A top sporting property in Western Montana listed at $14.5 million. Wonder if they need a caretaker?

AT LONG LAST, THE MARKET FOR LUXURY REAL estate is coming back to life.

Prices for primary residences, which plunged at least 20% from the peak in 2007, appear to have bottomed. In some of the snappiest locations, scattered bidding wars are breaking out and prices are turning upward.

In Greenwich, Conn., realty brokers say, the final months of 2009 were almost record-setters for sales volume, as two years of pent-up demand was unleashed. Even the megadeal is back. In Beverly Hills, film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg just plunked down $35 million for an 8,700-square-foot home on six acres.

There's nothing like a stabilized economy and a huge rebound in stocks to send folks looking for the perfect manse. The return of hefty Wall Street bonuses hasn't hurt, either.

View Slideshow

 

With all that in mind, and with summer just around the corner, Barron's sized up the market for upscale second homes, one of the greatest luxuries of all. We scoped out dozens of deluxe enclaves across the country, speaking with brokers, homeowners and others. Our conclusion: Now could be an excellent time to buy.

Prices are way down -- 40% off the peak in some locations. Seemingly at or near bottom, they are starting to attract the first wave of bargain hunters -- and not just families in need of R&R. Hard-nosed investors also are on the prowl, says Jan Reuter, head of residential real estate at U.S. Trust Bank of America Private Wealth Management: "We've seen an uptick in buying in just the last couple of months."

***See the list here.***

via @FizzyDuck

Single Hauz

[Image: The Single Hauz by front architects].

Like an inhabitable billboard, the Single Hauz %u2013 by Poland's front architects %u2013 proposes cantilevering domestic living space from a central mast. The house can then be installed above a variety of ground conditions, from the middle of a meadow to an urban core.
Personally... I'd put it in a lake.

[Images: The Single Hauz by front architects].

The cool thing is that I've actually spent the last 11 months of my life staring up at some of the Herculean billboard structures out here in Los Angeles; they tower over intersections on streets from Venice to Sepulveda and often seem as large as houses.
But how much weight could a billboard carry?

[Image: The Single Hauz by front architects].

Could you build a house up there?
Could you use the mast-and-cantilever model for other types of architectural structures, whether those are single-family houses %u2013 whole cul-de-sacs lined with modernist billboard homes! %u2013 or even restaurants and public libraries?
The Single Hauz shows how beautiful the effect could be.

[Image: The Single Hauz by front architects].

For more projects by front architects, check out their website (though I couldn't find any information in English).

(With huge thanks to a commenter named munditia, who first pointed out this project to me).

Posted Friday, August 24, 2007 %u2022 34 comment(s)

Click to enlarge picture

The San Diego housing market has seen the greatest three-month drop in asking prices between October and December 2009. // Photo courtesy of the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau.

more on Forbes.com

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• The 10 highest state income tax rates for 2009

If you've been holding your breath for that home-price upswing that the more optimistic forecasters predicted last year, you're out of luck. The real-estate slide — though it's now a mild one as opposed to the double-digit drops of 2008 — isn't going to abate soon. Home prices

are dipping nationwide, down 1.4% by one measure, and will inch perilously close to their January 2009 bottom, according to a new report from Altos Research, a Mountain View, Calif.-based research firm.

Some metros have it worse than others. San Diego has seen the greatest three-month drop in asking prices of the 27 markets Altos tracks, falling 7.3% between October and December 2009. In that city, volatility is the name of the game. Prices drifted upward for the first half of 2009, prodded by new sellers who were encouraged by modest bumps in pricing. But when fall's seasonal slump hit, the trend reversed dramatically.

Although home prices are always weakest in the fall — they typically peak in the spring and hold steady through the summer — Altos' numbers reflect an unsteady market in general. Its 10-city composite, which it uses as a proxy for the national market, shows a 1.4% drop since October. When stimulus measures like the first-time homebuyer tax credit (which expires in June) and historically low interest rates abate, the market could continue to suffer.

• Video: What's depressing home prices?

“The combination of an expired tax credit and rising interest rates

would be a catalyst for retesting the (January 2009) bottom,” says Mike Simonsen, CEO of Altos.

Bing: Search & decide U.S. cities with the best commute Has housing market bottomed yet? Learn about the homebuyer tax credit

Behind the numbers
For our list of cities with the fastest-falling home prices, we used Altos' January market update, which looks at asking prices, inventory and days on the market single-family homes — but not condominiums — in 27 of the country's closely watched real-estate markets. It uses homes for sale in each city's Metropolitan Statistical Area — a census-defined area that the federal government uses to collect statistics — for its data.

Charlotte, N.C., the city with third-greatest drop in asking prices (falling 4.4% to a median price of $248,543 in December), suffered from exuberant pricing early in the year. But the Wall Street collapse hit Charlotte hard, as it's a financial hub that is headquarters to Bank of America Corp

., among other major banks. Now the area's housing market is suffering.

Home Prices on Shaky Ground?

View more MSN videosGo to CNBC

“In Charlotte, at the beginning of the year, new sellers thought they would get a nice premium, and they were pricing above the median price,” says Scott Sambucci, vice president of data analytics at Altos Research. "They were reading all those articles about the national housing market saying, ‘That's not happening here.’ But there was a lag effect.”

Miami is the only city of the 27 markets Altos tracks that saw asking prices rise over the last three months. Prices there were up 2% from October to a median price of $494,992. The reasons for this are mixed: While the numbers are somewhat promising, Miami's good fortune is also a reflection of just how long it took for the hard-hit Florida housing market to regain its footing. And even with the recent upturn, it's the city where homes sit on the market for the longest by far. Homes here stay for sale for a median of eight months. Not to mention that Altos' analysis reflects only single-family homes — not condominiums, a section of the Miami's real-estate market that has yet to stabilize.

Therefore, Miami's upswing should be taken skeptically, says Simonsen. “Miami lagged behind everything else, and so is only now starting to feel the impact of the stimulus.”

But a decision on Jan. 7 by mortgage entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to begin backing some Miami condominium loans that they previously hadn't touched might help rejuvenate sales.

What's your home worth?

Big Apple trouble
Most markets have seen price drops of less than 3%, and that's true for New York City, where home prices have fallen by 2.3%, to a median of $638,082. But there may be trouble in store for the Big Apple, which peaked late and whose real-estate market was more directly affected by the Wall Street implosion of late 2008. Its inventory of listed homes has increased by 4.2% since October. Phoenix is the only other market that saw inventory rates rise during a slow season in which the rate typically falls. Slimming down inventory is necessary to curb price declines.

In New York, tough real-estate laws mean that foreclosures take roughly six months to complete, and post-foreclosure sales don't usually close for an additional four months after that. This has kept buyers away and hamstrung real-estate recovery in the area.

”In states with complex foreclosure laws, the recovery is clearly being delayed,” says Simonsen. “For example, there are investment funds that will buy in Texas and California, but won't buy in New York because it takes so long to foreclose — and then you have to go to court.”

New York prices likely have much further to fall.

Although the rate of decline has mellowed from stomach-turning to gentle nationwide, these numbers show that any jubilation over a recovered real-estate market would be premature.

Top 5 cities with the fastest-falling home prices

Rank	Metro area	% change over 3 months
1.	San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, Calif.	-7.30%
2.	Salt Lake City, Ut.	-6.30%
3.	Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, N.C.-S.C.	-4.40%
4.	Denver-Aurora, Co.	-4.10%
5.	Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, Or.-Wa.	-3.60%

Click here to see Forbes' full list of cities with the fastest-falling home prices.