That Unreal Real Estate...

[Lady Dragonfly]

How much space would a human being (with money) need to feel cozy? Let’s find out.

"The home once again at the top of our list is Updown Court, a spanking-new palace in England. The residence has what one might call strong curb appeal, with 103 rooms, five swimming pools and a heated marble driveway. What it doesn't have is an owner in residence, as it was built on speculation in the hopes that a very wealthy, probably foreign, buyer will covet it.

Donald Trump's property for sale in Palm Beach has all the big-time extras one might expect. Pricey marble and 24-karat gold fixtures decorate bathrooms. There's a gargantuan fountain in the driveway and 475 feet of oceanfront out back.

Perhaps the biggest thing about the home, however, is its price tag: $125 million. And (sorry Donald) that price has already been trumped. A home in Aspen, Colo., is now listed at $135 million. Another home in Lake Tahoe, Nev., was recently listed at a flat $100 million.

At the Aspen property, owned by Saudi Prince Bandar, the main residence, finished in 1990, has over 56,000 square feet (about 1,000 square feet bigger than the White House). That's set on a 95-acre site. Think roughly twice the size of Boston Common. It even has its own car wash and gas pumps.

Need more space? The recently listed Lake Tahoe home, owned by Tommy Hilfiger Corp. co-founder Joel Horowitz, comes with 38,000 square feet of livable space on 210 acres. That includes a private trout-stocked lake and two par-three golf courses. Features also include a grand staircase replicating one built on the doomed ocean liner Titanic.

Owning properties like these requires a large bank account. Taxes alone on the Palm Beach property if sold at its current asking price would amount to more than $2 million annually, according to the Palm Beach County property appraiser Web site.

Trump, for his part, was surprised to hear his property had competition for the top spot in the U.S. "Who's at 135 (million)?" he asked.
He didn't seem sore, though.
"I think my property is worth more than $125 million," he said. "It's a bargain."


$100 million homes hit the market - Buying a House - MSN Real Estate

[fable]

Sorry if this sounds incredibly naive of me, but with so many people lacking even basic shelter in the world, and so many lacking more than a one room shack even in the US and UK, these kinds of "luxuries" and prices strike me as obscene. I sincerely hope that every single owner of those homes is forced to live in a squatters' "town" or a bargain basement tenement, or perhaps under a tent provided by a UN agency.

[dragon wench]

This is...disgusting.
Sure, it's no surprise, I knew this already. But... when I read something like that, I always think of the homeless, and the hungry..... Extravagant wealth like that simply galls me to the core.

Of course... going from the description and photos I've seen, it's also nauseatingly tacky.

Sorry for being a grouch, but if I hadn't said it, I can think of several people around here who likely would have

EDIT: er too late, Fable beat me to it

[Magrus]

Realistically, I only need my bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. I don't use my living room unless other people come over, ever. I think that's sick. I hope a bear comes in and tears those people apart and claims those houses for himself. In fact, I should join the circus and start training them in secret at night.

@ Fable, I've got one of those "bargain basement" deals. I quite like it to be honest. It is cozy, under $500 a month for everything besides phone and cable and internet and it is cooler down here in the summer than the other places around me. It's almost heaven. Better than my mothers 3 bedroom and two bathroom house. It's a good thing my tastes and preferences tend to run cheap in all but electronics.

[fable]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magrus @ Fable, I've got one of those "bargain basement" deals. I quite like it to be honest. It is cozy, under $500 a month for everything besides phone and cable and internet and it is cooler down here in the summer than the other places around me. It's almost heaven. Better than my mothers 3 bedroom and two bathroom house. It's a good thing my tastes and preferences tend to run cheap in all but electronics.

Mags, I probably should have been clearer when referring to bargain basement tenements. I meant the kind of place that's an absolute dive, owned by cockroaches, frequently without running water, certainly with holes in the walls, infested with rats, and likely to be used by derelicts of all sorts in larger urban areas. NYC's Bowery apartments came to mind when I was writing this.

[Lady Dragonfly]

To have a luxurious mansion is not enough. You have to maintain your property. All twenty bathrooms and three kitchens. And a square mile of a lawn is kinda not too much fun to mow. Poor rich guys, what a headache.

There are few exerpts from a curious article (Forbes, October 2006) titled

The price of privilege

Rising mortgage rates got you down? Concerned about renovation overruns? Tired of tipping the kid who mows the lawn? Please. Try living in a mega-mansion.
.....
These homeowners face thousands of dollars in heating and air-conditioning costs, landscaping fees that come to more than $1,000 a month and, in many cases, six-figure property taxes. They need housekeepers to make all the beds, scour the sinks and fold the laundry; nannies to look after the kids; and landscapers to prune trees, plant perennials and groom private golf greens. Tack on the salaries for personal chefs, drivers, and managers who keep the home — and the lives if its inhabitants — running smoothly, and you've got a more realistic idea of what it costs to run a multi-million-dollar home.
.....
To take care of all that space, some affluent homeowners are enlisting the help of household and estate managers to supervise the staff and communicate with vendors and delivery people.
.....
"There is more demand for higher-skilled trained professionals," says Mary Louise Starkey, chief executive of the Denver-based Starkey International Institute for Household Management. "Salaries are higher. Ten years ago, a household manager would probably be earning about $50,000 a year. An entire budget was $250,000. Now it can easily be $800,000 a year."

Here is the pay range for the above-mentioned professionals:

Driver: $40,000-70,000
Groundskeeper: $60,000-125,000
Housekeeper: $45,000-60,000
House manager: $60,000-80,000
Personal assistant: $60,000-100,000
Private Chef: $60.000-150,000
Nanny: $8-12 an hour.

Back to the article in Forbes:

But it's not a cake-walk, since these homeowners are often "people in the world of business who have moved mountains," Starkey says. No desire is too great — or too idiosyncratic.

Starkey recalls a client who owned a massive Connecticut spread but used it only about 60 days out of the year. In the state, homeowners install fences to keep the deer off their property. But this family found the fences obtrusive. So upon entering the estate, their driver called the groundskeeper, who removed them for the duration of the family's stay.

Indeed, "service is in the eye of the beholder," says Starkey, "and it has to be in their style."

It's no secret that the rich are getting richer. This year the Forbes 400 list was made up entirely of billionaires, and the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances shows that nearly 40 percent of the country's wealth is held by the richest 1 percent.

[Magrus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fable Mags, I probably should have been clearer when referring to bargain basement tenements. I meant the kind of place that's an absolute dive, owned by cockroaches, frequently without running water, certainly with holes in the walls, infested with rats, and likely to be used by derelicts of all sorts in larger urban areas. NYC's Bowery apartments came to mind when I was writing this.

*shudders* Mine is in no way like that. My place is just cheap, but functional, and frankly, larger and better kept than most places nearby. Funny how the upper middle class frowns on the cheap stuff, even when it's better. ^_^

Quote:

It's no secret that the rich are getting richer. This year the Forbes 400 list was made up entirely of billionaires, and the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances shows that nearly 40 percent of the country's wealth is held by the richest 1 percent.

It won't stay that way. Wait until 60% start going hungry or homeless, you'll have an instantaneous need for personal armies amongst the rich. With a dozen able bodied people I could take this town if I really wanted to. I wouldn't be able to hold it against an army or something, but I really could if I wanted to. You wait, if the economy keeps going downhill...things could get messy. People do crazy stuff when starving or freezing to death.

The city about 15 miles west of me is a good example of extremes of wealth. Old mansions and old money. The families that started Paychecks, Xerox, Kodak, Bausch and Laumb are all around here. The mob still runs stuff around here too, as much as people deny it and it's hidden. Rochester is amongst the worst in violent crimes in the US. The rich are disdainful of the poor, and the poor are desperate. Fences don't keep people out, and guns don't scare away people who are desperate either. That mansion someone owns can end up as a home for a hundred bums and seem like paradise to them. Those kinds of houses will be definate targets if things slide downhill a good bit further.

[dragon wench]

Quote:

These homeowners face thousands of dollars in heating and air-conditioning costs, landscaping fees that come to more than $1,000 a month and, in many cases, six-figure property taxes. They need housekeepers to make all the beds, scour the sinks and fold the laundry; nannies to look after the kids; and landscapers to prune trees, plant perennials and groom private golf greens. Tack on the salaries for personal chefs, drivers, and managers who keep the home — and the lives if its inhabitants — running smoothly, and you've got a more realistic idea of what it costs to run a multi-million-dollar home. ..... To take care of all that space, some affluent homeowners are enlisting the help of household and estate managers to supervise the staff and communicate with vendors and delivery people.

Awwww.... Life surely sucks if you are obscenely wealthy...

@Magrus,
Yes... Hence at least part of the reason why nations have social welfare programmes. Because when peoples' backs are up against the wall and they are desperate, they will act. That is what happened in both Canada and the US during the 1920s and 1930s...serious social unrest owing to the fact that many people were in dire straits. They were also unemployed, and so had time to further sow discontent.