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Michael Jackson’s 2,700-acre Neverland Ranch has been sold for $22m to a billionaire investor Mr Burke for a quarter of its initial price of $100m in 2015.

Since then Neverland, north of Santa Barbara city, has been on and off the market, listed most recently last year for the lower price of $31m.

Jackson originally paid about $19.5m for Neverland, which he named after a fictional island where children never grow up in ‎JM Barrie’s Peter Pan story.

He bought Neverland in 1987, making it his home during the height of his fame.

The ranch was turned into an entertainment complex, building a zoo and fairground on site, where he regularly entertained children and their families.

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Neverland became the centre of various investigations into child sexual assault allegations against Jackson in the 1990s and 2000s, a claim he denied

Jackson was tried and acquitted of allegations he abused a 13-year-old boy at the ranch in 2005,

Since then he never returned to Neverland and four years later, in June 2009, Jackson died at another home in Los Angeles of  a cardiac arrest induced by a drug overdose.

Since his death the former pop star has been the subject of further abuse allegations, including those made in a documentary called Leaving Neverland in 2019.

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