Price of Neverland Ranch drops to $67 million

Sycamore Valley Ranch, the Los Olivos-area property formerly known as Neverland Ranch once owned and occupied by late entertainer Michael Jackson, just got a price cut.

In February, the going price for the ranch dropped by tens of millions of dollars to $67 million, according to joycerey.com, the website of the Los Angeles-based realtor who agreed to handle any sale of the property.

That’s down 33 percent from $100 million, an asking price that’s held since May 2015.

click to enlarge Price of Neverland Ranch drops to $67 million
FILE PHOTO
PRICE CUT: Sycamore Valley Ranch, formerly known as Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch estate, dropped its going price from $100 million to $67 million.

The property has sat virtually unoccupied since 2003, when it was extensively searched by dozens of deputies from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office. The search was linked to the trial of Jackson, who, at the time, was accused of molesting children at the estate.

Jackson was eventually acquitted, but never returned to Neverland, telling news outlets that it no longer felt like home.

Wracked with debt, Jackson abandoned the property, which went into foreclosure following the trial. Jackson died in 2009 while living in Los Angeles.

Shortly before Jackson’s death, Los Angeles-based investment firm Colony Capital picked up Neverland Ranch’s defaulted loan in 2008 and now has a 12.5 percent stake in the property when it sells. Colony Capital’s CEO is Thomas Barrack Jr., who’s also a friend of President Donald Trump and owns a 1,200-acre ranch in Santa Barbara County.

Since his death, Jackson’s former home has become somewhat of a shrine to the late mega pop star, like Elvis Presley’s Graceland in Memphis, Tenn., which was turned into a museum.

Neverland has attracted curious fans, including a group of anonymous urban explorers who snuck into the ranch several times in late 2007 and early 2008, taking a series of photographs from around the abandoned property and inside the mansion.

According to an interview by Vice, one photographer recalled seeing the inside of the house filled with a “strange hodgepodge of shit,” including many one-off works of art.

One of those objects may have been the exotic Bosendorfer piano that Santa Maria-based piano tuner Larry Keast tuned on a regular basis for 15 years.

Speaking to the Sun last November, Keast said he received a call from a lady at Neverland Ranch in the early 1990s and remembers having to sign a three-page legal waiver agreeing to “bring nothing, record nothing, and take nothing from the property,” he said.

It was all business for Keast, who immediately went to work tuning the piano upon entering Jackson’s home, although he vividly remembers passing through a spacious home with grooved wooden floors decorated with unique furniture.

“Nothing in there was something you can buy from Neiman Marcus,” Keast said.

Each time he’d pass through the gates on his way to the house, Keast said he noticed a well-manicured property adorned with the numerous statues of children. According to the International Business Times, the statues are still there.

Caroline Luz, a spokeswoman for Colony Capital, wouldn’t speak with the Sun about details of the ranch. Instead, Luz referred all questions about the ranch to Joyce Rey, who didn’t respond to calls from the Sun before press time.

According to Rey’s website, where the Sycamore Valley Ranch property is listed, the 2,700-acre property comes complete with multiple buildings, including a 12,598 square-foot French-Normandy style house, a 5,500 square-foot movie theater and dance studio, a 3,655 square-foot tennis court and pool, a four-unit guest house, a stable, a Disney-style train station, and two water reservoirs that can hold approximately 4 million gallons.

The property’s eventual buyer would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in property taxes each year—more than $325,000 as of April 2016.

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