Chicago’s his kind of town

Breaking up with Los Feliz isn’t hard to do for Vince Vaughn, who just finished filming “The Break Up” with Jennifer Aniston in Chicago and decided to part company with the City of Angels and move to the Windy City. His 3,000-square-foot Mediterranean in Los Feliz recently sold for nearly $4 million.

The actor, who costarred with Owen Wilson and Christopher Walken in “Wedding Crashers” and was featured with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” will use Chicago as his base of operations for a while. “The Break Up” was based on an idea of Vaughn’s, and he influenced the decision to have it filmed in Chicago, where he was raised.

Vaughn, 35, bought his Los Feliz home in 1991, two years after relocating to Southern California.

The private, gated estate is on a knoll in a neighborhood known as the Oaks. The home has four bedrooms and four bathrooms and sits on about half an acre with lush gardens surrounding the pool and patios.

The house, built in 1930, has old-world charm. It also has air conditioning, a satellite dish, a hot tub and canyon views.

Victoria Massengale of Coldwell Banker, Sunset Boulevard, represented the buyers. Kirk Psenner and Karen Lower of Sotheby’s International Realty, Los Feliz, had the listing.

Quaids say so long to Brentwood Park

After 15 years, Dennis Quaid is saying goodbye to his Brentwood home, which went into escrow last week after barely coming on the market.

Quaid and his wife, Kimberly, have moved into the Pacific Palisades house they bought just before their first wedding anniversary on July 4.

The Brentwood Park home, which the actor shared with actress Meg Ryan before they were divorced in 2001, was listed at just under $6.5 million. And who had the listing? Kimberly herself. She’s a real estate agent in the Coldwell Banker, Brentwood East office.

The house, behind gates, has six bedrooms and 5 1/2 bathrooms in slightly more than 6,300 square feet. It’s on a corner lot with a large, flat lawn and mature trees.

A traditional home reminiscent of the Hamptons and built in 1917, it has a wide front porch, private balconies and a slate roof.

The house was recently updated with stainless-steel kitchen appliances, a family/media room and a gym. The house also has hardwood floors and crown moldings.

The Quaids’ new home is 8,400 square feet in size and cost about $8 million. They gutted the formal interiors and refinished them for a more casual, down-home look. The 51-year-old actor is from Texas, where he met Kimberly in 2003.

Quaid plays a U.S. president in the upcoming film “American Dreamz.” He also will appear in a remake of “Yours, Mine and Ours,” opposite Rene Russo, and he played the Jimmy Stewart role in the 2004 remake of the action-adventure “Flight of the Phoenix.”

Manhattan Beach was a slam-dunk

Former L.A. Laker guard Brian Shaw was bouncing around the South Bay for years, renting here and there when not commuting to Oakland, his hometown. Now, two years after retiring as a player, Shaw, 39, has purchased a 1,820-square-foot townhome for $1.2 million in Manhattan Beach. The unit has three bedrooms and three bathrooms.

“It’s a family-friendly community,” he said, “and it is convenient to my children’s school and to my work.”

Shaw retired as a player after 14 NBA seasons, four of them with the Lakers. He had a hand in each of the Lakers’ last three NBA championships. He developed a successful passing strategy with center Shaquille O’Neal, drawing O’Neal’s praise. In August, he was named one of three assistant coaches under returning Lakers coach Phil Jackson.

Phyllis Cohen-Edwards of Shorewood Realtors was the listing agent and represented Shaw in buying.

Now they’ve got more writing room

Greg Behrendt and Amiira Ruotola-Behrendt, the coauthors of “It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken,” have sold their Burbank home for $830,000 and bought a Studio City house for just under $2 million.

The home they sold is about 1,700 square feet. The one they purchased is 3,200 square feet and is walled and private with Brazilian-hardwood floors, a pool and a guesthouse.

Greg Behrendt was a writer and consultant for the HBO series “Sex and the City” and is coauthor of the bestseller “He’s Just Not That Into You.”

Steve Tipp of Ewing & Associates Sotheby’s International in Calabasas represented the Behrendts in the sale of their home and in their purchase.

From ‘Dogtown’ to the Sunset Strip

Samantha Lockwood, who played Johnny Knoxville’s girlfriend in the movie “Lords of Dogtown” (2005), has bought her first home -- a townhouse in the Sunset Strip area for $815,000.

The contemporary-style unit has two bedrooms and two bathrooms in 1,200 square feet.

Lockwood, 23, is the daughter of actor Gary Lockwood, who appeared in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 classic, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

The actress was represented in her purchase by Michael Hiatt at Prudential California Realty in Brentwood. Christie St. James, of the same firm in Beverly Hills, had the listing.

To see previous columns on celebrity transactions visit latimes.com/hotproperty.