Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Your Mama Hears...

...from Will Spillit, a valued informant deep inside the Platinum Triangle real estate game, that famously hermetic double Oscar winning actress/director Jodie Foster will soon list her long-time home in the swanky, celebrity-stocked and so-called Bird Streets neighborhood above the Sunset Strip where all of the streets are named after—you got it—birds. According to our Mister Spillit Miz Foster has already decamped and the property will soon pop up on the open market with an asking price in the five million dollar range.

Property records show Miz Foster purchased the residence in April 1995 for an undisclosed sum of money from former supermodel Cheryl Tiegs who—as it turns out—has her current, Balinese-y residence in Bel Air on the market for $12,000,000.

Miz Foster is nothing if not private and not surprisingly her Tinseltown hideout is completely shielded from passers by and looky loos by an impressively thick and towering hedge. Your Mama would bet both our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, that every square inch of the .29 acre spread is fortified with a state-of-the-art security system capable of identifying and mercilessly inflicting severe bodily damage to any potential intruder. There is no driveway in the front, just a bougainvillea enshrouded entry gate. Automobile access to the property is by way of a discreet, shared driveway around back.

Your Mama knows little to nothing about Miz Foster's residence other than what we can glean from a variety of interweb resources that may or may not be entirely accurate: It's a multi-winged single-story white stucco hacienda originally built in 1935 with four bedrooms and seven bathrooms in 5,367 square feet. Aerial images show a simple, rectangular swimming pool in the courtyard style backyard and a two car garage off the shared driveway where Miz Foster parks her speedy Prius.

Miz Foster's (alleged) decision to sell her house in The Birds isn't a surprise to celebrity real estate watchers and property gossips like Your Mama who surely recall that last June (2012) she shelled out $11,750,000 to very quietly acquire a walled, gated and high-hedged ridge line property privately perched above Franklin and Coldwater Canyons.

Back in July 2005 Miz Foster very quietly spent $8.1 million a large, Connecticut county/Cape Cod style ranch house in a prime section of Beverly Hills that was once owned by Dinah Shore.* We were told by a well-connected canary that Miz Foster planned to erect a new house to her custom specification but eventually had a real estate change of heart and sold the property, according to property records, in September 2011 for $8,300,000 to Doug Barnes, a lavish living budget eyeglasses mogul from Dallas.**



*We'll have no crude lesbian jokes here, hunties. Miz Foster may be a card carrying member of the Sapphic Sisters and lesbians from around the globe may gather in drunken droves in Palm Springs (CA) every year during the Dinah Shore golf tournament but—for the record—the late Dinah Shore was not a lesbian.



**In case anyone might be curious, Mister and Missus Barnes's primary residence is a 20,000-plus square foot behemoth that backs up to a petite semi-private pond with private sandy beach in the posh Preston Hollow area of Dallas. Some of Mister and Missus Barnes's nearest neighbors include Dallas-based bigwigs like investor Robert Haas who made a fortune when he bought an sold Dr. Pepper and 7Up and whose house has 10 fireplaces and a small private lake; Dee Wyly, the wealthy widow of businessman Charles Wyly who once owned the arts and crafts retail juggernaut Michael's; Susan Reese, the wealthy widow of Dallas developer Lou Reese;  trial attorney Lisa Blue Baron, the widow of trial attorney Fred Baron, whose 15,000-plus square foot Robert A.M. Stern designed red brick Georgian sits on nearly nine landscaped acres and has its own website; and prolific contemporary art collectors Cindy and Howard Rachofsky who own an art-filled Richard Meier-designed tour de force that also has its own website.

aerial image: Google

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