10 Most expensive celebrity houses in the world
Celebrities usually lead an extravagant lifestyle. For their homes, which are essentially their sanctuaries, they spare no expense. The celebs on this list have spent up to a billion rand on just one home. Here are the most expensive celebrity houses in the world.
1. Bill Gates – $145 Million
- Location: Medina, Washington
- Area: 66,000 square feet
- Worth: $145 Million
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda have spent $63 million over seven years to build their mega-complex called Xanadu 2.0. Located on Lake Washington outside of Seattle in Medina, it spans 66,000 square feet and consists of 7 bedrooms, 24 bathrooms, and 6 kitchens. Bursting with high-tech gadgets, the house was outfitted with fiber optic cables and each room has its own touchpad to control lighting, music, and temperature. The house is estimated to a worth $145 million if the couple sold it now. It also has an insane collection of art and artifacts – the Leonardo Da Vinci manuscript alone is worth $31 million.
2. Hugh Hefner – $113 Million
- Location: Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, California
- Area: 22,000 square feet
- Worth: $113 Million
Hugh Hefner bought the Playboy mansion in 1974 for $1 million and lived there until his death in 2017. It was designed by architect Arthur Kelly and built for a department store heir, Arthur Letts, Jr., in the mid-1920s. The mansion became famous during the 1970s through media reports of Hefner’s lavish parties which were often attended by celebrities and socialites. It is currently owned by Daren Metropoulos, the son of billionaire investor Dean Metropoulos, who reported bought for $105 million. That’s nearly $113 million in 2020 dollars. The famous estate is a 22,000-square-foot gothic/Tudor mansion with 29 rooms, a tennis court, a year-round fireworks permit, and a zoo license. There are commercial and outdoor kitchens along with a game room, wine cellar, and a screening room with a pipe organ.
3. Oprah Winfrey – $ 100 Million
- Location: Montecito, California
- Area: 70 Acres
- Worth: $101 Million
Oprah Winfrey is a media mogul but many people do not know that she is also quite the real estate tycoon. With homes all over the country, her magnificent Montecito estate she named Promised Land is certainly a dream place to live. Oprah originally purchased the 42-acre estate for $50 million in 2001 (Worth more than $100 million (£81m) today). The glorious Promised Land estate spans 70 acres thanks to some canny deals on neighboring properties. At its center is Oprah’s 23,000-square-foot mansion, an impressive neo-Georgian pile, and the amazing landscaped grounds include rose gardens, terraces and fountains. “I knew my house was impressive,” Winfrey wrote in her magazine in 2013. “I mean, just about every guest I ever invited for dinner told me so as they perched on the edge of the opulent sofa, trying not to get fingerprints on anything. I owned a stately home and I poured my heart and soul into making it perfect.”
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4. George Lucas: $100 Million
- Location: Lucas Valley Road
- Worth: $100 Million
Famed filmmaker George Lucas began assembling what would become Skywalker Ranch in 1978, the very next year after “Star Wars” came out. He assembled the 4,700-acre property — only 15 acres are developed — parcel by parcel for an estimated $100 million. It’s actually not Lucas’ primary residence and is used frequently as a Skywalker Sound workplace as well as a collaborative hangout for filmmakers. The estate’s parking lots are underground to preserve its natural beauty. Amenities include Lake Ewok, a real working ranch, a world-renowned art collection, and a 300-seat movie theater that is believed to have the most sophisticated sound system in the world. The Ranch contains a barn with animals, vineyards, a garden with fruits and vegetables used in the on-site restaurant, an outdoor swimming pool, and fitness center with racquetball courts, the man-made “Ewok Lake”, a hilltop observatory, a 300-seat theater called “The Stag” as well as theater screening rooms, and parking that is mostly concealed underground to preserve the natural landscape. Skywalker Sound was moved onto the ranch in 1987, now occupying the Technical Building. The Main House has a company research library under a stained-glass dome. Skywalker Ranch has its own fire station; it is part of the Marin County mutual aid system and is often called on to assist firefighters in nearby Marinwood.
5. George Clooney – $100 Million
- Location: Lake Como, Italy
- Worth: $100 Million
George Clooney fell in love with Italy and purchased this Italian villa located in Laglio, Italy, on beautiful Lake Como in 2002 which was constructed in the 18th Century. At the time, the actor paid €11.7 million for Villa Oleandra which includes 25 rooms, an outdoor theater, a swimming pool and a garage to house all of his motorcycles.
This luxurious estate also has a tennis court, a full gym, luxury kitchens, formal dining rooms, landscaped gardens, ornately carved ceilings, massive bathrooms, a separate “pizza room”, and an amazing constructed wall to keep the lake from pouring directly into the house. George Clooney said once that this villa “changed my life in a very pleasant and unexpected way…I realized how beautiful life was in Italy and how it really helped calm me and not feel so pressured.” Italy’s Lake Como is famous for many expensive celebrity homes. One of his neighbors is celebrity fashion designer Donatella Versace, for example. Such places in Europe work as a hideout for many celebrities who want to go away unknown and be with the family.
6. Jay-Z and Beyoncé: $88 Million
- Location: Los Angeles, USA
- Worth: $88 Million
One of the world’s greatest power couples should have one of the world’s greatest homes, an idea that is not lost on Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who plunked down $88 million on a hillside estate in Bel-Air. It’s the No. 6 most expensive home ever bought in the history of Los Angeles. Among its juiciest amenities are four pools, a 15-car garage, a helipad a full spa and wellness center, and 30,000 feet of living space that’s enclosed within six different glass-walled structures. Paul McClean, the celebrity architect points out a white cluster in the mountains just east of the Getty Museum. “You probably can see it from space,” McClean says of the spec home he installed there. The new Blue Jay Way home, at 8,000 square feet, is by no means the grandest of McClean’s designs, which can come with six-digit square footage and nine-digit price tags. The style is a take on the area’s iconic midcentury modern, metaphorically pumped up with steroids and silicone to a scale that would make Rudolph Schindler, a pioneer of the modernist Hollywood house, blush.
7. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie: $80 Million
- Location: Los Angeles, USA
- Worth: $88 Million
In 2008, the couple is then known as Brangelina, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie bought Château Miraval, a castle and vineyard in the south of France, for the equivalent of $67 million, or about $80 million today. The main house has 35 rooms, a helipad, indoor and outdoor pools, a video game room, a home theater, and more standard super-rich people mansion stuff. Outside there’s a dirt bike course, a chateau garden that includes a 200-year-old olive tree, and, like all good castles, a moat. The vineyard supports Miraval Wines, which produces a highly coveted rosé. Despite divorcing in 2016, they are still co-owners of the property and are collaborating on rosé champagne, it’s a champagne house for his new Fleur de Miraval champagne.
Fleur de Miraval is created through a special method called saignée, which boldens the wine by allowing the pressed grape juice to “bleed” away from the mash. “For me, champagne conjures up feelings of celebration, quality, prestige, and luxury,” Pitt told People. “But rosé champagne is still relatively unknown. Backed by our success with Miraval in Provence, I wanted to try to create the defining brand of rosé Champagne, focusing all our efforts on just this one color.”
2007 World’s Best Sommelier Andreas Larsson raved about his early tasting of Fleur de Miraval in an Instagram post, where he gave it a 95/100 score.
8. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks: $72 million
- Location: Beverly Hills, California
- Worth: $72 Million
In the silent film era, it’s hard to imagine any power couple was bigger than Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. The couple was known for hosting lavish and exclusive parties whose guest lists included European royalty, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and Amelia Earhart. Those parties took place at Pickfair (a play on the couples’ last names), the 17-bedroom, 30-bathroom mansion that served as the center of Beverly Hills movie star culture. Pickfair was an 18 acres (7.3 ha) estate in the city of Beverly Hills, California, originally designed by architect Horatio Cogswell for attorney Lee Allen Phillips of Berkeley Square as a country home. Coined “Pickfair” by the press, it became one of the most celebrated houses in the world.
Life Magazine described Pickfair as “a gathering place only slightly less important than the White House… and much more fun. It boasted the largest pool in Beverly Hills, which the couple used to cross in a canoe. Billionaire businessman Corry Hong bought it for about $17 million before listing it — as a fixer-upper, mind you — for $60 million in 2008. That’s nearly $72 million today.
9. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West: $60 Million
- Location: Beverly Hills, California
- Worth: $60 Million
The princely mansion in Hollywood’s Hidden Hills that Kim and Kanye call home belonged originally to Elvis’ only child, Lisa Marie Presley. They bought the sprawling property in 2014 for $20 million but quickly began sinking tens of millions of dollars into it to make it their own. In 2019, the home — which sits next to those owned by other stars, including fellow members of Clan Kardashian — was appraised at $60 million. Rapper Kanye worked with Axel Vervoordt to design the interiors for the home, which Kim has previously described as a “minimal monastery” in its style. The pared-back décor is white, cream, and grey throughout, with wooden accents, including in their open-plan kitchen, dining, and living room.
10. Tom Cruise: $59 Million
- Location: Telluride, Colorado
- Worth: $60 Million
This European-style villa believed to be owned by Cruise, sold for $11.4 million in September (reportedly to Eva Longoria). That’s $1.5 million below the original asking price, but six times the price when the home was last sold on the public market in 2005. Perched on 2.5 acres atop the Hollywood Hills, the home has sweeping views of Los Angeles. The home is gated with three bedrooms and a fully detached guest house with an additional four bedrooms and bathrooms.
Built from heavy bleached timbers and featuring floor-to-ceiling glass windows, Cruise designed the log mansion estate himself in 1994. The sprawling property boasts some of the most stunning views in the west and includes a hockey rink, a basketball court, a tennis court, and even some private trails. According to Variety, the home was rumored to have been bought as a retreat for high-level Scientologists — it was purchased by two corporate entities back in 2005 — and Tom Cruise’s sister was recently living on the property.