Tuesday Tidbit: Did Roman Abramovich Do It Again in London?

International Real Estate rumor has it that Russian oligarch and globe-trotting trophy property collector Roman Abramovich may have purchased a humongous house on Kensington Palace Gardens, the most expensive and security conscious gated enclave in all of hyper-pricey London.



Did y'all get that? This is just rumor and gossip at this point. Your Mama did not find any reports on the interweb that provide or claim definitive proof Mister Abramovich actually bought the house in question, a gleaming white, civic-looking Neo-Georgian limestone edifice owned by Belgian hedge hogger Pierre LaGrange and his wife Christina.



At least one report from mid-August relayed whispers that the wildly wealthy lover of über-luxurious living was interested in Mister and Missus LaGrange's behemoth house on Kensington Palace Gardens. Those property gossips heard through the real estate grapevine the LaGrange's mansion was quietly available for around £30,000,000. More recent reports, such as in the Daily Mail, suggest Mister Abramovich may have paid somewhere in the neighborhood of £90,000,000 for the house that reportedly has upwards of 12 to 15 bedrooms. We have no idea why there's such a wild discrepancy between the gossiped-about price tag and reported sale price. Make of that what you will children.



Most discussions of the matter indicate the LaGrange mansion is currently under construction with a massive subterranean extension to include an a "health centre," private museum, and indoor tennis court. Whaaaat? Do these reports mean that an indoor underground tennis court is planned? That sounds awfully odd, doesn't it? Would this be the first and only private residence in London with an indoor and underground tennis court?



Listen chickens, despite our daily intake of the devil's water Your Mama has been known to scoot our fat backside out on to the tennis court every now and then. That's why we know of what we speak when we tell the children y'all need a very high ceiling to accommodate an indoor tennis court. Do the children understand just how far a person would have to dig down in to the firmament below London to allow for a ceiling sufficiently high for the wild, top-spinning arches for which our boozy b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau is famous? Yes, puppies, she may be a walking, talking and often drunk disaster but when ol' Fiona steps on to the tennis court in her high-heeled platform sneaker-shoes beehotch does it down something fierce like that shrieker Maria Sharapova.



Anyhoo, Your Mama can't claim any intimate or actual knowledge of what goes on in Mister Abramovich's multi-billionaire brain but most reports suggest he and his art loving heiress baby momma Daria Zhukova have grown weary of the planned expansion and renovation of a decidedly decadent double-wide townhouse on Lowndes Square in London's hoity-toity Knightsbridge neighborhood.



When and if completed as planned, Mister Abramovich's Lowndes Square residence would measure an epic 30,000 square feet and include–according to the 2009 floor plans Your Mama had the pleasure to peep–multiple elevators, 8 bedrooms plus several staff apartments, a drawing room that spans the full width of the two townhouses, a swimming pool in the basement, and a sprawling full-floor master suite comprised of bedroom, two large bathrooms, two large windowed dressing rooms–one with walk-in safe–and a service kitchen/pantry connected to the subterranean main kitchen via a dumbwaiter.



In mid-March 2011 Your Mama discussed a rambling 13,000 square foot mansion on London's bohemian-chic Cheyne Walk that Mister Abramovich reportedly purchased for around $40,000,000. This house was to be a temporary residential weigh station until the work on the yacht-loving jet setter's house on Lowndes Square is finished.



If these newest reports are true–and we really don't know if they are or are not–it appears that Mister Abramovich would scrap the planned expansion of his mansion in ritzy Knightsbridge, bail out of his house on Cheyne Walk and high-tail it to the even more exclusive and expensive Kensington Palace Gardens where other residents include bajillionaire industrialists like Lakshmi Mittal, Foxtons founder Jon Hunt, a Saudi royal or two and a long list of international ambassadors. We shall see, puppies, we shall see.



In addition to his London property holdings–whatever exactly they may be–Mister Abramovich's property portfolio bulges with more than a dozen homes in far-flung and exorbitantly high-priced locales that include Moscow, the Côte d'Azur, St. Barts in the Carribbean, and Aspen, CO.



photo: Chris Eades via The Daily Mail