Brian Grazer Home: Super Producer Buys New House In Santa Monica (PHOTOS)

We knew, even before the Wall Street Journal reminded us with this very cool graphic, that super-producer Brian Grazer is a man who likes order in his life. (OK, the not-so-kind might call him a man obsessed with order.) Whatever. He certainly disrupted the natural order of the real estate universe -- which is to sell your old house before you buy a new one.

The very rich, of course, do things in whatever order they want. So here's the scenario involving Grazer: He plopped down $12.5 million on a 12-year-old house in Santa Monica in early December and then withdrew his 6,000-square-foot Malibu Colony house from the market on Dec. 28. When last listed, the Malibu place was for sale at $19.5 million.

Sometimes celebrities withdraw their homes from the active listings when they have a signed contract and expect to close escrow. Maybe that happened here, maybe not. The Colony house is a leftover from his marriage to Gigi Levangie Grazer, the ex who wrote "The Starter Wife." The couple bought it in 2003 and used it as a getaway from their other home, which was a couple of miles up the road in Pacific Palisades.

Grazer, an Oscar-winning film and TV producer, is expected to remodel the newly purchased 10,000-square-foot Spanish-style home in Santa Monica. The home has six bedrooms and nine bathrooms, and agents speculate that he may be hanging on to the Malibu place until the new one is finished to his liking.

Grazer co-founded Imagine Entertainment with Ron Howard and will be producing the 84th Annual Academy Awards next month.

Photos courtesy of Realtor.com.