Rumor has it sitcom star and romcom queen Jennifer Aniston caught a costly case of the Celebrity Real Estate Fickle.
Since she landed a co-starring role (and earned many tens of millions of dollars from) Friends Miz Aniston has lived primarily in Los Angeles. In April of this year (2011), with an itch to spend more time in The Big Apple where her actor man-beau Justin Theroux (American Psycho, Six Feet Under, John Adams mini-series) resides, Miz Aniston coughed up $2,069,084 for a 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom apartment directly below a compact 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom penthouse with wrap around terraces that she bought at the same time from hairstyling honcho Sally Hershberger for $4,950,000. The plan, presumably, was to combine the two small apartments located in a top-notch Bing & Bing building in the West Village into a still not particularly large duplex penthouse with 270 degree views from downtown to Midtown Manhattan.
Alas, Miz Aniston has reportedly changed her real estate mind and signed contracts to acquire a pricey pad in a particularly posh building that overlooks private, pristine and historicGramercy Park. The high-style, full-service building was developed by boutique hotelier and property developer Ian Schrager, designed by soo-blime minimalist architect John Pawson and has only 23 apartments (some have been combined). Residents have access to the copious amenities of the adjacent Gramercy Park Hotel–once funky now terribly chic and owned by Mister Shrager, natch–including room service, housekeeping, valet parking with car wash services, event planning and butler services, personal shopping and delivery services, and membership to the hotel spa and David Barton gym. We assume the apartment comes with a key to gated Gramercy Park across the street.
Listing information shows the apartment Miz Aniston is (allegedly) on the cusp of acquiring, listed at a superstar-sized $8,700,000, measures 2,873 square feet with 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms and pocketbook punishing monthly maintenance and common charges of $11,258.
Gorgeous wood floors run throughout the apartment that has generous 11'8" ceilings and over-sized windows with park and courtyard views. The contemporary crib features a long entrance gallery with nearby powder pooper, and a large living/dining room with fireplace and floor-to-ceiling windows, a sleek center island eat-in kitchen. The park view master suite has a walk-in closet/dressing room larger than some New York City studio apartments and an attached bathroom with two sinks, a tub for two and separate shower cubicle. Each of the two guest rooms–both set up as a nursery by the seller–has large windows and en suite terliting and bathing facility. We imagine (and hope) Miz Aniston will bring in her team of smart architects and nice, gay decorators to remove the twee and toile-ish day-core of the seller and replace it with something more appropriate for a gal whose tastes run more towards modern than Connecticut country house in the city.
Other residents–or at least owners–of apartments in the swank building include blue chip gallerist Alexander Acquavella and German-born but Paris-based haute fashion über-icon Karl Lagerfeld who has his little (or never) used unit in the building currently on the market with an asking price of $5,200,000.
We can't fathom why Miz Aniston would switch real estate gears and head for Gramercy Park so quickly after spending more than seven million clams on two downtown apartments but, if we've said it once we've said to 56,417 times, such are the often fickle and inexplicable real estate ways of the rich and/or famous.
Back on the left coast Your Mama hears through the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine Miz Aniston has gone on the hunt for a new Tinseltown residence to lay her perfectly-maintained tresses after she was kissed by the real estate leprechaun in June (2011) when she sold her just renovated Beverly Hills, CA mansion to a mutual fund mogul from Orange County for a gasp-worthy $35,000,000 after just two months on the open market with an even more gaspy price tag of $42,000,000.
More than one of Your Mama's many Platinum Triangle informants have snitched to us that Miz Aniston has peeped and poked around a number of deluxe homes in the ten million dollar range including a one-acre ridge-top spread in Beverly Hills owned by the scion of a prominent Los Angeles family as well as a sleek and sexy Hal Leavitt-designed house in the Trousdale Estates area of Bev Hills owned by AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips, decorated by Kelly Wearstler and recently acquired for well over $10,000,000 by music industry super-tycoon Simon Cowell.
Until she picks and purchases a fancy-pants new pad in Los Angeles, Miz Aniston and Mister Theroux have leased a temporary love nest in the form a modestly sized but still quite pricey gated residence near the tippy-top of the star-studded Bird Streets neighborhood above the Sunset Strip. We don't know what the couple coughs up each month for the 2 bedroom and 2 bathroom ranch-style residence but we do know it was last available with a $20,000 per month price tag.
Once again, we're not sure why Miz Aniston would opt to cough up twenty grand a month to rent a house when she has long owned another residence in the Bird Street neighborhood that is, buy our rudimentary calculations, just over half a mile from her and Mister Theroux's rental. But again, who are we to make sense of the wacky ways of celebrities and other high profile peeps with pockets deep enough to indulge their every real estate whim and desire?
listing photos and floor plan: Prudential Douglas Elliman