Dream House for Sale but Tab Could Keep You Awake
We are sitting in the park, the very private park of Michael and Pat DeAngelo in the Tustin Hills, and the video camera of “The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” is rolling.
Bruce Nelson, real estate agent to the rich and famous, is sitting on a bench with his back to the 36,000-square-foot DeAngelo manse. There’s a slight breeze, just enough to make the palm fronds shimmer a little, and Bruce is talking about the difference between a major and a minor estate.
The DeAngelos, he says, have an absolutely major estate, which is why, of course, we are all here.
Then the inimitable roar of a leaf blower wafts up the mountain from a rather boxy looking house below. Conversation stops. People are annoyed. The moment is broken. Cut!
“Hey, Jason,” the cameraman asks the 12-year-old son of Michael and Pat. “You have one of those high-powered pellet guns?”
“No,” Jason says, “but my brother does.”
Jason and his two brothers, Mike, 15, and Augie, 19, are making it their business to be helpful to the crew of “The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” For kids who have everything, TV is still a big deal. Mike and Jason have stayed home from school so as not to miss anything.
Maybe Robin Leach, who will do a voice-over on the segment, will oooh and ahh over one of their bedrooms--the house has 10--or maybe the projection room, the disco, the gym, the tanning room, the video arcade, the wine cellar, the library, the his-and-her beauty salons, the television room or the two-story master bedroom suite.
One could go on, and on.
“I think we have 18 bathrooms,” Pat tells me as she gives me a tour, during which we almost get lost.
“You think?” I say.
“Yeah, I’m not sure. I haven’t counted them. Maybe I should send the kids around to count the bathrooms and the TVs.”
No doubt the “Lifestyles” crew will figure this out. This is their business, after all, although even they were a bit astounded by this whitewashed and sun-kissed Mediterranean palace on 26 hilltop acres.
“Fabulous,” a producer has scrawled on the crew’s assignment sheet. “Better than we’ve ever done before!”
Moments earlier, Jason had offered to show the crew around the grounds, in his own golf cart. The guys loved this. In a golf cart . Great kid you’ve got here, ma’am.
But there may have been another reason for the offer. The fellows were more than an hour late, having lost their bearings once they ventured outside the Platinum Triangle. They ended up in Newport Beach.
“The Platinum Triangle,” Bruce explains, “is a term I coined two years ago and now everybody’s using it.”
For those of you who don’t know, Bruce says the triangle runs from Holmby Hills, which is where Bruce lives and where most of the money is, to Bel-Air, which ranks second, to Beverly Hills, in third.
“So where do you put this?” I ask as we stroll past the waterfall just outside the DeAngelos’ massive front door.
“ This ,” Bruce says, “is in a world of its own. This is the greatest estate in Orange County!”
“Any offers yet?” I ask.
“Uh, no,” he says, “No offers yet, but I can tell you right now that in six months it will be sold.”
For those of you who are asking, you know what that means. . . .
That’s right. You cannot afford it.
If the DeAngelos get their asking price of $22 million, this will be the most expensive estate, major or minor, ever sold in Orange County.
(There is, however, another house in South Laguna vying for the same honor as well as one in Newport recently reduced from the same sum. “I priced this at $22 million, so, of course , they had to put theirs at 22,” Bruce says.)
Now Bruce makes a little joke. Say you come in with 10% down, that would make your payments about $160,000 to $170,000 a month.
“No, seriously,” he goes on.
“This property is for the super rich. They fall in love with it. They write a check and that’s it.”
Which, of course, is what happened with the DeAngelos, he of ClothesTime Inc., and she, of the house .
Pat tells me that before the house, the six of them--daughter Gina lived at home then--were ensconced in a 5,000-square-foot home in Anaheim’s Peralta Hills for 10 years. Can you imagine?
But that was three years ago, before Michael and Pat walked through the door and decided they had to have this. Not that it looked like this back then.
The DeAngelos just finished the interior renovations--white walls, white furniture, gigantic aquariums, Mexican pavers, marble, tile, rock, and flow, darling, fabulous flow.
Now they’re mapping out plans for the yard, er park, including a lake and helipad.
This has involved great sums of money.
“Millions?” I ask Pat, rather crudely.
“Oh, yeah,” she says. “We’ve spent that much on the palm trees alone.”
We are sitting in the kitchen when Pat is telling me this. She has just pointed out the retractable skylight and a built-in surveillance monitor that flashes scenes of real life in the house and on the grounds.
This, she explains, is great for keeping in touch.
“I see the kids running in the halls and then I pick up the phone and say, ‘No running in the halls!’ ” Pat says.
Just then, the phone rings. It is Michael, upstairs. He’s a little hungry. Pat puts down the phone and asks her mother, Jean Hobbs, if she’d mind running to the grocery store for some goodies.
No, she doesn’t mind. Keeps her busy. Jean explains that that’s why she leaves her home in Orange to be here by 7 a.m. most every day. She takes her grandchildren to the orthodontist, does the laundry, the shopping and the cleaning.
“I walk around with a spray bottle of green cleaner at my waist,” she says. “Jason likes to kick his soccer ball in the halls and it leaves black marks . . . I hope they don’t move to the beach because then I wouldn’t have anything to do.”
Oh, yes, about this moving business. Despite the improvements they’ve made, Pat explains that maybe the family would like something a little closer to the beach, maybe something a tad smaller, say, in the 15,000 square feet range.
But that’s only if they find something they love, which, so far, they haven’t.
Somehow, this place seems, what’s the right word? Incomparable.
