Model Carolyn Murphy On The Move....Again: Part 1

SELLER: Carolyn Murphy
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA (Brentwood)
PRICE: $2,995,000
SIZE: 2,361 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama regrets to inform the children that still fresh-faced and drop-dead gorgeous 38-year old supermodel Carolyn Murphy has long been stricken with a (seemingly) incurable case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle. That's right, puppies, this American-born globetrotter and her impossibly high cheekbones and flawless, perpetually bronzed skin flips pricey properties like a good Morman or an old-school Catholic makes babies, one after another in rapid succession.

In late-November 2006 the still-strutting her stuff 5-foot-9-inch blond single mother of one—is there a catwalk or a cover she hasn't worked it on?—sold an almost brand-new, two-story contemporary in the hip and trendy but still rough around the edges beach community of Venice CA for $2,375,000. That was, as per property records we peeped, twenty thousand clams less than she paid for the place just 9 short months earlier.

Since she sold up in Venice, the long-time and current face of Estee Lauder has owned at least four other multi-million dollar residences including her current crib, a compassionately remodeled and picture perfect Spanish-style casa in Los Angeles's upscale Brentwood area that she bought in September 2011 for $2,625,000 and—thanks to Rhonda Rainyday we recently learned—put on the market last week with a $2,995,000 price tag.

A few quick and unscientific clicks and clacks of the hard-working beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus reveals the opening asking price amounts to a $41,111.11 monthly increase in value over the 9 short months (to date) she's owned the property.

The Los Angeles County Tax Man puts the two-story domicile at a decidedly modest-by-celeb standards 2,361 square feet, a number that may (or may not) reflect the current and actual size of the house given that current listing information shows the structure was originally built in 1927 and has 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms in an undisclosed amount of square footage.

Soon after she purchased the property Miz Murphy, according to a gushy, photo-thick article in the March 2012 issue of Vogue, hired skilled L.A.-based lady decorator Schuyler Samperton to do it all up in what Your Mama might (probably inaccurately and definitely awkwardly) describe as a sophisticated but quite cozy, modern-classic manner that merges and marries a plum example of quintessential SoCal Spanish-style architecture with a casually chic and pared down French country meets East Coast Americana type of day-core. (Yes? No?)

The step down living room has (antique looking) variable-width oak floors, wood-beams on the ceiling, and at least two arched niches for books, photos, mementos and hoozymagoozys. Windows on three sides include two sets of French doors that open directly to the front garden. Miz Murphy and Miz Samperton the lady decorator kept things bright and airy in the living room with matte but none-the-less lustrous white plaster walls. They furnished the space simply and somewhat symmetrically with a masculine pair of burnt caramel-colored leather wing back chairs that square off over a low-profile wood and iron coffee table with a curvy, more feminine slip-covered sofa all set conversationally on a textural sisal rug in front of a protruding white-stucco fireplace on which are mounted with a quartet of small-antlered animal skulls.

The (antique-looking) oak floors in the living room continue into the dining room furnished with a lot of rustic, (antique-looking) distressed wood pieces, simple cloth panels over the windows, a upside-down bowl-shaped woven wicker pendant light and a bunch of linen slip-covered chairs.

The floors switch from oak to antique terra cotta in the eat-in, galley-style kitchen equipped with both butcher block and baker-friendly marble counter tops; a high-grade, stainless steel commercial-style range and hood and an adjoining laundry nook with poured concrete slop sink and poured concrete folding counter where simple, biscuit-colored cotton canvas curtains hide the no-doubt top end but still unsightly washer and dryer machines.

Between the living and dining rooms just off the front entrance, there's a small den/family room where, according to the Vogue article, Miz Murphy (and child) do not watch television.

The upstairs master suite has more oak wood floors, a window-wrapped nook and an over-sized, stone-floored bathroom with claw-footed soaking tube, separate glass and marble shower enclosure, double sinks set into an antique-looking breakfront and French doors that connect the airy and pale pooper to a private terrace.

The all-but perfect Pamela Burton-designed gardens look and feel more like they might surround a sun bleached farmhouse on the Côte d'Azur than a white-stucco Spanish in Brentwood. A river rock wall defines the long, crushed granite driveway that runs up the side of the property, olive (or olive-like) trees, crushed granite driveway and terraces for dining and lounging, a spa set into a geometric grid of lavender bushes, and a simple, rectangular plunge-sized swimming pool.

Although in between she owned photo-friendly properties in both Ojai (CA) and Brooklyn (NY), this isn't the first time Miz Murphy has owned a beautifully (re)done Spanish-style residence in Brentwood. In fact, about 4.5 years ago she sold—and we discussed—a similarly-decorated but larger Spanish-style residence on the very same street in the flats of Brentwood for $3,600,000 to a tech exec and his wife who appears to have once been in the television business.

Anyhoo, as we've already many times said already, Miz Murphy has long been in the expensive grip of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle and before moving to the beautiful house in Brentwood she's now trying to sell Miz Murphy lived briefly in Brooklyn, NY and for a few years before that in pretty-damn-fab, early 20th century bungalow on a well-located multi-acre estate in low-key but still swanky Ojai, CA. Interested parties can stay tuned (or check back) for more details and discussion of those real estate cast offs as well as some speculation on where she might be moving her slender, peripatetic boo-tox next.

listing photos: Prudential California Realty