It’s a Buyers Market for Luxury Homes

Luxury Homes
March 19, 2018

Now may be the time to grab one of those luxury homes you’ve been watching. The price of luxury homes varies from market to market. In some, it could be $700,000 and others over $2 million. In the San Diego luxury home market, we see luxury homes priced north of $2 million languishing on the market a little longer than ones priced below that number. On the other hand, that…

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Hidden Castle for $399,000

hidden castle
January 29, 2016

Though not exactly my taste, this hidden castle in Newport, Oregon is absolutely magnificent–and beyond amazing. Yahoo reports that this average-looking suburban home hides inside a Renaissance-era castle, with hand-carved columns, exotics woods, 400-1000-year old priceless furnishings, tapestries, gilded ceilings and precious luxury fabrics that run $150 per yard. In fact, the dining room draperies are estimated to have cost around $14,000. It is, in other words, a hidden castle. The…

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Jumbo Loans Boosting Luxury Home Sales

Jumbo Loans are Back with a Bang to Fuel the Luxury Real Estate Market by Selena Cowell Is the luxury real estate market on the mend? Home sales and prices are gradually rising in those places where the wealthy would like to plant their mailboxes–such as Chicago’s North Shore, the San Francisco Bay area, the haute Hamptons and the Rancho Santa Fe and La Jolla areas near San Diego. According…

July 19, 2013
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Most Expensive Rental in the U.S.

Beverly House is most expensive rental in U.S
March 10, 2013

by Roberta Murphy–At $600,000 per month, the Beverly Mansion in Beverly Hills, is most likely contender for most expensive luxury rental in the nation.  And it’s got an interesting history as well. It was in the Beverly Mansion that the infamous horse-head-in-bed scene was filmed for The Godfather. John F. Kennedy and his bride honeymooned in the Beverly Mansion. Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston filmed scenes for The Bodyguard here. Marion…

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Between Rancho Santa Fe and the Beach…

Home Near Rancho Santa Fe
February 24, 2013

Between Rancho Santa Fe and the beaches in Encinitas sits an irreplaceable plot of land that surely belongs to another century. The wide and expansive rear lawn backs up to pasture, wetlands and forest beyond.  Family of deer come grazing and cows come to visit when the lawnmower is at work. Late afternoons, it is not unusual to see colorful hot air balloons gliding across the sky–and the stars at…

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The Luxury of a $500,000 Closet

luxurious
February 9, 2013

by Roberta Murphy We’ve written about luxury closets in the past, but these days some are spending up  to $500,000 for a luxe master closet that might include a champagne refrigerator, sound system, glass-enclosed display cabinets, wet bar or even a breakfast area. Gone are the simpler days of a luxurious dressing room. The master closet area has become a destination room. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday on four…

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Want to Live in a Most Expensive City?

Bargain Townhome
November 8, 2012

by Roberta Murphy Ah… the luxury of being able to comfortably live in one of the most expensive cities in the world (so why not divide one’s time between them–just for bragging rights?:-) CNBC just released their 10 most expensive cities in the world to live where they included 200 factors such as costs for a 2-bedroom luxury apartment, utilities, transportation, food, clothing, entertainment and so on. It might come…

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Hong Kong Luxury Real Estate on a Roll

Hong Kong Flat
October 15, 2009

by Scott Murphy   $57 Million as a sales price for a Hong Kong apartment? That’s a price that would make the most expensive areas around the world such as San Diego, Los Angeles, New York and even London cringe. This five-bedroom, 6158 square foot luxury duplex suite located at one of Hong Kong’s most prestigious addresses was bought by an unidentified Chinese buyer. And if you think that is…

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Luxury Hotels and Timeshares Struggling?

by Roberta Murphy We are seeing luxury scaled down on many fronts, and luxury hotels and timeshare resorts are taking it on the chin as well. For the first five months of this year, according the the Wall Street Journal, U.S. hotel occupancy has declined 53 percent. This is the lowest drop in occupancy since 1987, when Smith Travel Research began tracking these numbers. While both luxury and budget hotels…

June 25, 2009
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Even Luxury Home Owners can be Victims of Fraud

by Roberta Murphy It’s a sad fact of life, but unscrupulous vultures are always ready to pick at the flesh of the most financially distressed–which more frequently these days includes the owners of luxury real estate. Over on our San Diego real estate blog we report that San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis is asking San Diego Realtors to help her track down and prosecute real estate fraudsters operating…

April 5, 2009
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