On Friday January 14, 2011, 12:18 pm EST,Celebrities are a picky bunch when it comes to buying homes. Among the amenities they may regard as necessities: screening rooms to watch their celluloid selves, entertainment spaces to host A-list parties and elaborately equipped gyms to keep those tabloid-gracing abs rock-hard. Other must-haves are high-tech security systems and secluded locations.
"The home really should be set off the street or down a private driveway," explains Jade Mills, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker Previews International of Beverly Hills, who regularly handles celebrity real estate deals like the late Dennis Hopper's $6.2 million compound, which she currently shares with fellow agent Jane Gavens.
It's no surprise then that the properties celebrities like Ricky Martin, Dr. Phil McGraw and Anjelica Huston have on the market are walled-in fortresses tucked into exclusive neighborhoods. Many are in Beverly Hills, where the average police response time to calls for assistance is a speedy three minutes.
We tapped online listing sites Realtor.com and Trulia to round up a list of the most expensive celebrity-owned real estate now for sale. We narrowed the search to Multiple Listing Service (MLS)-listed properties that currently belong to high-profile people in entertainment, or that did so in the past. The result is a list of the 15 priciest properties for sale from America's rich and famous stars.