Inside Taylor Swift's homes: After setting $81M real estate empire, will she move to London with lover Joe Alwyn?
Taylor Swift is always in the news — be it for chartbuster hits sprinkled with tidbits from her personal life or her feuds and friendships with fellow musicians, and even for her adorable cats! It goes without saying that her two decade-career has made her one of the greatest singers of all time after having sold over 50 million albums. With a net worth of an estimated $360 million, she's one of the world's highest-paid celebrities. Reportedly, she owns approximately $81 million in mansions and penthouses in Nashville, Rhode Island, Beverly Hills, and New York City. Going by the latest hearsay, she is said to be hunting for a home in London to be near her boyfriend, British actor Joe Alwyn.
Born in 1989 in Pennsylvania, Taylor was born to a stockbroker dad Scott Kingsley Swift and homemaker mum, Andrea Gardner Swift, who had worked as a mutual fund marketing executive. Proud of her Scottish heritage, she once told a packed crowd at Glasgow “I am one of you,” and was named after singer-songwriter James Taylor — who also had Scottish ancestry. When she was 12, she first picked up the guitar and penned down songs that led to her musical success later on. To help her break into country music, the family moved to a lakefront house in Hendersonville, Tennessee a couple of years down the line. Her Wyomissing childhood home was on the market for $799,500 according to an Inquirer report and Daniel Mashevsky — who purchased it soon after they moved away in 2004 — said, "People would stop by and take pictures and pose out in the front."
When she was about 20, Taylor started investing in real estate and purchased her first home in the center of Nashville’s Music Row for $1.99 million. The 3,240-square-foot condo overlooked the city and kept her close to the recording studios and her mates from the music industry. As her stardom rose, she needed to be in Los Angeles more often and she got herself a comfortable Cape Cod-style home in Beverly Hills in 2011 for $3.55 million that she sold a few years later for about $4 million.
Her pop singles 'Love Story' and 'You Belong with Me' made 'Fearless' the best-selling album of 2009 and she won four Grammy Awards—including the Album of the Year. Then came her self-written third album 'Speak Now' in 2010 and sold over a million copies in the first few weeks. In 2011, she bought a 5,000-square-foot, Greek Revival-style mansion on almost six acres for her parents in the elite suburb of Forest Hills, Nashville. Purchased for $2.5 million, the 30-year-old still owns it.
Her third album 'Red' smashed all records yet again and the track 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' became her first Billboard Hot 100 number-one single. That very year, she bought a mid-century-modern home in Los Angeles for $1.78 million. Later, it was sold for $2.65 million in 2018.
By 2013, her popularity grew to gigantic heights and it was followed by her cash purchase of a 12,000-square-foot beach mansion in Rhode Island’s Watch Hill for $17.75 million. In the serenity of the coastal village, the 'Bad Blood' singer is rumored to be known for hosting parties for her girl squad. There was no stopping to the ladder of success she was climbing and she won the hearts of her fans with the next all-pop project, '1989' in 2014 with songs like 'Shake It Off' and 'Blank Space' that won three Grammy Awards.
But soon back on the East Coast, New York City was calling. By Valentine’s Day in 2014, Taylor was checking out the trendy Manhattan neighborhood of Tribeca. She settled on two penthouses for $20 million, which she combined to cover 8,309 square feet of living space encompassing ten bedrooms and ten baths. She added a third next door in 2015 in the form of an $18 million townhouse and further in 2018 by adding an apartment in the same building for $9.75 million.
The best of them all came in 2015 in Beverly Hills when she bought the historic Samuel Goldwyn mansion for $25 million. In honor of Goldwyn’s award-winning career as a film producer and contributions to the film industry, Taylor decided to restore the home to its original 1934 condition when it was built for the Goldwyns. In 2018, she applied for and won Los Angeles landmark status for the estate ensuring that the home will never be significantly changed or demolished.
Taylor is now in her dirty 30s and is truly "America's Sweetheart." She insists she does not "live by all these rigid, weird rules" and likes the way that makes her "feel very free." She may have dated a string of famous celebrities but beneath all that, lies a simple, dreamy girl. In a Vanity Fair interview, she once said, "If I could find someone who just looked at me like I’m a girl... like a girl they want to be their girlfriend, with all my accomplishments and my criticisms, without this big cartoon character that most people see me as because they don’t know me … I just want a guy to be dating me as a girl."
From a goody-goody girl, her image has starkly changed in the last few years. In a Rolling Stone interview, she said, "They decided I was a serial dater — a boy-crazy man-eater — when I was 22. And so I didn’t date anyone for, like, two years. And then they decided in 2016 that absolutely everything about me was wrong. If I did something good, it was for the wrong reasons. If I did something brave, I didn’t do it correctly. If I stood up for myself, I was throwing a tantrum. And so I found myself in this endless mockery echo chamber."
It was then that she came up with 'Look What You Made Me Do' and the song phrase: "The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Because she’s dead!" It was funny — sure! But it was dead serious. "I needed to grow up in many ways. I needed to make boundaries, to figure out what was mine and what was the public’s. That old version of me that shares unfailingly and unblinkingly with a world that is probably not fit to be shared with? I think that’s gone." Taylor confessed.
No matter how she's changed, one thing has remained the same — her penchant for penning down her heartfelt feelings in songs with a wistful nostalgia that always strikes the right chord. After all those luxurious homes, there are rumors she is now checking out the real estate market in London, could that be true? Well, only time will tell. Can't take your eyes off her spectacular mansions? Click here for more pictures.