It started in a 672-square-foot house on Jackson Street in Gary, Indiana. Eleven people. Four rooms. Joe and Katherine Jackson bought it in 1950 for $8,500. That tiny house in one of America’s toughest cities is where Michael Jackson began.
By the time the Jackson 5 signed with Motown, the whole family relocated to a large estate on Hayvenhurst Avenue in Encino, California. Michael lived there for seventeen years. Thriller and Bad were written inside those walls. He stayed not because he wanted to, but because he told people directly — he was afraid of being alone. He couldn’t leave his mother.
In 1988 he finally did leave. He bought Neverland Ranch for $19.5 million — 2,800 acres in Santa Barbara County with a private zoo, two railways, a movie theater, and rollercoasters. He built the childhood he never had.
Take A Look Inside Neverland
Then the 2003 raids came. Police searched every room. Michael never went back. He moved to Bahrain, then Las Vegas, renting properties he never owned, staying in hotels with his three children, never settling anywhere for long.
By 2008 he was living in a rented Spanish Colonial estate in Las Vegas, nicknamed the Thriller Villa. A year later, he was in a rented house on Carolwood Drive in Los Angeles, rehearsing for This Is It.
He died there on June 25, 2009. In a house that wasn’t his.
The Full Account Of His Houses Throughout His Life.
Every home Michael Jackson ever lived in tells the same story. He spent his whole life looking for a place where he could finally be free. He never quite found it.