Five Celebs Who Went Broke and Had to Ditch Prized Property

In the popular imagination, celebrities live in a world of endless riches, but that's not always so, as these five famous people can attest. Perhaps no one went from vast wealth to debilitating bankruptcy as egregiously as actor Nicolas Cage. In his professional hey-day, the Francis Ford Coppola nephew banked nearly $40M in 2009, but proceeded to spend most of it while forgetting to pay his taxes. Cage filed suit against his business manager for failing to pay the taxes, but the manager countersued, citing  an outrageous buying spree on the actor's part, which included "the purchase of three additional residences at a total cost of more than $33 million; the purchase of 22 automobiles (including 9 Rolls Royces); 12 purchases of expensive jewelry; and 47 purchases of artwork and exotic items." By the time it was all over, Cage owned some 15 personal residences around the world. Among them was this stone manor in Middletown, R.I., near Newport, known as Gray Craig. Cage purchased the place, and the accompanying 26.77-acre property, for $15.7M, but with the tax woes was finally forced to unload it  in April 2011 for just $6.2M. Yes, that's right, he took a $9.5M loss on this house alone. That's more than $211K in depreciation per month!

 Sports stars don't have the best track record when it comes to avoiding bankruptcy. Their relatively short careers mean that what they make in their youth has to last a lifetime. Former NHL star Sergei Fedorov is intimately familiar with that problem, having plunged some major cash into two Bloomfield Hills, Mich. mansions that he couldn't make the payments on. This one, a five-bed, five-bath gated mansion, was facing foreclosure  before Fedorov sold it off for far less than the $1.2M he originally paid.

 NBA star Allan Iverson may have landed huge contracts over the course of his career, but thanks to a divorce and some financial mismanagement, his Philadelphia-area home nearly fell into foreclosure and it ultimately sold for $2.6M, or almost half of what he spent to acquire it. Now the property is back on the market with a higher asking price that is sure to enrage the famously volatile hoops star.

 ↑ Formerly popular actors also fall victim to high expenses and declining income. Actor Stephen Baldwin, whose brother Alec is the family golden boy by comparison, lost his Nyack, N.Y. home to a foreclosure auction back in 2009. Baldwin and his wife paid some $515K for the property back in 1997. They listed the place for $3.6M in 2006, but were unable to sell before the bottom fell out of the market and they were left holding the bag on $825K worth of loans they couldn't support.

 Actor Randy Quaid, whose brother is the more commercially successful Dennis Quaid, lived out the saddest celebrity foreclosure story in recent memory when he was arrested in 2010 for squatting in the Montecito, Calif. mansion he formerly owned. The Quaids had owned the Mediterranean-style manse since the 1990s, but had sold it in 2007 to the current owner. After bouncing bad credit cards at a couple of local luxury hotels, Quaid was discovered living in the estate's guest house.