None of Tyler Perry’s houses and properties are subtle. They run a wide gamut of designs and aesthetics, including an Atlanta mega-mansion with an underground ballroom, an extravagant film studio lot where Black Panther was shot, and a luxe log cabin in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The actor, director, screenwriter, and producer has also bought and sold a number of sprawling estates in Los Angeles. (He famously hosted Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at his Beverly Hills villa at the start of the pandemic.) But his generous spending isn’t all just for show: Perry has been deliberate in selecting the sites for his real estate expansion, choosing a number of properties that have ties to slavery and racial injustice as part of a slow, steady march toward reclaiming these places. Additionally, he’s donated millions to help seniors in Atlanta at risk of losing their homes, and, in 2023, he even helped build a new home for Josephine Wright, a 93-year-old woman fighting to hold onto a property that had been in her family since the Civil War. Perry truly puts his money where his mouth is when it comes to “building [his] own” table for Black folks, as he famously said during a 2019 BET Awards speech.
Below, we’ve rounded up some of Perry’s most well-known homes, and the powerful stories behind them.
Atlanta-area chateau
The now-billionaire—Forbes values Perry’s 2024 net worth at $1.4 billion—grew up in a house situated between the projects and mansions in New Orleans. (He once told The New York Times that living between these two extremes “became my metaphor for life.”) After he began to make it big in the play circuit in the late ’90s, he made one of his first investments in Atlanta real estate with the purchase of a parcel in Fairborn, Georgia, in April 2001. He paid just $62,661 for the land and built what he would later tell Ebony magazine was a “testament to the rewards of faith.” He named the palatial estate Avec Château, French for “with home,” as a nod to his previous circumstances being unhoused, living out of his car on the streets of Atlanta. It was a 17,252-square-foot behemoth featuring six bedrooms and six-and-a-half bathrooms.
“I wanted this house to be vast,” he told the publication. “I wanted to make a statement, not in any grand or boastful way, but to let people know what God can do when you believe.” The 26-room home featured a double-height Italian marble foyer with a large sculpture of a horse, a ballroom-size “grand salon,” and a paneled library with a crystal chandelier, among other extravagant living spaces. There was also a pool with a waterfall, tennis courts, and two prayer gardens. Perry listed the property for $3.695 million in 2009. He ultimately sold it for $2.19 million in 2018.
Beverly Hills villa
The creator of the Madea movie franchise next paid $4.3 million for 22 acres of land in the ultra exclusive Beverly Ridge Estates in 2004. He then spent many years and many millions building an impressive 24,000-square-foot Tuscan-style villa on the grounds. The luxurious pad features eight bedrooms and 12 bathrooms, and has played host to a number of A-list celebrities, including Barack Obama, Oprah, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Perry opened up his home to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in early 2020, after they stepped down from their royal duties, a connection largely believed to have been made by their mutual friend Oprah.
“We needed a house and he offered security as well,” Markle said in a now-famous interview with Oprah in 2021. “So it gave us breathing room to try to figure out what we are going to do.” Perry told Vanity Fair that, in exchange for offering his luxury home to the young family, Harry and Meghan made him their daughter Lilibet’s godfather. “I had to take a minute to take that in,” the filmmaker said. “And I thought, I’d be honored. I’d absolutely be honored.” The property is currently worth around $18 million, according to county records.
Buckhead mega-mansion
In 2005, Perry made headlines when he paid $9 million for 17 acres along the Chattahoochee River, just outside Atlanta. That’s because the property previously belonged to segregationist Moreton Rolleston, a prominent lawyer and the proprietor of the Heart of Atlanta Motel, a business that refused service to African Americans prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Rolleston and his motel lost a Supreme Court case that declared the act to be unconstitutional that same year.) After purchasing the Buckhead estate, Perry tore down the existing home and spent the next three years constructing a 34,688-square-foot mansion with seven bedrooms and 14 bathrooms. The palatial residence featured a motor court with a fountain, a parlor with leather walls, a home theater with unique vaulted ceilings, and an underground ballroom with Brazilian cherry flooring. A separate guesthouse, a five-car garage, a private helipad, and a 70,000 gallon infinity pool were found elsewhere on the grounds. Perry sold the estate to televangelist David Turner for a record-breaking $17.5 million in 2016. Steve Harvey then reportedly bought it for $15 million in 2020.
Woodsy Wyoming retreat
Also in 2005, the Diary of a Mad Black Woman star purchased land in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he began to build a log cabin as a vacation home. The media mogul has shared stunning sunset photos from his deck there, and in a 2019 interview with Ellen DeGeneres, he shared that he’d encountered a grizzly bear in his backyard, as well as a moose. “You were here first, I’m not gonna bother you,” he recalled jokingly telling the bear. “I’m gonna stay over here and if you want the backyard, that’s fine. That firepit I built and spent all that money for, you go right ahead, it’s all yours. Beer’s in the fridge.” Other details about Perry’s rustic getaway are scant, but it’s believed that he still owns this residence.
Ultramodern Hollywood Hills contemporary
The following year, Perry paid $9.6 million for an ultramodern, 9,725-square-foot contemporary behemoth, designed by SPF:architects and located on more than a third of an acre in the Bird Streets area of Hollywood Hills. Tyler Perry’s new Los Angeles property featured four bedrooms and six bathrooms, a sauna, a glass-floor catwalk that looked down into an impressive wine cellar, a billiard room with a window gazing directly into the swimming pool, a nightclub with a bar and a disco ball, and a three-car garage. Perry first listed the home for $13.25 million in 2010 to no avail; he finally sold it for $11.25 million three years later.
Bahamas private island
You don’t get to be known as media mogul Tyler Perry without being a little extravagant sometimes. Perry treated himself to a pair of private islands for his 40th birthday in 2009, purchasing the 25-acre White Bay Cay and an adjacent seven-acre island in the Bahamas to ring in his landmark year. The larger of the two islands was listed for $7 million, according to The Wall Street Journal, though it’s unclear how much he ended up paying in total for the purchase of both islands. Perry built a Balinese-style villa and neighboring bungalows on the island, which was previously uninhabited, and even took flying lessons just so that he could take his private plane to and from his new pad, People reported. “There was nothing there when I bought it,” he told Architectural Digest of the Exuma property. “I had to bring in the water and electricity—even my own palm trees from Miami.”
Tyler Perry studios
Six years later, in 2015, Perry purchased a 330-acre lot on a historic former military base in Atlanta with the intentions of creating his most ambitious endeavor yet: Tyler Perry Studios. “At heart, I’m a frustrated builder,” Perry told AD during a tour of the space. “I think I would have been an architect if I hadn’t gone into entertainment.” His studios are built on the grounds of Fort McPherson, a former military base that served the Confederate Army, a fact of immense significance to Perry. “When I built my studio, I built it in a neighborhood that is one of the poorest Black neighborhoods in Atlanta so that young Black kids could see that a Black man did that, and they can do it too,” he said while accepting his 2019 BET Award. “The studio was once a Confederate Army base, which means that there were Confederate soldiers on that base, plotting and planning on how to keep 3.9 million Negroes enslaved. Now that land is owned by one Negro.” Black Panther was one of the first films shot at the studios, and the impressive lot includes a near-exact replica of the White House, an airport terminal, two baseball fields, a strip mall, a residential neighborhood, and a golf course.
Sleek Beverly Hills glass house
Perry’s next purchase had a decidedly different aesthetic: In 2017, he purchased a sleek glass Beverly Hills pad with stunning views of Downtown Los Angeles. He paid $14.5 million for the 4.5-acre estate, previously owned by billionaire physicist, philanthropist, and inventor Alfred E. Mann, who built the property in 1992. The pad measured 17,245 square feet, with 10 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms throughout. Perry reportedly only bought the home as an investment property. He flipped it back onto the market for $17 million just five months later without many renovations or improvements, selling it to fellow multihyphenate Pharrell Williams for $15.6 million. The home featured pyramid-shaped skylights, stone marble stairs, a koi pond, and a resort-style swimming pool with a slide and grotto. The former mentor for The Voice held onto the glass house for a few years before selling it for $14 million in 2020.
Sprawling Atlanta estate
As chef Joshua Weissman welcomes AD into his Austin home in the latest episode of Open Door, he jokes that he doesn’t actually live in a kitchen.
Two years after selling off his record-breaking Atlanta estate, Perry bought another plot of land just outside the city in 2018. Though it’s unclear how much the billionaire spent on the 1,200 acre property, he is in the process of constructing a 35,000-square-foot Gilded Age–style mansion there, as well as a second, smaller structure, possibly to be used as a guesthouse. There is also an enormous lap pool under construction, and what appears to be an airport runway, which makes sense given Perry’s pilot skills. Other plans for the property include an organic farm with horses and other animals; TMZ reports that Perry wants his young son to grow up appreciating the land and the animals. As an added perk, the new estate is located very close to the mogul’s 330-acre Tyler Perry Studios for an easy commute.
Hilton Head helping hand
In 2023, Perry extended his generosity to 93-year-old Josephine Wright, who was reportedly in a legal battle with a property development company that was suing her over land that had been in her family since the Civil War. After hearing that Wright was at risk of losing her Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, home, the media mogul stepped in and pledged to help ensure she could stay on the property, which she called “a sanctuary of my family.” He had a five-bedroom modular home built and then transferred to a part of Wright’s 1.8-acre estate. According to TMZ, the residence includes plenty of leisurely living spaces, including a game room, a great room, and a porch.
