Tuesday Tidbit: Bill Chadwick

SELLER: William J. Chadwick
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $35,000,000
SIZE: 10,480 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 9.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Brace yourselves west coast real estate freaks because it's baaaaack! In the summer of 2008, right about the time that the bottom fell completely out of the real estate markets in southern California and around the country, low profile real estate financier William J. Chadwick heaved and ho-ed his behemoth ocean front mansion on Malibu's Carbon Beach on the market with an elephantine (and insanely optimistic) asking price of $65,000,000.

The price eventually fell to $35,000,000 and in mid-September, more than three years after it first appeared on the open market, an auction was scheduled with the minimum bid price set at a substantially and somewhat shockingly lower $22,000,000.

Alas, butter beans, the auction was unsuccessful and yesterday Your Mama received a covert communique from Our Fair Godmother in Bel Air who informed us that Mister Chadwick recently re-priced the 10,480 square foot pile with an asking price of–are y'all sitting down for this?–$35,000,000.

Now, children, Your Mama is well aware we are far from the sharpest knife if the drawer. However, it seems to our rather pea-sized brain that if Mister Chadwick's Malibu manse didn't sell for $35,000,000 before and the September auction failed to entice someone with both the desire and deep pockets to sign on the deed's dotted line then it follows that the increased asking price is just pie in the real estate sky. Yes? No? Bueller?

Then again, let's get real people, what does Your Mama know about anything? We never thought someone would pay Candy Spelling more than $50,000,000 for her monster mega-mansion in Holmby Hills for which Formula One Racing heiress Petra Ecclestone coughed up $85,000,000 in cash money. We also would not have put all our chips on black 35 that sitcom queen Jennifer Aniston would have snagged $35,000,000 for her sprawling Beverly Hills mansion a few months ago either.

Anyhoodles poodles, Mister Chadwick's bulky and hulky quasi-Cape Cod style beach house sits on an unusually large .54 acre parcel, claims an almost unheard of for Malibu 150-feet of beach frontage, and includes a long list of fancy features such as an attached three car garage with direct entry, 90-foot long great room, 6 en suite bedrooms, a total of 9.5 bathrooms, 4 fireplaces, a 16-seat state-of-the-art home theater, formal dining area with 5-seat built-in wet bar, wine cellar (natch), an ocean front gym, paneled library a wall-sized aquarium–breathe, breathe, breathe–a small patch of grass for piddling pooches, a 4,500 square foot ocean side entertainment terrace with outdoor kitchen and barbecue station, and a 75-foot long two-lane lap pool.

This beach house is without question unreservedly lavish and amenity-loaded in that pseudo-casual sort of way that billionaires seem to like to decorate their super-sized beach shacks in the Bu. It is also a weighty and high-maintenance real estate albatross around Mister Chadwick's pampered neck from which he's not been able, despite years on the market with heaps of international publicity and a last ditch effort auction, to un-tether himself.

Your Mama imagines that Mister Chadwick must be about as frustrated as a bee stuck in a jar of honey but we also expect that free-floating real estate schadenfreude will keep Argentina from crying much for Mister Chadwick and his ongoing real estate woes.

listing photos: Westside Estate Agency