Montecito Neighbors Are Reportedly Poking Fun at Prince Harry, Meghan Markle for Their 'Outdated' 2003-Era Kitchen

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are reportedly being mocked by some neighbours in Montecito, California, over the dated look of the home they bought in 2020, with one commentator claiming the couple's kitchen still feels stuck in 2003. The claim, which centres on the Sussexes' £10 million property in the Santa Barbara area, is based on remarks relayed by journalist Tom Sykes and is not independently confirmed.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle moved to the United States after stepping back from royal duties in 2020 and later settled in Montecito with their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. Their home, known as the Chateau of Riven Rock, sits in the historic Riven Rock neighbourhood and was built in 2003 in a French Provençal style, on land linked to the original McCormick family estate from the 1890s.

Prince Harry, Meghan Markle And The Montecito Perception Problem

The latest chatter is less about the couple themselves than what their house is said to project. In affluent American enclaves, homes are a kind of social language, and according to Express, the Sussexes may be speaking in an accent their neighbours find oddly old-fashioned.

Sykes said on his Royalist podcast that someone living fairly near the couple had described the property they occupy as 'a sort of laughing stock.' He went further, saying that in the US, when a billionaire buys a house for $14 million, the expectation is often to knock it down or at least remodel it.

That is his characterisation, not an established fact, but it captures the air of snobbery that tends to cling to Montecito property talk. There is also a faintly absurd quality to the criticism.

The house is hardly a modest suburban relic. It spans five acres and includes nine bedrooms, 16 bathrooms, a pool, tennis court, guesthouse, spa, wine cellar, gym, library and tea house. It also has a chicken coop the couple call 'Archie's Chick Inn,' one of the few features of the estate that has managed to cut through as something lighter and more personal.

What seems to be drawing the jibes is that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have not substantially updated the aesthetic of a mansion built just over two decades ago. In celebrity property terms, that can apparently pass for neglect. In ordinary life, of course, most people would call it living in an enormous house and getting on with it.

Why Prince Harry, Meghan Markle's Home Draws Such Scrutiny

A large part of the fascination lies in how rarely the couple let the public see inside their private world. They have offered only selective glimpses of the Montecito property, including footage in their Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan and occasional appearances on social media. That limited access has created the usual vacuum, quickly filled by speculation, projection and a fair amount of cattiness.

The house itself comes with a certain inherited grandeur. It was designed by Terry Cunningham and sits in one of Montecito's better-known residential pockets.

The Sussexes paid around £10 million for it in 2020, a figure that has followed the property ever since and now seems to shape expectations about how aggressively it ought to have been renovated.

There is no direct response according to Express from representatives for Prince Harry or Meghan Markle on the remarks made about the house. Without an on-record comment from the couple or their team, what remains is a second-hand account of neighbourhood gossip, sharpened by the familiar appetite for stories that reduce celebrity lives to décor choices and status anxiety.

Still, such stories persist because homes often become stand-ins for broader judgments. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have spent years being scrutinised for how they live, what they spend and how comfortably they appear to inhabit a wealthy California existence after leaving royal life behind.

A kitchen said to look 'outdated' may sound trivial, and it is trivial, but it also serves as a neat little vessel for a bigger argument about image, aspiration and whether the Sussexes are admired, envied or simply picked apart because they remain useful targets.

Not that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have committed some ghastly design offence, but that even the cabinets in Montecito can become part of the running commentary around them when the public mood turns snide and the walls, however grand, are never quite thick enough.