Their internationally recognized names sell music and movie tickets. They promote perfumes and presidents. But when it comes to selling their own houses, celebrities often find that their cachet doesn’t pull in the cash.
Actors Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell haven’t found a buyer for their Malibu beach house, which comes with a raft of celeb-friendly amenities including a covered outdoor living room, a spa-like bath retreat and a meditation room. So the couple have nipped $3.5 million from last year’s price, listing the Balinese-influenced oceanfront spread at $11.2 million.
Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne managed to sell their Malibu place for $7.925 million — nearly 21% off the original asking price. But the Architectural Digest-worthy Hidden Hills mansion owned by the first couple of hard rock has had no taker since it was listed last year at almost $13 million.
Actress Meg Ryan has put her Bel-Air manse back on the market at $11.4 million — a 42% price chop from its 2008 listing.
Although the masses respond to rock-star branding, housing is too expensive for celebrity ownership to make a measurable dollar difference, said Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, author of “Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity” and an associate professor at the USC School of Policy, Planning and Development.
“This is different than buying a sports drink because Tiger Woods endorsed it,” Currid-Halkett said. Home value is too complicated, she said, with lots of variables: the season, the location, the quality of the home.
“In the art world, there is this notion of provenance — that who owns something can detract or add to the value,” Currid-Halkett said. “But it does not seem to translate to celebrity homes.”
Having a big-name seller certainly draws attention to a home listing and can speed up the process.
The Los Feliz home of singer Katy Perry and actor Russell Brand went into escrow last summer nine days after it appeared on the Multiple Listing Service.
“I immediately had people knocking on the door,” said Ernie Carswell, a founding partner at Teles Properties.
The Perry and Brand names increased the number of views online, and the word among agents spread more quickly, shortening the sales time, Carswell said.
The intense interest failed to pump up the price, though. The gated 1920s home sold for $3.3 million — about 3% shy of the asking price.
The value of a house has more to do with the individual stamp the person puts on the property, real estate experts say, than a famous autograph on the sales contract.
“Typically what adds the value is what they do to the home,” said Ellen Galeski, owner of Appraisals by Ashby, a Los Angeles company with about a dozen appraisers and a history of working with celebrity clientele.
The homes of stars are often redone by designers who have fabrics made for the draperies, use time-consuming methods such as Venetian painting or travel abroad to select the marble, she said. “One brought in painters from Italy to do murals, and they spent a month on it.”
When actress Jennifer Aniston put her 10,000-square-foot house in Beverly Hills on the market at $42 million last year, she turned the heads of even seasoned real estate professionals.
“Every agent in town wanted to go see it,” Carswell said.
Although Aniston didn’t get that initial asking price, the $35 million paid by Pacific Investment Management Co. co-founder and billionaire Bill Gross caused a collective intake of breath in the local real estate community.
Aniston is not only a highly visible actress but she is also known to have impeccable taste in home furnishings and design, said Drew Mandile, a real estate agent with Sotheby’s.