Family on the mind of Mencia
This is one of those celebrity deals that practically requires a score card.
Carlos Mencia, the wit behind Comedy Central’s “Mind of Mencia,” and his wife, Amy, have bought the Encino home of actor Eddie Cibrian (“Saved by the Bell,” “Third Watch,” “Say It Isn’t So,” “The Cave”) and his wife, Brandi, for close to its asking price of $4.4 million.
Mencia, a stand-up comic in such hot spots as the Comedy Store since he was 19, wanted a larger house. The 40-year-old is the 17th of 18 children and apparently has a lot of company.
The Mencias liked Encino, where they had been living, so they house-hunted there. What they found was the walled and gated Mediterranean-style home belonging to the 34-year-old Cibrian (one of People Magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful People in 2006) and his wife, a model.
Now, the Mencias are relocating to their new Encino home, which the Cibrians had refurbished from top to bottom before they put it on the market.
The residence, built in 1992, has six bedrooms and eight bathrooms in 8,500 square feet -- two master-bedroom suites and six en suite bedrooms.
The house has a family room with a wet bar, a kitchen with two dishwashers, a banquet-sized dining room, a home theater with seating for 15 or more, a pool, a barbecue pavilion and a six-car garage, which could be used for four cars and a limo.
The Mencias decided to keep their former home for his family, and the Cibrians have moved to a gated community in Calabasas.
Carol Wolfe of Coldwell Banker Previews, Encino, and Barry Dantagnan of the firm’s Sherman Oaks office had the listing on the house the Cibrians sold, and Olga Laron with Nelson Shelton & Associates, Beverly Hills, represented the Mencias in their purchase.
He’s off to swim
with the Dolphins
Former UCLA head football coach Karl Dorrell has put his five-bedroom, three-bathroom home in Stevenson Ranch on the market at $1,125,000.
Dorrell, who played football for UCLA, where he was a noted wide receiver, is moving to Florida, where he has been hired as wide receiver coach for the NFL’s Miami Dolphins. He was wide receiver coach for the Denver Broncos from 2000 to 2002, before spending five seasons at UCLA. He was fired in December.
His 3,500-square-foot Stevenson Ranch house, built in 2000, has a pool, a large yard and an outdoor fireplace.
The home, on a cul-de-sac, also has window shutters, stainless-steel kitchen appliances and a master closet with organizers.
Neal Weichel at Re/Max of Valencia, has the listing.
Stretch of green for a blues man
Just in time for the Grammy Awards, guitarist-songwriter Robert Cray and his wife, playwright and filmmaker Susan Turner-Cray, have sold their Los Feliz house and bought a 5-acre Santa Ynez Valley ranch.
The house sold for nearly $3.5 million; the ranch was purchased for about $2 million.
The ranch, 35 miles north of Santa Barbara, has a barn with an adjoining guesthouse, numerous horse corrals, gardens and lush landscaping. The main house has three bedrooms and three bathrooms in 4,800 square feet. There is a second story with an office and a playroom.
Cray, a blues artist with a mainstream following, plans to continue touring the world performing works from his albums “Live From Across the Pond” and “Twenty.”
Cray, 54, and his Robert Cray Band collected five Grammy Awards in the 1980s and 1990s.
Turner-Cray was an Edinburgh Festival winner for her play “Manchester Girl,” which she wrote and performed. She also wrote and directed “Through Riley’s Eyes,” a film about ALS.
The couple was represented in their sale and purchase by Arleen Ruby-Leviton and Lawrence Leviton of Prudential California Real Estate, Beverly Hills. Bill Grove, of Coldwell Banker Realty Los Olivos, represented the seller of the ranch.
Put couch here and lie down
Irene Kassorla, the psychologist and author once described by Merv Griffin as the “shrink to the stars,” owned this Bel-Air home from 1966 to 1975 before she moved on, and Dr. William Bondareff moved in.
Bondareff and wife Rita then lived there for 20 years, while he was conducting research on Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia and dementia as professor of psychiatry at USC’s Keck School of Medicine.
The Bondareffs are now moving to Carmel, so the Neutra-inspired, indoor-outdoor house is on the market. It has three bedrooms and 2 3/4 bathrooms in 2,400 square feet, plus a pool that features a wall of stone with trickling water. The asking price is slightly less than $2.2 million.
Dave Osman of Rodeo Realty, Beverly Hills, has the listing.