LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $10,700,000
SIZE: 4,680 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In case any of the children somehow didn't already know, daytime television judge Judy Sheindlin is rich. To be more exact, she's filthy stinking rich. In 2011 it was revealed the famously vituperative television bench warmer works only about 5 days per month and, for her scant effort, rakes in about $45 million per year.
A few quick tabulations on the well-worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that works out to a toe curling $123,287 and 67 damn cents per day...everyday. Although most online reports state she hoovers up a staggering $865,000 for each day she's on set, Your Mama calculates Judge Judy hauls in a much lower $750,000 for every day she spends in her faux-courtroom and barks her small claims court legalese to a pearl clutching parade of humanity who sue each other willy-nilly over things like bill money, fender benders and broken damn chop sticks. Let's be honest, though Either figure is plenty high enough to to make minimum wage workers and average multi-millionaires alike feel just a little bit suicidal, right? As our frequent informant Yolanda Yakketyyak more succinctly put it, "Judge Judge could buy and sell my life with the change she loses in the cushions of her private jet."
And, yes, butter beans, the fast-talking and exceedingly well compensated legal referee and her much less blustery second (and third) husband Jerry Sheindlin, who briefly presided over People's Court in the late 1990s and early 2000s, do indeed own a private jet. So the stories go, the East Coast-based judge climbs aboard her jet a couple times a month and wings her way to Los Angeles where her wildly popular courtroom reality t.v. freak show tapes at the Sunset Bronson Studios in the still somewhat gritty heart of Hollywood.
Your Mama doesn't know where Judge Judy shacked up the last number of years when she was in Tinseltown for her courtroom tapings. We like to imagine it was a hideously expensive multi-room suite at one of the pricier hotels around town. What we do know, however, thanks to a little birdie we'll call Kent Konfidential, is that Judge Judy can now hole up in her very own pied-a-terre at the new and swankily swish Montage Beverly Hills hotel and condo complex where property records confirm she's shelled $10,700,000 for a 4,680 square foot spread with five bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, four exposures, seven small balconies and four dedicated parking spots in the underground garage.
While the actual layout may differ, the floor plan included with online marketing materials for the small number of lavish private apartments at Montage Beverly Hills shows Judge Judy's new upper floor West Coast bedsit is entered through a long, L-shaped foyer and gallery off of which open a puny coat closet, a powder pooper, a tiny library and a giant, temperature controlled walk-in wine cellar. If one walks long enough they'll finally arrive at a 42-plus foot long living room with fireplace that gives out to a narrow balcony with low-rise but still panoramic city, mountain and sky views.
The adjoining formal dining room also opens to a balcony—albeit an even more narrow one with a southerly vista—and connects through to a commodious kitchen well-equipped with a center work island/snack bar, a walk in pantry and all the usual bells and whistles to be expected in a five-star condo-hotel residence that costs nearly 11 million bucks.
One set of double doors in the living room opens to a bedroom/den with skinny south-side balcony and a second set of double doors lead to the bedroom wing where two bedrooms on opposite sides of a wide corridor share a sizable hall bathroom. There's also a convenient utility/laundry room off the bedroom corridor.
The master suite occupies a prime position at tail end of the hall and includes a pair of roomy walk-in closets and a spacious bedroom with direct access to private balcony with sweeping views over Beverly Hills and beyond. The attached master bathroom has a couple of sinks separated by a make-up vanity, separate tub and stall shower and his and her crapper cubbies, hers with a bidet and his without because, apparently, men don't care to wash their bums with a bidet.
A comfortably sized guest suite—or an unusually luxurious staff suite—is smartly and privately tucked into a quiet corner behind the kitchen and offers over-nighting occupants a minuscule balcony, a large walk in closet and a private bathroom that's bigger and better outfitted than most peoples' master bathrooms.
Montage Beverly Hills offers residents an army of discreet and pampering staff including attentive and well connected concierges, super deluxe amenities (i.e. spa and fitness facilities and a roof-top swimming pool), five-star hotel services (i.e. room service, laundry, and housekeeping), and exceedingly tight security circumstances. Although residents have a private, residents' only lobby and access to at-home dining services, they're certainly free to hang out in the hotel's lobby lounge and dine at the hotel's on-site restaurant Scarpetta.
It seems that Judges Judy and Jerry have been in the mood to shake up their real estate portfolio. Last week the legal eagles sold their deluxe (if decoratively quite staid) corner apartment on the 11th floor of the uncommonly posh and storied Sherry Netherland on Fifth Avenue in New York City to an unknown buyer for an as yet unrevealed amount. Your Mama (dissed and) discussed the two bedroom and 2.5 bathroom park view pied-a-terre that also includes a cell-sized staff room/office and bathroom on the 10th floor after it popped up on the open market in early 2013 with a $9,000,000 price tag.
In addition to a Gulf-front penthouse pad in Naples, FL, they picked up in 2005 for $6.9 million, the low-key but lavish living couple's residential property portfolio also includes—but may not be limited to their primary residence, a forbidding stone mansion on 12.54 manicured acres in hoity-toity Greenwich, CT. Property records show they bought the bucolic estate in September 2007 for $13,200,000 and various online reports reveal they proceeded to demolish the existing 11,623 square foot mansion and replace it with an approximately 20,000 square foot manor house.
Aerial imagery shows the gated estate has a substantial gate house—presumably for security, a carriage house, a massive motor court, vast lawns, extensive formal gardens, a swimming pool, and a poolside cabana with a deep, trellis-shaded patio. Your Mama didn't turn up too many details about the house itself but but one of the army of fellas and gals hired to do faux-paint finish work throughout the newly constructed house posted a few snaps of the place on his own blog that will give the children some idea of its scale and rather traditional interior appointments.
Just in case you're curious, the Sheindlins' 2012 property taxes in Greenwich, according to public records, ballooned to a mind-bending $230,660. Listing details indicate the fees for her new digs in Bev Hills chalk up to $5,366 per month but it's not clear to Your Mama if that includes the property taxes.
NOTE: Listing photos are representational and may or may not reflect that actual rooms in the mini-mansion-sized condo recently acquired by Miz Judge Judy.
listing photos and floor plan: Montage Residences