Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra’s Mansion Mold Lawsuit, and Other Celebrity Real Estate News

Mercury retrograde ended on January 1, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by the amount of home-related turmoil happening in the lives of this week’s featured celebrities. Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra have a mold issue, Stella McCartney is fighting with trees, and nobody wants to hear the phrase "atmospheric river" ever again. Let’s see what’s happening with our pals, a term which I, of course, use in a parasocial way.

• Over the past week, a major storm wreaked havoc across Southern California. The intense downpour and heavy winds caused flash flooding and mudslides, and left nearly a million people without power. On Monday, Los Angeles firefighters rescued 16 people in Studio City, the same neighborhood that houses Bruno Mars, George Clooney, and Zooey Deschanel; Harry and Meghan’s Montecito mansion was also under flood warning, as was Lady Gaga’s Malibu home. While reports haven’t surfaced about how the celebs’ homes in particular fared, or whether they were even there at the time of the warnings and evacuations, it’s another reminder that when it comes to increasingly common extreme weather events, everyone is at risk—even Bruno Mars.
  

• Stella McCartney might be next to heed warnings from mother nature, or at least those speaking on her behalf. The fashion designer (and sustainability advocate) plans to build a £5 million modernist mansion in the Scottish Highlands, a proposal the Highland Council’s forestry team objects to on the grounds that it would have an "adverse effect" on the area’s existing trees. McCartney and her husband would need to cut down Corsican pines to build, and the forestry team says the couple’s plans for an underground water system would also damage the remaining trees in the area. The home’s architects disagreed with those findings, but the forestry team doubled down on their request that the plans be revised. Why not be nice to the trees, Stella McCartney? I thought you loved them!

• Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra would probably rather deal with an upset forestry council than their current issue: mold. The couple has had to move out of the $20 million L.A. mansion they purchased in 2019 due to a mold infestation caused by extensive water damage. The issue is now the subject of a complicated legal battle: Jonas and Chopra are seeking, via their trustee, to have the sale of the home rescinded; they’re also looking for compensation for the loss of use, and reimbursement for the cost of repair. Fred Fenster, the lawyer who represents the trustee, spoke to Page Six about why the question of blame has caused a delay in the legal proceedings: "The trustee filed the lawsuit against the builder, the builder then filed a cross-complaint against subcontractors, the subcontractors then filed lawsuits against their people. It’s like everybody who put a pick or a shovel in the property is going to be involved, and it’s going to be up to the builder to decide and prove who was responsible for the defects." It’s enough to make you almost glad that you don’t own a $20 million L.A. mansion.

• However, it seems not owning a mansion doesn’t necessarily let you off the hook for financial lawsuits around it. According to legal filing obtained by TMZ, Lisa Marie Presley’s daughter Riley Keough is attempting to argue that she doesn’t have to pay back a loan given to her late mother in 2010 to purchase an 11-bedroom estate in Rotherfield, England. (Presley sold the estate in 2021.) Barclays Bank is seeking to recoup an outstanding balance of $1.6 million, but Keough—the sole trustee of her mother’s estate, which includes Graceland—argues that the statute of limitations has run out, and Barclays missed their deadline to file any claim. She also claims her mother only agreed to interest payments on the loan between 2010 and 2015, so her trust shouldn’t have to pay the outstanding principal. A judge has yet to rule on the decision.

• Don’t worry, it’s not all doom, and gloom, and lawsuits in recent celebrity home news. We have one uplifting update (if you consider something that happened to a celebrity’s friend in an episode of a home improvement reality series good news) (listen, times are tough). In a new clip from HGTV’s Celebrity IOU—a show in which celebrities, with the help of Drew and Jonathan Scott, aka the Property Brothers, gift housing upgrades to noncelebrities—Zoe Saldaña surprised her best friend and makeup artist with a modern kitchen makeover. We’re only privy to the kitchen island upgrade here, but I have no doubt the full reno will make us all want to befriend one celebrity around whom we can drop home upgrade hints. "Wow, Alexandra Daddario, sure would be nice if I could have a second bathroom." "Huh…is it me, Lee Pace, or would my closet fit more stuff if it were twice the size?"

Top photos courtesy (from left): Angela Weiss/AFP; Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images Entertainment; Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Entertainment

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