2012 brought us oodles and oodles of celebrity real estate news and tidbits. From salacious to snooze-worthy, if it was happening in celebrity real estate, you could read about it on Trulia Luxe Living.
This year in celebrity real estate wasn’t positive for everyone. Some stars were actually losing money on their big ticket real estate items. Let’s take a look at some of the losers:
Goldie Hawn & Kurt Russell in Malibu
The longtime Hollywood lovebirds aren’t loving the $5 million-dollar price cut they had to make on their Bali-style Malibu mansion. For many years, Goldie and Kurt put their Malibu beach house on the summer rental market with an asking price of $95,000 per month. In the summer of 2011, the longtime duo not only lowered their monthly asking price to $80,000 per month, they also placed the beachfront property on the open market with an asking price of $14,749,000. Two scorching summers and many months passed and no buyer stepped up to the plate. It’s still lingering on the market.
Matthew Perry in the Hollywood Hills
Matthew Perry has been trying to “unfriend” this home for the better part of a year. After hitting the market in October 2011, Perry took it off the market and then relisted the home for $5,295,000 – a price reduction of $400,000. It’s still waiting for a buyer to come in and make an offer.
Kimora Lee Simmons in Beverly Hills
The usually fabulous Kimora Lee Simmons, faced a not-so-fabulous situation when it came time to unload her relatively modest Beverly Hills estate for $4,650,000. The Style Network star of her own reality show, “Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane” purchased the “country home” around the height of the market in 2007 and is now taking a dose of a different kind of reality – that of a down real estate economy. Like many sellers in today’s struggling market, Kimora sold at a loss and was forced to slash 21 percent of her original $5.9 million buying price.
In 2008, Ryan had her Bel Air home listed for an optimistic $19,500,000. With no buyers at that price, the asking fell to $14,200,000 and was eventually converted to a $40,000-a-month lease. Ms. Ryan tried her luck again in the real estate game in April 2012 by listing her 6 bedroom, 7 bathroom, 6,877 square foot home for a new, improved and much lower asking price of $11,400,000. It eventually sold for $11,000,000.
Hulk Hogan in Bellaire, Florida
Maybe Hogan doesn’t know best after all, at least when it comes to real estate. Former Wrestlemania super-star, Hulk Hogan (real name: Terry Bollea) sold his 17,145 square foot Tudor-style mansion in Bellaire, FL for $6.2 million. The property has been on and off the market since 2006 and was originally listed for $25 million, then discounted to $9.24 million in July 2011.
Lauren Conrad in the Hollywood Hills
Lauren purchased the home for a very star-like sum of $2,360,000 in early 2008. Her neighbors weren’t big fans of Conrad or the caravans of tour buses that rolled by the home on a regular basis, so Lauren fled for a another residence higher in the hills (naturally), and rented the home out for a while, before putting it on the market for $2.25M. It eventually sold for $2M and Conrad lost almost $400,000 on the deal.
Reese Witherspoon in Ojai, California
Reese Witherspoon is trying to let go of her Tennessee-style Ojai, CA estate. She listed it with a bang, asking for a cool $10 million. Within weeks, Witherspoon lowered the price to a more realistic asking price of $8.9M. It’s still awaiting a buyer.
Since we’re not all doom and gloom over here, there’s one beacon of hope in the celebrity real estate game this year:
Ellen Degeneres & Portia de Rossi
The married duo sold the Malibu beach home that they purchased from Brad Pitt for $12M in December 2011. They sold the home in June 2012 for $13M to cosmetics entrepreneur Victoria Jackson. That’s a nice profit after less than a year of ownership. Oh, and they also sold their other monster estate to Ryan Seacrest for $37M. Not too shabby, ladies.
