Benjamin Bratt Lists Topanga Contemporary

By Mark David

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Benjamin Bratt hopes to just about double his money on the sale of an effortlessly chic, low-slung mid-century contemporary in the craggy mountains above Malibu that has come up for sale at $4.8 million. Built in the early 1950s and acquired by the 1999 Emmy-nominated former “Law & Order” star and wife Talisa Soto in 2009 for not quite $2.4 million, the split-level residence was subsequently rehabbed for the couple by the since shuttered Los Angeles firm Kanner Architects. Listed with Paul Ferra and Melissa Oliver at Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage and tucked into a rustic but tony private enclave just outside tiny Topanga, Calif., the house sits amid terraced gardens on almost five, mostly unspoiled acres with three bedrooms and three bathrooms in roughly 3,500 square feet.

Open-plan interiors feature tightly spaced exposed-ceiling joists, meticulously crafted built-ins and vast walls of floor-to-ceiling glass sliders that allow the living spaces to spill out to massive, exotic-wood decks and thick carpets of lawn. There’s also an interestingly amorphous swimming pool and a graveled patio with deep, cushioned built-in seating alongside a fire pit. A white-stucco casita with a wood-burning stove sits a short stroll from the main house with additional space for an art studio, home office and/or screening room. Several terraces are carved into the hillside with serene vistas over the surrounding mountains.

Bratt sold an investment property in his hometown of San Francisco in 2007 for close to $1.9 million, and in 2010 he took in $2.5 million on the sale of a three-bedroom loft in New York City’s Greenwich Village that has since been radically re-imagined and is back up for sale at $4.5 million.