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Written by Jason Notte
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New-home sales rose 24% and pending home sales jumped 32% in October
from a year earlier, but estates with wine cellars, infinity pools and
servants' quarters saw their prices drop 7%. Basketball star Shaquille
O'Neal and rapper 50 Cent were among the bigger names to take losses or
pull their homes off the market. Some luxury sellers are still
weathering the storm. While the former home of the Detroit Lions took
perhaps the biggest beating of the year, the former mailing addresses
of Leona Helmsley, Nicolas Cage and Bernie Madoff still have no takers.
Here are five property duds whose oversized infamy was matched by their
inflated price tags:
1. Dunnellen Hall Location: Greenwich, Conn. Price: $60 million When
we first wrote about this property in October, the price had been
recently slashed from $75 million. That doesn't seem bad until you
consider that it hit the market at $125 million last year. Nevermind
that Leona Helmsley billed her husband's Manhattan real estate firm for
renovations to the estate's 14 bedrooms, two pools, multiple cottages
and million-dollar dance floor with funds and later did time for it.
This Jacobean manse is a monument to the sluggish luxury home market in
Greenwich, where sales during the first nine months of 2009 were down
46% from the same time last year.
To read about more of the biggest real estate flops, visit Yahoo! Finance.
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© 2008 Cook and Zook Team. All Rights Reserved.