This home belongs to 80-year-old movie producer Sidney Kimmel, the billionaire founder and chairman of Jones Apparel. He reportedly paid $5.5 million for this roughly 5-acre property in 1993.
The next year, Donald Trump raised the ante by $50 million with a newly renovated 6.5-acre compound directly on the ocean in Palm Beach priced at $125 million. Three Ponds slipped down a notch, as did the former No. 2, a $70 million penthouse at the Pierre in New York City. The 2006 Ultimate list jumped to 1,000 homes. Even so, at $8 million, the least expensive still exceeded the prior year.
Trump's $125 million listing also broke the $100 million threshold, and the 2007 Ultimate Homes featured three homes priced at $125 million or higher, including a $155 million compound in Montana, complete with a helicopter. Rounding out the top 10 in 2007 were two $60 million estates, the legendary Robert Taylor Ranch occupying 112 acres in Brentwood, Calif., and a 42-acre estate in Lloyd's Neck on Long Island's gold coast.
Prices Today
”We're seeing a reaction in the real estate market to the extreme wealth that is being created today. It's not just that people are wealthier, but they are coming into wealth earlier in life, and they are looking to express themselves,” says Boomsma. “It is a little like we saw a hundred years ago when industrialists like Rockefeller and Carnegie were building amazing estates. Now we are seeing people with similar amounts of wealth looking to create these same kinds of properties” in locations all over the world, he explains.
Several on our list this year find their roots in this era. Hillandale, an English-style stone manor overlooking a private lake, was built in the early 1900s and actually lies in two states with 262 acres that span the Connecticut, New York border. Historic Dunnellen Hall in Greenwich and Beverly House, the Hearst property, were both built prior to 1920.
Recent information from Sotheby's affiliates shows that luxury buyers are indeed wealthier and younger than buyers five years ago, with a high proportion being described as self-made, according to George Ballantyne, senior vice president for Sotheby's International Realty.
As spectacular as these homes are, prices still generate the most interest and discussion. “The numbers may seem high now, but 20 years from now they won't seem high at all,” says Joyce Rey, who heads the Estates Division for Coldwell Banker Previews International in Los Angeles. Rey has set a few price records of her own, including a 1978, $4.2 million sale that doubled the highest price ever paid for a California residential property. At the time, she recalls, everyone was surprised, but later the property sold for quite a bit more. “There is no doubt that expensive homes usually turn out to be good investments,” she says.
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