How the Rich and Famous Buy and Sell their Exorbitant Homes

For celebrities and high-earners, moving house isn’t that much of a hassle thanks to the vast teams they can employ. When buying a home, the celebrity might not even engage directly with the other people in the process. On the selling side, the same may also be true, but they’d often be more than happy to let the public know that someone can buy their previous home. Their process is different from our own, but in the end, they’re still subject to market conditions.

Celebrities Looking to Sell

It’s not uncommon to hear about celebrities who’re looking to sell. Not only are the properties incredibly valuable, but they want the news out there to try to shift the property quickly. Unfortunately, due to how many celebrities adapt their homes and the market value of such builds, their potential pool of buyers is always rather small. Plus, additional factors can create a kind of rush to sell, such as rising interest rates, hefty stamp duty costs, and increased scrutiny on luxury property ownership.

In recent news, Paddy McGuinness and Christine McGuinness have reported struggling to sell their £6.5 million mansion. Other celebrities, such as Rod Stewart, Mary Berry and Noel Gallagher, have had to take millions of proposed sale prices for their homes in recent years in order to sell.

In Dorset, house prices have been reported to be higher than the national average, with the average house price sitting at £390,215 over the last year, compared to the overall UK average of £269,000. Even so, being able to reach these celebrity figures is no easy feat, which explains them slashing the prices.

Where some of these celebrities may have done better, assuming that they originally listed near market value, would have been to find a cash house buyer. We buy any house-style platforms, which provide cash offers for houses, including covering legal fees, would come in handy here. Agents, viewings, and fees would all have been brushed aside, ensuring a swift property purchase without the fanfare. Alas, pride can sometimes come in the way of convenience when you're a celebrity looking to sell.

Celebrities Looking to Buy

After reaching a certain level of prestige and fame, you don’t tend to have to do things like go through the motions of purchasing a property yourself. Where things may be tricky, however, is in the viewing stage. Seeking maximum privacy, a celebrity may request a private viewing session out of hours.

While it’s more of a parodic take, one piece by Vice does rightly state that keeping everything confidential and outsourcing the actual work are key to celebrity buyers. It’s this latter part that some estate agents say makes things tricky. Few will have a direct line to the famous client. Instead, they need to work through a personal real estate agent who then needs to contact the travel manager, who then goes to the business manager, and they then relay the information or questions to the rich client. Once in, many celebrities will redecorate to the extreme, making it their own. However, this doesn’t always up the value.

There is a bit of a trend that celebrity mansions up for sale don’t sell for as much as they were purchased for, especially when you bring in refurbishment costs. So, while the rich and famous do go about their purchases in a more luxurious way, the will of the market can be more punishing on them than us in the end.