Ellen DeGeneres to sell Cotswolds home... for £22.5m

Telegraph

6 days ago

There is a trend amongst Hollywood's ultra A-list set for flipping houses. In fact, half of the stars in that Oscars selfie from 2014 like to renovate them fast and sell them on when they're not winning acting awards: Meryl Streep focusses on properties in New York and California, while Brad Pitt has taken on multiple real estate development and restoration projects, including eco-focused homes in New Orleans and a château in France.
And now Ellen DeGeneres herself – the person holding the phone in that infamous image – has added house flipper to the many hyphenates of her career, putting her Cotswolds retreat, Kitesbridge Farm, on the market for for £22.5m. It's only just over a year since she bought it for £15m with her wife Portia de Rossi, so yes, that's £7.5m more than she paid for it a mere 12 months earlier. Investments rarely come much better, assuming she gets the asking price, of course.
When the couple bought the vast 43-acre Oxfordshire estate in June 2024, it seemed like they were embracing the good life. Freshly off her chat show, for which Ellen was reportedly paid $50m a year, a retirement in the quiet of the British countryside was not as unexpected as it seemed (at the time she still had her $5m property in California's Montecito, where the Duke and Duchess of Sussex live, so she wasn't cutting ties with her homeland all together).
She had frequently said that she wanted to leave the US after the 2024 election result - a fact she reiterated at Cheltenham last week – and at the Los Angeles show of Ellen's Last Stand... Up Tour in April last year that she'd been kicked out of show business after multiple allegations came to light about how she'd been mean to the crew of The Ellen Show. A change of scene was clearly appealing. So what's more surprising is that after selling the Montecito home for $5.2m – seemingly to go all-in on life in the UK – and then investing in a restoration in the Cotswolds, she is selling it on after such a short period of time, reportedly having realised that the estate couldn't accommodate Portia's horses. Having been shipped over from the States, the horses now live in a purpose-built equestrian property down the road.
So how does she justify the amount the home is on the market for, especially when she paid £2.5m over its original asking price? Well, the refurbishment was large scale, employing a team of 70 craftsmen to complete the work in just two and a half months, reinventing the 18th-century farmhouse into your classic Californian-style palazzo – think upscale shearling sofas, artfully rustic wood tables and vaulting ceilings painted white. It looks more like what the celebrity designer Brigette Romanek would do – and has done – for Gwyneth Paltrow in LA's Brentwood, than what Jeremy Clarkson has done at his famous farm in a neighbouring village.
And for your £22.5m, you'll get a lot of space. There's the five‑bedroom main house, a two‑bedroom guest cottage, a 'party barn' with its own pub, a gym, a heated pool that has the most incredible views of the hills beyond the estate and a heated five‑car garage. The house is on the market with Sotheby's International Realty, and the marketing material neatly describes the property as 'discreetly set at the end of a long private driveway, beautifully reimagined over the past year to an exceptional standard. The estate blends period character with sleek, modern design across 43 acres of rolling Cotswold countryside. The main house unfolds around a central landscaped courtyard, a lovely focal point that brings light and flow to the interiors.'
In case you were wondering what you might do with all that acreage, it helpfully has an answer for that. 'Designed for both grand-scale entertaining and relaxing, the layout combines sharp architectural detail with a contemporary eye for volume, proportion and finish.'
It may have a high-end finish now, but the project wasn't without its complications. As the Grade II-listed farmhouse is located in a conservation area, some local planning concerns were raised, ranging from flood risks to archaeological significance. However, following an inspection, West Oxfordshire District Council has confirmed that all renovations were completed in line with heritage regulations, and no enforcement action was required. A council representative concluded that the extensions were 'sympathetic' and 'of high quality'.
While this may have been Ellen and Portia's first major UK project, their approach was unmistakably familiar: buy a home with good bones, restore it beautifully, then sell it at a premium. In fact, the estate is now one of the most expensive listings in the Cotswolds – the average house price in the area is £446,247.
While we're used to seeing properties in Ellen's homeland go for the sort of figures she's commanding – in fact, it's cheap compared to many of the Hollywood homes on the Netflix real estate-based show Selling Sunset – this could mark the start of a new trend in British home design. Take the best of the sun-drenched, low-slung, minimaluxe Californian aesthetic, transplant it to the green fields of the UK and charge a premium for the privilege. Whether it sells for asking price or not, one thing's clear: Ellen DeGeneres has brought a touch of the trademark American ambition to the English countryside.