The Beckhams Sell in the Country and Make Offer in the City

The latest celebrity real estate reports out of the U.K. say that after several years of trying David and Victoria Beckham have finally up and sold Rowneybury House—a.k.a. Beckingham Palace, their country estate in Hertfordshire in an off-market dear for for £12 million. (That's $19,207,300 at today's rates, according to Your Mama's trusty currency conversion contraption.)

Your Mama has no specific intel on the matter but the reported sale price allegedly includes not just the Georgian style pile and manicured grounds but several luxury cars—including a Ferrari and two Jaguars—as well as Domaine Saint-Vincent, their little-used holiday home in the south of France valued at around £2.6 million ($4,161,590).

The (now retired) footballer—that's a soccer player to all us Americanos—and the pop star turned fashion designer purchased the estate in late 1999 for about £2.5 million ($4,161,590).* Over the years, they added, among other amenities and luxuries, a helipad, a recording studio, fitness facility, a 52-foot long marble-floored garden pavilion, a lighted tennis court, and both indoor and outdoor swimming pools.

So the scuttlebutt goes, the comely couple desire a more cosmopolitan urban life and have already made an offer on a four-story and £45 million mansion in West London where they hope celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay will design the kitchen and designer Kelly Hoppen will do up the day-core.**

Mister and Missus Beckham, according to various reports, plan to educate their four children in the U.K. but spend holidays in the United States where they continue to own a gated estate in Beverly Hills that they scooped up back in mid-2007 for $18,200,000.

*Some reports put the property at 12 acres, others at 17 acres, and still more at 22 acres. 

**Call Your Mama a real estate cynic—and we've been called worse—but something seems amiss here. We know that Mister and Missus Beckham are wealthy by any standard. They are, to be sure, sick rich. Indeed, the folks at Forbes estimated in 2012 that the couple earned over $50 million between May 2011 and May 2012. But, seriously people, are they really rolling in so much clover they can afford a £45 million house? That's more than 72 million U.S. dollars, a vast amount of money to spend on a house that will surely require millions in customizing renovations and as ass load of dinero every year just to staff and maintain.

photo: Pacific Coast News