London celebrity homes: the most spectacular A-list sales and home moves of 2020

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6 January 2021

Celebrities, they're just like us. From the Boris bounce that started the year to the stamp duty holiday boom that's ending it, the country has been in a property frenzy in 2020.

And it's not just us normies who've been buying and selling homes with gusto. Many of London's top movers and shakers have been moving and shaking things up this year, too.

From the teen idols adding to extensive property empires to the renter whose move signalled big change in the country's financial leadership, here are the crucial A-list moves of the year.

Harry Styles bought a third house in the same street

Not content with two multi-million pound houses in a secluded north London enclave, everyone's favourite gender-bending heartthrob snapped up a third property in the same leafy cul-de-sac at the start of the year.

Harry Styles paid just over £4m cash for the stucco-fronted, early 18th-century villa in an off-market sale.

The 26-year-old singer, actor and model bought his first property, a four-bedroom house in the exclusive residential road, for £2.95m when he was 18 with his share of the proceeds from One Direction's debut record deal.

In summer 2019 he paid more than £8m for a neighbouring five-bedroom semi. His 2020 purchase brings his total investment on property in one NW3 street up to £15m.

But one agent estimated that a full refurbishment of the three properties could run to many millions of pounds, bringing his total spend up to £20m.

Ed Sheeran added to his property empire

Ed Sheeran has also been busy building up his impressive property empire, which now includes a reported 27 properties.

He is believed to have spent £10m on property this year, with two homes in Floral Street, Covent Garden, two apartments on Palmer Road, Battersea, five flats in Wiverton Tower, Whitechapel, and five properties in Holland Park among his purchases.

The Shape of You singer already owns a mini-village of five houses and a pub, dubbed Sheeranville in his hometown of Framlingham in east Suffolk.

£6 million: the former home of King Constantine II of Greece
DAILY MAIL

Prince William's godfather's house on Billionaires' Row

Princess Diana used to drive Princes William and Harry up to this house on The Bishops Avenue in her convertible sports car (a notable feature in the current season of The Crown) to visit Prince William's godfather, the last King of Greece.

Although Constantine II sold the house for £9.8m in 2013, he had lived in the 9,500sq ft mansion overlooking Hampstead Heath for 46 years with his wife, Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, and their five children.

It was sold by a new owner this year for just over £6m, having fallen into disrepair.

Dame Barbara Cartland's Mayfair mansion in Valentine's sale

With impeccable timing, the five-bedroom Mayfair mansion that billion-selling romance novelist Dame Barbara Cartland lived in until 1950 went on the market for £40m on Valentine's Day.

Dame Barbara Cartland and her dog Mai Mai at her home in the countryside

Dame Barbara, who died in 2000 having published 723 books, bought the house in South Street in the Thirties with her second husband, Hugh McCorquodale, the cousin of her first husband, Sachie McCorquodale, whom she divorced in 1933.

She lived there with her daughter from her first marriage, Raine, and her two sons with McCorquodale, Ian and Glenn.

Raine was named "Deb of the Year" after coming out from the house in 1947. Her second husband would be Earl Spencer, father of Diana, Princess of Wales — who famously referred to her stepmother as "Acid Raine", although she had been a teenage fan of her step-grandmother's novels.

Mark Carney exit leaves South Hampstead home on the market

It's rare to find quite so much interest garnered by the former governor of the Bank of England's housing arrangements, but when the man in question has been dubbed "the George Clooney of finance" it is, perhaps, understandable.

£5.5 million: the former Bank of England governor's home went up for sale

Everyone's favourite banker (amid admittedly slim competition) Mark Carney completed his term with the Bank in March this year and returned to his native Canada, leaving the eight-bedroom South Hampstead house he'd been renting for £3,500 a week, paid for with his £250,000 annual housing allowance.

The Arts & Crafts house, where the "rockstar banker" lived with his wife and their four daughters, was then put on the market for £5.5m in July.

It has a wine cellar, a glass cupola-topped sun room and a duplex main bedroom suite with its own study, dressing room and an atrium staircase leading up to the bedroom and bathroom.

Rihanna's London pad for sale for £32 million

Londoners were beside themselves when they spotted a Sainsbury's bag for life in the background of one of Rihanna's Instagram videos back in May 2019 and discovered that she had been living under the radar in London for a year.

The St John's Wood mansion Rihanna rented
Beauchamp Estates

At the time the singer and designer was renting an £16,000-a-week mansion in St John's Wood to be closer to her Fenty fashion and beauty teams in Paris and factories in Italy.

After the Umbrella singer decamped, the 6,300sq ft, seven-bedroom property, which was originally built for a Victorian diamond tycoon, was put on the market for £32m.

Rihanna was also rumoured to be looking at buying other multi-million pound homes in north London and some sources say she may even have spent the first lockdown in the capital.

Edith Piaf's 'love boat'

Legendary chanteuse Edith Piaf owned the Flamant Rose (pink flamingo) during her happiest period, when she was having an affair with married French boxer Marcel Cerdan.

The houseboat was moored on the Seine but would follow Piaf around France's waterways so the French chanteuse could meet Cerdan while she was on tour. He was killed in a plane crash in 1949 on his way to meet Piaf in New York.

Gold drapes: the boudoir on the Flamant Rose, Edith Piaf's former boat

It's current owner, celebrity hypnotist Valerie Austin, decided to sell it this year with an asking price of £2m.

Austin's husband, fellow hypnotist and author James Pool, bought her the 150-year-old cruising yacht 25 years ago as a gift during the early years of their marriage and the couple kept it moored in St Katharine Docks in Wapping.

Although large enough for three cabins, the boat has just one, decorated with gold drapes, shearling rugs, a padded cream ceiling and walls, and a free-standing gold bath "for a boudoir feel".

The boat also has a fully fitted bar area and Austin, a Brexiteer, loaned it to Nigel Farage to host a thank you party for some of the major Brexit donors.

Bidding war for George Michael's Highgate house

The off-market sale of George Michael's house in Highgate sparked a bidding war within the local community this year, pushing the eventual sold price to £19m.

Although agents in the know said the property was exceptional with a state of the art interior and large garden with a swimming pool, the sale price surprised many.

It was sold for more than twice what the Wham! frontman paid when he bought the house for £7.65m in 2002.

The A-list street's other celebrity residents past and present include Sting, Jude Law and Victoria Wood.

Annie Lennox owned the house before George Michael while Kate Moss has said that the Last Christmas singer would let her and her daughter climb over the wall between their gardens to swim in the swimming pool.

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