When Prince first clapped eyes on his dream Spanish mansion he had to snap it up. The star then spent another $1,831,793 renovating the property in the hills above the millionaire playground of Marbella.
He turned it into a purple palace - a place to raise a family with his then wife, Mayte Garcia.
But then they were hit by a run of luck so bad that the singer, according to a local estate agent, now believes the house is jinxed.
Soon after he bought the house, the couple's week-old child died of a rare disease in November 1996.
The couple were totally devastated and the stress led to the marriage breaking down.
"Prince hardly ever went into the house after losing the baby," says estate agent Miguel Ferrer.
"He has only been in the property four times in eight years, for a total of three weeks. Now he hates the house and reckons it has a curse on it."
He offered to donate it to an orphanage - but locals scuppered the idea.
Two years ago the mansion was on the market for $8,250,000. It failed to sell.
Prince was advised to dress it up to make it look homely.
But his taste in furnishings is so tacky that estate agents now say it looks like a cross between Disneyland and the house in The Addams Family.
Prince decided to garnish it with a purple piano, spent $219,735 on a dining room set complete with Prince/Mayte insignia and had his "crest" painted above the swimming pool.
And he's made the study into a shrine to himself, covering the walls with photographs of him and Mayte.
Another blow for Prince came when the stunning views from the property were obstructed by cranes. Developers had begun to encroach on the isolated land around the mansion.
"Prince went crazy," recalls Ferrer. "He bought the house because it was so isolated."
The rock star spent a further $550,000 on buying up the land in front of the house so that no one could build on it.
"This was all supposed to help sell the property quickly," says another estate agent. "But it dosn't seem to have worked. Let's face it, the first thing that anyone with that kind of money will do is rip everything out and start again. The place looks more like a tacky furniture store than a home from home."
Prince has now dropped the price to $5,000,000. He's even thrown in his beloved purple BMW which he shipped over from America.
Mayte still occasionally drops into the mansion while Prince has to pay $18,312 a month on its upkeep and its permanent staff of five.
[This message was edited Wed Aug 11 23:47:25 2004 by ThePurplePeopleEater]

Where did this Story come from?

Sounds like he needs the House Doctor.

Just paint all the walls white, paint over any tiles with white tile paint, put new beige carpets down, and de-clutter. Cost: a few hundred quid, none of that half a million nonsense.

Then it should sell for well over it's asking price. Well, this works time and again on the tv series...

A few throw cushions and some white muslin drapes could realy make a difference dahling: ACCESORISE!

© Asianbomb777

She's selling it for alot less. Prince looks Funny as that Leather kinda Village Man guy.. I Could never like that look on him.. That Mustache is Too Gross! Yuck!

Prince has now dropped the price to $5,000,000. He's even thrown in his beloved purple BMW which he shipped over from America.


holy chit

What's the source of this story?

I read this months ago hope he sells it i would buy it :tacky furniture and his purple car lets all get our money together we buy it ok lol

metalorange said:

But Prince is a man i love him to death but hes rich american and a man: so he aint going to b watching changing rooms : hope it sells being rich and american he has rich millionaires taste but u are right white walls cream carpets would have sold it 4 him if i had 5 million in my bank i would buy it in seconds! there has to b a rich Prince fan out there that will buy it

Too bad this story is false and completely made up by the PurplePeopleEater who is probably laughing at those of you who took it seriously.

Prince bought the house in 1998 after the New Power Soul album came out. He claims he used the proceeds from the album to buy the house which is why he hung a big letters spelling N P S on the house. You can find a picture of this in the "In Style" photo shoot of the house.

Also, it's Maytes house and she is the one who has it on the market.

apple2 said:

Is English your second language?


.
[This message was edited Thu Aug 12 6:50:30 2004 by lovemachine]

I remember reading this article around the time Musicology was released. It was in the magazine that comes with the News Of The World!

lovemachine said:

wtf ?

apple2 said:

LOL, we don't need a rich fan to buy it...I think all of Prince's fan should chip in. There's enough of us to have it in less than a month. Kinda like a time share or something. Everybody getting a week or weekend to hangout. Then we could have one great big party/gathering at the end of the year for everybody.

Oh I forgot to mention that I'd have to be there 24/7 no matter whose turn it is, making sure you riff-raff don't sneak off with the Royal Purple Crest.

lovemachine said:

Let's take the tour shall we peeps...?

Heidi said:

I was looking for an explaination behind her post. Try to make sense of it and you will know what I mean.

lovemachine said:

Wrong answer fool! This is an actual story and 100% true.

ThePurplePeopleEater said:

Who the hell are you trying to kid?



Notice the NPS on the walls because as I said he bought the house with the proceeds from New Power Soul.


Here is the article from the news section of this site announcing that MAYTE is selling the home that was purchased in 1998.



Anyone familiar with 1980s and 1990s pop music will immediately recognise the strange squiggle - half-Arabic script, half-scientific symbol - picked out in black above the deep end of the swimming pool. For a few years, this symbol identified the Artist Formerly known as Prince, now plain Prince again, who bought this villa for his then wife, Mayte, in 1998.

The couple moved into the villa, in the El Paraiso district of Marbella two years after they married on Valentine's Day 1996 and although the then snowy white, colonial-influenced love-nest was practically perfect, it was not quite to the Prince of pop's ebullient taste.

"Prince chose the pink for the exterior and interior," says Mayte, a dancer and singer who met Prince when she was 16. "He loves pinks and purples and I think the pale pink looks very fresh in the house. He insisted on putting the mirror above the bed, but a lot of the Arabic influences are mine."

Mayte, a Puerto Rican and immortalised as The Most Beautiful Girl in the World in Prince's 1994 song, has been a belly dancer since she was three years old and has performed in front of several members of the royal houses of the Middle East.

"I influenced Prince a lot in the whole Arabic sound and look," she says. "I wanted the drapes around the bed because I like sleeping with the windows open, but I didn't want the bugs coming in and biting me. The painted headboard is to symbolise the mystical journey we were on together - we are both very interested in Egyptian history and religion."

Although Prince has recently turned to fundamental Christianity, the bed represents a more eclectic period of his spiritual quest.

Elsewhere, Prince converted a small room into a professional hair salon complete with indented washbasin, huge mirrors and hair-drying equipment. "Prince always travelled with his personal hairdresser in those days and he paid a lot of attention to his hair," recalls Mayte. "He would spend a lot of time in the salon."

Mayte says the villa was a perfect, peaceful retreat for her and her superstar husband. Certainly, it appears to have inspired him creatively as he wrote most of the songs for Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic - one of his most critically acclaimed albums - while chilling out in Marbella.

"But I've also had a lot of parties here," says Mayte, who, after her marriage to Prince was annulled in 2000, was briefly linked with ageing bad-boy rocker Tommy Lee. "You can't help but have fun in this house."

The gardens of this exclusive and private villa are carefully landscaped to restrict prying eyes and zoom lenses while serried ranks of perfectly manicured cypresses stand guard around the property.

Any purchaser of the villa will be presented with a thorny problem if the flamboyant, Moorish style is not to their taste. Does one redecorate and thus erase evidence of Prince's previous ownership, or does one preserve it and thus, in years to come, make the house a place of pilgrimage for pop historians?

Fortunately, it is not a question that I myself have to wrestle with, as the €3.7 million (£2.5 million) price tag puts it slightly out of my wallet's capacity.

Although the pair were happy for a few years, the marriage did not last and they went their separate ways in 2000.

Now, Mayte is selling the villa to concentrate on her acting and dancing career in Los Angeles.

• The villa in El Paraiso, Marbella, Spain is on sale through Aylesford. Contact 020 7351 2383 for further details.
[This message was edited Thu Aug 12 13:25:06 2004 by lovemachine]