Nicolas Cage & Other Celebrity Foreclosures

How does Nicolas Cage get behind on his mortgage payments? The same way other rich and famous people do.

"They've stretched themselves higher than they probably should have," says John Anderson, owner of Twin Oaks Realty in Minneapolis and a National Association of Realtors expert in foreclosures. Some couldn't keep up when the rates on their adjustable rate mortgages shot up, Anderson says. Price drops at the high end of the market were so steep that a sale wouldn't cover the debt. In other words, high-end homeowners face the same problems that plague the not-so-rich-and-famous.

Here are five of the biggest names on the of list homeowners falling to foreclosure. We've included a bit of info about the current markets where these stars once lived. You know, in case you'd like to hunt for a foreclosure deal in one of those tony neighborhoods.

Nicolas Cage

The star: He's an Academy Award-winning actor (for "Leaving Las Vegas"), nephew of multiple-Oscar-winning filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola and the former son-in-law of Elvis.

The house: Make that "houses." In November 2009, Cage lost two New Orleans homes -- one in the French Quarter, the other in the Garden District -- worth a combined $6.8 million, according to a CNNMoney.com report. Cage was behind $5.5 million in mortgage payments and he owed $151,730 in property taxes to the city of New Orleans. Regions Banks paid $4.5 million for the properties...More

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Swift Spells Slow Newsstand Doom

It's taken some time, but the surefire secret to selling magazines has finally been revealed: Put Lady Gaga on the cover. Women's Wear Daily reports that from Vanity Fair to Rolling Stone to Elle, many publications locked down their best-selling issues of 2010 when Gaga appeared in some form of disrobement on their covers -- a stat that probably isn't that foreign to Gaga, who announced her new album with a bare-bottom photo on New Year's Eve. Cosmopolitan's April issue featuring Gaga sold 1.7 million copies to make it that magazine's best seller, and her Rolling Stone cover moved 245,000 copies, nearly three times RS' average newsstand sales. It seems that oversaturation hasn't dampened people's interest in Gaga. Also faring well on newsstands: Rihanna, thanks in large part to her topless GQ cover...More

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