Your Mama Hears...

...through the Beverly Hills celebrity real estate grapevine that the reason entertainment mogul/real estate size queen Tyler Perry, who made much of his many millions working it on the silver screen as a sassy and saggy boobed old woman named Madea, wants to sell his über modern mansion at the tippy top of the bird streets above Sunset Strip is because he's building and even bigger house on a 22-acre spread in Beverly Hills.

Mister Perry purchased the 22-acre property behind the guarded gates of the swank and showy Beverly Ridge community in April of 2004 for an undisclosed amount of money. He began building his multi-winged dream mansion but soon after the foundation was poured, some steel framing erected, and the tennis court pad graded Mister Tyler caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle and hoisted the property and the unfinished mansion on the market with an asking price of $15,000,000. Listing information from the time stated that plans were for a boo-teek hotel sized 22,000 square foot Tuscan style home. Although the property was featured on the first season of Bravo's Million Dollar Listing it was not identified as belonging to Mister Tyler and in October of 2007 Your Mama heard through the gossip grapevine that Mister Tyler showed his big Bev Hills spread to Puff Diddle (or Diddy Diddle or Fiddle Puff or whatever his name is) but no deal was consummated.

At some point, around the middle of 2008 as best as we can surmise, Mister Perry caught another case of The Real Estate Fickle because the 22-acre property was taken off the market and construction resumed with the idea, we hear, that this will be Mister Perry's rarely used west coast crib. But Your Mama ain't holding our breath because if history is any predictor of the future we'd not be least bit surprised if mercurial Mister Perry changed his damn mind and decided to flip this beehawtcha back on the market and buy a new damn house in Malee-boo–where he did once own a ocean front getaway that he sold in the spring of 2007. Phew!

The relatively new and totally nouveau riche Beverly Ridge community is home to a number of other hoity toity big name sorts including Alexis Carson–that would be Johnny's insanely rich widow, and former professional pigskinner turned interior decorator Keyshawn Johnson. It's also the same community where Paris Latsis, heir to a great Greek shipping, banking, and oil fortune, once bought a mansion for he and then fiancée Paris Hilton to live. However, like all of Miss Hilton's high profile romances with far less famous men, her short lived relationship with Boy Paris swirled down the terlit of love.

In early 2009, Atlanta-based Mister Perry heaved his Fairburn, GA home–all 17,252 square feet it–on the market with an asking price of $3,695,000 so that he could move to an even bigger, (approximately) 30,000 square foot monument to his wealth and success on 17 suburban Atlanta acres overlooking the Chatahootchie River. Mister Perry's Fairburn mansion no longer appears to be on the open market, but property records show it's still taking up space in his bulging real estate portfolio.

Madea–aka Tyler Perry–Lists Modern Mansion in Los Angeles

SELLER: Tyler Perry
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $13,250,000
SIZE: 8,751 square feet, 4 bedrooms 6 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Tyler Perry, the spectacularly successful and prolific writer/actor/director who has made a mountain of money dressing up as a crotchety old woman named Madea, is an out and out real estate size queen. In January of 2009 he listed Avec Chateau, his 17,252 square foot pile in Fairburn, GA that he once told Ebony magazine was a "testament to the rewards of faith" and "what God can do when you believe." Bitch, please. We don't begrudge you your smashing success or vast wealth, but going around saying silly stuff like that chaps Your Mama's already chapped hide. It is just so insulting to all the God fearers and holy rollers out there who spend their entire lives speaking in tongues and tithing ten percent of their meager income and still have to live in a damn double wide smack in the path of a tornado. How are these less fortunate lives a testament to what God can do when you believe? If God wanted Mister Tyler to be so filthy, stinking rich, how come s/he leaves so many true believers to be hungry and poor?

Property records show that Mister Perry has yet to sell his titanic "testament," which is currently listed at $3,650,000. According to multiple and many previous reports, Mister Perry wants to get rid of his first real estate testament to what God can do when you believe because he has spent the last few years building an even larger testament to what God can do if you believe, a 30,000+ square foot beast on 17 acres overlooking the Chatahoochie River in suburban Atlanta, GA. Well, good for him. This is America, dammit, where a filthy rich single man can and should be able to have a house the size of a damn Wal-Mart iffin he has a fool notion to want it. Have mercy and hand Your Mama a nerve pill, please.

Anyhoo, we digress. Word on the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine is that for the last few months Mister Perry and his real estate people quietly shopped his little used uber-modern mansion in Los Angeles' Sunset Strip area with an asking price of around $15,000,000. With no takers, or at least no one serious enough to sign on the dotted line, Mister Perry shifted gears, swapped real estate agents, and hoisted his dramatic digs on to the open market with an asking price of $13,250,000.

Property records and other sources Your Mama can't reveal tell us that in November of 2006 Mister Perry paid $9,600,000 for the sleek and sexified SPF:architects designed edifice that measures, according to listing information, 8,751 square feet and includes 4 bedrooms and 6 poopers. When the glassy manse was built it contained, according to the architects' website, a two level "concrete plinth base" that holds the 3 car garage fronted by stainless steel doors, a screening room, billiards room, home fitness center, wine cellar and a damn disco, because everyone needs a nightclub in their private home, right? Current listing information also states that the boldly built house boasts "spaceship views" and several feats of architectural chutzpah including a curved and mirrored wall in the billiards room that is actually a window into the depths of the swimming pool–perfect for pervy voyeurs–and a glass catwalk that acts as the ceiling of the wine cellar, another potentially pervy architectural device.

Although it is a long, long, long slog up Byzantine and twisty roads, trust Your Mama when we tell the children that Mister Perry's house is supremely sited at the tippy-top of the famed Bird Street neighborhood. The house hovers high above the surrounding homes, some of which are owned by famous folks like crooner Michael Bublé, R&B singer Robin Thicke–that's Alan's son, Fran Drescher's recently outed gay ex-husband Peter Marc Jacobson, and Jenny Aniston, who still owns the very first bachelorette pad she bought with Friends money and appears to still use as some sort of office/storage facility for her vintage Mercedes.

Mister Perry is hardly a stranger to high priced real estate in Los Angeles. The cross-dressing showbiz mogul owned ocean front house in Malee-boo that he purchased in 2005 for $3,375,000 and, according to property records, sold in April of 2007 for $4,800,000. In the mid-2000s, Mister Perry planned to build an approximately 22,000 square foot Mediterranean mansion on an undeveloped 22-acre sprawl behind the guarded gates of the Beverly Ridge community up in the hills above Beverly Hills. In the fall of 2007, after laying down the cement foundation for the big house, Mister Perry caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle and heaved the property on the market for $15,000,000. Public records indicate that the property remains in Mister Perry's property portfolio.

photos: Keller Williams Realty Sunset via Redfin

Lord Black of Crossharbour Cashing Out

YOUR MAMAS UPDATE: Although Mister Black's broker once told the Palm Beach Daily News that Mister Black did not want to "sell it or show it at present" there remains a listing for the property online.

SELLER: Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel
LOCATION: S. Ocean Boulevard, Palm Beach, FL
PRICE: Unknown
SIZE: 15,795 square feet, 5 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Elegant ocean to lake estate was completely rebuilt for the present owners in Jan 2002. 5 bedroom suites, totally private with views, master suite consisting of 22x17 bedroom, lakefront library, his & her baths & dressing room plus a tower computer room. 7 baths plus fitness center with steam room, sauna and full bath. Formal living room with curved walls, fireplace, ocean to lake views, dining room lakefront with French doors opening to balcony, kitchen with commercial equipment and butler's pantry, two loggias both lake front, one opens to pool deck and pool, other to 2nd floor balcony, 20x18 theater with kitchen.

YOUR MAMA NOTES: Erstwhile Canadian media mogul Conrad Black famously lived phat, spending obscene amounts of money on jewelry, clothing and humongous homes around the world. His wife, noted columnist Barbara Amiel once said of herself in a Vogue magazine profile: "I have an extravagance that knows no bounds." Oh dear.

But oh lawhd children, how far the mighty and filthy stinking rich sometimes fall. The former head of Hollinger International (now the Sun-Times Media Group) is now shacking up in a prison cell at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Orlando, FL. after being convicted in a U.S. court on three counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice. Uh oh. Mister Conrad, who renounced his Canadian citizenship in a blaze of publicity and was granted a lordship by the Queen of England in 2001, settled into his itty bitty new home in early March of 2008. His sentence is 78 long months, an amount of time our bejeweled abacus tells us is more than six years.

As one might expect in a time of white collar criminal crisis, expenses have to be sliced, diced and hacked away and thanks to Paulina Padlily in Palm Beach Your Mama has learned that Lord and Lady Black have put their large and lavish S. Ocean Boulevard spread on the market with an undisclosed asking price.

According to the Palm Beach tax man, the 2007 taxes alone were $471,082 and given that it's probably costs another million to operate and maintain a monstrous mansion like this, it kinda makes sense that the Blacks would want to be free of that considerable financial obligation. Besides, it appears they won't be using it much for the next five or six years.

Located on a princely parcel that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway, property records reveal that Lord and Lady Black purchased their chunk of Palm Beach paradise way back in July of 1997 for $9,900,000. Listing information indicates that the property was "completely rebuilt" in 2002 and includes 5 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms (records show 5 beds and 9.5 bathrooms and listing information would indicate there are multiple half bathrooms).

Other dee-luxe amenities on the property include his and her powder rooms, perfect for when there are 40 or 400 over for a charity function, a 52-foot swimming pool with an adjacent pool/guest house, a tennis court, also with an adjacent building, an elevator–because apparently really rich Lords and Ladees can't be bothered to walk up a single flight of stairs, a wine closet (natch), staff accommodations (natch, again), a large media room, a kitchen with commercial grade appliances, a master bedroom with his and her baths, private library and a tower computer room, and last but not least, a tunnel under S. Ocean Boulevard for accessing the beach without the indignity of dodging traffic in a boldly printed Lily Pulitzer shift and raffia beach mules.

Your Mama can't tell the children for how much this house is listed, but we can tell you that in 2007, the Palm Beach assessor valued the estate at $27,980,115. We would guess it's listed for between five and ten million smackers over that number, but that is just a damn guess children, so don't anyone report or repeat that like we know what we're talking about, because clearly we do not.

The Lord and Lady Black have long made their primary home in a big house on posh Park Lane Circle in the Bridle Path neighborhood, an area Your Mama has several times heard referred to as the Beverly Hills of Toronto. In 2005, the Blacks sold their New York City digs, a 4,500 square foot co-operative apartment at 635 Park Avenue. Given the relatively modest size of their Park Ave. co-op, the couple also reportedly owned a second smaller apartment in the building where their staff were housed, an impressive real estate luxury to be sure. The sale of 635 Park Avenue was tawdry, complicated and widely reported by all the New York real estate media and gossips and resulted in the Feds seizing $8,900,000 of the proceeds. Uh oh. Also reportedly sold in 2005 was the 11 bedroom townhouse the couple owned in London's coveted Kensington district. That residence was reported to have been sold for around $25,000,000 (US).

We do feel badly for anyone faced with the collapse of their financial house. It's an uglee mess for anyone to have to deal with. However, we also are hard pressed to believe that the Lord and Lady don't have a pile of money in some off-shore account somewhere that will allow them to restart their lavish, but currently on hold lifestyle. We know nothing and make no claim to knowing anything, but it just makes sense because people this rich simply don't sell everything and move into a tract house in some sad development in the Florida panhandle, you know?