25. 19 Kensington Palace Gardens – $140 Million
Oh look, we’re back in London, in our favorite neighborhood of Kensington Palace Gardens—we visited it at the beginning of the list, remember? It’s still one of the richest neighborhoods on the planet, and it’s still way beyond anything we can imagine in terms of real estate prices. But don’t worry, we found parking for the low price of a second mortgage and now we can continue to explore the lifestyles of the rich and famous . . .
Enter one Roman Abramovich, who is a—wait for it!–Russian billionaire business tycoon with a taste for high-end living. Because of course, he is. Anyway, Abramovich was looking for a little corner of London to call his own and he found it in 19 Kensington Palace Gardens. His modest estate—purchases for a paltry $140 million—is home to five bedrooms, some untold number of baths, a swimming pool, fore-and-aft terraces, a giant dining room—and that’s before Abramovich started to customize the place. He added an extensive underground addition—requiring some pretty slick engineering in order to finish—which includes a tennis court, gymnasium, and a museum for his collection of Ferrari sports cars. Go ahead and read that last bit again. Go one. Do it. We didn’t make that up, dear reader.