Atwood

I agree, I don't think Garcelle qualifies as wealthy (Santa Clarita!). She was doing okay financially but I'm pretty sure she's made more from this show and the added exposure than she did during the preceding decade. I hope she continues to think it's worth it because as far as I'm concerned she's worth every penny Bravo is paying her and then some. Top tier housewife and she's showing it this reunion. Crystal is sort of on the opposite end of the spectrum to me. She looks amazing and I want to like her but she's falling flat to me.

It is, but I don't think it's D'Andra's trust. I'm guessing he left it with both of them as beneficiaries, but Mama Dee in charge until she passes.

I absolutely agree. But as the devil's advocate, that would be another explanation for why she couldn't get a mortgage (other than the money's all run out). Also why the kids and the count chose to sue her to stop her from transferring their portion of the hamptons property into this money pit.

I had to go back through my old links and look, but I thought I had found the house when I was snooping around for it when it was first reported. This house fits the description really well. It's definitely a "mansion", it overlooks the Hudson River and the pricing matches since it was first listed for 5M and then had a price bump. Keep in mind that I have absolutely no inside knowledge and just has been looking through listings online. This was the house that came closest to her description that I could find.

That's actually a good point, and very true. My point isn't that she overpaid, just that she hasn't underpaid either. This makes it very difficult to resell for any real profit, once you take transfer costs, commissions and improvements into consideration. She bought the house at market value which was 2 million, I'm not saying that it was worth less than that. It's just that it could have been higher if it was in a SLIGHTLY better location, aka not on the main east-west thoroughfare of the Hamptons. The way the market moves in the future will dictate if it is profitable or not.

Best case outcome I can get if I run the numbers in excel is a modest profit on the house as a rental, and that assumes she's got non-existent maintenance costs and full occupancy throughout the rental season at her full asking price for the rent. Even if she were to get lucky on all of those factors one year, it's extremely unlikely in a longer term perspective. Even in the short term it's a best case scenario that she's making money and far more likely that she's breaking even (if she has a great mortgage) or taking a loss. She's unlikely even if EVERYTHING goes right for her to make more money back on a per-cash basis than practically risk-free investments, which makes this a questionable investment on a risk-adjusted basis. It's a single family house so it's extremely doubtful that she could depreciate it, but even if she could that is an accounting approach that temporarily lowers your tax burden -- you have to actually pay that tax in full if you sell the property. She has a chance to make a decent profit in a sale (or as a rental) if the Hamptons market rises significantly in the coming years, but on the flip side she's likely to make a huge loss if the market turns down. (Sorry, I realize this is probably super-boring to a lot of you guys, but I live for this stuff. )

The fact that Ramona has tacky taste doesn't mean she was wrong about Bethennys property. Bethenny bought a house at a discount because it's in a subpar location. SUBpar. It sits less than 100ft back from the main highway on the east end. Seriously, look it up on google streetview (2623 Montauk Hwy, East Hampton, NY 11937) and check through the image history: even in the dead of winter there is heavy traffic, and in the summer it's completely packed with ALL the traffic passing through the East End. Anybody going east of Bridgehampton is passing right by. It doesn't matter that there is a hedge in between. You can hear it, and you can definitely smell it. If you try to walk the short distance to Bridgehampton town you will definitely feel it. This isn't some secret deal that Bethenny got in on, the house had been on the market, renovated, for a long time with no takers. It doesn't matter that the house itself was a great and barely needed any renovations from her other than a coat of paint, the same factors that made her get an ostensibly good price are still there now that she's trying to rent and sell it. And they can't be hidden. Nobody going to look at the house will miss that it sits on the HIGHWAY. Literally. The economics for this house doesn't pencil out, not as a flip and not as a rental project. (And yes, I know that Bethenny did some creative accounting and claimed to be making a profit by renting it out, but that's only true if you ignore alternative costs: if the income you're making from your investment can't cover mortgage interest of the purchase price, realtor fees and property taxes, you're not actually making a profit, you're eating a big fat loss.)

She's renting. I looked it up on streeteasy (i'm a real estate creeper) and it's listed as having rented for around 7k per month, though most new leases right now has a one or two free rent month concession since it's a down market. I think she was trying to rent her townhouse for 30k per month, but I'm guessing she actually got way lower than that. I'm so glad this show is back on. I was trying to get into RHOBH, but it just doesn't have the same pull for me anymore. Unlike many I actually miss Carole, and I was doubtful I'd stick around without her, but I still love/hate most of these ol gals enough it would seem.

This right here is probably part of the dynamic that Carole is tired of with Bethenny. She's not her parent, and is positioned to be her inferior, yet she's constantly expected to mother Bethenny and put her needs first. Bethenny doesn't need to put Carole first or not shit on her in return since she "doesn't know better". As she said, it's a lot of Bethenny and not a lot of Carole. And despite of this, the notion that Bethenny owns her shit still stands--even though she can't even fess up to being "a taker" emotionally, something that has been blatantly clear throughout the seasons. But that's totally okay, because see she doesn't know any better. Bethenny has a lot of fun sides, and I can understand why someone would befriend her. But for me she would quickly become a "once in a while" type of friend, because I've stopped putting up with being the person doing all the emotional labor. It isn't a mystery to me that Carole tried to pull back a bit as well.

I'm pretty sure it would also mean that Bethenny could sign off to use Bryn in her TV shows and other PR endeavors without input from Jason. ETA: oops just realized that the page wasn't reloaded for a while so this has already been brought up. I'm not a fan of Jason (his alleged treatment of Cookie really turned me off him), but after I realized that Bethenny is the person who's been prolonging this custody fight by filing for sole custody, I lost any sympathy I had for the "hell" and "torture" it's bringing her. And it's made me hugely skeptical of her motives. Add in her own Cookie seizure video complete with panic attack in front of Bryn, as well as her choice to post about Bryn's ongoing grief over Cookie and I just don't have a lot of faith left in her. At this point I think she'll do almost anything for pity and attention, and while I think she genuinely loves her daughter I don't think she's able to understand the negative impact the decisions she makes will have on her emotional health. I used to think she was just a bit "damaged" by her upbringing, but she's coming off more and more like a person with a personality disorder to me. And I'm sorry if this is considered un-PC at the moment, but that's never a good quality in a parent.

Is there a source for this? I may be blanking out, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't any threats of violence involved.

Having been friends with a Bethenny-type, and related to another, this makes total sense to me. It takes a while to realize that The Bethenny is ALWAYS in a crisis. At first you just kind of take them at face value, like clearly what Jason was doing to her was psychological torture since she's reacting like a person who is being tortured. And obviously she's the victim, and his hostility and impatience with her comes out of nowhere. But after a few years of constant crisis, where you eventually realize that 90% of what triggers the crisis mode is things that happen to other people in your life EVERY DAY and they just deal with it and move on, you get a bit numb to it. (Side note: a turning point for me with "my" Bethenny was when my friend had a piece of IKEA furniture turn wobbly which triggered an out of the blue case of hysterics and her sister was soothing her and agreeing that this was just another example of how ALL THE HORRIBLE THINGS always seems to happen to her, and she's just cursed and has the worst luck and if other people could have a tenth of her bad luck they would understand why life is so hard for her. And I was kind of trying to reason with them and explain that everyone who has bought furniture at IKEA has at some point had it go a bit wobbly, it's not the end of the world, like tighten the screws a bit and it will be fixed, price of doing business at IKEA and all that. It was the first (of what would end up being many) time that I kind of stepped back, looked at the situation at hand and went huh. I get that she's crying and all, but this is taking up hours of our weekend and I'm expected to treat this with the gravity of a death in the family. Is it realistic for me to be expected to spend so much of my free time babying her?") I've always been extremely sympathetic to Bethenny, I think she's smart and I identify a lot with her inability to deal well with close relationships due to "faulty programming" in childhood. I understand that depression and anxiety have very little to do with what's objectively going on in your life. But the thing is, BETHENNY doesn't seem to understand that. To her, horrible things are happening TO HER every day, but for the most part it seems to be mundane parts of being an adult. I completely get that Carole is out of patience with Bethenny being in a state of crisis. You get numb eventually, your reserves get used up. You get sick of treating a paper cut like it's an amputation and start responding with "put a band-aid on it and let's go" instead of the full on trip to the ER (while looking like an asshole to the casual observer, because how can you be so cold when someone is CRYING, yeez, have some compassion). I actually thought that Bethenny's whole #ThisIsACrisis period maybe would have woken her up to that, but apparently it's a nope on that.

Just for the sake of clarity, the cost of the house was 3.1 million when she bought it in 2013.

Except for the people filming them having that conversation, and all the people at Bravo who have a lot to gain from publicizing the storyline.

The house they live in on the show was bought in her husbands name for 1.8 million in 2011 (around the time they married). It was renovated when they bought it, but some of the surfaces have since been updated. It's currently listed for 3,2 million and located in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood. Unless I'm mistaken, this would make their lifestyle fairly comparable to Eden Sassoon's. ETA: The single thing that upset me the most this episode was Kyle claiming that Lisa had poured a glass of wine over her bag when you can clearly see that Kyle's thrashing around is what tipped over KYLE'S OWN glass of wine! Shades of Dubai for me.