Okay. So, last year, on the Bravo! series Million Dollar Listing, you might have seen SoCal megabrokers helicoptering potential buyers all over Michael Jackson’s abandoned adult playground, Neverland Valley Ranch, trying to sell it for around $50 million.

Though many developers were interested – I mean, the estate is over 2,900 acres of prime, Santa Ynez property (Oprah & Ellen have lived in the ‘hood) – nary a deal was cut.  By contrast, the average residential lot is around 1/10th of 1 acre – you could fit 29,000 houses on the Neverland property, and each one would still have a medium-sized front and backyard of its own!

Well, I guess times are tough for everyone. Yesterday, a foreclosure auction was scheduled for March 19^th – if M.J. hasn’t paid the $24 mill. or so he owes on the place, it’ll go on the auction block.

Any lessons here for the real-world property owner?  Yep – avoid overimprovement and overpersonalization.  Neverland is a very valuable parcel, but it would cost the next buyer tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to dismantle the amusement park/zoo/private railroad and convert it into something usable to, uh, regular people. So the interested buyers didn’t want to pay a jillion dollars for the place and have to still demo and redevelop it. 

My guess is that you don’t have a ferris wheel at your place, but remember when you convert your garage into a sauna that most folks would actually prefer the garage, so you might want to convert it back before you try to sell the place.   

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Filed under: Asset Protection, Buy, Invest, Mortgage & Credit, Remodel, Sell