Liam, Noel, Gwynnie, Nicole…why do they all sell to, buy and rent from each other?
By Ruth Bloomfield.
For your everyday A-list celebrity, house hunting can be a trial, despite the vast budgets at their disposal.
Because a star has certain needs which us civilians don’t need to worry about — high walls, a way to get in and out without attracting attention and neighbours unlikely to get star struck or ring the papers if they pop out for a pint of milk in their PJs.
And this is probably why so many household names buy homes with a celebrity track record.
Liam Gallagher, riding high on the triumph of Oasis’s reunion tour, is said to have spent some of the proceeds on an eight-bedroom Cotswolds mansion previously owned by football icon Tony Adams, having rented locally last year to try out the area with fiancée Debbie Gwyther.
Adams’s property has five acres of grounds, offering plenty of room for the couple’s rescue dog Buttons to frolic in. It also has a swimming pool, stables and a cottage for staff, and was sold for £4.25 million over Christmas.
The former Arsenal and England captain bought the property near Cirencester more than two decades ago for £2 million, and has upgraded it with must-have celebrity extras including a cinema and games room.
Not to be outdone, the other Gallagher brother, Noel, was responsible for kicking off one of the most enduring celebrity home swap stories in London’s history.
In 1997 he bought an unassuming three-bedroom terrace in Steele’s Road, Belsize Park, for £2 million, christening the property Supernova Heights in honour of the Oasis hit Champagne Supernova.
For years it was party central for the Primrose Hill Set, until Gallagher and his now ex-wife Meg Matthews moved out of town.
It was sold on to a close friend of Matthews, former Hollyoaks actor Davinia Taylor. She paid £3.25m for the house, and lived there until 2005 when she sold up to Britain’s Got Talent host David Walliams for a relatively knockdown £2.97m.
North London is very much the heartland of celebrity house swaps — an early iteration involved Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin buying a home in Belsize Park following their 2003 wedding.
The deal was complex, involving the purchase of several properties which they amalgamated into one 33-room house screened by a high brick wall.
One of those properties was a townhouse belonging to Kate Winslet and her ex-husband, film director Sam Mendes, which they bought for £2.5m. After their conscious uncoupling the former Paltrow-Martin home was sold in 2022 for £12.5m.
Just up the road, film director Tim Burton paid actor Tom Conti, star of Shirley Valentine, £11m for his Edwardian mansion in Hampstead in 2018, following his split with Helena Bonham Carter.
“I think one of the reasons why celebrities, and indeed other high-profile buyers, like to buy from people they know or who they perceive to be at a similar place in life to them is reassurance,” says buying agent Camilla Dell, managing partner of Black Brick. “It’s the old saying: ‘If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.’”
Robbie Williams must have thought he had really arrived when he bought the magnificent Woodland House in Holland Park from the late film director Michael Winner in 2016.
The Queen Anne-style house is Grade II* listed, and cost the former Take That singer £17.5m.
It is more than possible that Williams also felt that he, his wife Ayda Field, and their young children, would be able to enjoy relative privacy in a neighbourhood well used to rock royalty — the Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page owns the house next door.
Unfortunately Williams and Page have fallen out, spectacularly, over the former’s plans to upgrade and extend his home.
Page claimed that Williams’s plans to build a basement swimming pool beneath the property would compromise the foundations of his Grade I listed home.
Williams eventually won permission for the basement extension, but hostilities continued with Page objecting to a whole series of projects including building a children’s playhouse and cutting down a diseased Norway maple tree.
Other musicians have been far more civilised in their dealings. When Sam Smith bought the house next door to Boy George’s gothic mansion in Hampstead in 2015 with the proceeds of his debut album, the older star was fulsome in his praise of the “lovely” singer.
A few years later Smith agreed to sell the house to Boy George, who amalgamated the two properties.
Later still, after trying and failing to sell the property, Boy George decided to rent it out instead — his elevated tenants have included Nicole Kidman, who paid a cool £65,000pcm to live at the five-bedroom house last year while filming a sequel to Practical Magic at the Warner Bros Studios in Hertfordshire.
Marc Schneiderman, director of Arlington Residential estate agents, believes there are many reasons for stars to house swap.
“The principal demands for celebrity homeowners will always be privacy and security,” he explains. “Homes tucked away and unseen from prying eyes, with gardens not overlooked by neighbours, are highly prized and likely to already be in the ownership of a celebrity.”
Schneiderman says this kind of home also tends to exchange hands between red carpet acquaintances.
“In the past few years there have been two instances where we have been appointed to sell the homes of well-known owners in the media and arts sector, one in Highgate, the other in Hampstead Village,” he says.
“In both cases they informed me from the very outset that (celebrity) friends have made it clear that if they were to ever sell, they would be interested to hear.
“One of those buyers eventually purchased our celebrity client’s house, the other found they were competing with separate buyers we had introduced, which pushed the price well beyond what they wanted to pay.”
Given their habit of moving from club to club around the world, footballers are regularly inclined to live in each other’s homes.
While playing for Crystal Palace, Mamadou Sakho and his family lived in a multi-million-pound gated property in Wimbledon, rented from former Chelsea and Arsenal player Nicolas Anelka.
Meanwhile, Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk rented a £4m Cheshire mansion from Manchester United player and manager Ole Gunnar Solskjær, who had bought the house when he moved to the UK.
Scott Joseph, director and head of prime central London at Anderson Rose estate agents, says sportspeople appreciate the security of living in a home chosen by a well known figure within their industry. “There’s an understanding that it is premium enough for them and is a home that they can truly trust in,” he says.
Beyond the quality of the finish, Nina Harrison, a buying agent at Haringtons UK, finds the famous have surprisingly similar requirements.
“When a house has been owned by someone in the public eye, the small but crucial details are already sorted,” she says.
“The security works, the staff routes make sense, entrances are discreet. Those things aren’t added later. They’re built in.”
Then there are the neighbours. “Streets long used to high-profile residents are relaxed and almost protective,” she adds.
“Drop a famous name onto an unaccustomed street and suddenly everyone’s watching. WhatsApp groups light up, builders are questioned and curtains twitch. Even minor changes become hot gossip, which is exactly what most high-profile buyers are trying to avoid.”
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