Keanu, Mariah and Frankie - Oh My!

Keanu Reeves' house. Photo via The New York Times (link below).

Keanu Reeves' house looks like a mausoleum; Mariah Carey wears halter-tops to funerals.

These things and more we learned, assuming the brokers aren't goosing the truth a bit, in tomorrow's Real Estate section of The New York Times.

In a rather breezy, loping piece by Teri Karush Rogers (I know, we should talk), brokers serve up their usual self-serving tidbits of non-information about celebrities, sprinkled with a few good little snippets--notably from Elliman's Dolly Lenz.

Mariah Carey.

Dolly says:

[She] once advised Mariah Carey to arrive for an interview with a Manhattan building's co-op board "dressed for a funeral." She appeared "in a halter top and mini-mini-miniskirt," Ms. Lenz recalled.

"I said, 'I told you to come dressed for a funeral,' " Ms. Lenz said. "She said, 'This is the way I dress for a funeral.' " She was not approved.

Right! Remember that? From The Economist, Sept. 8, 2005:

A few years ago Ms Lenz sold Barbara Streisand's apartment on Central Park West to Mariah Carey, another popular singer, only to have the deal blocked by a residents' committee which balked at the team of bodyguards accompanying Ms Carey to her interview.

This rejection tale gets racier and racier!

Owners must leave before Madonna looks at a place.

John Travolta takes off his shoes and lies in your bed to see what it will be like to wake up there. Presumably with you gone.

Keanu Reeves.

Cher and Frankie Muniz both buy lots of places in the same town or neighborhood to test-drive them. They sell the ones they don't want. Most recently, Muniz tried out this strategy in the Bird Streets section of Hollywood. That's where Keanu Reeves lives, too, which is presumably why a picture of his house appears with the story even though we don't learn anything about his house-hunting habits. (Other Bird Streets name-checks include Tobey Maguire, Cameron Diaz and Leonardo DiCaprio.)

They also love privacy, which is presumably why some of them live in big famous buildings with malls in the bottom. Here's Ricky Martin employing that tactic--with puzzling results:

Ricky Martin.

In Manhattan, a discreet domicile is likely to be inside a condominium tower with two street exits and an underground garage. (At the celebrity-strafed Time Warner Center complex near Central Park, for example, the staff has been known to refer to a passage connecting an elevator to the garage as "the Ricky Martin hallway," in honor of the singer, who is regularly besieged by fans when he is in residence.)

Ah, privacy!

We all know of Brad Pitt's love of architects. Apparently, he is not alone:

Brokers say that the latest magnets in New York are buildings designed by celebrity architects.

"There's a real appreciation for Richard Meier, Jean Nouvel and Philip Johnson," said Wilbur Gonzalez, a senior vice president of the Corcoran Group in New York, who is also the sales manager for 40 Mercer Residences, the glassy offspring of Mr. Nouvel and the hotelier André Balazs. "Celebrities are really drawn to that. As silly as it sounds, it's from one artist to another."

- Tom McGeveran