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

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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.’