BUNGALUX

February 5, 2012

Super Bowl Real Estate

Where Players Play in the Offseason

Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen

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For those of you haven’t heard, there was a pretty cool Madonna show on TV on Sunday. It was squeezed in the middle of a little football game called the Super Bowl.

We can’t let go of football season just yet. After all, between Thursday night games, Sunday games, Monday Night Football, Skip Bayless’s ESPN First Take chat (Skip, where’s Alex’s signed T-shirt?), rehash on Quora, Trent Dilfer’s ESPN Sports Center commentary, Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback, and all that Tim Tebow talk, football season took up the majority of September through January.

Before we allow the 2011-2012 season to fade to a memory, we decided to take a look at some of our favorite Super Bowl’ers’ houses. While we’re spending our own offseasons getting back to work, football players will have cushy offseason pads – no, those pads come off, we’re talking houses – to relax sore muscles, watch tape, and, yes, frolic with supermodels.

Speaking of supermodels, our first stop is Brentwood, California, the Los Angeles area where New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady and wife Gisele Bundchen have been constructing a modest $20 million love nest. We hear they’ve been granted the entire 90047 zip code all to themselves because the house doesn’t fit in 90049. (Twitter, we’re kidding.) Is it a Bungalux? Probably not, but the beautiful family that lives there can up the cool quotient of even slightly pretentious properties. Incidentally, the 22,000 square foot house includes eight bedrooms, a six-car garage, an elevator, nursery, weight room, and wine cellar.

Tom’s Super Bowl 46 quarterback foe Eli Manning is a bit more on the low key side. His Manhattan apartment was recently featured in Electronic House. While he didn’t skimp on the electronics, the rest of the modern apartment is decidedly understated.

Eli’s teammate, wide receiver Hakeem Nicks, was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina and bought a $940,000, house in March of 2010 in the town of Waxhaw. Built in 2006, the 5,510 square foot home brick has six bedrooms, six bathrooms and one half bath, and offers an exercise room, home theater, billiard area, oasis heated pool, and spa.

Fellow Giant defensive end Osi Umenyiora’s “crib” was appropriately featured on MTV Cribs. Check out the episode on You Tube. It pretty much speaks for itself. Bungalux or not? We’ve made our decision. Now you make yours.

You know us pretty well at this point, and we tend to go for the less-is-more approach (okay, sometimes more is more, but only if it’s tasteful), so the real estate we’re really envying from this year’s Super Bowl is that belonging to the owners of the Patriots and the Giants. After all, there’s no salary cap for those guys.

The Patriots owner Robert Kraft owns multiple houses in the Mashpee area of Cape Cod. He recently sold a 7,524 square foot house to his oldest son Jonathan (who is President of the Pats) and his wife Patricia for $3.8 million. The seven bedroom, six bathroom contemporary style house, built in 2006, is one of several properties Kraft owns in Mashpee. There's also a 1,964-square-foot, two bedroom house, a 1.15-acre parcel, and a third undeveloped lot. He purchased all the properties in 2002.

However it’s Kraft’s home in Brookline, one of our favorite suburbs, that’s up our alley. The 11,163 square foot home boasts seven bedrooms, seven and a half baths, four fireplaces, and the requisite tennis court. Yes, judging from the aerial photos this is a more-is-more Bungalux.

But, since we’re Californians at heart, New York Giants’ co-owner Steve Tisch’s Los Angeles house is our favorite. It’s rare we see a house that we think is perfect – we’re always redoing the redo – but Steve’s house comes pretty darn close. The Peter Dunham-designed traditional luxury home is tasteful and rich, and we could move right in to the Marc Appleton-designed pool house. The house was featured in Architectural Digest, and is was one of our favorite houses to be featured in the magazine in recent years.

Now it’s really time to say au revoir to football. Good-bye to our favorite sport and thanks for a great season. We’ll see you next year.


Photo Credit: Steve Tisch's home was featured in Architectural Digest / Photography by Roger Davies. Eli Manning's flat was featured on Electronic House / Photography by Steve Hulbert.