Ben Affleck & Jennifer Garner Purchase Westside Home for $20M

---

After many months of shopping for a home on the Westside, the multi-talented, Oscar-winning Ben Affleck and his wife, actress Jennifer Garner, have purchased one for about $20 million.

It was the home of Oscar-winning producer Brian Grazer and Gigi-Levangie-Grazer, his wife of eight years. Grazer founded Imagine Entertainment with his partner, Ron Howard.

During the same week, another Westside home was sold in the mid-$6-million range. That house, built in 1929, has four bedrooms and four bathrooms in slightly more than 3,800 square feet.

It was sold to a prominent investment banker and his family, sources said. Before this sale, the home was owned by model-actress Cindy Crawford.

Not a bad way to end a week, was it? And these aren't the only ones in town who stepped up to the plate.

Another one was Scary Spice, also known as Melanie Brown. She not only sold her home for more than its listing price of $2,999,999, but the property was on the market for only one day, according to listing agents.

The quick sale, at $3.14 million, was not attributed to anything in particular, but the contemporary-style home was described as "ultra chic" by the Multiple Listing Service, and the house was expensively remodeled.

The house was purchased by Brown for $3 million in 2007, public records indicate.

Considering the current economic and real estate markets in the Los Angeles area, Brown and Stephen Belafonte are, in a word, "delighted," said listing agent Charmaine DeGratte. The sellers plan to buy a larger home for their expanding family.

Brown, 33, joined the Spice Girls in 1994, pushing sales of the group's three albums to more than 40 million copies worldwide. She made her theatrical debut in "The Virgin Monologues" in London and played Mimi in the musical "Rent" on Broadway.

Stephen Shapiro and Jonas Heller of Westside Estate Agency, Beverly Hills, were involved in the first two sales mentioned, and Shapiro represented Ben Affleck, real estate sources said. Other real estate agents involved were Brett Lawyer and David Offer. None was available for comment.

Sally Forster Jones and DeGrate, both of Coldwell Banker Previews International, Beverly Hills, had the listing.

---

The Maoofs are apparently also counting their good fortune now that one of the three L.A.-area homes the family was trying to sell in November has been sold, according to the Multiple Listing Service, for $7.3 million.

The most recent asking price for the home, in the Beverly Hills area, was $8,895,000.

Family holdings include the Sacramento Kings and the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. The house that just sold is in the Mulholland Estates gated community. Features are a great room with a sunken bar; an outdoor kitchen; an inside kitchen with four ovens and four dishwashers, a pool and a covered patio.

Joe Maloof still has a home in Brentwood for sale at $4.2 million, reduced from $4,995,000, and Phillip Maloof has a Beverly Hills home for sale at $10,865,000, reduced from $16,995,000.

---

Veteran actor Robert Loggia, who played "Feech" La Manna on HBO's "The Sopranos," has put his Bel-Air home on the market at $3.65 million.

The actor, 69, often plays mobsters.

His home has four bedrooms and four bathrooms in 4,620 square feet. 

Other features are two master suites, an office-gym; a pool, and a sunny half-acre backyard.

The French Country-style, recently remodeled home is listed with Tania Ferris of Coldwell Banker, Beverly Hills South.

---

Brian "The Boz" Bosworth, the former NFL Seattle Seahawks linebacker who became an action star, has listed his Malibu home at $8,995,000.

The ocean-view home on a knoll overlooking Paradise Cove has seven bedrooms and 10 bathrooms in 8,854 square feet. There is a four-car garage, a pool, pool house and spa as well as a guest house.

Bosworth, 43, played for the Seattle Seahawks from 1987 to 1989. He started appearing in movies in 1991 with "Stone Cold," followed by "The Longest Yard" in 2005.

Chris Cortazzo of Coldwell Banker Malibu West is the listing agent.

---

No wonder Shaquille O'Neal hasn't sold his Miami Beach home since he first listed it in 2005 at $32 million. "Shaq", former center for the L.A. Lakers, has changed his asking price enough times to confuse the most fastidious. So let's rehash it one more time.

O'Neal bought the Mediterranean-style house for about $19 million in 2004. A year later, he listed it at $32 million. In 2007, he raised the asking price to $35 million. Since then, he has dropped the listing price several times.

Other details about the house are simpler to recall and more fun to recount. How many basketball stars have an indoor basketball court? "Shaq" is one, and he has eight bedrooms in nearly 20,000 square feet, sitting on 2.5 acres on Star Island, off the southern tip of Miami Beach. The home also has a swimming pool, a tennis court and a dock.

O'Neal won his fourth NBA championship with the Miami Heat in 2006. Rony Selkaly, a former Miami Heat center, built the mansion in 1992.

"The Jills," Jill Eber and Jill Hertzberg--both with Coldwell Banker in Miami, Macoriah "Cori" Nelson of Coldwell Banker have the listing.

---

This is a story about Severin Wunderman, a watch entrepreneur who owned a chateau in France, which was put on the market at $23.9 million, including its "contents," when the watchmaker died a year ago in June. He was 69.

Wunderman spent "a lifetime of earnings" restoring, expanding and redecorating the chateau, which included its furnishings and artworks, according to executor Richard E. Tomlin Jr. Among the chateau contents are the owner's collection of Jean Cocteau paintings and a 7-foot bronze sculpture by Salvador Dali, known as "Venus with Head of Roses."

The French country-style home has 12 bedrooms in 16,000 square feet. The property is on 25 acres with a pool and a formal garden about 11 miles west of Nice.

Wunderman died in the chateau, which had been a 17th-century hunting lodge when he purchased it as a ruin in the early 1990s. He also owned the watch manufacturer Corum.

---