Spider-Man Maguire Sells Hollywood Hills Home For 11.5 Million

Spiderman star Tobey Maguire sold his 3 bedroom Hollywood Hills home for an estimated 11.5 million dollars. The actor had previously purchased the 5,000 square foot home in Hollywood Hills in 2002 for 3.7 million.

Maguire, who was born in Santa Monica, Calif., spent a lot of time growing up in Oregon, and admits he’d like his daughter to spend her childhood well away from the madness of Hollywood. The little girl was born five months ago and the actor is already thinking about where he wants to school his child.

Courtney Cox, Realtor?

It’s official. Courtney Cox has applied to get her Real Estate License in California. She is best known as Monica on friends, but she’s a pretty amazing Real Estate Flipper in Los Angeles. She recently sold her blockbusting Malibu estate around 30 million…she paid around 10 million for it a few years back. I suppose Cox decided to apply for a real-estate license so that she can get more of the commission on properties that she buys and sells. Shrewd, indeed! I wish her the best of luck…


How Would You Describe Courteney’s Efforts to Get a Real-Estate License?

Greedy

Smart

For Sale: Godfather of Soul’s Manhattan Apartment

James Brown’s former Manhattan apartment is now on the market. Mr. Brown lived on this property during the seventies and eighties, when he was enjoying an upswing in his career. While it’s not as lavish as you might expect, it IS a spacious and sunny three bedroom on Third Avenue and 67th Street priced at just under one and a half million dollars. The two-story property is in the heart of the Upper East Side where any apartment is at a premium, much less one with such an illustrious past.

On The Market: 730 Acres in Malibu Near Pepperdine University Being Sold By Movie Director James Cameron

Famed film director James Cameron is selling 730 acres of ranch land in the Malibu, CA area for a reported 25 million dollars. Mr. Cameron originally bought the land in smaller parcels to create a vast ranch called “Tranquility Base” for himself and his family. He had the site completed by 2000, but has since decided to focus on filmmaking instead of developing real estate.
The property is mostly pastureland adjacent to Pepperdine University. It has views of both the Malibu coastline and the Santa Monica Bay. The site is accessed by Puerco Canyon Road off Pacific Coast Highway. To view this property, visit the listing on the CB Richard Ellis website by clicking here.

Flip This vs. Flip That

The Prey: Uninformed everyday people trying to get rich quick.

The Bait: Infomercials and Reality Shows showing huge profits too good to be true.

The Catch: It’s easy for a flip to become a very expensive flop.

Stop letting these vultures prey on you with promises of riches. PAY ATTENTION & PASS THIS ON: REAL ESTATE INVESTING IS NOT AS EASY AS THEY MAKE IT LOOK! AS A MATTER OF FACT, MOST OF WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT EVEN REALLY WHAT IT IS!

Every where you look, someone is trying to sell a bill of goods to you about how easy it is to find a property, fix it up and get rich quick. Two popular shows come to mind. A&E’s, Flip This House program really dug into problems with contractors, negotiating prices, and time crunches. TLC’s Flip That House follows the transformation of a different house, each with its own “flipper/host” with step-by-step renovation from the initial purchase to plans for giving it the necessary “facelift” to re-sell.

Flip This was a one hour show vs. Flip That being 30 minutes — the differences between the two programs are very subtle. At the end of each of the shows episode the results of the house-flipping exercise is revealed, along with a new sales price to re-sell showing a huge profit.

These shows romanticize the act of rehabbing properties and selling them for profit. The reality of this reality is that it’s not as easy as they make it sound, even for a seasoned investor. What they don’t show is how easy a flip can become a flop!

On an episode of A&E’s popular reality series Flip This House, Sam Leccima, a self proclaimed successful Atlanta real estate investor sits in front of a run-down house and calls buying and selling real estate his passion.

Flip This House depicted him buying, refurbishing and reselling several Atlanta-area homes for profits of $77,000 and more. But Leccima, who is currently under investigation by the Georgia Secretary of State’s office for securities fraud, is nothing more than the latest scam artist caught preying on victims with promises of easy riches. His real estate license was revoked by the Georgia Real Estate Commission in 2005, citing that Leccima “does not bear a good reputation for honesty, trustworthiness, integrity, and competence.”

It appears Leccima’s true passion was a series of elaborate hoaxes and scams that included faking the home renovations shown on the cable TV show and claiming to have sold houses he never even owned.

His friends and family were presented as potential homebuyers and “SOLD” signs were slapped in front of unsold houses. The home repairs – the lynchpin of the show – were actually temporary patch jobs designed to look good on camera. One scammed Investor attended what was billed as a wrap party at one of Leccima’s homes. But when A&E Television Networks aired the party on Flip This House, it was presented as an open house at where a buyer expressed interest in buying the property. Sound familiar? How many times have we seen this on shows!

While not acknowledging his televised renovations were staged, Leccima didn’t deny it. Even though Leccima suggested that A&E and Departure Films, the production company that makes the show, knew exactly what he was doing, they got busy denying any knowledge of wrongdoing. The cable network pulled reruns of Leccima episodes off the air and wiped his mentions from its Web site when they learned of the claims against him. “We are dismayed to learn of these allegations,” read a statement issued by the network. “A&E Television Networks is not a party to any of the transactions shown in Flip This House and has not received any formal complaints about the properties or sales.”

“Ask anybody who works in television how a reality show is made and you’ll find that ours was a very typical approach,” Leccima said in a telephone interview.

Atlanta FOX 5 has this footage.