Weird. I get that the icon wouldn't be gold if he's the active character - green as it should be. I did some testing for 3 scenarios. I felt that others should see his home as a gold star, ie. my other characters.
1) - Started Bridgeport from scratch. Matthew married Jun Xi (I think that's how it was spelled) a townie who was not a celeb. I then used Edit Town and went to 4 of the gold houses, checked the map view and this is what showed up.
- Counting Hamming all 5 were gold house icons on the map view from each residence pertaining to the individuals who knew Hamming. So the Belle house had 4 people living there and only one (Jupiter - the kid) knew Hamming. So the gold icon showed for him, but not the others.
- Hamming knew these people & gold icons showed in the map view for their homes & vice versa his:
Jupiter Belle - acquaintance
Old & New Glam (Alan Stanley & Emmy Starr) - acquaint & disliked
Striker (Ritchie) 3 residents - BFF
Littler (Reuben) 5 residents - enemy
2) Then I did a 2nd test with Matthew and a character I created. I made sure she knew someone from the Old & New Glam household and then she married and moved in with Matthew. The same held true as the first scenario.
3) Copied my original town and moved my character to one of the gold star homes. Guess what. Of the characters he knows they had gold icons and when I went to Hamming' home and checked the map view, my character had the gold star icon. My conclusion for what it's worth - those gold star lots/homes are per-designated and you must live in one of them to obtain that icon. Hope that helps clear things up, in case anyone else has this question. It sure was muddy for me. In the end, I'm keeping my penthouse. I really like it. I don't need a gold star that badly. Thanks for your input. It helped me figure it out.
Bear