Winning Bidder Pays $35,000 to Tour Bill Gates' House

Todd Bishop, a blogger for Seattle-based TechFlash.com, recently reported that Bill Gates donated a tour of his Lake Washington home once again this year for a charity event.  He's talking about this techie-lover's dream home, we featured a while back. 

Anyway, last year, the winning bid was $8,600.  This year, it came in at a whopping $35,000!   Either the economy is really bouncing back, or somebody has waaayyy too much money on their hands.  Hey, may we tag along?

A big thanks to Zillow Blog for spotting this news item.

Can You Guess Who Owns This House?

This living room is filled with tons of furniture, drapes, and accessories.  In fact, the whole house is filled with so much opulence that it's hard to believe anyone can even breathe here.  So whose house is it?

FLIP THE HOOD BELOW TO FIND OUT & SEE MORE PHOTOS!

This is the 35,000 square foot New Jersey "home" that Kimora Lee Simmons shared with her now ex-husband hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons:

We reported on Tuesday that this home was for sale and that we'd seen it before.  All of these photos were taken a couple of years ago, when the home was first put up for sale.  They were asking $23 million then.

We wonder if the furnishings come with the current asking price of $16.5 million.  Don't know if anyone would want all this ornate stuff anyway.  Like, if you thought the living room was too much, check out the dining room:

And though we're unsure what they used their self-described "Lion room" for, we're sure that we're frightened by its fireplace:

It's clear they spared no expense.   The home not only comes with its own movie theater . . .

. . . it even has a ticket counter with a creepy anamatronic ticket-taker:

Nevertheless, there are a few enviable touches like this indoor pool in their spa room:

If you want to see more opulence, go here.  All photos by Matthew Roberts for the NY Daily News.

Where Can I find the Mansions in Palm Beach Florida

Well, we are hearing this question pretty frequently" "Where Can I find the Mansions in Palm Beach Florida?"

If you are visiting West Palm Beach or Palm Beach anytime soon, you may be asking yourself, "Where can I find the wealthy home area?" Well, the answer is pretty easy. To overly simplify this, the million dollar homes in this area of Florida are along A1A (also known as Ocean Ave). Though they can be hard to find given the gates and massive landscaping (including Royal Palms that are over a hundred years old and huge ficus hedges).

Many million dollar homes are located on South Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach Florida. This street has many famous homes to include the Mar-a-Lago Club that is owned by Donald Trump. (answering another popular question: where is Donald Trumps Marlago mansion?" This strip has several huge Florida Mansions, including a couple valued at over $50,000,000. Many of these homes along A1a in West Palm Beach, Manalapan and Ocean Ridge have cabanas on the ocean side that match their house, connected by tunnels to the main homes, where the backyards are the intercoastal! It's an exciting drive to pass these million dollar homes in Palm Beach County. If you pass this area at night and on a weekend, you may catch a glimpse of a celebrity in one of the nearby restaurants just located off of South Ocean Boulevard. Local celebrities in Palm Beach County include Chris Evert Loyd, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Celine Dion, Rush Limbaugh, and many others.

If you want to walk around some of the lower million dollar homes, then there is metered parking around a mile from the Mara-a-Lago Club. It's extremely hard to get one of these metered parking spots if you are arriving before 6:00 P.M. It is a lot easier to find parking after 6:00 P.M, when the sun has gone down and the beach goers are finished swimming and surfing. This community is perhaps one of the most luxurious in the United States of America. Many world famous millionaires live in this area and security is extremely tight. If you are looking to shop around this area, be sure to bring plenty of cash since the restaurants and shops are a bit pricey.

Kimora Lee Simmons looks to trade $16.5M New Jersey estate for new Manhattan pad

Will she ever unload this house?  We saw Kimora's mansion on MTV Cribs a while back, when she was still married to Russell Simmons.  We hated almost ever inch of this house.  We'll dig up some photos later and show you why.  In the meantime, read the full story here:

Kimora Lee Simmons looks to trade $16.5M New Jersey estate for new Manhattan pad | The Real Deal | New York Real Estate News

Website Listing Addresses and Aerial Photos of Celebrity Homes Comes Under Scrutiny

The L.A. Times reports today that one our favorite sources -- Celebrity Aerial Address -- is currently under scrutiny in connection with a criminal investigation. A search warrant revealed that one of the alleged Hollywood Hills burglars used the site to obtain the addresses of celebrities, including Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Orlando Bloom.

Some people may not realize that the addresses of celebrities' homes are public information.  It just take a little bit of legwork to find it.  Or you can visit CelebrityAerialAddress.com.  The site's operator, David Ruppel a.k.a. Celebrity Dave, gathers publicly available data on celebrities' homes into a one-stop shopping site and charges a fee for the service. 

We use Dave's service occasionally.  (So do a lot of other celebrity real estate bloggers!) We try to avoid publishing the addresses of celebrities, however.  We believe our readers typically don't care about where celebrities live.  They're just curious about how celebrities live.

Tell us, do you think there's anything wrong with having access to celebrities' addresses?

Metropolitan Home Magazine Folds

Hachette Filipacchi Media, publisher of Elle Decor and other notable magazines, announced today that it will halt publication of Metropolitan Home magazine.  December 2009 will be its last issue.  Another one bites the dust.  Too bad.  Met Home was one of our favorite sources for info on celebrity homes.

Thanks to Casa Sugar and Shelteriffic for alerting everyone.

Mad Men's John Slattery Says "Not In My Backyard!"

We Tivo'd last night's season finale of Mad Men and started watching it this morning.  We were on the edge of our bed waiting to hear a final quip from our favorite character, Roger Sterling.  But, as luck would have it, our Tivo ran out of storage space and didn't record the last few minutes!  Oh well!

We decided to spend this morning looking for info about the homes of Roger, er, John Slattery, that is (above). We know this handsome actor is married to actress Talia Balsam--who plays his ex-wife on the show and also happens to be the real-life ex-wife of George Clooney.  We also know that they split their time between New York and Los Angeles.

Looks like they might be spending more time in New York . . . so they can keep fighting!  No, not each other!  They are fighting the city's plans to build a $346 million sanitation department building in their neighborhood.  For more details, check out the Huffington Post article here.

We'll let you know if we find photos.  In the meantime, if you want to get your fix on the homes of Mad Men stars, be sure to read our earlier posts showcasing the homes of John Hamm/Don Draper, January Jones/Betty Draper, and  Bryan Batt/Sal Romano.  By the way, Sal was conspicuously absent from last night's show, but we'd bet money he'll be back!