Wednesday, June 27, 2007

The Fred Savage Trifecta: FLIP

Our third and final installment of the Fred Savage Trifecta will involve the Hollywood Hills house he purchased, renovated, and flipped.
SELLER: Fred Savage
LOCATION: Devlin Drive, Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $3,500,000 (sale price)
SIZE: 2,520+ square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Architectural Digest quality Mid-Century on a major celebrity street. Gated glass & steel entry leads to a remodeled home w/ an open floor plan. Teak floors and walls of glass featuring head-on views from downtown to the ocean. Gourmet kitchen, great entertainment flow. Slate patios w/ 2 grassy yards & gorgeous landscaping w/ room for pool. 3 bd/3ba + a maids or guest suite. Major privacy behind gates, priced for immediate sale.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Back in February in 2006, Mister Fred Savage purchased this home up on celebrity laden Devlin Drive in the Hollywood Hills. It's unclear to Your Mama whether Mister Savage and his wifey Jennifer originally intended to inhabit this flat roofed modern, or if the intention was always to flip the property at a considerable profit.

We admit that the front of this house isn't all that compelling, but Your Mama thinks that may be a result of the photographs making the place look like an ordinary 1970s ranch house.

But get inside and we start to likey some what we see. Sure, the house is staged to within an inch of its life, but we confess to really liking the living room with its white sofas, sisal rugs, and the delicious teak flooring. The red blanket tossed across the bench can go and along with it, the black and white photo above the fireplace. The floor to ceiling wall of windows is blessedly without curtains. We can only hope the glass has been treated with a UV coating to protect artwork for the sun's harsh glare.

We'd toss the ugly photo diptych on the wall behind the dining room table, and in fact we'd swap the dining room set out for a black waxed farmhouse table with six or eight white Panton chairs. And we would hang a gorgeous chandelier. But otherwise, we like the dining area.

Into the bedroom and we are once again pleasantly surprised. The red rug works hard and successfully to ground the room and we appreciate the white fainting couch. Again, the blanket tossed on the chaise can go. So can the artwork above the bed.

Unfortunately the garage has been converted into a media room, which we're sure industry types appreciate, but Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter prefer covered parking for our fancy automobiles.

The outside areas are a mix between intimate and enclosed spaces juxtaposed with covered patios that take advantage of the wide and long views to downtown Los Angeles.

Neighbors to this Devlin Drive home include a few major celebrities such Christina Aguilera, who is rumored and reported to have purchased the Ozzy Osbourne home on Doheny Road, and Quentin Tarantino, who recently purchased his Devlin Drive home from super model and former Victoria Secret angel Gisele Bundchen.

Savage's flip house has also been occupied by a celebrity resident. In 2002 the house was purchased by former lezbian, club queen, and rock and roll widow Amanda Demme. Miz Demme has a notorious past working the door at some of New York City's hottest clubs, but more recently the velvet rope despot opened Teddy's (and Tropicana) at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, named after her deceased husband, filmmaker Ted Demme. However in 2006, due in part to her extreme exclusivity and celebrity only door policy, she lost the contract to operate the clubs.

It may be that we're exhausted from typing our fingers to the nubbins on the Fred Savage Trifecta, but we have not been able to locate a purchase price. However, we can tell you that Mister Savage sold the house in November of 2006 for $3,500,000, which was $241,000 more than the asking price of $3,269,000. So clearly, Mister Savage made quite a bit more money than he planned.

Mister Savage sold the house to a gal named Cassandra Mann, whose daddy happens to be Alfred Mann, a billionaire entrepreneur and controversial philanthropist. We can only assume that Miz Mann is not fond of water and does not like to swim, because she paid top dollar for a house that does not include a swimming pool.

Who pays $3.5 clams for a house in Los Angeles without a swimming pool? Much as we like the interiors spaces of this house, Your Mama would not dream of coughing up a that much money for a house without a swimming pool.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This home's interiors are a breath of fresh air compaired to the last two and give good reason to believe Fred will transform his new Hancock Park house beautifully. I'm genuinely impressed with the rooms, and the teak flooring is stunning.

On a non related subject, another stunner for me was the Paris Hilton interview on Larry King tonight. I rather cynically tuned in fully expecting not to be able to tolerate more than 3 minutes max and ended up watching the full hour with interest. She overcame my cynicism and left me with the impression that she is a genuinely sweet, decent, articulate girl underneath the all media hype and beyond her past immature mistakes. If you care to check it out when it repeats later tonight, I think you'll be pleasantly suprised too.

Anonymous said...

Cool house. I like it alot. I saw the Paris thing and think she's ok. Not nearly as mixed up as Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears.

Anonymous said...

The exterior is really horrid - so much concrete in those first 2 photos! Ick. Where is the natural element??

Anonymous said...

All that concrete drive? No curb appeal here. No thanks.