Ellen DeGeneres lists renovated Cotswolds farmhouse for £22.5m
She has, however, already decided to move on. A video released by Sotheby's International Realty revealed that DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, her wife, had put their 43-acre Kitesbridge Farm estate on the market for £22.5 million — up from the £15 million they paid last June after an extensive renovation.
The 18th-century house, which also includes a gym, pool, games room and 'party barn' with its own pub, has 16,600 square feet of living space and is in the village of Asthall, at the heart of the Chipping Norton set.
Yet according to DeGeneres, the house didn't have the one thing de Rossi really wanted: space for her horses.
'When we decided to live here full time, we knew that Portia couldn't live without her horses,' she said in a statement issued through Sotheby's.
'We needed a home that had a horse facility and pastures for them.' The couple, it has emerged, have already moved onto a larger and more modern estate near by.
DeGeneres and de Rossi's renovation was extensive. Andrew Barnes, of Sotheby's, said Kitesbridge Farm had great bones but was 'quite tired' when the couple bought it but that it was transformed by an army of 70 workers in four and a half months. Among other upgrades, they created a single-storey extension and landscaped the garden.
He said the house now looks like it belongs in Malibu, and is among the few in the area to be finished to the standard of London, Los Angeles or Montecito, California, where the couple previously lived in a £24 million house.
DeGeneres and de Rossi have become known as serial flippers — buying and quickly renovating properties across the US. The latest upgrade did not, however, come without tribulations. In February, local councillors expressed concern that the works could disturb Roman remains and raise the risk of flooding.
Agents said that, despite a dramatic property market slowdown thanks in part to tax and non-dom rule changes, liberal Americans have continued to express an interest in the Cotswolds. Experts suggest they prefer the area to London because of the perceived crime risk in the capital, as well as the creature comforts and celebrity residents on offer.
'Overseas and particularly American buyers are increasingly tying in their holidays with property searches, drawn by the good weather, the lifestyle and the favourable dollar-pound exchange rate,' said Harry Gladwin, head of the Cotswolds market for the high-end property agency The Buying Solution.
'American accents seem to be around every corner this summer — it feels that many make the Cotswolds their first stop rather than going to London first.'
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