UPDATE: Dick Fuld

Earlier, while Your Mama was rolling around in the real estate misfortunes of Park Avenue banker name Ramesh Singh, we mentioned that the almost universally loathed ex-CEO of Lehman Brothers Dick Fuld Jr. had quietly placed his posh Park Avenue co-op apartment on the market with an asking price of $32,000,000.

Well, apparently, Mister Fuld and the Missus have decided against selling their 6,200 square foot, 16 room spread at 640 Park Avenue after all. Or at least that's what his p.r. people (or perhaps the real estate agent charged with quietly getting the place sold) are telling the the real estate gossips at the Wall Street Journal.

Hmm. Does anyone else smell something fishy?

A Big Buy on the Beach in La Jolla

BUYER: Gary Barber
LOCATION: Camino de la Costa, La Jolla, CA
PRICE: $17,350,613
SIZE: 9,800 square feet (approx.), 7 bedrooms, 11 bathrooms (approx.)
DESCRIPTION: A truly rare offering...a stunning oceanfront compound with direct access to a secluded sandy beach. Impossible to duplicate today, this magnificent 6BR/9BA gated residence was recently remodeled to perfection. Your buyer will think he is visiting a Four Seasons Resort with all the finest finishes and amenities.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: While many of Wall Street's formerly rich financiers get increasingly eager (and desperate) to unload their lavish, high maintenance homes, a few entertainment tycoons are shopping up a storm. Thanks to Beachfront Billy Your Mama was directed to a recent article in the La Jolla Light with a headline that screams, "Celebrity Pays $17M for LJ Home." Some people brake for deer, dogs and old ladees; Your Mama comes to a screeching halt for headlines like that.

The article did not identify the buyer who paid a not very recession-like $17,350,613 for the recently rehabbed oceanfront mansion on swank Camino de la Costa, but public property records clearly show the new owner isn't so much a "celebrity" as a super producer named Gary Barber who along with Roger Birnbaum, his bizness partner at Spyglass Entertainment, have produced cinematic cash cows including (but far from limited to) The Love Guru, 27 Dresses, Evan Almighty, Seabiscuit, and the Ace Ventura film franchise.

On a side note, Mister Birnbaum's beatific Beverly Hills house–which Your Mama discussed in mid-April of 2009–is currently on the market with an asking price of $16,000,000.

Mister Barber's new beach house, according to listing information we were able to scare up off the interweb, shows the dignified Spanish Colonial style casa built in the 1920s wraps around an interior courtyard where a gurgling fountain hints at the sound of the crashing waves at the back of the property. The multi-winged manse measures approximately 9,800 square feet.

There seems to be some discrepancy regarding the number of bedrooms and bathrooms. The news reports all say there are 7 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms, while listing information indicates there are 6 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms. Some other thingymabab we pulled up showed 9 furll and 2 half bathroms. Whatever the case, there are enough sleeping chambers and poop rooms to keep at least one house gurl making hospital corners and scrubbing terlits several hours a day. Your Mama surmises the difference may have something to do with the bit of square footage atop the garage that overlooks the swimming pool which may (or may not) be guest quarters that would account for the extra bedroom and terlit shown in the press reports.

Anyhoo, a little more poking around on the internets turned up some photographs which clearly show Mister Barber's new beach house is far from a cozy little surf shack. The front door opens to a rotunda-like entrance hall with a curving staircase, swooping wrought iron details and an over the top glittering golden chandelier. The impress the guests foyer as well as the formal living and dining rooms have what appears to be inlaid marble floors, fancy mill work lining the archways in between the rooms and floor to ceiling windows that frame views of the Pacific Ocean. A den or media room has carved paneling, built in shelves for pricey and fussy gewgaws and a trio of arched windows looking out over, you guessed it, the Pacific Ocean. The master suite has another fireplace, access to an oceanfront balcony, a bathroom Marie Antoinette could love and custom fitted closets and dressing rooms.

A small but adequately sized swimming pool is tucked into an ell formed by two wings of the house. a wide terrace runs the full width of the property and a sunbathing terrace with a stone balustrade hangs over the ocean below. The property offers private access to a sandy beach, a surprising rarity on all theses insanely expensive La Jolla houses that do not have direct beach access because they sit high atop vertical cliffs that drop down to the craggy coastline.

While every Mercedes driving real estate agent in La Jolla would probably like to think this high-priced property transaction means the worst of the economic troubles are over. Your Mama would not hold our breath or bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly that is the case because it just might get worse before it gets better, particularly in California where a behemoth budget crisis threatens to bankrupt the state, a situation that surely makes all you California haters salivate with real estate righteousness.

On a lighter note, records would indicate that Mister Barber also owns a 4,270 square foot penthouse apartment with 4 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms in a posh high-rise on Wilshire Boo-lay-vard which he and the wifey picked up in December of 2003 for an undisclosed amount of money.

How the Mighty–and the Children of the Mighty–Sometimes Fall

SELLERS: Marisa Noel Brown
LOCATION: East 78th Street, New York, NY
PRICE: $12,000,000
SIZE: to be 7,800 square feet with 8 bedrooms
DESCRIPTION: Perfectly situated just off Fifth Avenue on one of the city’s most prized townhouse blocks, this stunning 20’ wide brownstone has approved plans from the Department of Buildings and the Landmark Preservation Commission for the addition of a 6th floor, an 8 foot expansion on all floors towards the garden, and the excavation of the basement. The approved plans also include vast windows on the back of the house, bringing additional light and garden views into the 7,800 square foot home....

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama does not mean to be callous and we do feel a teeny bit bad about not feeling very badly about the misfortune of some of the highest of financial flyers and their hyper-consuming progeny whose wings were clipped when Wall Street went to hell in a hand basket on the back of credit default swaps, mortgage backed securities and all those other failed financial instruments that no one really understands. However, just like our finest friend Fiona Trambeau who relishes schadenfreude the way Madonna revels in the spotlight, like metal to a magnet Your Mama is also drawn to all the news about how far the formerly financially mighty are falling in the aftermath of the recent economic tsunami. We know, it's ugly and unseemly and in utter bad taste to delight in the downfall of others, but we just can't help our self sometimes.

Which is why, yesterday, when real estate gossip Mister Max Abelson at the NY Observer announced that toothy New York City gal about town Marisa Noel Brown and her huzband Matt Brown finally did what what all the Manhattan real estate watchers knew they were eventually going to have to do–list their Indiana limestone faced townhouse on East 78th Street–Your Mama got all goose-pimpled and sweaty.

For those children who do not know, Missus Noel Brown is one of several daughters sired by much maligned hedge hog Walter Noel, the founder of the Fairfield Greenwich Group which famously funneled some 7.5 billion client dollars into the bottomless pit that was Bernie Madoff's sixty-five billion dollar Ponzi scheme. Missus Noel Brown's huzband Matt had been a well paid managing director at F.G.G., but is now, of course, unemployed.

Property records and bazillions of previous reports reveal that Mister and Missus Brown bought the 20-foot wide townhouse on East 78th Street in January of 2008 for $13,500,000. The couple reportedly took a nine million dollar mortgage, hired the fab folks at Steven Harris Architects and planned a multi-million dollar renovation that listing information indicates included adding a sixth story to the five already there and adding a glassy eight feet to rear end of the townhouse which would would have brought the total square footage to around 7,800.

The townhouse sits just half a block from Central Park and a few more blocks from the venerable Metropolitan Museum of Art, the unauthorized history of which can be read in Michael Gross's dee-voonly salacious and scandalous new book Rogues' Gallery. Listing information indicates the interior spaces of townhouse have already been gutted and made ready for a massive, multi-million dollar renovation tha, presumably, Mister and Missus Brown can no longer afford to make since they no longer have an income or access to her daddy's formerly fat bank account.

The plans, according to listing information, included "dramatic" interior spaces, a roof deck, a "sophisticated" master suite plus seven additional bedrooms, 4 fireplaces, a "soaring" staircase and an elevator for the old, the infirm and the lazy. It's just too back the once publicity seeking Browns ran out of luck and money because we're quite sure they would have had magnificent photographs taken of the place so it could be published in one of the better shelter publications.

The comely couple have chosen to list their townhouse with an asking price of $12,000,000 a figure our bejeweled abacus reveals is a staggering one-point-five million clams less than they paid for the place just over 1 year ago...and that's not counting the architect fees, cost of demolishing the interiors and the staggering carrying costs of the $9,000,000 mortgage and the $46,450 yearly tax bill. Even worse for Mister and Missus Brown is that more than one real estate insider is whispering to the press and anyone else who will listen that word on the real estate street is that the cash-strapped couple will take much less than twelve million dollar asking price. Oh dear.

No matter what price the townhouse eventually sells, Your Mama seriously doubts we'll soon see Missus Noel Brown schlepping her Balenciaga clad booty and Jimmy Choo shod feet onto a cross-town bus with all the MetroCard carrying plebes. However, given the sharp-toothed and vicious social culture of the Upper East Side new money hoity-toities, we don't imagine she'll be hanging on to her vaunted position among all the young and well maintained ladees who lunch and shop and order the maid around while their huzbands and fathers pay the bills.