...professional basketball dribbler Jason Kidd of the New York Knicks listed his 13,523 square foot, vaguely Mexican hacienda-style mansion in Paradise Valley, AZ with an asking price of $5,995,000.
...Shabby Chic queen Rachel Ashwell coughed up $930,000 to buy an itty-bitty and already Shabby Sheeked two-bedroom cottage in Venice (CA).
...Super Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps, winner of more medals than any other athlete ever, has reportedly sold his four-floor Baltimore townhouse at a punishing $400,000 loss.
...Formidable octogenarian French multi-billionaire heiress Liliane Bettencourt sold off her private island in the Seychelles for £39,000,000. A quickie consult with our currency conversion contraption shows that comes to 60,973,400 American dollars at today's rates.
Madame Bettencourt—the largest shareholder in cosmetics and beauty juggernaut L'Oreal, founded by her father—has owned D'Arros and a few surrounding islands since the late 1990s when she secretly paid a member of the Iranian royal family (around) $18,000,000 (US) for the tropically picturesque, pill-shaped coconut plantation island (and a few surrounding atolls) that includes a luxurious main residence as well as separate quarters for guests and caretakers.
Iffin any of the children don't know the truly scandalicious story of Madame Bettencourt and her (admitted) tax evading ways, her (alleged) "payments" to French politicians including former president Nicholas Sarkozy, and the 1.3 billion dollars in gifts and insurance policies to much younger man-pal b.f.f. François-Marie Banier—now cut out of Madame's will after a bitter legal intervention by Madame Bettencourt's daughter who argued her elderly mother is not longer competent to handle her own (financial) affairs—then you should. Y'all can read all about Madame's difficulties and dramas in a 2010 article in Vanity Fair.
