Even More Expensive House in the U.S.

On July 3rd I wrote about the most expensive house for sale in the U.S. only to wake up today and find out I am out of date and $30 million dollars low.

Now a Beverly Hills mansion that once belonged to publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst is on the market for $165 million. It is believed to be the nation’s priciest residential listing. The six-and-a-half acre estate has three swimming pools, 29 bedrooms, a movie theater, a disco and separate residence for the security staff.

According to an article in the Independent newspaper, in reality, no single residence has sold for a nine-figure sum before. The record remains the $94m which was paid for the Bel-Air home of the former telecoms mogul Gary Winnick in 2001.

July 12, 2007 – Late Breaking News -The $94 Million record is now toast with a record-breaking sale of a residential property in East Hampton (NY) for $103 million. The new U.S. record sale was supposed to be hush-hush; but, the news was quickly out that Schlumberger Oil fortune heiress Adelaide de Menil and her husband Ted Carpenter had sold the ocean front property to Ron Baron, founder of Baron Funds Investment Company.

AP Aerial view of the property.

Open House Canceled
There will be no open houses for the merely curious. Buyers expressing serious interest will be screened by Mr Shapiro before they are let through the gates. His rule of thumb: spending $165m should not dent their personal worth by more than 10 per cent.

 

Have You Ever Wanted To Convert a File But Didn’t Know How?

I stumbled across a great site called Zamzar which offers to convert music, video, image and document files from almost any format to almost any format for free (but a donation is appreciated).

I converted a 4 page pdf to an editable Word document and received the notification by email almost instantly.  That totally eliminated the need to cut and paste the sections I wanted.

You’ll be pleased to know that the file that you submitted for conversion is now available for download from Zamzar – all files will be stored for 1 day from receipt of this mail. Thanks for converting with us !

Why not check out what video conversions are hot right now on Zamzar ?

Alternatively click on the following link to download a copy of your converted file:
http://www.zamzar.com/getFiles.php?uid=148723472928951780 etc

One good example of a common conversion you may have is a text file in a csv – Comma Separated Values format and you want to convert it to:

doc – Microsoft Word Document
html – Hypertext Markup Language
mdb – Microsoft Access Database
ods – OpenDocument spreadsheet
pdf – Portable Document Format
rtf – Rich text format
xls – Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet
xml – Extensible Markup Language

or you have an image in a tiff – Tagged image file format and you want to convert it to:

bmp – Windows bitmap
gif – Compuserve graphics interchange
ico – Windows Icon
jpg – JPEG compliant image
pcx – PC Paintbrush Bitmap Graphic
ps – Postscript document
png – Portable Network Graphic
tga – Truevision Targa Graphic
thumbnail – Thumbnail image
wbmp – Wireless Bitmap File Format

Trends in the Luxury Home Market

The Luxury Home Council recently released the The 2007 Membership Survey of Luxury Housing Market Trends*

While the survey is excellent and the information useful I thought I might uncover a few secrets here that might change the way I recommend marketing to high end clients, but there were really no surprises.

If you only read the following stats then you will benefit from having the secret of real estate success reinforced; spend your time and money marketing to your sphere of influence:

• 75% 0f Realtors come into contact with a luxury home buyer for the first time through a Referral or recommendation
• 55% of business luxury home business comes from personal referrals
• 70% of luxury home buyers select their Realtor for their integrity and honesty
• 67% of luxury home buyers select their Realtor for their knowledge of the market

Following are selected results from the survey:

Who is buying luxury homes?
40-50 age group (48%)
50-65 age group (44%).
These are the “Baby Boomers” that have reached their peak earning years and are now benefiting from a rising stock market and historically high home prices.

What do they do for a living?
Entrepreneur 51%
Large Business Executive 46%
Medical Doctor 24%
Retired 24%

When the Realtors were asked to select what services luxury home buyers are most interested in receiving from you (you may choose more than one):

Help in finding a home 86%
Help managing the transaction 56%
Expert counsel during negotiation 43%
Advice on purchasing a luxury home 34%
Assistance with paperwork 28%
Help understanding the process 13%
Help locating jumbo financing 9%
(This does not seem any different than regular folks.)