The Year of the Celebrity Luxury Home Foreclosure

It looks as though 2008 will be “the year of the celebrity luxury home foreclosure.”

Following on from the news that Ed McMahon’s Beverly Hills mansion is likely to be foreclosed upon, we are now hearing that heavy weight boxer Evander Holyfield is in similar dire straights with his $10 million estate in Altanta, GA. A legal notice ran Wednesday in the Fayette Daily News, which stated that Holyfield’s estate will be auctioned off “at public outcry to the highest bidder for cash” at the Fayette County courthouse on July 1. The house is apparently over fifty four thousand square feet with more than one hundred rooms, including a seventeen bathrooms, 3 kitchens and a bowling alley.

A Federal lawsuit was also filed recently alleging over half a million in unpaid landscaping bills. Holyfield is estimated to have earned more than $120 million during his boxing career, but his story is not an unfamiliar one. Boxers are not famous for their money handling skills, or perhaps more realistically, choice of business managers.

Boxers are also not famous for their good taste in interior decorations, but it seems Mr. Holyfield had the good sense to employ the services of the Blackburn Studio for some of the interior woodworking. This is the mahogany handrail which was cut from solid mahogany and runs 280 feet with only 4 feet straight. I don’t know the price, but I certainly hope the bill was paid.

“I’m not broke. I’m just not liquid,” Holyfield told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Friday. “I do feel kind of sad because things have always been positive and now everybody wants to jump on me like I’m the worst person in the world and I went out and blew all my money.”

We certainly make no judgment as to how easy it is to lose 100 million bucks, but we also wonder how much this will actually sell for. The property is currently valued at $10 million, but I am going with 6.8 million final sale price. Comments and guesses welcome.