Madonna’s man in property faux pas

Mike Collett-White — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:43:52 +0000

Madonna’s husband Guy Ritchie has given less-than-sympathetic British newspapers more fodder to have a dig. The 39-year-old film director gave a recent interview in which he remarked at how the super-wealthy had priced locals out of the housing market in London and that it was now almost impossible to pick up a pad in the centre of town for less than $20 million.

Now, unless Ritchie was being deliberately ironic, it should not take a genius to work out that the comments might be seen as somewhat hypocritical. News reports say that he and his super-rich wife own a $14 million house in Marylebone, central London, and a $12 million house next door, not to mention at least two non-domestic properties in London and a $20 million country estate. And that’s just in the UK.

“House prices don’t go down, they just go up,” Ritchie is quoted as saying in an interview with Empire magazine. “The natives of England are sort of being left behind because the big money came in and if it wanted something it bought it and made a bigger fortune doing so. And as anyone who has tried to buy a house in central London knows, it’s almost impossible to do so unless you have 10 million quid.”

On the annual Sunday Times Rich List, Madonna and Ritchie were estimated to be worth 300 million pounds, or around $600 million … in other words, enough for 30 more houses in central London.

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Madonna’s man in property faux pas