Robin Williams

From the LA Times:
–A Beverly Hills home originally built for Bert Lahr, who played the cowardly lion on “The Wizard of Oz,” is on the market at $28.5 million. The listing is here.
–Singer Chris Brown has purchased a West Hollywood condominium for close to its $1.75-million asking price.
–John McEuen of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band has placed his Hollywood Hills home on the market at $1.269 million. The listing is here.
–A La Cañada Flintridge house once owned by Academy Award-winning actor Victor McLaglen has come on the market at $4.95 million. The listing for Fairhaven is here.
–A Palm Springs property that actor Cary Grant lived in for 20 years has come on the market at $2.995 million. We checked out this home in 2009 when it was listed at $4.95 million.

From the NY Post:
–Robin Williams has rented a four-bedroom unit in the Rushmore condo building on Riverside Boulevard for about $15,000 a month.
–Hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman, founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, has purchased a $22 million beach estate on Ocean Road in Bridgehampton. The property was listed for $25.995 million.
–Ivan Wilzig, also known as the Hamptons famous Sir Ivan, is unveiling a dragon goddess statue by Roby Braun at his 15,000-square-foot medieval-style castle in Water Mill, New York.
–Jim Carrey is renting an entire floor at the Richard Meier-designed glass condo palace at 176 Perry St.
–Former congressman Harold Ford Jr. has just closed on a five-bedroom, three-bathroom unit on West 15th Street which had an asking price of $3.4 million.
Ford and his wife, Emily Threlkeld sold their one-bedroom Greenwich Village co-op on Fifth Avenue for $1.3 million.
–Alex Rodriguez and Cameron Diaz are still real estate shopping. They most recently visited the five-bedroom, 7,180-square-foot townhouse at 400 West St. that is owned by developers/designers Bob and Cortney Novogratz. It was our estate of the day last October.

From the Real Estalker:
Britney Spears has reportedly spent $18.9 million on an estate in the Hidden Hills area of Los Angeles.
–Rumor has it that Ellen Degeneres is quietly shopping around her multi-residence Beverly Hills –compound for around $50,000.
–Rachel Zoe has moved to a home in Beverly Hills.

From the Wall Street Journal:
–A group of three private islands off Italy’s Amalfi coast and a nearby home once owned by Franco Zeffirelli are for sale at €195 million, or about $263 million. The listing is here.
–Equinox gym co-founder Danny Errico has purchased several Kauai properties that belonged to the estate of late author Michael Crichton for $11.65 million.
–Ivana Trump is quietly shopping her oceanfront home in Palm Beach, Florida for around $24 million.
From the Wall Street Journal:
–Yankee star Alex Rodriguez has made a deal to buy a four-bedroom condo on the 35th floor of a the Rushmore building. His full floor apartment is said to have cost between $5.5 to $6 million.

Continue reading Sunday Real Estate Round-Up, 02/20/11

Sunday Real Estate Round-Up, 02/20/11 originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 09:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

They were wrong. Something about buying a gallon of milk without someone actually selling it was too sterile, too cold. (Or maybe the fear was that it wasnat cold enough.)

But all was not lost. At the same time McDonaldas released the convenience-store units, it also put 12 DVD kiosks into the field. People werenat as untrusting toward an automated purchase of something they didnat have to eat. They were still consuming; they just werenat ingesting.

Since then, Redbox has seemingly added an automated kiosk for every closing of a manned video-rental shop. In six and a half years, it has gone from those 12 trial units to 22,400. Thanks to Redbox, Netflix (NFLX), and the rise of On Demand (both through cable and the Internet), the process of renting a movie has been completely disrupted. Blockbuster is either teetering on the edge of bankruptcy or pretending itas not already there, and mom-and-pop rental stores have all but disappeared from small towns. Redbox is as responsible for the destruction as the rest of the hydra.

But at some point this new monster is going to run out of things to destroy. And when it does, itas going to have to start turning on itself. Last week, word got out that Redbox was thinking about streaming movies over the Internet, just like all of its other competitors. If it happened, it would be a meaningful expansion to Redboxas business model, and one that puts it in even fiercer competition with its crimson colleague, Netflix.

The reason itas looking online is because it has been so successful offline. It did that by being comfortably innovative, offering something new without ripping the rug out from under the way consumers already rented DVDs. There were four elements to the old way of doing things: 1) Renting a movie was an impulse decision, 2) a real person checked you out, 3) you got to take a real disc (or tape) home, and 4) you had to remember to bring the disc back by a certain time. The On Demand services have retained only the first step. Netflix has held on to the third. Redbox, meanwhile, has held on to three. All but the real, live person have been retained. And on top of that, Redbox threw in budget prices. Renting a DVD usually costs $1 a day.

This gradualism has paid off handsomely. In 2005, supermarket-kiosk magnate Coinstar (CSTR) bought part of the company for $20 million. Four years later, it bought the rest for $176 million. It was worth the money. Redbox is growing faster than Robin Williams in Jack. In 2009, 8,700 new kiosks were spread out across the country. Pre-existing kiosks rented $105 million more in DVDs in 2009 than they did in 2008. Coinstar took in $385 million more from DVD rentals in 2009 than in 2008 (aided, no doubt, by its full purchase of Redbox). And that extra revenue brought in more profit, too: $56 million more from DVD operations. Redbox has become by far Coinstaras biggest business. The companyas namesakeathose machines you dump your coin jars into at the supermaketanow pales in comparison, bringing in one-third of the revenue that Redbox does.

So, if things are going so well, why would Redbox turn its attention online? If it does begin to stream movies, it is going to be entering a marketplace brimming with retailers new and old. Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), and smaller upstarts allow users to rent movies a la carte. Netflix already has a streaming service on nearly every Internet-enabled device known to man. Hulu lets you watch (an obscure selection of) movies online, for free, with some ad interruptions. For these guysaNetflix includedathe online plans have to work or else theyare screwed.

But Redbox isnat nearly as desperate. It already knows it can survive as the country moves more toward online video. Otherwise its kiosk business wouldnat be thriving. But for-profit companies like to sniff for more profit. Thus it has to at least explore the online option; not doing so would be irresponsible. There is money to be made online, especially when video is paid for by the customer, not advertising. Also, getting into video streaming is a nice hedge in case online video becomes wildly more popular than it is now.

But that doesnat mean itas the right move for Redbox. At first glance, a streaming Redbox would be more in competition with Amazon and iTunes than with Netflix. But Redbox would likely be forced/able to undercut their prices because of its existing business model. Itas hard to ask customers to spend more money for something online than they would at the store down the street. The same logic applies to the local kiosk. But Redbox may not be able to afford to do that. To make online streaming happen, Redbox would likely have to renegotiate its contracts with the studios to include streaming rights. (I asked a Redbox spokesman whether this is true, but he declined to comment.) And acquiring those rights is expensive; on new releases, the number is likely more than the $1 Redbox charges at its kiosks. At first, it may have to run the online business at a loss to get the momentum going and hope that acquisition prices go down so it doesnat have to increase rental prices.

The low prices Redbox will likely charge mean itas really competing with Netflix, not Amazon, Apple, et al. But Netflixas subscription model is much pricier than Redboxas $1 a la carte strategy. (Assuming Netflix users donat stream eight movies a month.) Online, Netflix is better situated to reap profit, especially as customers ask it to stream more movies and send fewer DVDs.

Thus far, both Redbox and Netflix have been able to exist in the world of actual discs. (Netflixas own revenue has steadily risen every year for the last five.) And similar to their offline offerings, both companies would provide different services online. Redbox would go after the impulse buyer who favors more big-budget fare. Netflix would cater to the person who wants a deep library of meaningful, arty classics. Itas essentially Avatar vs. The Hurt Locker all over again. But like Avatar, Redboxas magic may not be as impressive online.