50 Cent

50 Cent Selling 53-Room Connecticut Mansion

By Stephen M. Silverman

Originally posted Thursday May 03, 2007 03:10 PM EDT

50 Cent Photo by: Tony Barson / WireImage

Rapper 50 Cent's 53-room Connecticut estate – once owned by Mike Tyson – is on the market.

The 20-year-old, 50,000-plus-sq.-ft. residence, which cost Fitty (real name: Curtis James Jackson III) $4.1 million in 2003, is located in Farmington and rests on 17 acres, the Hartford Courant first reported.

It features about 19 bedrooms, 37 bathrooms, a gym, billiard rooms, racquetball courts and a disco. The asking price is unknown, but local brokers – who tell the paper the house could be a small hotel were it not for zoning laws – estimate that it is more than $10 million.

After 50 Cent bought the property, he spent up to $10 million renovating it, including the addiiton of a 40-person hot tub situated in a grotto, brokers familiar with the property tell PEOPLE.

"He's put a lot into it, and it's all very tasteful, except the stripper poles," Curt Clemens Sr., owner of Century 21 Clemens & Sons in Hartford, tells the Courant. Clemens, who represented the property when it was owned by Tyson, said he toured the house a few months ago but is not handling the sale.

On the down side, "It's an impossible house to use because of its gargantuan size," Clemens says. "Only a very minute portion of the population could afford to buy it, maintain it and would want it."

50 Cent's mansion in Farmington, Conn. Photo by: Justin Sutcliffe / SIPA PRESS

Past owners of the house, which was built in 1985, apparently have not had the best of luck. According to a timeline in the Courant, first owner Benjamin Sisti, a founder of Colonial Realty, spent $2.3 million on the residence – and he was later jailed for bilking investors out of millions.

The mansion was bought by a bank at a foreclosure auction for $3.5 million and in 1993 sold it for $2.7 million to Lithuanian businessman Romas Martsinkiavitchous – who faced bankruptcy a year later, according to the Courant.

Tyson bought the house in 1996 for $2.8 million, and listed it the following year for $22 million. After six years on the market – and a price cut to $4.1 million – the house was awarded to Tyson's second wife, Monica Turner, in their divorce settlement. 50 Cent bought it from her in September 2003.

With reporting by KC BAKER