BUYER: Blake Anderson
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,175,000
SIZE: 2,792 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: As of June 2012 professional skateboarder turned hard-charging entrepreneur and reality television host Rob Dyrdek (Rob and Big, Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy, and the currently in airing Ridiculousness) owned not just one but three million dollar-plus houses in L.A.'s fabled Hollywood Hills: one in the Mount Olympus community, another in the Hollywood Knolls nabe and a third in a little known 'hood called Laurel Hills.
Mister Dyrdek's most recent addition to his property portfolio came in June 2012 when he shelled out $2.5 million for a fully renovated two story contemporary in the sleepy Laurel Hills neighborhood at the top of Laurel Canyon. Listing details from the time of his purchase show the residence of just over 3,700 square feet has four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a long, just about unimpeded view that sweeps across a wide swathe of the San Fernando Valley.
Last November (2012) Mister Dyrdek sold a boxy, concrete and glass contemporary in the Mount Olympus neighborhood above Laurel Canyon for $2,125,000, a figure that represents a bank account brutalizing $334,000 loss from the $2,459,000 he paid for the place back in May 2008.*
Fortunately for Mister Dyrdek, he recently and finally, after almost five years on and off the market at a variety of prices, unloaded a mid-sixties modern in the somewhat geographically discrete Hollywood Knolls neighborhood. No, puppies, Your Mama did not make a liquor-fueled typo. The house really was on and off the market for nearly five years. Unfortunately, like with Mount Olympus house on which he lost a bundle, Mister Dyrdek sold his Hollywood Knolls house at a significant loss. Property records show he paid $1,400,000 for the hillside house in June 2005 and online evidence suggests he first listed it in June 2008 at $1.75 million. By October of 2012 the asking price had fallen to $1,199,000 and property records reveal Mister Dyrdek managed to shed his real estate albatross a few weeks ago, in mid-March 2013, for $1,175,000.
A few clicks and clacks on the well-worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that Mister Dyrdek has tallied up a throat constricting real estate loss of $559,000 in the last year, not counting other also significant expenses such as (but not necessarily limited to) carrying costs, improvements and real estate fees. Presumably Mister Dyrdek's money managers and accountants know how to turn all those losses into a tax benefit. Isn't that how it's done?
The Hollywood Knolls house was purchased, according to property records, through a vaguely named trust that Your Mama's celebrity real estate Deep Throat Lucy Spillerguts tells us is controlled by the thickly mustachioed and crazily kinky-haired comedian and actor Blake Anderson.
Mister Anderson may not be a big household name in the vein of au courant comedians like, say, Louis C.K., but he's been a solidly upwardly mobile minor player in the comedy scene for the last several years. He studied with the legendary improv comedy groups The Groundlings and the Upright Citizens Brigade before he co-founded his own sketch comedy group, Mail Order Comedy, with longtime b.f.f.s and fellow comedic up and comers Adam DeVine, Anders Holm, and Kyle Newacheck.
Over the last few years the recently secretly married Mister Anderson has popped up on a couple of primetime sitcoms programs (Community, Entourage) and a handful of short form t.v. series (Crossbows & Mustaches, 5th Year) but unarguably his big Showbiz break came in 2010 when he and his Mail Order Comedy cohorts were tapped to write, produce and co-star in Workaholics, a raunchy and low brow yet smartly conceived scripted series, now in its third season with two more seasons already ordered by the network. The show centers on three sophomoric post-college man-children—and their dopey drug dealer—who live together and share a single cubicle at a soul-crushing telemarketing company. It's kind of Girls for guys, dudes and brahs who think sexting is sexy and farting is funny. Just FYI, kids: underneath all that frizzy hair and slacker-hipster attire there lurks the slender, taut and hairless body of a twink but that's really neither here nor there, is it? Anyways...
Property records show the glutially unfriendly multi-level mid-century modern post and beam residence was built high on the hillside of a steep but generous .45 acre lot in 1967 and listing details Your Mama squirreled out of the interweb show there are three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms in 2,792 square feet.
The street-level two car garage is an excellent feature in the tightly packed Hills of Hollywood but it only takes eyeballs to see the house looms spectacularly high over the street. This is not, children, a house for anyone with underdeveloped haunches or a bad ticker. By Your Mama's observation and estimation it's at least two full flights from the street to the front door that opens (awkwardly) directly into a combination foyer/sitting room with raised fireplace and mottled copper and ocher slate tile flooring.
It's another full flight up to a proper living room with yellow blond wood floors under foot and a wonderfully decadent 15-foot ceiling overhead. Your Mama appreciates the architectural meatiness of the massive raised hearth fireplace with its double smoke stake flue and we swoon for the full wall of glass panels and sliding glass doors that connects to a small terrace with big canyon and sky views. Knowing this neighborhood as we do, Your Mama thinks this house might have a terrific view of the 101 Freeway as it bends its way through the Cahuenga Pass between Hollywood and Studio City in the San Fernando Valley.
Behind the fireplace another half flight of stairs leads up to an open concept dining and kitchen space that overlooks the living room. As inconvenient as it might be to have the living room on a separate level from the dining room and kitchen, it's the three-plus flight hike from the street to the kitchen that really seems like, well, a literal and figurative pain in the patooty. We know for sure that our house gal Svetlana would demand a minimum of a 20% raise if we were to ask her to schlep our groceries, cleaning supplies and other kitchen and bathroom necessities up all them stairs on a regular basis.
The kitchen isn't huge but it is certainly reasonably well equipped with decent grade stainless steel appliances, speckled granite counter tops on cherry-finish cabinetry, and a center island snack bar with built-in microwave cubby. However, the kitchen also looks like a bit of an after thought that was shoved thoughtlessly up into corner. With all that head space Your Mama wonders why the kitchen designer didn't take the cabinets all the way to the ceiling or anchor the airy space more effectively with a larger center island but, alas.
The master suite occupies a private end of the upper level and claims a full wall of glass sliders that open to a private terrace in the tree tops that's perfect for a post coital cigarette and/or a weekend wake and bake with a loved one. The average sized attached master bathroom is almost entirely decked in white with a contrasting gray slate tile floors. Along one wall there's a double sink vanity that looks to Your Mama like it might be from Ikea and on the opposite wall there's a glassed in white tile shower stall. Two more bedrooms with a shared hall bathroom and laundry facilities located on a separate floor ensure seclusion for guests and secretive teenagers.
The dining area opens through sliders to a slender pergola shaded dining terrace that makes a long run between the back of the house and the plunge-sized swimming pool. The swimming pool may be in-ground but the spa shown in listing photos is one of those above ground things that we imagine had to be craned in since—as we've repeatedly mentioned—it's a long, long, long haul from the street. The backyard is remarkably roomy and flat for a house in the hills and besides the pool and spa includes a small deck for sunbathing, a wee patch of lawn and a towering retaining wall that holds back the steep and densely foliaged up slope behind the house.
We don't know if Mister Anderson currently owns (or previously owned) any other residential property in Los Angeles or in the Bay Area where he was born and bred but we do know that in 2011 the moe-ron fractured his damn spine when he jumped off the roof of his house and landed on a beer pong table. This ass-hat move, children, was not only captured on video but put up on the internets for the world to gawk at. Now that, children, is classy with a capital K.
*Interestingly the non-celebrity buyer immediately caught a severe case of The Real Estate Fickle and flipped the property back on the market two months later with the familiar asking price of $2.125 million. A couple months later the asking price was raised to $2,295,000. A marketing maneuver like that might seem counterintuitive to some but was absolutely effective because the property was put into escrow just two weeks later.
listing photos: Prudential California
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