LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,300,000
SIZE: 2,436 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A little celebrity real estate birdie we'll call Hedda D. Class chirped to Your Mama via covert communique—and then we confirmed with property records—that the always dapperly dressed and hard-charging Beverly Hills-based real estate agent and Million Dollar Listing star Josh Altman dropped $2.3 million on a very truly ass-ugly wart of a house just above West Hollywood's bustling Sunset Strip.
Digital marketing materials describe the existing dwelling as an "ARCHITECTURAL GEM" but anybody with functional eyeballs can plainly see from even the most cursory of glance over listing images that that's nothing but insincere (and even slightly cynical) real estate hyperbole because—all T no shade, buttercups—this house is hideously deformed. You know it is. We know it is. And so does Mister Altman who may be many things but he ain't no real estate fool. Fer chrissakes, children, the immaculately-groomed man drives a Fisker* and probably puts on a designer suit just to go to the damn bathroom in the middle of the night so it's highly unlikely he's going to shack up in this revolting little residence without, at the very least, giving the place a comprehensive re-do that renders it otherwise unrecognizable from its current, sad state of affairs.
Listing materials show the existing house, built in 1962 and situated down a long gated driveway, is conveniently located a short distance—a easily walked distance, for anyone so inclined—to the many designer boutiques and upscale eateries in the perennially trendy Sunset Plaza shopping and dining district. Your Mama, who does not know a damn thing about a damn thing, happens to be of the mind that Mister Altman's $2.3 million outlay for the beastly abode is wholly justified by the easy-access central location, commodious half acre-plus lot, and sweeping city view. While it may come as a surprise to some and the self-righteous chagrin of others, a half an acre lot is whole lotta land to own just above the Sunset Strip where houses are often tightly packed on minuscule lots carved out of steep hillsides on impossibly narrow and dangerously windy roads.
The two-story residence as it stands, according to listing details, has three bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms in just over 2,400 square feet. At the foot of the driveway there's a detached two-car garage and in between the garage and the house there's a walled and gated courtyard with a swimming pool and a disturbing lattice-encased elevated view terrace. The listing description goes on to state that the kitchen was remodeled with "STAINLESS STEEL AND STONE" but that the rest of the house is "SOMEWHAT DATED." Somewhat dated? Seriously? Pleeze.
We know that taste and fashion in architectural style change over time but, still, it just gets Your Mama's blood all worked up to think that somebody designed that house and, when it was all done, looked at it and thought—and we paraphrase imaginatively, of course—"That looks exactly like what I wanted." Somebody really wanted and actually paid for all that decorative wrought-iron that looks like the sort of affectation you might find in an affluent trailer park in Romania and the rectangular windows with the inset arches are perplexingly perplexing. The hulking, herringbone patterned brick masses on the front façade, especially that one that looks like it's floating mysteriously over the corner of the house, are beyond wrong and the striped awnings over some of the upper level windows along with the totally fucked-up wrought iron cornice on both the garage and the house only enhance the utter absurdity of the whole thing.
Anyhoodles, poodles, as part of our research in to the matter Your Mama made a couple of queries with a few of the people we know whom we thought might know a little something about the situation and it wasn't too long before we heard back from a well-placed contact we'll call Wanda Gitterdone who told us that scuttlebutt on the Platinum Triangle real estate street is that Mister Altman plans to raze the existing house and replace it with a 7,500 square foot über-contemporary crib that will be worth $9 million when it's finished. When we asked Wanda if Mister Altman planned to sell the new house or move in with his real estate agent fiancée, Heather Bilyeu, she huffed and clucked and said, "Who knows? But, you know, baby, he's a real estate agent. Everything is an investment and everything is for sale."
*Just because we can identify our own BMW in a parking lot doesn't mean this boozy property gossip knows diddly squat between a Tesla and a Fisker and, indeed, the children in the comments are correct, Mister Altman drives a Fisker and not, as we first "reported," at Tesla.
listing photos: Coldwell Banker Gene Armstrong
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