Ellen Degeneres Flips Out in Malibu

Celebrity real estate watchers will recall it was only in mid-December 2011 when talk show queen bee Ellen Degeneres and her actress wife Portia de Rossi shelled out $12,000,000 to snatch up Brad Pitt's bluff top beach house in Malibu, CA.

Well, the property-mad ladies appear to have caught an immediate case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle because a snitch named Malibu Ken told Your Mama (and property records confirm) the sleek and glassy, 4,088 square foot, low-slung contemporary on 1.26 ocean front acres was sold in mid-June 2012 for $13,000,000.

The property, which Mister Pitt picked up in early 2004 for $8,410,000, was purchased through a blind trust that Your Mama can't crack but Malibu Ken says scuttlebutt on the (celebrity) real estate street is that the new owner is Tinseltown makeup artist turned cosmetics entrepreneur and television infomercial pioneer Victoria Jackson. 

Miz Jackson is married to direct-marketing tycoon Bill Guthy who shills products direct to consumer, many of which are celebrity-owned skin care and beauty products such as Youthful Essence (by Susan Lucci), Meaningful Beauty (by Cindy Crawford), and In an Instant (by Heidi Klum).

The Missus Degeneres's recently sold the bulk of their Beverly Hills (CA) compound to milquetoast Hollywood mogul Ryan Seacrest for $37,500,000. At about the same time they sold their Bev Hills house to Mister Seacrest, they scooped up a single story mid-century modern house in the lower Trousdale Estates area of Beverly Hills and, as far as we know, they still own and maintain a modest condo in Beverly Hills (probably for staff and/or family), a house in Beverly Hills that borders their old compound (and which we imagine they'll sell soon or eventually), and a spectacular, equestrian-oriented ranch in a particularly fancy-pants corner of Thousand Oaks (CA), which they've had on and off the market the last couple years with an asking price of $16,500,000.

aerial photo: Pacific Coast News