SELLER: Dean Cain
LOCATION: Basalt, CO
PRICE: $5,900,000
SIZE: 4,399 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms.
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen, children, Your Mama is fresh out of the Alaskan bush where we were blissfully removed from the digital world for five liquor and laughter fueled days at a semi-remote and decidedly rustic lakeside cabin—we're talking a no-frills one-room, no indoor plumbing situation—owned and generously loaned by a couple of our dear Alaska-living amiga Sheila Sinn's dear friends (and dog sitters).
We are, y'all can be sure, tired as a post-Iditarod musher dog, dirty as the never been properly vacuumed carpeting in, well, a rustic and semi-remote one-room cabin in the Alaskan bush, and currently marooned in the Seattle airport on a frightfully lengthy layover. Rather than whittle the time away with a couple or several gin & tonics, we figured it was best for everybody if we immediately jump back in the celebrity real estate saddle. A quick sift through our forbiddingly long list of unread emails turned up a number of celebrity real estate tidbits, most of which have been covered by other property gossips during our absence. However, thanks to a nice lady we'll call Teri Ahkee, Your Mama has come to learn that beaver busy B-list film and television actor Dean Cain has recently (re-)listed his 35 acre ranch in Basalt, CO with an asking price of $5,900,000.
Mister Cain's fame peaked, some will argue, back in the mid 1990s when he shook his hard bodied money maker as Clark Kent in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Since then his roles may have been, uhm, a little bit more lower profile but, according to his resume on the Internet Movie Data Base, he's worked consistently with dozens of roles in movies and television programs, most of which Your Mama has neither seen nor heard of (Flight of Fancy, The Division, Clubhouse, Hope & Faith). More recently Mister Cain's popped up on the t.v. programs Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 and Hit the Floor, and he has nearly a dozen projects in the works including a sci-fi thriller with Hollywood veteran Malcolm McDowell (Mind's Eye), a horror film (The Appearing), and several holiday-themed comedies (A Dog For Christmas, Defending Santa, Holiday Miracle).
According to information we easily turned up on the interweb, this is not—by a long shot—the first time Mister Cain has tried to ride this particular real estate pony. In fact, the poor thing has had his Rocky Mountain spread—listing details describe it as a "Gentlemans [sic] Ranch" about 30 minutes from Aspen and minutes from Willits Town Center—on and off the open market since at least July 2011 when it popped up for sale with an in-hindsight optimistic asking price of $9,500,000.
Property records show Mister Cain purchased the 35 acre property in 1997 for $725,000. It's not clear—or, at least, it's not known to Your Mama—if the property contained any residential or ranch structures at the time. Listing information does indicate that the existing residence was custom built in 2002 as a recreational pavilion/guest house to an as yet un-built main house. Listing details indicate that "Plans are in place for a main home" of unknown size or style.
While it may have been designed and built as a guest house/recreation pavilion, the existing residence has all the features and amenities of a high-end Rocky Mountain mini-manse. Listing information shows there are five bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms in 4,399 square feet of luxury interior space finished with the exact sorts of (predictably) rugged materials—stone, rough-hewn tree trunks and the like—that Your Mama expects to find in multi-million dollar, celeb-owned homes in and around the star-studded and profoundly pricey community of Aspen (CO).
Listing details are somewhat slim as to the home's specific features but photographs show a double height living room with an imposing river rock fireplace and what may or may not be heart pine floors. As they are in many frontier areas of The West (and elsewhere), the antlers hung above the room-wide picture windows are de rigueur as day-core in this part of the world. There are also double height ceilings in the expensively equipped, open-concept kitchen area where a light fixture hung from thick, log rafters inexplicably does double duty as a pot rack. Lowerd have mercy, children. If there's anything worse to Your Mama than a goddamn pot rack, it's a pot rack that lights up. Heavens to Betsy. Maybe we will have a mid-morning booze bomb, after all. Anyways...There's also a large office and an attached four car garage, as per listing details.
The scenic property includes a hay meadow and irrigated horse pasture plus, a small stable and riding ring, a fishing pond, and, perhaps most desirable to outdoorsy sorts, a quarter mile of private fly fishing on a gentle bend of the rushing Roaring Fork River that bisects the ranch.
Mister Cain also owns a 3,302 square foot, single story suburban style ranch house with a superbly sweeping ocean view in Malibu, CA that property records show was purchased in October 2004 for $2,590,000. The house, in case any of y'all might be innerested, happens to be located in the very same residential enclave where actress Shannen Doherty owns a house. In the early Aughts there were reports in the European media that were picked up by a number of Dean Cain oriented discussion groups that Mister Cain scooped up a five bedroom villa on the island of Ibiza—that's off the coast of Spain, punkins—from high society portrait artist Birgitte Knaus. Alas, butter beans, we know zip, zilch, and nada about whether the reports were true and/or if Mister Cain still maintains the Balearic Islands abode. Do you?
listing photos: Mason Morse Real Estate