Photo credit: Joe Bielawa / CC from 2.0
Fed up with Los Angeles’ ‘toxic culture’, Rod Stewart is ready to sell his $70 million ‘Chateau’ and return to London.
Legendary singer Rod Stewart leaves Los Angeles. Just days after the Grammy winner’s former home in Malibu appeared for sale for $49.5 million, Stewart’s current home in Los Angeles — a sprawling European-style “chateau” — is now on the market for a cool $70 million. He also owns a home in Palm Beach, Florida.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the singer bought the Los Angeles property in 1991 for $12.08 million. The property measures around 33,000 square feet and has a pool and soccer field, as Stewart, 78, is a keen soccer fan – the star was once spotted in Malibu playing the game with the Scotland national team on the beach by invitation they are there , to play.
Shortly after the property went up for sale, Stewart announced Daily Mail that he was “sick” of the “toxic culture” in LA and wanted to abandon his possessions in the Golden State and return to his native London. The singer feels he has “no privacy” in Los Angeles and is tired of the “nuisance” of traveling back and forth.
Stewart’s planned full-time return to London means far less travel for the singer and his family; He and his wife Penny Lancaster, whom he married in 2007, have two sons, Alastair, 18, and Aiden, 12, who are enrolled in a London school. Penny, 52, has been working as a volunteer firefighter in London for the past few years.
A source also told the Daily Mail that Stewart – who shares eight children with five different women – has the full support of his children in his decision to move home. “You all know how happy (he) and Penny are living there and they just want their dad to be happy,” the source said.