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The Star Island Battle

Lisa dishes on her drama with the preservationists.

By Lisa Hochstein

What better way to kill a romantic morning more than a pre-nup conversation. These conversations are the ones every couple dreads. I know that Joanna doesn't like the idea of signing one, but it’s for the best in my opinion. I expected to sign a pre-nup when marrying my husband. Any wealthy, successful man or woman should protect themselves, because you just never know what the future may hold. I do believe that it should not be one sided and that both sides should be comfortable with the terms.

I couldn't help but laugh as I watched the scene of me and Daysy. She was so thrilled with her results from the surgeries my husband performed last year to fix poor plastic surgery she had before. Daysy looks better than ever, and her confidence is through the roof. She wanted a sexy photo shoot to poke fun at my “a sexy maid is every man’s fantasy” comment I made last year. I am so proud of her achievements. She has grown her cleaning company so much that she herself no longer has to clean. I'm sad to see her go, but she has better things to do than clean my house now, so good for her.

I want to say a few things about the home we bought on Star Island The property had been neglected by the previous owners for many years and allowed to fall into disrepair. These people took out $14 million in loans with two banks and then promptly stopped making payments. They then put the house on the open market for sale, but found nobody interested in purchasing it. My husband negotiated with the bank to buy the note and completed the foreclosure process that the bank had initiated two years prior. After obtaining the note from the bank, he tried to negotiate with the tenants and offer them a tremendous amount of money to move out to start a life. They turned him down and then spent a huge sum of money on attorneys to delay the foreclosure process. To this day my husband doesn't quite understand why they refused the roughly $200,000 that they could have otherwise had. Ultimately after exhausting their baseless appeals and spending so much money on attorneys, they had to move out. Fortunately no eviction was necessary.

Once we got on the property we were disgusted by the condition of the house. Our engineer deemed the house uninhabitable. We then went to the city of Miami Beach to get permission to demolish the home and build a new one

It was at this time a group of preservationist decided to take advantage of this situation. They wanted free publicity by opposing us in an attempt to designate our home as a historic site in Miami Beach, which is something that has never been done in the history of Miami Beach to single-family home.

It seems very strange to us that they never cared about this home in the past while it was allowed to deteriorate. They also didn't take much interest in the other homes that were demolished before or after. In spite of their attempts, the city of Miami Beach’s design review board unanimously voted to allow us the demolition and approved our new plans. Since this time, these preservationists had appealed the decision to a special master who upheld the city decision. Unfortunately they did not stop there. The preservationists are now suing us and the city of Miami Beach for giving us this permission. My husband has even offered to donate the home and help pay for its relocation, but has been turned down. The fact is these people do not care about the home, they just want publicity for their cause that they otherwise would not ever get. They are a despicable bunch that is targeting the wrong people. They give preservationists a bad name.

In this scene Lenny and I decided to check up on things at the Star Island house, something we often do. The reason I was having a hard time with the Ferrari is because Lenny had just bought it for me a few days ago, and this was the second time I had driven it. It’s a little different from most cars I've driven.

Disgusting Tenants
The house was left in such a disgusting condition; I don't understand how anybody could have lived like that. This scene was very early on in the ridiculous battle against these preservationists. The cost to us has now reached a half-million dollars, not $130,000, because of these losers.

Star Island has some very notable residents and interesting history. There are tour boats that go by the island all the time. Some make comments about our home. For some reason they decided to make this house more interesting by saying that the movie Scarface was filmed there. This is simply not true.

Thanks for reading my blog! I hope I could help you understand what’s really going on with our home on Star Island. Until next week!
Jealousy, Sex, and Needing Help


Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and visit my site Lisamariehochstein.com.

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