SELLER: Jensen Ackles and Danneel Harris Ackles
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $3,495,000
SIZE: 2,636 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Over the years Your Mama has toiled and typed our fingers to the bloody nubbins discussing the (often capricious) real estate activities of famous folks we've come to discover some fairly reliable markers and patterns.

For example, we learned that Tinseltown types—as a generalized group—frequently have a powerful attraction to Buddha statues, regardless of whether they practice or know anything about Buddhism. We've also figured out when a property goes up for sale on the open market as being owned by a celeb it's pretty much a slam-damn-dunk, take-your-money-to-the-bank gare-uhn-tee the celebrity isn't much of a celebrity and/or Your Mama ain't never heard of said celeb home owner.

Case in point, a mini-estate just south of Sunset Boulevard, in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, CA, that just hit the market as "Celeb Owned" with an asking price of $3,495,000.

Natch, we bit the "Celeb Owned" bait and five seconds spent poking around the property records turned up evidence the property in question is owned (by a trust controlled) by a 30-something year old actor we've never heard of named Jensen Ackles who is married to actress Danneel Ackles, née Harris. We'd never heard of Missus Harris Ackles before today either but, for what it's worth to anyone, she ranked #72 on Maxim magazine's 2010 Hot 100 list,

Anyhoo, just because we couldn't pick him out of a line up if our next bottle of top-shelf gin depended on it does not mean Mister Ackles isn't a successful, working actor with legions of fans, which he is. As a youngster, he spent a few years in the late 1990s on the soap story Days of Our Lives where he earned three Daytime Emmy nominations. Since then Mister Ackles has worked frequently and steadily on boob-toob programs that include (but are not limited to) Dark Angel, Dawson's Creek, and Smallville. For the last seven years, he's starred with Jared Padalecki on a sci-fi program we've never heard of nor seen called Supernatural.

Like her hubby, Missus Harris Ackles has also worked steadily since she first appeared on a soap story (One Life to Live) in 2003. Her list of subsequent credits include roles in Joey, One Tree Hill, Friends With Benefits and a couple of those silly, money-making Harold and Kumar stoner comedies.

Property records reveal Mister Ackles acquired the .29 acre property in September 2009 for $2,435,000. Current listing information shows the single-story main house measures 2,636 square feet—modest by celeb standards—with 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. A renovated, semi-Tuscan-style two-story, detached guest house offers significant additional living space.

Listing information from the time of the 2009 purchase suggests Mister Ackles (along with, one imagines, input by Missus Harris Ackles) has made a number alterations and improvements that include exterior paint; new flooring in the voluminous foyer; and a complete kitchen redo; a swimming pool overhaul with new tile work. The guest house was also fixed up with a darker, more dramatic color palette.

A library loft with custom wrought iron railing overlooks the main living room with rich brown hardwood floors, a vaulted and sky-lit ceiling and a fireplace set enough off-center to cause Your Mama's burrow to crinkle with consternation.

The shiny wood floors continue into the over-sized dining room (with well-stock bar and sitting area) as well as into the recently renovated, galley-style kitchen outfitted with dove grey Shaker-style cabinetry, top-grade, commercial-style stainless steel appliances, shimmering tile back splashes and a two-seat snack and booze bar.

The master bedroom has direct access to the backyard through a wide row of dark-framed French doors and the attached bathroom has twin sinks, jetted tub set into tiles plinth, separate stall shower and built-in shelving for towels, terlitries, and even books.

The dark-bottom swimming sits between the main house and detached two-car garage. The stone terracing around the pool steps up and wraps around the back of the house where a large outdoor entertainment space with built-in barbecue station shaded by a pergola.

A arched pathway of randomly shaped stone pavers cuts across a flat lawn and connects the outdoor living spaces to the sizable, two-story guest house done up in a kind of contemporary faux-Tuscan style. The guest house includes a voluminous, double-height living/dining area with soaring windows and buff-colored tile floors laid at a 45-degree angle, a simple but fully equipped kitchen, and a wood staircase that winds up to a wood-floored loft bedroom.

Behind the guest house, tucked into the tight point of the triangular-shaped parcel, Mister and Missus Ackles maintain a raised-bed kitchen garden (and orange tree). We can only hope they have more luck than Your Mama has keeping critters from snatching tomatoes off the vines before they get quite ripe.

listing photos: Keller Williams Studio City

SELLER: Dan Harris
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,395,000
SIZE: 3,085 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A little birdie chirped in our ear over the weekend that Tinseltown action/adventure screenwriter/director Dan Harris (Until Death, Superman Returns, X2) listed his celebrity pedigreed property just above Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, CA with an asking price of $2,395,000.

Property records indicate Mister Harris coughed up $2,075,000 when he bought the house in October 2005 from musician Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics). Mister Stewart and his wife Anoushka purchased the house only about 1.5 years earlier for $1,590,000 from a married couple who had themselves acquired the house from Aussie-Brit pop songstress Kylie Minogue in February 2001 for $1,225,000. Miss Minogue kept the house less than one year and property records reveal her classic case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle cost her $60,000 not counting carrying costs, upkeep and real estate fees.

Current listing information shows the gated, turreted, somewhat dour and putty-colored two-story French Normandy-style residence spans 3,085 square feet with a total of 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.

The house retains whiffs and hits of its architectural roots—there's some heavy-duty paneling here and there and a coffered ceiling in the dining room—but the interior spaces have been significantly pared down and, where not wood paneled, bathed in white paint that sets off Mister Harris's impressive, idiosyncratic and mostly contemporary art collection that includes what may (or may not) be an Inka Essenhigh painting from the late 1990s in the dining room.

Espresso-colored wood floors in the elegantly spare entrance hall extend into the partially wood-paneled and partially window-lined "formal" living room that steps down into an ample formal dining room with mosaic tile-faced fireplace flanked by built-in book cases filled with actual books, a bank French doors, and a chunky wood table the size of a Honda surrounded by 10 or 12 chairs that look like they came out of the prop room for some epic, historical drama about King Arthur.

The adjacent cook- and family-friendly eat-in kitchen has extra-thick, Calacatta slab marble counter tops, high-grade stainless steel appliances and a center island cook top with snack bar. Mister Harris has outfitted the gleaming, white Shaker-style cabinets with door handled and drawer pulls fashioned from chef-quality cooking knives, a quirky and sinister conceit that adds a deliciously nerve-wracking element of danger and (melo)drama to the kitchen.

There is a fully paneled and book shelf-lined library but it looks so very narrow even the wide-angle listing photos make Your Mama feel a mite claustrophobic. More spacious is the upstairs master suite with vaulted ceiling and exposed trusses, more built-in book cases, private bathroom, an adjoining sitting room/office, and an over-sized dressing room that opens through a bank of French doors to a private terrace with a bit of a city view.

Several of the lower level rooms open to a small well-outfitted back yard where flagstone terracing wraps snugly around the back of the house, surrounds the plunge-sized swimming pool and elevated spa and continues around to an elevated dining patio under an arched pergola.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty