50 Cent Or Two Cents? Rapper’s Mansion Sells At A Loss For $2.9 Million

It seemed destined at the time. His moniker is 50 Cent. The address is 50 Poplar Hill Drive. The colossal house is 50,000 square feet. It boasts 50+ rooms. The numbers all added up.

Until they didn’t. After more than a decade, rapper-actor-TV producer 50 Cent finally sold his suburban Connecticut mansion (a monument of success, excess and regress) at a loss for $2.9 million—84% less than his initial ask, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The hip hop superstar (birth name Curtis Jackson) doggedly pursued the sale of his decadent Farmington home, as it languished on and off the market for 12 years—especially during his highly publicized Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing years ago.

The Grammy Award winner bought the home from the ex-wife of former champion boxer Mike Tyson for $4.1 million (still a town record) in 2003, following his tour de force album Get Rich or Die Tryin’. Tyson’s pet Bengal tiger wasn’t included in the deal but a real estate Hangover was.

Unfortunately for 50 Cent, the home’s value did not appreciate. In 2007, it listed for $18.5 million. By 2018, the price was slashed to just under $5 million, even listing with Million Dollar Listing New York’s celebrity agent Fredrik Eklund. It made an appearance on the rental market for $100,000 per month as well.

This isn’t what 50 Cent had in mind when he rapped on “Get Low.” This house was a hard sell. Was the 52-room mansion’s sale jinxed by its reputation, most infamously 50 Cent’s night club with a rumored stripper pole stage? Even scrubbing that down or removing it doesn’t take 12 years. Was the marbleized mansion too customized to the rapper’s specific taste? For sure. Truth is, the notorious mega-mansion was controversial before “Fiddy” ever stepped inside, cited in the Hartford Courant as “the most notorious house in Connecticut.”

The enormous estate was built in 1985 for Benjamin Sisti, a former partner of the Colonial Realty Co. which was tied to a fraud case. The mansion was once five times as large as the next house in Farmington.

“It’s the largest house in the northeast,” says Douglas Elliman’s Jennifer Leahy, who brokered the deal. “There is a full state-of-the art night club with a casino room, two-billiards room, basketball court, recording studio and indoor pool. Outside there is a pool and grotto, a full basketball court, a pond fully stocked with koi, and pond house plus a helipad.”

According to reports, 50 Cent invested approximately $6 million renovating the 25-bedroom, 19-bathroom mansion. Over the years, various listings have hyped the home theater, “G-Unit” conference room, infinity pool, racquetball court, sauna, and the disco where the rapper threw provocative parties “In Da Club”. The 17-acre grounds also offer a mountain views, guesthouses and landscaped gardens.

Despite taking a loss, 50 Cent is okay. While his “Piggy Bank” isn’t as full as it once was, the prolific entertainer still lives comfortably with a lucrative back music catalog and a successful career as a writer, producer and actor on Starz’s crime drama series Power. That’s something he knows all about, with or without his Farmington mansion. He never lost that.

This post first appeared on Forbes.com. To see the original, click here.