is “‘someone that people would recognize’” and plans to use the penthouse as a private residence for his “‘very nice family.’”

Little is known about the two-floor penthouse—the developer has kept most of the details of the building’s larger units out of the press—but is said to have a “grand salon” with 23-foot ceilings and extraordinarily 360-degree views.

Mister Barnett further expounded that a different buyer, a foreign buyer, was earlier this year interested in combining a 13,500 square foot lower floor duplex (with separate solarium) with another full floor apartment that would have brought the total size to around 20,000 square feet. Alas, the deal fell through but the developer said but that stomach-churner of deal would have been worth between $100-150 million.

Even with all the humongous deals that have gone done recently in New York—the $88 million purchase at 15 Central Park West by Russian billionaire, Dmitry Rybolovlev, the $52.5 million dollar deal at 740 Park and Mister Wynn’s $70 million real estate bauble atop the Ritz Carlton—the numbers still pale in comparison to London where, as noted in the New York Post, Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov reportedly paid somewhere around $230 million for his palatial pied-a-terre at the punishingly pricey One Hyde Park.
 
Maybe the buyer at One57 is one of those very young and very rich Ecclestone heiresses who have been snatching up exorbitantly high-priced properties in both London and Los Angeles over the last couple of years and were rather reverently profiled in The Wall Street Journal this morning? We doubt it but stranger things have happened.

How’s that taste with your morning coffee?

Edmonton Real Estate Market Update

Here is our update on the Edmonton real estate market. (Previous week’s numbers are in brackets). For the past 7 days:

New listings: 551 (591, 596, 536)
# Sales: 331 (330, 336, 311)
Ratio: 60% (56%, 56%, 58%)
# Price changes: 313 (298, 262, 285)
# Expired/Off Market Listings: 130 (139, 277, 66)
Net loss/gain in listings this week: 90 (122, -17, 159)
Active single family home listings: 3017 (2963, 2895, 2924)
Active condo listings: 2017 (1962, 1882, 1887)
Homes 4-week running average: $400k ($399k, $395k, $393k)
Condos 4-week running average: $237k ($234k, $237k, $234k)

The REALTORS® Association of Edmonton is reporting 1110 sales for the Greater Edmonton area so far this month, which should put us around 2000 for the month (just ahead of last year). Single family home sales are still leading the way, especially homes under $400k. Recent articles show luxury home sales are taking off in some markets, including Calgary, but we are not seeing that trend in Edmonton right now. We are starting to see some sales in areas that were quite slow up to this point. 

Edmonton housing prices

Edmonton real estate listings and sales

BUYER: Charles Kelley
LOCATION: Nashville, TN
PRICE: $1,600,000
SIZE: 6,682 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Earlier we (lightly dissed and) discussed a fairly modest, white brick traditional in Nashville’s Cherokee Park neighborhood recently sold by Lady Antebellum lead singer Charles Kelley for $720,000.

Let’s have a quick look-see now at the much larger red brick traditional in Nashville’s more upscale Belle Meade area Your Mama hears Mister Kelley and his publicist wife Cassie McConnell purchased earlier this year for $1,600,000.

Like with the Cherokee Park place, property records conceal the identity of the home’s new owner with a cutesy-named trust overseen by big-time bizness manager Julie Boos. But, once again, The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial tell us the bigger Belle Mead mansion was bought in February (2012) by Mister Kelley and his missus Miz McConnell.

A low, brick wall, partially covered with some sort of ivy-like vine, runs around the corner property’s long perimeter. The driveway cuts through discreet break in the wall and curves around to a tree-shielded motor court at the front of the house. The driveway continues past the motor court, down the street-side of main house and wraps around to a rear motor court and detached three car garage connected to the (e)stately main house by a short breezeway. 

The recently renovated red brick mansion was originally built in 1942, stands on 1.56 acres and measures 6,682 square feet, according to listing information and various other online documentation. Listing information teased up out of the interweb also shows the two-story traditional has 4 bedrooms and 4 full and 2 half bathrooms with additional living space in the sizable pavilion out back beyond the cement pond.

A stodgy, essentially symmetrical front façade gives way to what appear in listing photographs to be some decent and dignified spaces like the 26-foot long formal living room with fireplace, wood floors and plenty of room for a (baby) grand piano. There’s also a paneled library with fireplace and a 29-foot long, sun-filled family room/den with built-in entertainment cabinetry and long walls of floor-to-ceiling French doors and windows.

The house also has a few wacky spaces. The most egregious is, of course, the discombobulating gallery at the rear of the residence into which the formal dining room juts with a pair of dorky Doric columns and a fancy-scrolled wrought iron railing. We speak with no authority whatsoever but that gawd awful gallery space looks to Your Mama like maybe it was once a covered porch enclosed in glass and fluffed up with thick moldings and marble floors. The room—more accurately described as a space, maybe—probably makes for a damn convenient traffic hub between the various nooks and crannies of the substantially-scaled house. But, seriously children, that looks like the sort of faux-eleganza Your Mama would expect to find on a middle-brow luxury cruise ship iffin we were ever to be punished by The Dr. Cooter with a “vacation” on a middle-brow luxury cruise ship. It’s a workable space but it needs a full architectural and decorative face lift.

Anyhoo…the house is said to have a working elevator for exertion-free access to the second floor. We’re not sure if the thing drops into the basement but, really, what good is the elevator if it doesn’t descend to the 1,500-plus square foot basement where, if they’re not already there, there’s room to install a state-of-the-art media room and temperature-controlled wine cellar.

The second floor master suite, accessed by a long corridor lined on one side with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, encompasses a bedroom large enough to have a sitting area, French doors to private balcony, fitted dressing room big enough for a mid-level clothes horse and—a delight for sure for those who believe keeping some of life’s ugliest but necessary rituals private is the first key to a successful long-term relationship—a pair of bathrooms.

The breezeway that connects the garage to the mansion opens into an unexpectedly grand rear entrance hall with tile floor, double height ceiling and curved staircase with wood treads and wrought iron banisters.

Manicured gardens and brick paths weave and arch arch around a racing track-shaped lawn that slopes gently down to a wide terrace that completely surrounds an rectangular swimming pool. Behind the swimming pool, an unexpectedly formal, mansard-roofed pool pavilion invites shade-seekers with a deep covered porch lined with a whole bunch of Doric columns that make better sense in this context than the ones in the bizarre prow of the formal dining room.

Inside the pool pavilion, as best as we can tell, there’s a sky-lit living/dining area with fireplace and hexagonal tile floor, an adjoining (clean but dated) kitchen(ette) and at least one bathroom. There may (or may not) be one or possibly two additional sleeping spaces in the pool house convenient for in between pool paddling naps and such.

Again, we don’t know a slit from a slot but Your Mama can imagine that since she/she/they signed on the deed’s dotted line several months ago Mister Kelley and his missus might have coughed up a bit more cash to put a little polish on their real estate diamond so it better suits their own particular hopes, dreams, needs and tastes. We can only hope they felt an impassioned and uncontrollable compulsion to hire a smart architect and/or nice-gay or lady decorator to oversee some important alterations to the rear gallery space.

listing photos: Fridrich & Clark

SELLER: Charles Kelley and Cassie McConnell
LOCATION: Nashville, TN
PRICE: $720,000
SIZE: 2710 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We discovered from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial that Lady Antebellum’s bearded lead vocalist Charles Kelley recently purchased and sold homes in Nashville, TN. Let’s discuss the more modest one he and the wife sold first, shall we?

Every property record we peeped shrouds ownership of the well-maintained white brick residence in question with an oddly-named trust trustee-d by powerful country music industry insider Julie Boos. No surprise there. Miz Boos’ (utterly magnificent) name appears on the deeds and documents associated with property owned by any number of high-profile Nashvillians in the inter-connected music, sports and entertainment industries. The Bizzy Boys have their mysterious ways, though, assure Your Mama the house in question, located in Nashville’s Cherokee Park ‘hood, was sold in April (2012) for $720,000 by the pop-country superstar and his perky-looking publicist wife Cassie McConnell in April 2012 for $720,000.

Lady Antebellum, for those not dope with the new-fangled country music scene, is one of the most popular pop-country acts doing their thing today. Since 2008 when the trio stormed the scene with number one hit Love Don’t Live Here, Lady Antebellum’s fame and fortune elevator has only gone up with an astonishing number of hit songs and accolades that, as of today, include (but may not be limited to) 10 ACMs, 7 Grammys, 6 CMAs, 3 TCAs, 2 CMTs, and 2 AMAs plus 1 BMA and 1 ACA.

As an aside, Mister Kelley happens to be the younger brother of (less successful) singer-songwriter Josh Kelley who is married to and adopting babies left and right with Emmy-winning hospital drama denizen turned movie star Katherine Heigl. As a second, related aside, we hear from always knowledgeable real estate insider Knancy Knowsthedish the Kelley-Heigls have been out peeping pricey properties in Los Angeles that are larger than the Los Feliz residence they bought in November 2007 for $2,550,000 and spent a pretty penny more remodeling. Also, as an only sort-of-related third aside, can anyone tell Your Mama why for the last few years every time we see Miz Heigl’s photo on the blogs or in the gossip glossies she’s either sucking on a ciggy—she reportedly quit a couple years ago now—or shoveling food in her gaping mouth? Do they just hate her?

But we digress…

Property records show that above mentioned trust The Bizzy Boys linked to Mister Kelley and the Missus paid $685,000 to acquire the Cherokee Park place in February 2010. Various other online resources indicate the house was originally built in 1910 and spans about 2,710 square feet with 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms.

The Bizzy Boys, bless their hearts, kindly pointed a bleary-eyed Your Mama to the dregs of an online listing for the former Kelly-McConnell with a cache of photographs that appear to Your Mama to show the interior spaces after being worked over by Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota. Of course, we don’t know a camel from a needle’s eye but at least we hope that’s staging because it all looks so stiff and mannered and uncomfortable. Even the kitchen looks uncomfortably buttoned up, right down to that cockamamie metal rooster perched just so on the center island.

UPDATE: This video on People.com during which Mister Kelley gives a glimpse inside (and outside) of the house would suggest the house was indeed dressed down and staged for selling.

The off-center entry, marked by an urn pediment painted olive drab, shares the same shiny wood floors and impossibly trendy dark wall covering as the formal dining room. The especially long formal living room has a bay window on one wall and a wood-burning fireplace flanked by inset book and display shelves on another. Just to the left of the front door, overlooking the side driveway, what appears to have originally been a screened porch has been glassed in. We absolutely prefer a screened porch to a glassed-in three season thingamajig but y’all say tomaytoes and we say tomahtoes, right?

Less formal, open-plan family quarters behind the dining room include a u-shaped center island kitchen with black Shaker-style cabinets, flecked tan granite counter tops, tile back splash and medium-grade stainless steel appliances. The kitchen opens over the center island snack counter to the family room outfitted with a second fireplace, tray ceiling and a long bank of wood-framed glass doors that open to a concrete and brick terrace partially shaded by a glammy black and white canopy.

The second floor master has a compact bedroom and separate sitting room with full-length interior window that allows a person at the top of the stairs to look straight into said sitting area. We’re not really sure why this was a good idea, but there you have it. The attached master bath is a decent-sized but fairly ordinary affair with twin pedestal sinks, a jetted tub set into a niche tiled with some sort of tumbled stone, separate shower stall and, mercifully, a private cubicle for the crapper.

Back in the backyard, red brick raised planters thick with flowering bushes run along one side of the oddly-shaped swimming pool while the terrace extends off the back of the house and around the other side of the pool to a slightly elevated, shrubbery encircled sunbathing terrace.

In February of this year (2012), even before they sold their Cherokee Park abode, Mister Kelley and Miz McConnell splashed out on a much more significant estate in the upscale Belle Meade area of Nashville. More on that in a minute…

listing photos: Fridrich & Clark