7 Celebrity Homes that ‘Normal’ People Could Maybe Even Afford

As someone who loves to trawl through celebrity real estate listings, you can trust me when I say the other half is living lavishly. It’s downright rare to find a price tag with fewer than seven figures. But truly, I can’t blame ’em. If I started making major bank, the first thing I’d do is set myself up with the home of my dreams too.

But it seems lavish real estate isn’t a top priority for every celeb under the sun. In fact, some stars have been known to live sort of modestly, in price tags that aren’t too out of reach for “normal” folks buying real estate. (Quick caveat: while these aren’t multi-million dollar homes, they aren’t exactly cheap—some are still double or even triple the median U.S. house price of just over $200,000. But we’re going with relativity here, people.)

The Detroit rocker — you might know him from the White Stripes — snatched up this George-Nelson-designed property (above) in Kalamazoo, Michigan, last summer for $60,000 over the $450,000 asking price. He told The New Yorker that he wants to use this mid-century modern midwestern gem as a songwriting retreat (he lives full time in Nashville) and was drawn to its history. “A George Nelson house, there’s not too many of those,” White told The New Yorker. You can check out more photos inside on Curbed.

The mega-star and former NBA player can lay claim to four NBA championships, three NBA finals MVP awards, and the prize of the lowest priced home on this list: this small house outside of Orlando, Florida, that he bought in 2012. He turned around and sold the property two years later — you might have seen the news stories reporting he sold the place for the curious total of $10 (no we didn’t miss any zeroes). That’s bogus, though. The final sale was $240,000 with a $5,000 profit for Shaq.

The celebrity chef sold this 5-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom Tudor-style home in Cleveland last summer for the non-celebrity sum of $510,000. Still, $510k buys a lot, especially in Cleveland, so whoever bought the Iron Chef’s home will enjoy a living room with a wood-burning fireplace, a mega-star master suite, walk-in climate-controlled wine room and, yeah, a “chef’s kitchen,” complete with “Carrera marble counters, custom Blue Star range with matching hood, huge island, coffee station, custom cabinetry with pull-outs, refrigerator drawers, and two sinks.”

Yes, y’all, that Oprah. Last summer, she listed this modest 4-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom brick colonial outside Chicago for $393,000. Curiously, according to Trulia, she never lived there though, and “it’s unclear why or for whom she held the property” after buying it in 2001 for $298,000. We don’t know who bought it or when, but the owner now gets to boast they own the media mogul’s last ever piece of Chicago real estate.

The Partridge Family star unloaded his Philly townhome in 2011 after taking his radio career to the West Coast — he’s now a radio host for KZOK in Seattle, where he snapped the photo above from his new home for Twitter. He listed the industrial-style Center City East property for $475k, but it sold for $40k less to a forensic accountant who plans to use the commercially-zoned space as a live-work space. You can check out photos of the property on Curbed.

This American Idol singer has never heard the celebrity siren call to decant to New York or L.A., instead making his way through properties in his home state of North Carolina. In 2011, he listed a 4-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom brick home in Oak Ridge, NC, for $699,000 — he and his wife settled in there in 2006 a month after his American Idol stint; they bought it for $690,000. The couple then moved to a nearby 44-acre estate, which they sold for $2.3 million in 2014, before hoofing it to Charlotte to live in a 3,473-square-foot condo (with neighbors like Michael Jordan and Cam Newton) for which they paid $1.9 million.

Let me tell you what: If I were the third-wealthiest person in the world with a net worth around $87 billion, I would probably not be living in the 5-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom Nebraska property that Warren Buffet calls home. He bought the place in 1958 for $31,500 (the equivalent of $250,000 in today’s dollars), and it’s now worth an estimated $652,000.