50 Cent’s Mansion On Sale Slashed From $18.5M To $8.5M

50 Cent’s Mansion On Sale Slashed From $18.5M To $8.5M

Rapper 50 Cent has lowered the asking price for his Connecticut mansion again after filing for bankruptcy in the state this past summer.
The Hartford Courant reports the new listing for 50 Cent’s 21-bedroom, 25-bathroom home in Farmington is now $8.5 million.
The rapper bought the 50,000-square-foot mansion for $4.1 million in 2003, but reports say he invested between $6 million to $10 million on renovations.
50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson III, first asked for $18.5 million for the home in 2007 and has been periodically reducing its price ever since.
High-end residential real estate expert Rob Giuffria says ’50 would have a better chance being a country music singer’ than finding a buyer at $8.5 million.
The house – one of the biggest private residences in America – costs a whopping $72,000 a month to finance and maintain.
The rapper bought it in 2003 from boxer Mike Tyson. That year, 50 Cent had became one of the world’s best-selling artists with his album Get Rich Or Die Tryin’.
He then spent $6million renovating the house and its grounds, and installed a helicopter pad, infinity pool and a private cinema.
The home also has a private casino, gym, racquetball courts and disco room with stripper poles. There are 52 rooms in total, including nine kitchens.
In 2012 the rapper showed it off to Oprah Winfrey, giving the cameramen for her chat show a tour.
The entertainer has followed in the footsteps of Tyson and two other former owners of the huge property, one of the biggest private residences in America, that none of them could afford to keep.
The house was built for notoriously ‘tacky’ Colonial Realty founder Benjamin Sisti in 1985 for $2.3m.
The Hartford Courant described the businessman as ‘to good taste as Madonna is to modesty.’
Sisti became ‘bankrupt’ in 1990. Police later found out that Colonial Realty was a ponzi scheme and around 7,000 investors lost all their money.
Sisti at one point said he had less than $15,000 in assets but it was later revealed that he doled out all his assets to family members before claiming he was broke.
Tyson spent millions more installing a nightclub that could fit 1,000 people called club TKO, an indoor shooting range, an NBA sized basketball court on a former tennis court, and an entirely pink bedroom.
Despite personalizing every nook and cranny of the house, the infamous boxer decided to sell the home just one year later for $22m.
No one wanted to buy the home, which included the decked out furnishings, so in 2003 the house was awarded to Tyson’s ex-wife Monica Turner as part of their divorce settlement.
Tyson, who once had a $400 to his name, filed for bankruptcy.
Once he got the keys 50 Cent added a movie theater, a helicopter pad, an infinity pool, and stripper poles.
‘He’s put a lot into it, and it’s all very tasteful, except the stripper poles,’ said a real estate agent in 2007.
That same year, 50 Cent listed the home at $18.5m.
Over the years he dropped the price of the home hoping to find a buyer.
Jackson filed for bankruptcy last summer after a New York City jury ordered him to pay $7million to Lastonia Leviston for posting – with his own mocking commentary – a sex tape of her on his personal website.
Leviston, 36, who has a child with Jackson’s rapper rival Rick Ross, said the tape destroyed her life and drove her to the brink of suicide.
The rapper was also embroiled in a $18million lawsuit over his headphones businesses, and says his costly legal woes have forced him to file for Chapter 11.
The musician has sold more than 22million albums, and Forbes once estimated the entertainer and businessman’s net worth at $150million largely from his business interests in clothing, beverages and music technology.
Fans had a tough time understanding how the New York-born rapper, actor, and Vitamin Water investor could be in a financial hole.
However, in bankruptcy paperwork 50 Cent reported $32million in debts – including $2,000 he owed to his grandfather.
And in court, he said the flashy cars and bling were all borrowed – part of an act to keep up his image.
‘Those cars were rented,’ he testified in July.
‘It’s like music videos, they say action and you see all these fancy cars but everything goes back to the dealership.’
However bankruptcy papers state he owns seven or eight cars worth more than $500,000, including a Bentley and a Rolls Royce Phantom.