Sheryl Crow Lists California Compound

SELLER: Sheryl Crow
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $15,950,000
SIZE: 11 acres, 3 houses

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It looks like the Grammy winning singer-songwriter is leaving Los Angeles, or at least she wants to sell her gated 11-acre compound in the Hollywood Hills that was just listed as a "private celebrity compound" with an asking price of $15,950,000.*

Listing information shows the multi-parcel property is comprised of three houses (above) that include a remodeled and restored 1925 Spanish Revival main house with 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms plus a double-height foyer, step-down living room with fireplace and high beamed ceiling, formal dining room with vintage floor tiles. There's also an intimately scaled library with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and a half-vintage 1950s/half modernized eat-in kitchen with adjoining family room area.

A Brazilian Ironwood bridge (above, top) spans the driveway and connects the main house to a perfectly charming and meticulously restored and updated 1885 cottage with 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms (above, middle). Set into the hillside just above the cottage, with long views down the canyon and over the city, is a negative-edge swimming pool and spa (above, bottom) encircled by a broad sunbathing, lounging and dining decks.

 

The highest of the three residences that comprise the compound, a 1909 Craftsman with 3,335 square feet (as per property records) sits above the swimming pool complex and includes three bedrooms, large living and dining rooms—there's a wood burning fireplace in the living room—a small kitchen with restored vintage appliances and fittings, three vintage bathrooms, a small television viewing room, and another small room with an Old-Timey upright piano.

In addition to the resort-style swimming pool and spa terrace that sits high on the hill between the two guest cottages, the sprawling property includes acres of rugged and naturalistic but painstakingly maintained landscaping; scads of meandering pathways, stairways, bridges and hiking trails; a private campsite and children's play area; an authentic tee-pee; and several palapas that dot the steep hillside, at least one of which has a rope hammock and sweeping views over Tinseltown.

Miz Crow acquired the three residences in what appear in property records to be two separate transactions. The first came in February 1998 when she paid $1,800,000 for the smallest of the three parcels—just .25 acres—that includes the 5,437 square foot main house. In December of the same year she shelled out another $3,300,000 to acquire two adjacent and contiguous parcels. One parcel measures 1.2 acres with a 1,334 square foot 19th-century cottage and the other 8.87 acres with a 3,335 square foot Craftsman residence.

Miz Crow also owns a gulf-front residence on the Florida Panhandle between Pensacola and Panama City in Santa Rosa Beach, FL and a 50-plus acre spread in (suburban) Nashville, TN purchased last year for $5,225,000.

Although she's been trying to unload it for year Miz Crow is still saddled with Cross Creek Farm, a 150 (or so) acre equestrian-oriented estate in pastoral College Grove, TN. She put the farm on the market for the first time—that we know of—in May 2010 with a $7,500,000 asking price and by August 2011, after a failed auction of the property, the asking price dipped to as low as $4,500,000 but it's currently still on the open market with a $6,399,000 price tag.

*Thanks to all the children who turned Your Mama on to this listing just moments after it went live.

listing photo: Dream Home Photo for Nourmand and Associates

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Stella McCartney To Sell London Bacherlorette Pad

SELLER: Stella McCartney
LOCATION: London, UK (Notting Hill)
PRICE: £2,500,000
SIZE: 1,980 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Its not often we get to discuss a celeb-owned residence in the terrifically chic and impossibly expensive international über-capital of London where an always reliable and trusted informant—let's call him Harry Hound—tells Your Mama that PETA-friendly fashion designer and rock-n-roll scion Stella McCartney's (former) bachelorette pad in London's natty Notting Hill nabe is up for sale—and currently under offer/in escrow—with an asking price of £2,500,000.

Two-and-half million pounds maybe doesn't sound like so much moolah in the rarefied world of celebrity real estate to all us Continentals and Americanos, but according to Your Mama's hard-charging currency conversion contraption that actually works out, at today's rates, to a much more substantial sounding 3,141,770 Euros and 4,040,550 U.S. dollars.

Although Miz McCartney was born to a silver-spooned life of fame, fortune, nepotism and privileged access—her father is former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney and her mother is the late photographer/activist Linda McCartney—she is not some hair-brained heiress like, say, Paris Hilton who fritters her life away with a slew of silly (albeit reasonably successful) reality tee-vee programs and a fleet of douche-y cars like horrendous, 200-and-some thousand clam Barbie-pink Bentley GT. Instead, Miz McCartney has admirably forged her own impressive, respectable and successful path as a much lauded and applauded fashion designer.

In 1997, at the dewy age of 25 and just two years after graduating from the prestigious Central St. Martins design school in London, Miz McCartney was—to predecessor Karl Lagerfeld's mild skepticism—appointed Creative Director of the venerable, high-brow Paris-based label Chloé. Four years later, in 2001, she launched her own eponymous label that now encompasses lingerie, perfume, skincare products and clothes for the kiddies. Over the years Miz McCartney has designed Madonna's wedding dress, made sporty outfits for professional tennis player Caroline Wozniacki, created successful collaboration lines with mass market retailers H&M and Target, and in 2011 she was given the Red Carpet Award by the The British Fashion Council. A staunch and vocal animal rights activist, Miz McCartney does not wear or use leather in her designs. She does, for the record, make use of sensitively harvested animal by products such as silk and wool.

In August 2003 Miz McCartney hitched her wagon to publisher turned high-end and high-design furniture purveyor Alasdhair Willis who co-founded of slick and sophisticated, late-1990s design magazine/manifesto Wallpaper* and later co-founded the design-world zeitgeist-y Established & Sons furniture and design showroom that promotes the high-end and high-style designs of contemporary British and Britain-based designers.

The newlyweds—who bought a stunning 160-acre country estate about 120 miles outside London in Bishampton, Worcestershire before they were married—reportedly moved into the Miz McCartney's bacherlorette pad on leafy, serpentine, and affluently trendy Westbourne Park Road that she purchased, according an un-sourced report on the internets, in the late 1990s for around £695,000.

The stylish and savvy couple quickly began to procreate—they have four little ones now—and in 2007 dropped £4,750,000 on a pair of adjoining, down-on-their-heels Notting Hills Gate properties with a staggering 45 bedrooms and previously used as some sort of rooming house or hostel. Miz McCartney and Mister Willis reportedly converted the run-down buildings back to two single family homes, sold off one and moved into the other that's been reported to now include five bedrooms, a library, gym, home theater and, possibly, a swimming pool in the basement.

No longer in need of her Notthing Hill bachelorette pad turned family homestead, it went up for sale some time ago, according to our man on the ground, Harry Hound, for £3,000,000 before the price was lowered to it's last asking price of £2,500,000.

Current listing information and marketing materials show the unassuming yet gleaming, dove-gray stucco townhouse-type residence spans a relatively modest 1,980 square feet over four floors with a total of three bedrooms and two full and two half bathrooms.

A wee, gated garden and slender stoop lead to the parlor-level entrance/stair hall and double reception room that stretches from a wide, street-side bay window with original shutters clear though to a large window at the back with verdant garden view. There are original—or at least antique-looking—hardwood floors that carry the pits and pockmarks of previous residents, a pair of period fireplaces and exposed radiators, built-in cupboards and two banks of floor-to-ceiling floating glass shelves that give the otherwise Old-School space(s) a sleek, modern twist. Eagle-eyed children will have already noted a convenient but privately situated and properly ventilated half-pooper tucked behind the stair landing.

Down below, in the half-subterranean lower ground floor,  the large dining/family room has a second, under-the-stoop entry for deliveries, domestics and dirty dogs and a second, also convenient but privately situated and properly ventilated half-bathroom with direct back garden access. The compact but well-equipped galley-style kitchen has blond hardwood floors, crisp, white Shaker-style cabinetry, butcher block counter tops, and snow-white subway tile back splashes. French doors connect to the terraced and planted rear garden where a circular picnic bench was playfully custom-built around a skinny tree trunk on the upper level.

Two guest/family bedrooms on the second floor each have fireplaces flanked by built in wardrobes and share a split, hall bathroom. The loft-like master suite occupies the entire top floor and includes a completely open-plan bathroom that lacks any real privacy from the rest of the room. It does not appear in the floor plan that there are any actual closets or wardrobes in the master bedroom, which is on obvious problem for obvious reason, but there is direct and private access to a glassed in galled and tiny terrace on the roof.

listing photos and floor plan: Bective Leslie March

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Bernanke Begs Congress to Address "Fiscal Cliff", Pledges to Hold Interest Rates Near Zero Through Mid-2015 Even If Economy Picks Up

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was yapping about jobs today in his speech Five Questions about the Federal Reserve and Monetary Policy in Indianapolis.

Bernanke asked five questions of himself and gave five self-serving responses, all absolving the Fed of its role in the global financial crisis.

Bernanke also patted himself on the back numerous times (indeed in the answers to nearly every question).

In particular, Bernanke bragged about the inflation-fighting prowess of the Fed, not pointing out the Fed and fractional reserve lending are the source of inflation.

Direct Lies

In the direct lie category, Bernanke stated "The Federal Reserve is also very open about its finances and operations."

In reality, it took freedom-of-information lawsuits from Bloomberg and others to get information from the Fed. The Fed still does not want to be audited.

Here are a couple of key snips regarding monetary and fiscal policy.

Pledge To Hold Rates Low

In the category of communications policy, we also extended our estimate of how long we expect to keep the short-term interest rate at exceptionally low levels to at least mid-2015. That doesn't mean that we expect the economy to be weak through 2015. Rather, our message was that, so long as price stability is preserved, we will take care not to raise rates prematurely. Specifically, we expect that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy will remain appropriate for a considerable time after the economy strengthens. We hope that, by clarifying our expectations about future policy, we can provide individuals, families, businesses, and financial markets greater confidence about the Federal Reserve's commitment to promoting a sustainable recovery and that, as a result, they will become more willing to invest, hire and spend.

Bernnake Begs Congress to Address "Fiscal Cliff"

I certainly don't underestimate the challenges that fiscal policymakers face. They must find ways to put the federal budget on a sustainable path, but not so abruptly as to endanger the economic recovery in the near term. In particular, the Congress and the Administration will soon have to address the so-called fiscal cliff, a combination of sharply higher taxes and reduced spending that is set to happen at the beginning of the year. According to the Congressional Budget Office and virtually all other experts, if that were allowed to occur, it would likely throw the economy back into recession. The Congress and the Administration will also have to raise the debt ceiling to prevent the Treasury from defaulting on its obligations, an outcome that would have extremely negative consequences for the country for years to come. Achieving these fiscal goals would be even more difficult if monetary policy were not helping support the economic recovery.

Bernanke Tosses Monetarist and Keynesian Hats Into the Ring

Although Bernanke does not want Congress meddling in monetary policy at all, he meddles in fiscal policy all the time. Bernanke cannot make decisions or pass laws, however, Bernanke is clearly warning Congress the alleged "Fiscal Cliff" of tax hikes and automatic budget cuts "would likely throw the economy back in recession".

I suggest the US economy is already back in recession. Regardless, Keynesian and Monetarist clowns (Bernanke wears both hats when he attempts to manipulate Congress),  never want to do anything "now" to fix structural problems.

Indeed, Bernanke does not even want to do anything until at least mid-2015 regardless of what the economy is doing.

If you want to know why the boom-bust cycles have ever-increasing amplitudes and troughs, look at the policies of the Fed.

Bear in mind that I side with Bernanke that price inflation is not going to get out of hand. However, His policies have destroyed those on fixed income (a claim he tries but fails to address in his five questions). More importantly, those with first access to money (primarily banks and the wealthy) are the biggest beneficiaries of monetary printing exercises.

Those wondering how the 1% got so wealthy need only look at the Fed for the answer.

That was a question Bernanke did not address, but I addressed in detail a few days ago in Can the Fed Fight Droids and Win? Apple's SIRI, Driverless Trucks, What's Next? Riveting Video: Are Droids Taking Our Jobs?

Please take a look at that post if you have not yet done so.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

"Wine Country" Economic Conference Hosted By Mish
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Manufacturing ISM Rebounds Slightly

Following three months of contraction, the September 2012 Manufacturing ISM PMI is back in the green at 51.5%.

Index	Sep	Aug	Percentage Point Change	Direction	Rate of Change	Trend in Months
PMI™	51.5	49.6	1.9	Growing	From Contracting	1
New Orders	52.3	47.1	5.2	Growing	From Contracting	1
Production	49.5	47.2	2.3	Contracting	Slower	2
Employment	54.7	51.6	3.1	Growing	Faster	36
Supplier Deliveries	50.3	49.3	1	Slowing	From Faster	1
Inventories	50.5	53	-2.5	Growing	Slower	2
Customers' Inventories	49.5	49	0.5	Too Low	Slower	10
Prices	58	54	4	Increasing	Faster	2
Backlog of Orders	44	42.5	1.5	Contracting	Slower	6
Exports	48.5	47	1.5	Contracting	Slower	4
Imports	49.5	49	0.5	Contracting	Slower	2

Production is still in contraction. Deliveries and inventories are nearly flat. The big jump is in employment, still in its 36th month of expansion. I doubt that trend continues given the global slowdown.

Respondent Comments

• "Appears that our so-called 'slowdown' was a summer thing. September brings with it increasing requirements and business." (Paper Products)
• "Business improved through Q3, but is beginning to show signs of slowing down in Q4; this has been a typical trend over the last few years." (Wood Products)
• "Business has picked up going into the last quarter." (Plastics & Rubber Products)
• "We are sticking to our manufacturing plan, but have slowed production down considerably. Haven't added any new units to the 2012 plan, and still have no forecast for 2013 released." (Computer & Electronic Products)
• "Sales have tanked over the last two months, bringing a very concerned and stressed management team. Not very optimistic for the near-term future." (Apparel, Leather & Allied Products)
• "Uncertainty in the healthcare legislation (reform) continues to be the underlying force keeping our sales revenue below its full potential." (Miscellaneous Manufacturing)
• "Steel and aluminum prices still dropping, and auto production orders are up." (Transportation Equipment)
• "Domestic business is up; international is down." (Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components)
• "Demand seems to have stabilized from August. New orders are appearing this month without advanced notice from our customers." (Chemical Products)

Respondent Comments are all over the map from "summer slowdown" to "sales have tanked last two months".

A one month rebound is not that significant unless it is a trend change which I highly doubt.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

"Wine Country" Economic Conference Hosted By Mish
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Hockey House

Q&A with Bob Wilkoff of Archaeon, Inc. Architects

By Beth Herman

Because of a contemporary mom’s burgeoning interest in professional hockey, predicated on a Washington Capitals' championship season, the cramped first floor of a late 1970s 2,800 s.f. residence in Potomac, Maryland, underwent a significant reorganization. The goal was for client advantage in viewing much-anticipated games on the family’s flat screen TV from the kitchen and other points. With a few strategic slap shots, Bob Wilkoff of Archaeon, Inc. Architects brought her game plan home.

DCMud: Describe the home’s interior and some of the challenges for you in opening it up to the space that featured the TV.

Wilkoff: The house was dated and compartmentalized—no open flow from space to space. There was a convoluted access to get from the garage and entrance foyer into the kitchen through a series of corridors, and a tight breakfast room. The kitchen was landlocked in the back corner of the house. There was also a very small family room that was adjacent to the kitchen but not contiguous to it in any way: You still had to go through the breakfast room, through a corridor, back into the hall, past the laundry room to get to the family room.

DCMud: Were there any prior renovations at all?

Wilkoff: The kitchen had been redone about 15 or 18 years ago and had held up well, but it was claustrophobic. A built-in computer desk in the corridor between the breakfast room and main entrance hall wasn’t used, becoming just a catch-all for things. It wasted a lot of square footage.

DCMud: So how did you begin to use the superfluous square footage?

Wilkoff: The client wanted to make the family room feel bigger without expanding the house, and open up the kitchen to the family room so she could watch the game. We were not going to add a single square foot to the house—everything was being done within the existing footprint. I might add that though the dining room had a cathedral ceiling, it was also not spacious. In fact it felt like you were in a tower.

DCMud:What was the process?

Wilkoff: We opened up as much of those areas as we could. We took out the knee wall handrails in the entrance foyer stairwell -- a typical ‘70s detail where you have a half-height drywall partition up to a wood cap handrail. It had some bold forms but also closed everything in. There was no sense of a vision beyond the space of those walls. A balcony over the foyer that overlooked the dining room had that same detail, so we cut out all of those drywall handrail walls down to the stringers of the stairs and landings, and put in a stainless steel cable rail design which opened everything up dramatically without changing the space of the stair structures at all.

DCMud:And the rest of the square footage?

Wilkoff: We then gutted the series of corridors that were there and put in a new corridor that went from the entrance foyer to the family room, but we put it at a 15-degree angle. This allowed us to steal more space out of the family room to make it almost four feet wider—to use all of those (haphazard) corridors as a single corridor within this angle. We opened a giant peninsula from the new kitchen to the family room. There was also an over-sized powder room off of these old corridors. It had been dead space at the time, so they’d made the powder room really big and the laundry room as well. We reconfigured the powder and laundry rooms to a more typical size. In this way, we were able to steal another 18 inches of that old space and make the family room 18 inches wider one way and four feet wider the other way, all from the dead space.

DCMud:So really without picking up any square footage, you incorporated a great deal of wasted space into the two new living spaces—and the hockey mom client achieved her vantage point(s) in grand style.

Wilkoff: It feels as though the space has been doubled. We also used new cabinetry, fixtures, hardware, appliances. In fact the angled corridor is a porcelain ceramic tile—floor-to-ceiling—for a more dramatic feel. And it created an entrance portal into these spaces, so you feel like you are going through a transitional space. Some AV cabinets were built into the corridor with the same wood used on the kitchen cabinets. The same cabinet detailing was echoed in the dining room so these three spaces related to one another.

DCMud:And the TV—the renovation’s raison d’etre?

We gutted a dated and dare I say hideous fireplace, and put in a remote controlled gas unit. We took the huge wall between the fireplace and the kitchen’s new end windows and put the big flat screen TV on it. It’s centered between the family room and kitchen, so anywhere you are in that space, the focus is on the TV.

DCMud: A real game changer. And speaking of focus, what D.C. building would you say has inspired you the most as an architect?

Wilkoff: I grew up watching Italian craftsmen hand carving stone on the lawn of the soon-to-be National Cathedral. It was old world craftsmanship that is gone today. There were tents on the Cathedral’s front lawn that sheltered these workers all along Wisconsin Avenue as they carved gargoyles and numbered stones going into this gorgeous building. It left a huge impression.

Washington D.C. design news

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What's Ahead For Mortgage Rates This Week : October 1, 2012

Mortgage rates dropped to another all-time low last week as concerns for global economic growth helped U.S. home buyers and refinancing households nationwide. 

U.S. mortgage rates responded to non-U.S. events and, for rate shoppers and home buyers in Renton , home affordability improved.

Early in the week, with Greece and Spain debating new austerity measures, and with citizen protests rampant, a flight-to-quality helped to boost demand for U.S. mortgage bonds. So did rumors of a weakening Chinese economy.

"Flight-to-quality" is a trading term for when investors shun investment risk in favor of safer, more high-quality portfolio assets. Typically, this involves selling stocks and buying bonds, including mortgage-backed ones.

When demand for mortgage-backed bonds rise, mortgage rates tend to fall.

Demand for bonds is also receiving a boost from the Federal Reserve's latest market stimulus program -- QE3.

"QE3" is a shorthand term for the Fed's third qualitative easing, a program by which the nation's central banker buys mortgage-backed securities on the open market in hopes of driving mortgage rates down.

So far, it's been working. Since the Federal Reserve announced QE3 in mid-September, conforming mortgage rates have been on steady decline.

According to Freddie Mac, the average 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate slipped to 3.40% nationwide last week with an accompanying 0.6 discount points plus closing costs. The average 15-year fixed rate mortgage rate moved to 2.73%, also with 0.6 discount points and closing costs. Both rates are at all-time lows.

This week, mortgage rates have a lot of data on which to trade, and may be poised to bounce higher. 

In addition to the release of manufacturing, construction and retail sales reports, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will post its September Non-Farm Payrolls report Friday. More commonly called the "jobs report", the monthly release takes on added significance now that the Federal Reserve has said that its open-ended QE3 program will be linked to the U.S. jobs economy.

Wall Street expects to see 120,000 net new jobs created in September. If the actual reading exceeds this figure, mortgage rates should rise.

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Morning Real Estate Fix

Investing in apartments - REITs are performing well (National Real Estate Investor)  The economic downturn has been kind to investors in real estate trusts owning apartment buildings, and the prognosis is for another solid year ahead.

Old Town's GenOn power plant set to close (Washington Post)  After years of complaints about the plant being located too near the city and too inefficient and dirty, the power plant on the Alexandria waterfront closed at midnight last night.  Now the talk will turn to redevelopment of the site and the waterfront.

QE3 to raise home prices (HousingWire)  A study by Deutsche Bank says that the Fed's QE3 is likely to raise home prices next year by 2%.

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