BUYER: Albert Brooks
LOCATION: Santa Monica, CA
PRICE: $4,495,000
SIZE: 4,475 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Oscar-nominated actor/writer/director Albert Brooks (“Finding Nemo,” “Drive,” “Taxi Driver”) sold a large house in Bel Air in October 2012 for $6.275 million. The two-plus acre estate, in the same swank neck of the mountains as the mansion Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon have on the market for $12.995 million, was previously owned by both Merv Griffin and Polly Bergen.

The buyer of Mister Brook’s Bel Air spread, as per property records, was real estate investor Paul Daneshrad who clearly experienced some sort of real estate change of heart and flipped the estate back on the market in February (2014) for $6.95 million. Mister Daneshrad, bless his real estate heart, sold it at a substantial loss the following month to retired professional tennis icon Pete Sampras who paid $5.996 million and — in case y’all did not already know — also picked up the property next door for $3.051 million. But we digress…

We’re not sure where Mister Brooks and his family moved once they decamped their Bel Air estate back in 2012 but thanks to Yolanda Yakketyyak (and property records) it’s come to Your Mama’s attention that the show business scion — both of his parents were in da bidness — recently and quietly acquired a more modestly sized if high-priced home in Santa Monica.

Listing details and other details Your Mama dug up on the internets shows the existing house was built brand new in 2006 on a mid-block parcel on a wide, pine tree-lined street in Santa Monica’s leafy and super-prime North of Montana Boulevard location. It last sold in June 2013 for $3.925 million, was given a light cosmetic touch up — walls painted white and floors stained a rich chocolate tone, etc. — and re-listed in late June 2014 for $4.45 million. There appears to have been a bit of competition for the property since the property was sold to Mister Brooks just a month later for $4.495 million.

Listing details call it a “Magical Cape Cod” but quite frankly, children, we’re not even sure what a magical house is and it certainly doesn’t look any Cape Cod house Your Mama has ever seen. Where, children, is the steeply pitched roof and where, pray tell, are the dormer windows? But there we go digressing again…

A petite front porch leads to a classic, center hall entry off which spoke a formal living room with fireplace and bay window seat, a temperature-controlled walk-in wine storage room, an office/study with built-in book shelves and a formal dining room connected to the kitchen through a marble-countered butler’s pantry.

The roomy and liberally windowed center island kitchen is decked out with snow-white cabinetry, marble counter tops and top-grade appliances that include two dishwashers and at least one warming drawer.

The kitchen opens to a combination family room/breakfast area where French doors in the breakfast area link to a central courtyard patio. The family room area, which has a built-in entertainment unit, also opens through French doors, to flagstone-tiled “Nantucket-style patio” — whatever that is — that overlooks the compact and verdant backyard and the alley-accessible detached two-car garage.

In addition to an en-suite downstairs bedroom suitable for a live-in domestic, the lazy and/or infirm there are three good-sized en-suite guest family bedrooms on the second floor. The upstairs master suite encompasses a private sitting room that’s (regrettably) divided from the bedroom by the exactly sort of three-side, stacked stone faced fireplace Your Mama might expect to find in a Quality Suites hotel room. French doors in both the sitting room and the bedroom open to a roomy balcony in the tree tops The attached master bathroom is slathered in marble and includes a twin vanities, an oval soaking tub under an oculus window and a separate, oversized and glass-enclosed multi-head steam shower with convenient built-in bench.

Listing photos: Coldwell Banker (via Movoto)