Actor Dustin Hoffman has just finished landscaping the most recent addition to his Brentwood estate.

In July, he bought the house next door to his home for more than $2 million, sources estimate. In November, he razed the house.

Now he has landscaped the site to match the rest of his property, which is hidden behind dense evergreens and bottle-brush bushes covering a chain-link fence.

"I'd call it privacy landscaping," said a neighbor, who also observed, "Few people buy a house, bulldoze it and then keep the lot as part of their garden."

Hoffman razed a Southern Plantation-style house built in 1941 with three bedrooms in 4,000 square feet.

It isn't the first time that he has torn down a neighboring house. Before he built his seven-bedroom, 12,000-square-foot house two years ago, he bought an adjacent house, razed it and built a tennis court in its place. He played tennis there for months before his house was completed.

Now the Oscar-winning actor's contemporary-yet-country-style home sits on at least two acres in a prime area.

Hoffman, 61, and his wife, Lisa, have four children, and he has two grown children from his first marriage.

The two-time Oscar winner will receive the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in February. He starred most recently in "Sphere" and "Wag the Dog."

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Fashion designer to the stars Richard Tyler and his wife and business partner, Lisa Trafficante, have purchased a South Pasadena home from developer Robert Maguire for $2.8 million, say realty sources not involved in the deal.

Tyler, 52, has dressed such well-known Hollywood clients as Julia Roberts, Sigourney Weaver, Anjelica Huston and Ashley Judd. Maguire, 63, is chairman of Maguire Thomas Partners, one of Southern California's most prominent real estate development companies.

Tyler and Trafficante moved to South Pasadena from a Hollywood Hills home that once belonged to actress Dolores Del Rio. They also have a 37-room home in New York.

Designed by architect Reginald Johnson and built in 1917, the six-bedroom, 7,400-square-foot house in South Pasadena was renovated in 1998. It has an outdoor glass-enclosed spa with built-in stereo and telephone and an outdoor stainless steel kitchen with a wood-burning oven.

Boyd Smith and Maggie Navarro of Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate, Pasadena, represented the buyers, and Steve Davis of Fred Sands Estates, Pasadena, and Geoffrey C. Lands of Bel-Air Holmby Properties had the listing.

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Mike Werb, who co-wrote the screenplay for "Face/Off" (1997) and wrote the screenplay for "The Mask" (1994), has purchased a Sunset Strip-area home for about $2 million.

The house has three bedrooms in about 4,000 square feet and was built in 1935. It also has a pool, spa and city views.

Werb, in his late 30s, was living in a smaller West Hollywood home, which he will rent out.

Jonathan Seltzer of Hilton & Hyland, Beverly Hills, represented Werb in his purchase.

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A Glendale home designed by Vienna-born architect Rudolph Schindler has come on the market at $590,000.

The house was built in 1941 and was known as "the Rodriguez House" for its original owner, concert pianist and radio commentator Richard Rodriguez.

The four-bedroom, 2,400-square-foot house has been owned for the past 12 years by Joel Polachek, CEO of the Pacific Design Center, and his wife, sound editor Caron Allen, who worked on the Oscar-winning documentary "The Long Way Home."

Rodriguez's sister was a metal-work artist, and she designed a copper fireplace and other metal artwork that is part of the house.

Schindler, who died in Los Angeles in 1953, worked for Frank Lloyd Wright before establishing his own practice in L.A. in 1921.

Schindler viewed the garden as an integral part of the house, and the Rodriguez House has 58 windows looking out on a landscaped half-acre. Schindler also designed a house as a series of private rooms and areas; the Rodriguez House has a wine cellar, two sleeping porches and a workshop.

Jackie Smith, the late Times columnist Jack Smith's daughter-in-law, has the listing at Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate in Glendale.