Estates

The estate of Micheline Muselli Lerner, the third wife of lyricist and playwright Alan Jay Lerner, is on the market in Hollywood Hills West at $8.9 million. The French-style house, designed by noted architect  John Elgin Woolf and built in 1939, sits behind gates and hedges on a 1.4-acre promontory with city and ocean views. Features include a center hall, four fireplaces, an office, maid's quarters, five bedrooms, five bathrooms and 3,776 square feet of living space. Muselli Lerner became an attorney at 20 in France and during World War II  worked with the Resistance as a criminal defense lawyer under the German occupation.

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are putting their house in order. First, television personality Kardashian offloaded her place in the Beverly Crest area after just two years of ownership. Public records do not show a sale price. She bought the furnished estate in 2010 for about $3.5 million. The turn-key home was designed, built and decorated by Beverly Hills-based Lucien Lacasse. The Tuscan-style walled and gated house features fireplaces in the dining room, family room, living room, master bedroom and kitchen as well as outdoors.

Guess who has lowered his asking price? Armand Marciano, who co-created the Guess brand of jeans and its extended apparel line, has put his Beverly Crest-area estate on the market at $54.5 million. That's a 13.5% drop from the $63 million asked two years ago. Built in 2001, the Mediterranean-style mansion has 30,000 square feet of space in three stories including an elevator, nine fireplaces, a wine cellar, 10 bedrooms and 22 bathrooms. There is parking for 27 cars. The grounds of nearly 20 acres feature a mosaic-tiled swimming pool, a pool house, an outdoor kitchen with a pizza oven, a tennis court and pavilion, orchards and fountains.

The frozen fields of Wyoming came first. Long before the championship trophies. Before the glitz and glamour. Jerry Buss was still a teenager, digging ditches beside his stepfather, when he dreamed of bigger things. It was youthful ambition - a hunger for excitement - that led him to Southern California, where he amassed a fortune in real estate, traded it all to buy the Lakers, then became the man who transformed pro basketball from sport into spectacle. "I really tried to create a Laker image, a distinct identity," he said years later.

Word got around that Jack Kent Cooke wanted to cash out. It was 1977 and the Lakers owner had entered into a divorce that would eventually cost $41 million, a sum worthy of the Guinness World Records for the most costly marital split in history at that time. His mounting legal bills created an opportunity for an eager buyer named Jerry Buss. The onetime chemist, now wealthy from the real estate boom, wanted to purchase not only the Lakers but also the Forum and the Kings. Buss had one problem -- he wasn't the highest bidder.

The gig: Nick Segal is president and a founding partner of real estate brokerage Partners Trust, which specializes in the high-end, luxury markets of the Southland. It's his latest endeavor in a real estate career that has spanned decades and included stints with Sotheby's International Realty and DBL Realtors, which Sotheby's acquired in 2004. Partners Trust has offices in Santa Monica, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, Pasadena and Rancho Mirage. The firm, with about 100 agents, deals in expensive properties; last year, the average sale price was $1.65 million.

Actress Patricia Heaton , who stars in "The Middle," and her husband, actor David Hunt , put their home in Hancock Park up for sale at $8.295 million, and in three weeks it was in escrow. The Italianate Mediterranean-style estate was built in 1923. The architect was Pasadena-based Elmer Grey, who designed the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Pasadena Playhouse and the Huntington Art Gallery, among other landmarks. Nearly 8,400 square feet of interior space features Malibu tile, murals, wrought-iron work, a library, a billiard room, seven fireplaces, six bedrooms, five bathrooms, two offices and a guesthouse/screening room.

SACRAMENTO - Ethics officials are reviewing financial dealings between a state senator who abruptly resigned last week to work for Chevron and an oil executive whose firm lent him hundreds of thousands of dollars while he was in office. Officials at the Fair Political Practices Commission said Thursday they are studying a complaint that Michael Rubio, a Democrat from the Central Valley town of Shafter, may have improperly benefited from real estate deals with a refinery executive.

Producer-director Bud Yorkin and his wife, actress Cynthia Sikes, have sold their estate in the Beverly Crest area for $19.5 million. The gated traditional home, built in 1938, has five bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms and about 10,528 square feet of living space. Features include a main hall with a sweeping staircase, a 60-foot-long living room with a sunken bar, a wood-paneled study and a projection room. The nearly 2 acres of grounds include a tennis court, a swimming pool, lawn, fountains and rose gardens.

Actor Jason Bateman and his wife, actress Amanda Anka , are dropping anchor in the Beverly Crest area with the purchase of the estate of Ernest Borgnine for $3 million. The gated country English compound sits on a half-acre knoll. The 6,148-square-foot home features a formal entry hall, a grand staircase, a paneled library, an office, a den, six bedrooms and seven bathrooms. There is a guesthouse and a swimming pool. Bateman, 44, stars in the comic film "Identity Thief," released this month.