Geri reduces her best asset
Pop star Geri Halliwell has failed to sell her Buckinghamshire stately home, St Paul's House, at Middle Green, despite a publicity blitz. Knight Frank has therefore lopped £250,000 off last summer's asking price of £3.75 million. The Grade II listed Victorian pile, set in 17 acres of parkland near Windsor, has seven bedrooms, a separate guest house, tennis court and more security gizmos than Madonna. Perhaps the Halliwell name no longer has the same cachet?
The late cellist Jacqueline du Pré once lived in Rutland Gardens Mews, as did ballet dancer Dame Margot Fonteyn. Now Knight Frank is selling this Knightsbridge property, with its 31ft panelled drawing room, four bedrooms and three bathrooms, for £2 million. It describes the lavishly decorated pad as "a wonderful hidden" house close to Hyde Park.
TV personality Anneka Rice is looking for a seaside home on the Isle of Wight. She knows the island well, having enjoyed many bucket-and-spade summer holidays in the past with her three children. "Anneka loves the sea air and the beaches and has made many friends there," a local agent tells me. "She's looking for a three-bedroom property to buy near Cowes or Bembridge." The former Treasure Hunt and Challenge Anneka star already has homes in Barnes and the Cotswolds.
Victor Edelstein, Princess Diana's favourite couturier, has sold his converted finca near Marbella for £365,000, through FPDSavills.The fivebedroom property in the scenic mountain-top village of Gaucin was originally on the market at £425,000 18 months ago. "It was hard to sell because it was 25 minutes' drive from the sea and property prices are coming down on the Costa del Sol," explains Victor, who is now a painter. He and his wife, Annamaria, recently paid £225,000 for a studio flat near Sloane Square.
An occasional cry from Damian, the recently born baby of Elizabeth Hurley, might disturb the peace of whoever buys a six-bedroom house off Fulham Road, Chelsea. The white stucco terrace property, on the market at £2.4 million, is a few doors along from the actress's home. But, unlike Liz's pad, it has a 42ft artist's studio occupying the garden. "The whole place requires updating, which would probably cost you another £500,000," admits estate agents Russell Simpson.
If dad is a reviled dictator who lives in a tent, then the best way to drop out is to buy a fancy neo-Georgian house in the safest democracy in the world. Which is no doubt why 29-yearold Saif Gadaffy, the architect son of the notorious Libyan leader, is looking for a house in central London. Saif has been seen scouting around houses in St John's Wood and The Bishops Avenue in the past couple of weeks.
