Alicia Keys Buys Bubble Hill

BUYER: Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz
SELLER: Eddie Murphy
LOCATION: Englewood, NJ
SIZE: 25,000 square feet (approx.), 7 bedrooms, 9 full and 4 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: According to the ever-in-the-know property gossips at the New York Daily News, 15-time Grammy-winning superstar singer/songwriter Alicia Keys and her hip-hop producer/entrepreneur hubbySwizz Beatz have agreed to cough up "around $12,000,000" for Bubble Hill, the lavish Englewood, NJ estate of comedian Eddie Murphy.

Depending on how you see the sitch, that just might be a pretty good deal when you consider Mister Murphy first hoisted his Garden State real estate white elephant on the market seven or more years ago with an in-hindsight grossly optimistic asking price of $30,000,000.

The 25,000 square foot, Georgian mega-mansion sits on five gated and manicured acres and is approached from a long driveway that passes under, what Your Mama opines, is an architecturally unnecessary porte-cochère that only makes the place seem like someplace where you go for an upscale Bar or Bat Mitzvah, an upper management executive's retirement party or, maybe, a charity benefit hosted by one of those excessively spray-tanned drama mommas on The Real Housewives of New Jersey. We humbly but very strongly suggest a removal of said porte-cochère.

Anyhoo, the unapologetically grand—and quite possibly even grandiose—residence includes, according to listing information and previous discussions of the property, 7 bedrooms, 9 full and 4 half bathrooms and numerous formal and informal living rooms and dining areas. The gigantic red brick pile is also said to contain a recording studio, a two-lane bowling alley, a pub room, a wood-paneled billiards room and a spa area with—natch— multiple hair and make-up stations. There's also a detached structure with multiple automobile garage bays and, at the opposite end of the massive manse, an attached, glass-roofed indoor swimming pool pavilion.

Mister and Miz Keys-Beatz will, so the celebrity real estate gossip goes, will also purchase a contiguous two-acre lot, also owned by Mister Murphy, with additional living space, a children's playground and a tennis court.

In early 2010 Miz Keys and Mister Beatz paid design-minded rocker Lenny Kravitz $12,750,000 for his long-listed duplex penthouse loft in New York City's SoHo 'hood. In March of this year (2012) the procreating couple heaved the nearly 6,200 square foot, four-terrace spread on the market in March 2012 with a much higher $17,950,000 price tag.

Mister Murphy still owns another opulent mansion in the guard-gated Beverly Park community in Los Angeles that's almost as big as Bubble Hill as well as a 200-plus acre country spread in rural Poughquag, NY that he had on the open market back in mid-2007 with an asking price of $5,995,000, reduced from $8,995,000.

listing photos: Prominent Properties Sotheby's