Mariah Carey Buys West Coast Crib

BUYER: Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon Carey
LOCATION: Antelo Road, Bel Air, CA
PRICE: around $7,000,000 (allegedly)
SIZE: 11,750 square feet (approx.), 5 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Magnificent gated private view estate on 3 acres. Incredible site. Prime Bel Air address. Staggering 360 degree vus of entire city.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Turns out all the hoopla, head spinning and spilt ink regarding music super star Mariah Carey buying couture queen Suzanne Saperstein’s near mythic mansion in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles was just that…hoopla. That certainly comes and no surprise to Your Mama who never imagined that the wild and wonderfully kooky Miz Saperstein would ever allow her real estate baby to slip into the hands of a woman likely turn her heavily gilded ballroom into a hair and nail salon and stuff her boo-dwar with a bunch of Hello Kitty crap which is, apparently, one of the whistle stop wonder’s preferred decorating motifs.

According to our sources Allez Oup as well as the legendarily knowledgeable Lucy Spillerguts, Your Mama has learned that Miss Carey and her huzband Nick Cannon Carey dumped “around seven million” smackers on a house high in the hills above Bel Air that once belonged to poster princess and original angel Farrah Fawcett, who is, bless her pap hating heart, being ravaged by the cancer even as we type our fingers to the nubbins.

A peep into and a poke around property records reveals that Miz Fawcett sold the Antelo Road residence back in 1999 to a prolific and Grammy winning music engineer/producer named Allen Sides who has used his pin sharp musician’s ear while working with music masters like like Eric Clapton, Faith Hill, Mary J. Blige, the incomparable Joni Mitchell, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, André Previn and that freaky (and deceased) Frank Zappa dude to name just a few. No doubt, the man has crossed musical paths with Miss Mariah a time or two as well.

Thanks to Our Fairy Godmother in Bel Air, we’ve learned that Mister and Missus Sides listed their dee-voonly secluded 3-acre estate above Stone Canyon in August of 2008 with an asking price of $9,500,000. Before long, the asking price had been sliced, diced, slivered and slashed to $6,995,000 and shortly thereafter the property was removed from the open market but was still, we understand, shopped around off-market. Then along came Miss Mariah who, records show, quietly closed on the property in early April of 2009 for an as yet undisclosed sum of money.

Property records show the sprawling, multi-winged mansion measures 9,951 square feet with 6 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms. However, listing information we managed to get our grubby mitts on shows the house spans 11,750 square feet (approx.) and includes 5 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms. We don’t know why the discrepancy.

Anyhoo, listing information shows that in addition to all the bedrooms, terlit rooms and seven fireplaces, the 2-story center hall traditional includes formal living and dining rooms, den, family room, lanai, library/study (as if), media room, office, an eat in kitchen, and while listing information does not say so, we would not be remotely surprised to learn there is a recording studio on the property. This would, obviously, be a wonderful convenience that would allow Miss Mariah to warble and slide up and down every note on the damn scale without ever changing out of her robe, which we’d bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly is one of those shorty numbers that barely covers her nether regions.

The grounds include two motor courts, a huge rectangular swimming pool with a pool side pavilion, a large brick terrace with long views down the rugged canyon towards downtown Los Angeles, several flat lawn areas, a gazebo, and three gated entrances, all of which Your Mama can assure the children will be secured with armed sentries prepared to pepper an automobile with a curtain of bullets should anyone be stoopid enough to try and peer through Miss Mariah’s tall hedges. Don’t even think about it children. Seriously. If you think Ellen Degeneres is serious about her security, then you ain’t seen nothing compared to the pretzeling Miss Mariah’s burly men will do to anyone who gets nosy enough to cruise on by hoping to catch a glimpse of Our Lady of the Micro Mini and Hair Extensions.

In New York City, Miss Mariah still owns a tremendous triplex apartment in TriBeCa and down in the Bahamas, she owns a multi-acre ocean front compound on guard gated Eleuthera Island where the soft sands are, natch, Miss Mariah’s favorite color, pink.

Question of The Day - Down and Out in Omaha?

Everyone investor wants to be like Buffett but even Buffett isn't Buffett anymore…

What's with all his wacky derivatives trading?

You go off buying BRK.A or BRK.B shares with the assumption that Buffet makes sensible long term investments and now you come to find he's been making oddball bets like a drunkard at OTB… What deception!

Shouldn't Berkshire investors be looking for a bailout?

Beantown Bust: Boston CSI and RPX February 2009

The S&P/Case-Shiller (CSI) Home Price index together with the Radar Logic (RPX) for Boston represent the most accurate indicators of the true price movement for both single family homes and the entire residential real estate market as a whole (singles, multi and condos).

For February, both the CSI and RPX showed continued weakness with the CSI declining 7.20% on a year-over-year basis while the RPX dropped 20.72% over the same period.

Further, both reports indicate that area home prices have suffered significant peak declines with the Boston CSI showing a decline of 18.46% since the peak set in September 2005 while the Boston RPX shows a 38.63% price decline since its peak of June 2005.

It's important to note also that with the February release the Boston CSI has registered a peak decline that is well in excess (see peak charts below) of the than the peak decline seen during the 90s "savings and loan" housing bust.

Unfortunately for "homeowners" and housing speculators though, we are likely only just now reaching the cliff side for Boston area residential real estate prices.

The most obvious difference between the 90s housing bust and today is that during the 90s the home price decline occurred mostly in-line with the larger macroeconomic decline.

Today though, all of the home price decline seen prior to mid-2008 occurred within a backdrop of an (more or less) expanding economy.

Now that the economy has firmly taken a turn for the worse (particularly our local Boston area economy), home prices will suffer to the greatest degree seen in this cycle.

The following two charts compares the Boston CSI to the Massachusetts unemployment rate during the 90s bust and today.

Notice how early we are in the unemployment cycle today… there is lots more pain to go.

Recently S&P introduced a new line of data series that specifically track condominium prices in five select markets including Boston which showed that in February Boston condo prices declined 6.42% on a year-over-year basis and 15.87% on a peak decline basis (see chart below).

In all likelihood the dramatic declines to consumer confidence and increases in unemployment will work to place significant downward pressure on property prices, particularly condo prices, for the foreseeable future.

As you can see from the chart below (click for larger), although the RPX captures a greater degree of seasonality, both series are very strongly correlated.

To better illustrate the drop-off in home prices and the potential length and depth of the current housing decline, I have compared BOTH the normalized price movement, annual and peak percentage changes to the Boston CSI home price index from the 80s-90s housing bust to today's bust.

The "normalized" chart compares the normalized Boston price index from the peak of the 80s-90s bust to the peak of today's bust.

Notice that during the 80s-90s bust prices took roughly 46 months (3.8 years) to bottom out.

The "annual" chart compares the percentage change, on a year-over-year basis, to the Boston CSI from the last positive value through the decline to the first positive value at the end of the decline.

In this way, this chart captures only the months that showed monthly "annual declines".

The "peak" chart compares the percentage change, comparing monthly Boston index values to the peak value seen just prior to the first declining month all the way through the downturn and the full recovery of home prices.

In this way, this chart captures ALL months of the downturn from the peak to trough to peak again.

As you can see the last downturn lasted 105 months (almost 9 years) peak to peak including 34 months of annual price declines during the heart of the downturn.

The final chart shows that the Boston housing market has been, in a sense, declining steadily since early 2001 when annual home price appreciation peaked and the intensity of the housing expansion began to wane (click on following chart for larger version).

It appears that that the main thrust of the housing expansion occurred "in-line" with the wider economic expansion that was fueled primarily by the dot-com bubble and that since the dot-com bust, the housing market has never been quite the same.

Bull Trip!: GDP Report Q1 2009 (Advance)

Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released their first installment of the Q1 2009 GDP report showing a striking contraction with GDP declining at an annual rate of -6.1%.

Easily the most notable features of today's report are the stunning declines to residential and non-residential as well as exports of both goods and services.

Fixed investment provided significant drags on growth with non-residential investment declining a whopping -37.9% and residential investment plunging -38.0% while net exports of goods and services declined -30.0%.

Making a positive contribution to GDP were equally stunning declines to imports of goods and services slumping -34.1% as well as positive personal consumption expenditures increasing 2.2%.

The following chart shows real residential and non-residential fixed investment versus overall GDP since Q1 2003 (click for larger version).