Michael Jackson: Ranch Named Neverland Costs $100 Million — No Carnival Rides, Exotic Animals, Or Looky-Loos [Photos]
Michael Jackson owned a ranch known as Neverland, and it’s now available for a mere $100 million. With a new name (Sycamore Valley Ranch), it’s also minus carnival rides and Bubbles the chimpanzee that added to its intrigue, reported ABC News.
The ranch encompasses 2,700 acres, with features ranging from a Neverland floral clock and a llama peacefully grazing on the ranch.
“[The property is] the most spectacular ranch I’ve had the privilege of seeing,” declared Suzanne Perkins of Sotheby’s International Realty, which has the listing along with Hilton and Hyland.
In selling homes, it’s all about location, and the ranch is in Los Olivos, which is 40 miles from Santa Barbara. Although gone are the rides resembling an amusement park and most of the exotic animals (sorry, elephant and orangutan fans), the elaborate train station and tracks remain, as does a building once devoted to the Neverland Valley Fire Department, reported the Wall Street Journal.
Among the 22 structures are a main house, two lakes, four-bedroom guesthouse, two-bedroom guest cottage, barbecue area, swimming pool, basketball court, cabana, and tennis court.
And just in case you’re considering buying it and worry about boredom, you also get a 50-seat movie theater complete with a balcony. Love magic? No problem, because the stage even has built-in trap doors designed specifically for art-of-hand magicians.
Michael had a long relationship with that ranch, which he bought in 1987 for $19.5 million. He spent 15 happy years dwelling in his Neverland before he was forced to default on a $24.5 million loan.
After that adverse event, Jackson got help when Colony Capital created a partnership with Michael that included the title to the ranch prior to the singer’s death.
The real estate company then poured millions of dollars into improvements in order to sell it.
So if you’re thinking it might be a fun outing to tour it and pretend that you’re considering buying it, though, fuhgeddabout it, warn the agents.
“Extensive prequalification [of potential buyers is required before a property tour]. Our seller is not encouraging a lot of showings. We’re not going to be giving tours.”
As the Inquisitr reported, other celebrity properties currently for sale range from Paula Deen’s southern mansion to Julia Roberts’ Hawaii estate.
Located in Savannah, Georgia, Paula’s estate includes 5.5 acres in a gated community. You get a barn, a dock house, two guest cottages, and the 14,500 square-foot French Caribbean home customized to Paula’s Southern style.
And for a mere $29.9 million, for example, you can have Julia Robert’s seven-bedroom, four-bathroom home in Hanalei, Hawaii. You get enormous rooms, a huge porch, and the aloha-sunset windows that stretch from one to wall the next.
[Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images; Photo by David McNew/Getty Images; Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images]
