The High-End Flip: Still Flapping in the "Bird Streets"

If you don't like to read about high-end real estate, this one is not for you. (I hate to tell you, but if you don't like high-end real estate, Los Angeles may not be for you either.) If you do like reading about houses you can't afford, though, this is right up your alley: The story of the "queen of the high-end house flip", told as only Your Mama can tell it. Read the whole thing if you can, but here's a quick primer: The house is a $6.8 million flipper on Swallow Drive, one of the coveted "bird streets" above Sunset; the flipper is Xorin Balbes; his secret is a "special kind of (politically incorrect) magic"; the "high priestess of real estate gossip" is the Times' Ruth Ryon; and "Your Mama" is the voice of the real estate blog Realestalker.  Sample of Mama's notes: "Balbes takes houses with some sort of architectural merit, buys them at a good price, and injects them with a dramatic, new-fangled sort of modern. He himself lives up in Los Feliz in an extraordinary house designed by luminescent architect Lloyd Wright, son of Frank.  The intricate and complicated stone work on the exterior gives the house a distinct look of a Mayan temple and the interior has been kitted out with all the modern amenities a rich gay decorator could ever want including a sleek kitchen and a heated swimming pool."

Comments

[Bubblewatcher]

This is really a shame. I know because I spent some of my childhood in this house (pre parental divorce), from 1963 to 1968. The really idiotic feature of the renovation that cracks up me and my brother is the removal of the house's big front driveway and replacing it with that useless fountain -- the house sits on top of a lung-busting hill and the street itself has limited parking -- so much for accomodating lots of guest! My mother remarked to me, after looking at the online listing photos, that with all that work they put into it she couldn't figure out why they didn't fix the house's "fatal flaw", which is that, despite the fact that it sits on a great view lot, there are no views from any of the public rooms -- the best views in the house are still from my and my brother's old bedrooms (small) and the master bathroom! Meanwhile, the living room and kitchen look out to the side of a hill.

Finally, I hate that they opened up the kitchen completely to the living room. These stadium kitchens give me hives -- since when should somebody draining pasta and pulling stuff out of the oven be the focal point of the party?

Hmmmppph...