10 legendary houses that nobody wants to buy

Frank Sinatra's hideaway home in the Coachella Valley, named "Villa Maggio" in homage to the character Angelo Maggio portrayed by "The Voice" in the film From Here to Eternity, which won him an Oscar, is a complex of stone and wood shingle villas and outbuildings with a rustic and cosy feel. Sold in 1979, it has since struggled to find a permanent owner, even given the asking price of more than $4 million to acquire, along with the property, the charm of an era.

The surreal construction that evokes a blob of soap bubbles lying on the coast, originally conceived as a multi-purpose accommodation facility but later purchased by Pierre Cardin as his residence, was put up for sale by the French fashion house on completion for 400 million euros, one of the highest prices ever achieved for a real estate property in Europe. Left unsold, the complex remains used as a luxury residence.

The mega-villa surrounded by greenery, conceived as a ‘trophy house’ to represent the opulence of its original client, is a mixture of a country estate and a sort of medium-sized hotel, where luxury is an inescapable leitmotif. Entering the market in 2019 for the sum of £40m and remaining unsold (despite the price being reduced over time to "only" £32m), the house still awaits a wealthy buyer.

The nearly 5,000-square-metre mega-villa, estimated to be worth $195 million and listed in 2014 as the most expensive residential complex in the United States, is a profusion of styles that pay homage to the Mediterranean, amidst elements of neoclassical and Belle Époque taste. Easy to interpret as a triumphant apotheosis of luxury, difficult to sell.

The estate, which consists of a cluster of whitewashed volumes set in a private forest reserve with a lake near Chicago, includes 9 bedrooms, 15 bathrooms, a garage for 14 cars, 5 living rooms and various ancillary spaces for sports (from a regulation basketball court to a tennis court and golf course) and entertainment (a cigar room, a casino and a cinema). The villa has been on the market since 2012 and has yet to find a buyer, despite its price being halved from the initial $29 million to $14.9 million.

Liza Minelli's childhood home is a Spanish colonial-style building in the heart of Beverly Hills. When her father died, after years of legal wrangling over Liza's attempts to put the property up for sale in disagreement with her stepmother, the house was sold in 2009 to a new owner who, however, gradually abandoned it.

The six-bedroom luxury duplex located in the Crown Sydney (One Barangaroo) mixed-use tower in Sydney, which went on the market in 2021 for $59 million remains unsold, possibly due to waning interest from Chinese investors.

The 400-plus square metre flat in Via Nemea 21, Vigna Clara district, northern Rome, where Raffaella Carrà lived, has been on sale for three years for €2 million. A casual (and slick) luxury exudes from the creamy tones of the spaces, the brocaded sofas, the precious marble panelling and the pearly ceiling mouldings.

Situated on a cliff between Saunton Sands and Croyde Bay in North Devon, the modernist building sits on the coast with its rigorous, candid volumes, large floor-to-ceiling windows offering panoramic views and the cylindrical volume body evoking a lighthouse. After being put up for sale, it is now in a state of disrepair.

The 73-square-metre three-room apartment on the first floor of a building at 3 Via Giovanni Tagliere, where Pasolini lived with his mother between 1951 and 1954, and where he wrote his first novel ("Ragazzi di vita"), after years in Limbo (in respectful memory of its tenant) has recently been donated to the State by Pietro Valsecchi, the film and television producer who bought it at auction after the controversy surrounding its sale following the bankruptcy in 2019 of the real estate group that then owned the property. It will become a hub for young artists.

The legendary red-brick Georgian house, set of "Home Alone" and a destination for tourist fans of the film, is now for sale for "only" over $5 million.

The loft-style building in SoHo was the first New York home of the John Lennon- Yoko Ono couple, before they moved to the infamous Dakota Building on the Upper West Side.Today it still belongs to the family and has been put up for sale for $5.5 million.

The Malibu mansion purchased by musician and designer Ye (a.k.a. Kanye West) in 2021 for $57.3 million and designed by Tadao Ando, has been put up for sale again, radically disfigured amidst demolitions and transformations to turn it into a refuge or "batcave" as the rapper liked to call it. It was recently sold, albeit transfigured.

The 66 m high tower, made entirely of Portland cement, is the world's tallest structure in unreinforced concrete. Built as a mausoleum with 14 storeys and 330 steps to the top by a bizarre man inspired by the architectural "follies" of his time, in the 1890s the building was sold by descendants to a new owner who made it a hotel, then his own home. Today it is used as a part-time bed and breakfas but has been for sale for almost three million pounds for years and is awaiting a buyer.