The top 10 celebrity homes that hit the market in 2018
See inside homes owned by Elvis Presley, a former president, a "Today" show host, a boxing champ, and more.
From a hillside mansion fit for a hotel heiress to homes once loved by “Ol’ Blue Eyes” and the singer of “Blue Suede Shoes,” these properties are the height of star-studded luxury:
Cher’s mansion
This mansion was Cher’s first serious home after her divorce from Sonny Bono, a home she designed and built in Beverly Hills in 1980, according to TopTenRealEstateDeals.com. It was a testament to her newfound success as a single performer and where she could wholeheartedly apply her vision. The property has been relisted at $68 million — $17 million below its original listing price.
Cher built her mansion on four acres, and eventually sold it to comedian-actor Eddie Murphy in the late 1980s. He held on to it until 1994, when new owners took over and began accumulating additional parcels of land. Over the years they turned the property into a 14-acre equestrian estate.
Hidden from view behind massive entry gates and mature landscaping is the 20,000-square-foot main residence, which is in the first stage of an remodeling and has 11 bedrooms and 17 baths. Outside are stone terraces, a pool, spa, a kitchen, and tennis courts with a cabana and seating for viewing the players. The detached 7,000-square-foot guest house has exotic appeal with its arches, Moroccan tile, coffered ceilings, hand-carved wood doors, five bedrooms, and five baths. Also within the complex is a large equestrian center with a five-stall stable that includes a lounge area with slate floors and a fireplace. Tucked behind foliage are two riding rings and a network of riding trails that wind throughout the property.
See inside:
Paris Hilton’s Sunset Strip-Hollywood Hills home
Now living in sunny Ibiza, Spain, Paris Hilton, the granddaughter of hotelier Conrad Hilton, lived in this Sunset Strip-Hollywood Hills home from 2003 to 2007. It is on the market for $4,195,000, down from $4,800,000, and the price includes Paris’s original furniture.
The house Hilton called home is a three-story, Spanish-style property overlooking Sunset Strip with sweeping views of the Los Angeles city lights. Built in 1926, the 3,064-square-foot house includes four bedrooms and four baths, formal living and dining spaces that open to a courtyard, and a large eat-in kitchen with access to a backyard with terraces, a pool, spa, and fire pit. Old Hollywood-style glamour elements include dark wood floors, wood-beamed ceilings, cabanas, and impressive chandeliers. There is also a game room with a pool table, a media room, guest quarters, a den, and a separate office.
See inside:
Rob Lowe’s classic California estate
With rose gardens and fountains, it’s a 20-room home with a style more reminiscent of the White House than the Mediterranean mansions that flank it.
This Montecito, Calif., estate belongs to former “West Wing” star Rob Lowe and his wife, Sheryl, who have put it on the market for $47 million.
The main house has six bedrooms, eight full baths, three half baths, a seven-bay garage, an office, a library/music room with a bar, a family room, a movie theater, nine fireplaces, a gym, and a wine cellar. Sited on 3.4 acres, the main house was designed by architect Don Nulty, built in 2009, and encompasses 10,000 square feet.
Also on the grounds are a two-bedroom guest house, a one-bedroom pool house, an outdoor kitchen, a spa, a tennis court, two outside fireplaces, terraces, loggias, a koi pond, and views of the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Ynez Mountains.
See inside:
And take a video tour.
Robert Redford’s wine country estate
There is still time to grab Robert Redford’s magical Napa Valley retreat. Though just recently listed at $7.5 million, it is no doubt being coveted by the next creative visionary looking for a respite almost guaranteed to refresh their creative spirit.
Robert Redford recently celebrated his 82d birthday and announced his retirement as an actor. His final film, “The Old Man & His Gun,” in which he stars with Sissy Spacek and Casey Affleck and plays a real-life career criminal and escape artist, was released in September.
For decades, Redford’s permanent residence has been in Utah, home of his Sundance Institute. He and his artist wife, Sibylle Szaggars, also own a Napa Valley wine-country retreat where they enjoy hosting family and friends. The Redfords have owned the home for 14 years and have decided to move back to the Bay Area. The home is on the market, priced at $7,500,000.
The charming Napa getaway, named “Danza del Sol,” lies perched on a knoll on 10 acres surrounded by woods and vegetation with walking paths. The compound includes the main house, a 90-square-foot artist studio/guest house, and two large garages. The 5,200-square-foot main house is modest by film mogul standards — with three bedrooms, four bathrooms, a great room, den, library/office, white kitchen, and formal dining room. The home has multiple wood-burning fireplaces. The quaint studio/guest house has an open space filled with light from a wall of French doors and a double garage door that rises high into the vaulted ceiling. One of the two garages houses a workshop and exercise studio. Terraces by the pool, spa, and outdoor dining areas offer calming views and are perfect for entertaining.
See inside:
Kathy Lee Gifford’s Key Largo mansion
Kathie Lee Gifford, who recently announced she will be leaving the “Today” show in 2019, has listed her Key Largo, Fla., home for $10.5 million.
The 11,400-square-foot property is in Ocean Reef Club at the northernmost part of Key Largo. The club has two championship golf courses, a lagoon and pool, a marina, a fire station, two dog parks, a veterinarian, and a fully staffed medical center, according to the website.
Gifford and her late husband, broadcaster Frank Gifford, who led the New York Giants to the championship in 1956 and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1977, bought the waterfront house in 1998 for $3.9 million.
The three-level house has eight bedrooms and eight baths with a main-floor master suite, an elevator, a great room that opens to a screened terrace with a pool and spa, a fire pit, and an outdoor kitchen. The home also has a media room, a gym, a five-car garage, a dock, and stunning sunset views across Card Sound that Kathie Lee Gifford often talked about on the “Today” show. She did a remote broadcast from the estate in 2013.
See inside:
Elizabeth Taylor’s Beverly Hills house
Built around a “palm-shaded fountain courtyard,” this Beverly Hills home was certainly befitting the star of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “BUtterfield 8.”
The hilltop estate where Elizabeth Taylor and her second husband, British actor Michael Wilding, made their home is on the market for $15,900,000. The 7,781-square-foot home has six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, four fireplaces, an art studio, a sauna, and a library. Taylor died in 2011. Wilding passed in 1979.
In 1954, the newlyweds bought the home, a property Taylor described in her book “Elizabeth Taylor: An Informal Memoir,” as “the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen.”
Wilding and Taylor divorced in 1954.
The current owner, now 90 years old, hired architect Budd Holden to redesign the house when he purchased it in 1997. He added 2,000 square feet and opened it to the expansive city and ocean views by adding a large number of windows and floor-to-ceiling glass doors to access the terraces and gardens.
See inside:
Zsa Zsa Gabor & Elvis Presley lived here
It doesn’t get much better than Zsa Zsa, Elvis, and a party with The Beatles. One of the most storied celebrity homes in America was for sale at $23.45 million and sold in a few months for $20.8 million. The Bel Air home was built in 1955 by eccentric playboy, wealthy businessman, and aviator Howard Hughes — the romantic friend of Ava Gardner, Katharine Hepburn, and several more Hollywood stars. It was later the home of Elvis Presley, who entertained The Beatles there in 1965. Zsa Zsa Gabor bought it in 1974 and stayed until she died in 2016. Guests who have visited the property include Queen Elizabeth, Ronald Reagan, Elizabeth Taylor, and Frank Sinatra. A house well-known in the film industry, it was the location for “Behind the Candelabra,” starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, and in the Oscar-winning film “Argo,” starring Ben Affleck.
Zsa Zsa was on her sixth of nine husbands when she purchased the house, married to Jack Ryan, the creator of the Barbie doll, Hot Wheels, and Chatty Cathy. They divorced two years later, but as Zsa Zsa was fond of saying: “I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house.” She continued to live in the house for 40 years and through three more husbands. Zsa Zsa decorated it lavishly from the era and place in history to which she felt most connected, the French Court of Louis XV, with touches of gold leaf, elegant furnishings, and her ultra-feminine dressing table.
Sited on an acre-plus, the home features high ceilings[ a main level that opens into a circular foyer to a grand living room; a formal dining room; six bedrooms, including a master suite with a two-room closet; seven bathrooms; an office; a breakfast room; and a kitchen with a butler’s pantry. The large upper-level bonus room opens to a Monte Carlo-style rooftop terrace with commanding views. The grounds feature expansive patio space and a pool, all overlooking the city.
See inside:
Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman’s Colonial
Swept off the market in just three months, the 1938 Colonial Revival of Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, designed by architect-to-the-stars, Paul Williams, sold for the first time in 64 years for $6.45 million after only three months on the market.
When Ronald Reagan got his first starring role at age 2,7 as Dan Crawford in “Brother Rat” in 1938, his success not only drew the attention of the film industry, but also of co-star Jane Wyman. She was only 21, but after meeting the handsome leading man, she soon divorced her second husband and married Reagan in 1940. But instead of wedded bliss, the relationship went downhill. She filed for divorce in 1948. Of their two homes together, their Little Holmby property was the grandest. It was also used as the Joan Crawford’s home in the television series “Feud.”
At 6,153 square feet, the classic five-bedroom, six-bath house retains its original architectural layout, with large rooms, high ceilings, hardwood floors, and millwork. The impressive foyer is in Williams’s signature oval design, with a sweeping staircase and wrought-iron banister that continues through the second-floor overlook. The vast public spaces, private yard, swimming pool, gazebo, fire pit, and terraces, both open and covered, make entertaining comfortable and enjoyable. The reception hall includes a sunroom, and the family room has a fireplace and a bar.
See inside:
Muhammed Ali’s Michigan home
The down-to-the dollar price of this Michigan home — $2,895,037 — has a special meaning. The last two numbers reflect the number of knockouts the former owner, late Olympic Gold medalist and heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, had in his career.
In 1975, Ali bought this 81.25-acre property at 8105 Kephart Lane in Berrien Springs, Mich. It was where the boxer, activist, and philanthropist spent his summers and a portion of his retirement years until his Parkinson’s disease became more advanced. In 2006, he and his wife, Lonnie, moved to Arizona. He died in 2016, and his widow is now selling the property.
The farm, located in southwestern Michigan near the Indiana border, was where he and his family could relax away from the fame. The St. Joseph River, which frames three sides of the property, ensured privacy from neighbors and onlookers, as did the gated entry.
The 3,960-square-foot main house has four bedrooms, two full baths, living and family rooms, a kitchen with an island and a pantry, and a three-car, climate-controlled garage. Other structures on the property include a carriage house, a pool, gym, more garages, barns, and an office. The elaborate gym has a boxing ring in the center, along with exercise equipment, a steam room, baths, a massage room, a laundry, and a spa tub. A few steps outside the gym’s French doors is a full-sized basketball court.
Next door to the gym is the office building, which has several offices, a conference area, a bath, a mail room, vault, kitchen, loading dock, and basement. There are two separate climate-controlled garages. The two houses are on either side of the pool.
See inside:
Frank Sinatra’s Malibu beach house
The house that Frank and Barbara Sinatra built in the early 1990s on Broad Beach in Malibu is on the market for the first time. The home has been listed for $12.9 million.
In addition to it being a restful beach home for Frank, who was still touring until shortly before his death at age 82, the home was filled with family and the most famous names in show business.
Frank Sinatra, Ginger Rogers, and Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez lived nearby. The home’s most famous guests, though, probably were Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy, who, according to Monroe’s biographer, visited the house at the same time and may have made their rumored love connection, Bloomberg has reported. (A two-bedroom attached casita has been nicknamed “the JFK Wing’’ in Kennedy’s honor.)
In her book, “Lady Blue Eyes: My Life With Frank,” Barbara fondly describes their life in the beach house and their poker games in which jokes and laughter flowed as fast as the food and drinks. Although the couple also owned homes in Palm Springs and Los Angeles, this was where they chose to renew their vows in 1996 with friends watching from the dunes and speeches from Don Rickles and Bob Newhart.
After Barbara’s death in 2017, her son from a former marriage put the property on the market. Designed by architect-to-the-stars Ted Grenzbach, the house sits safely back from the waves nestled in lush lawn and mature landscaping with dunes framing the beach entrance. With 40 feet of beach frontage, the two-story, 5,800-square-foot house has seven bedrooms and nine baths. The master suite consists of a lounge, fireplace, sauna, and a hair salon. There is also a wood-beamed family room and a wet bar in the dining area, which accommodates both indoor and outdoor entertaining.
See inside:
Subscribe to the Globe’s free real estate newsletter — our weekly digest on buying, selling, and design — at pages.email.bostonglobe.com/AddressSignUp. Follow us on Facebookand Twitter @globehomes. Send story ideas to [email protected].
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com