The listing: 800 Caldwell Ave., Mississauga, Ont.
Listing price: $3,749,000
Taxes: $22,615.72 (2015)
Lot size: 32.94 ft. by 196.42 ft.
Listing agent: Jamie Stephens, Salesperson, Re/Max Realty Specialists Inc., Brokerage
In comedian Russell Peters’s Mississauga house, the art varies from generic black and white prints to posters from his comedy tours.
Real estate agent Jamie Stephens admits that most of the non-comedy-related art is just there for staging. But he stops at a two-storey tall oil painting of a landscape in the foyers.
“I think that’s his, though,” he said.
“That’s actually not really mine either,” Mr. Peters piped in from the kitchen. “It came with the house when I bought it. And I was like, ‘Well, it fits.’ I’ll leave it for whoever comes next. And then I’ll Sharpie my name on it and make it look like I painted it.”
The back story
Mr. Peters has three homes: a modern house in Malibu, a place in Las Vegas’s desert and a contemporary hidden away on a quiet street in Mississauga.
“The Caldwell house is the most classic house that I have,” Mr. Peters had told me earlier. “It feels like a true family home – and it has tall trees! You don’t find trees like that in the desert.”
As you approach 800 Caldwell Ave., in Mississauga’s tony Lorne Park neighbourhood, you start to wonder where the house is hiding. But tucked away off to the right along a dead end street there is a gated driveway.
“Even if you stand at the gate you’d never know there was a house on the property,” Mr. Peters said, adding that the home’s privacy was the main reason why he bought the home.
The six-bedroom, six-bathroom home was built in 2008. The main floor features a joint kitchen-family room-eating area that looks out on the backyard and formal dining room and living room. The lower level has a rec room with a bar area, two bedrooms (each with their own bathroom), a storage space, a laundry room and a wine-cellar-turned-sauna.
“I’m just not a wine person but I do love saunas,” Mr. Peters said. “So I had the cellar converted to a sauna and I love using that.”
The upper floors contain four bedrooms, including the master suite with its walkout balcony that overlooks the pool. There’s also an attached heated garage that can fit five cars.
The home has everything that Mr. Peters needs when in Toronto: comfort, luxury and room for all of his friends.
“I usually have a bunch of people with me when I’m in town,” Mr. Peters said. “So the fact that it has six bedrooms really helps a lot.”
But it also suits his on-the-go lifestyle because it is easily controlled from afar, thanks to the Control4 home-automation system he had installed.
“I can control any feature for any room from keypads around the house or from my iPhone,” he said, adding that he can check in on the house from anywhere in the world.
“Sometimes if someone is staying at the house when I’m not there, I’ll log in on my phone and make the lights go up or down and turn the music on just to mess with them.”
The other main modification Mr. Peters made to the house was turn the main-floor office, which he didn’t use, into a DJ room.
“All of my houses have DJ rooms,” he said. “I have little use for an office.”
“I get asked a lot how I write jokes and I actually don’t write jokes down or anything like that, so a space to write in would be a waste for me.”
Mr. Peters’s new special, Almost Famous, filmed over two nights in Massey Hall earlier this year, airs Oct. 7 on Netflix.
Being a touring comedian, Mr. Peters doesn’t get the chance to spend much time in any of his homes. So for his real estate agent, Mr. Stephens, there was little prep work to before putting the house on the market.
“By usage standards, everything in the house is basically brand new,” he said.“I think that the Wolf Stove has been on maybe 20 times.”
Favourite features
Mr. Peters’s favourite room in the house is his bedroom.
“It’s really comfortable and I love to sleep,” he said, adding: “I put in blackout curtains so that it can be as dark as possible even in the middle of the day – which also helps with my frequent jet lag.”
But he and Mr. Stephens both agree that the backyard – with its pool, outdoor speakers and lounge area around a fire pit – is a special treat.
“It’s so quiet and peaceful back here,” Mr. Stephens said. “It’s an oasis.”
Even though he doesn’t spend all of his time in Toronto, it’s clear his Caldwell Avenue home fits all of his needs.
“My houses are for sleeping, the occasional meal and some other stuff you can’t say in the paper,” he joked.