The true measure of an expensive home isn’t how much it cost to build or how much you’re selling it for. After all, who cares how expensive a home is if no one is buying? All of the following homes have passed the test of the real estate market with flying colors. They truly are the most expensive homes in the world.
Donald Trump’s Palm Beach mansion – $100 million
The Donald takes pride in having sold this beautiful 68,000-square-foot mansion at a time when the real estate market is doing poorly. Trump purchased the mansion—and the seven acres of beachfront it sits on—in 2004 for less than half of what he sold it for.
Lakshmi Mittal’s Kensington Palace Gardens mansion – $103 million
Steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal was widely reported to have purchased this property on one of London’s most exclusive streets for £70 million ($126 million at the time). As it happened, the Indian tychoon paid only £57,145,967 for the mansion—still enough to put the mansion on the list of the most expensive houses ever sold.
Victorian Villa, West London – $159 million
Purchased in February of 2008 by a Ukrainian businesswoman, this five-story Victorian villa was used as a girls’ school until it was purchased by developers in 2006. The luxurious residential dwelling has over ten bedrooms and an underground swimming pool. It also includes a gym, a sauna, a theatre and a panic room to be used in case of emergency. It was sold for £80 million (almost $159 million US), displacing the Kensington Palace Gardens home of Lakshmi Mittal as the most expensive house ever sold. With Mikhail Prokhorov supposedly reneging on a deal to purchase La Leopolda, below, it has retained that title.
La Leopolda, France – $750 million
Originally built for the mistress of King Leopold of Belgium, this mansion overlooking the French Riviera has been said to be owned by several prominent people over the years, including Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Fiat Group’s Gianni Agnelli. Sketchy reports of a “mysterious Russian billionaire” said that he had purchased the villa it from the widow of a Lebanese banker who was killed in an arsonist’s fire in 2003. Now it seems that the billionaire intends on backing out of the deal, possibly due to the financial crisis.
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