SELLER: David Charvet (and Brooke Burke)LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $12,500,000
SIZE: 6,769 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The guard-gated and secluded Serra Retreat in Malibu, CA has long attracted high-profile peeps in The Industry who desire easy access to Hollywood and a semi-rural quasi-equestrian seaside lifestyle. Some of the uppity enclave's current residents include Kelsey Grammer's ex-wife Camille, super producer James Cameron (The Titanic) and Mel Gibson's long-suffering ex-wife Robin who has the erstwhile couple's compound listed at $11,750,000. Past residents of the exclusive and semi-rustic community include Olivia Newton John and Britney Spears and Kevin Federline who sold their erstwhile love shack to horror film writer/director Stephen Sommers in August 2007 for $10,000,000. After an extensive cleansing and renovation Mister and Missus Sommers have the renovated 8 bedroom and 8 bathroom spread back on the market with an asking price of $15,950,000.
Handsome and hunky actor (and designer denim jeans heir) David Charvet has owned a home in the Serra Retreat since March of 1998 when he paid $1,275,000 for five contiguous parcels that combined cover a couple acres and form an "L" shape.
Mister Charvet–whose father is Tunisian-born and Los Angles-based apparel business baron Paul Guez–started up his ladder of often shirtless fame in the 1990s on the hit boob-toob programs Baywatch and Melrose Place. But for a lead role in a couple of movies Your Mama has never heard of (Meet Prince Charming in 2002 and Green Flash in 2008) Mister Charvet seemed to have all but retired from showbiz in the late 1990s. In the last couple of years Mister Charvet has gotten his acting feet wet again with a tee-vee movie (The Perfect Teacher) and a couple of not yet released sci-fi-sounding films (Prisoner of the Sun and Nephilim).
We assume–which means we could be making an as of you and Your Mama–that Mister Charvet shares his Malibu mansion with long-time lady-friend and two-time baby momma Brooke Burke. Miss Burke, who also has two children from a previous relationship, started up her ladder of Hollywood fame as a nekkid model who parlayed her exposed breasts into a career as a tee-vee hostess (Wild On!, Rock Star, Miss America 2011). She appeared on and won the 7th season of the long ago jumped the shark but still somehow enormously popular program Dancing With The Stars. In 2010 Miss Burke took on the co-hosting duties on the dreadful dance contest extravaganza, which is probably, all Hollywood things considered, a damn good gig.
Mister Charvet and Miss Burke hooked up in 2005 or 2006–we can't be bothered to sort out the details–and have since made two babies with appropriately unusual names. Their Heaven joins Gwynnie Paltrow's Apple, Mariah Carey's Moroccan and Rob Morrow's Tu. Yes puppies, Rob Morrow named his daughter Tu Morrow. That man and his wife are so gonna get it from their Tu Morrow when she gets to be a snarling and sniveling teenager! Anyhoo, the good-looking baby makers in our discussion got engaged at some point–we can't be bothered to find out when–but have not, as far as Your Mama knows, tied the knot in the eyes of God and government.
Current listing information shows that the existing French Country-style pile was built in 2007. That indicates to Your Mama that Mister Charvet either replaced or significantly renovated and expanded the much smaller 2,726 square foot residence built in 1961 that stood on the property when he acquired it in 1998.
The current two-story dwelling, according to listing information, measures 6,769 square feet, includes 5 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms and is dubbed with the pleasantly alliterative but unnecessarily grandiose Chateau Charvet.
An 18th century fountain and expansive hand-laid antique stone motor court set the stage and lead the way to the nearly new residence built and finished with materials meant to give it an immediate patina: Exterior lamps flicker old-school style with gas; The walls were plastered by hand with an antique-y finish; The floors laid with walnut and hand-carved limestone; The fireplace mantels in the living and family rooms imported from France and the doors were hand-sculpted, whatever that means.
The formality of the long "formal" living/dining room was given the ol' California architectural heave-ho with a wide bank of floor-to-ceiling wood-framed accordion glass doors that open the room to stone terraces and outdoor living areas that overlook the broad lawn and manicured grounds. Listing photos show an intimately-scaled and masculine wood-paneled office where Mister Charvet hung a striking painting of what appears to Your Mama to be a tree about to be engulfed in flames. Like the living/dining room, the open plan kitchen/breakfast/family room area spills out into the back yard through a bank of accordion-fold glass doors in the family room and graceful arched French doors in the breakfast room.
Listing information reveals that Chateau Charvet also includes a hidden screening room–why hide it?–and a 4,000 bottle wine cellar that will satiate and inebriate even the most committed of the wino-philes and booze hounds in the family. A finished lower level contains a bonus room of undefined use and what listing information called a woman's off-season closet. Now, hunnies, that really is quite a nice feature, this woman's off-season closet. But what is the man of the house supposed to do with all his winter woolens come warm weather? Put them in a garbage bag and stuff it into the rafters in the garage? And what exactly, Your Mama wonders, makes this exclusively a "woman's" off-season closet? Does it have an infrared vagina recognizing security system or something?
Anyhoodles poodles, the back of the house forms a shallow obtuse angle that gently hugs the grassy and manicured courtyard-ish backyard. A wide terrace with a variety of functional areas–eating, lounging, conversating–extends off the rear of the house. A wide flat lawn pushes off from the terrace, engulfs the infinity-edge swimming pool and spa and stretches beyond where it steps down in wide terraces lined with clipped box woods and white rose bushes. Gravel paths lined with more clipped box woods and stone stairs streak across and provide a rigorous structure to the wild tree stands and rugged mountain views that surround the property.
At one end of the house, near the swimming pool, a stone-built cabana has built-in bench seating and an outdoor fireplace for nipping the edge off misty Malibu mornings and foggy evenings. This house is not, in all honestly, Your Mama's most desired cup of real estate tea but we could happily whittle away weeks and years curled up in the corner of that cabana with a stack of gossip glossies (and The New Yorker), our trusty laptop computer, a giant bowl of penny candy and an even more giant pitcher full of gin & tonic (extra lime, please).
Listing information indicates Mister Charvet will lease the property for $75,000 per month so anyone who might like to spend some serious paper to test drive Chateau Charvet could do so before making the full commitment to purchase.
Mister Charvet is not the only Guez family member with his left foot in the real estate hokey-pokey. Your Mama hears through the Platinum Triangle real estate gossip grapevine that Mister Charvet's uncle Hubert–the current CEO of the brain freezing Ed Hardy clothing brand–is about to sell his 17,171 square foot faux-French chateau in the Holmby Hills 'hood where some of the hoitiest of Tinseltown's toitiest homes cluster together like debutantes in a biker bar. Mister Guez's extravagant mansion happens to be the very rented residence where deceased music icon Michael "The White Lady" Jackson met his maker in the summer of 2009. The house, once listed with an punishingly optimistic asking price of $38,000,000, was last listed with a $23,500,000 price tag. Your Mama hears from an informant whom we'll call Knancy Knowstheprice who snitched that the tech tycoon who's about to sign the deed's dotted line is actually getting the house for a significantly lower price...in the teens. It's just rumor and gossip now, sweeties, just rumor and gossip.
listing photos: Coldwell Banker Previews International
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