Filed under: Estates

This Sedona, Arizona home isn’t just full of art, it has art in the entrance. The “Dance of Life” bronze leads the way to a stone staircase flanked by six stacked-stone towers. On the other side of the entry is a glass wall that shows off the views and the pool. The home is shaped like a crescent moon and has plenty of windows to showcase the views. There are five bedroom sites, a great room, dining room, gourmet kitchen, office and theater room and a separate two-bedroom caretaker’s apartment and detached gym. The property also includes two horse stalls. The home was done in luxury materials including white Thassos marble flooring (quarried and shipped in tile form from Greece) and Travertine flooring (from Italy) throughout as well as stained glass windows and sconces. The home is wired for sound with a full CD/DVD central audio system with individually controlled loudspeakers in all main areas there’s also a home theater with a CD, DVD, VCR system in the media room and three additional televisions including a plasma screen in the living room. The home also includes all statues and sculptures that are displayed outside which includes several resin and bronze artworks. it is listed at $10 million.

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Sunday I had an interesting conversation with a high school teacher from Mongolia.  How this came about is a long story with which I shall not bore you.  She’s in her mid-30’s, married with 2 grade school children.  He husband attends grad school at the University of Indiana.  She instructs Russian in Mongolia.  That’s like teaching English here.  I think she probably instructs the children of the upper crust in her country.

Her massive complaint as a teacher of high school children is that nobody wants to read.  Her students want to text their friends on their cell phones while they surf the World wide web.  That is the exact same complaint I hear from instructors in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.  In a sad way it is comforting that the problems we have with education in our country are similar to those all over the world.  The concept that students here and there don’t understand is that those who read keep the electricity on.  What do you do if the electricity goes out?

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Filed under: Estates, Celebrity Shopping

Last Sunday’s estate took us to Spain and the home of artist Joan Miro, this week we are looking at the Paris home of another type of artist, fashion designer Kenzo Takada. Takada, who built the fashion line Kenzo and sold it to LVMH in 1993, lives in a striking home located on the Right Bank between the Place de la Bastille and the Place des Vosges. The approximately 14,000-square-foot house is very East-meets-West with much of the design informed by traditional Japanese design with modern touches.

The International Herald Tribune recently ran a piece on the house which says that Kenzo built the home between 1987 and 1993 with the help of an architect friend. The four-level home has five bedroom suites including Kenzo’s master bedroom suite which has two dressing rooms. The main house has a contemporary living room with an indoor lap pool, library, a professional kitchen used for large parties, a gym, sauna, hammam and two Jacuzzis. The home includes a mezzanine studio where Kenzo worked on his designs and also painted. The home has oak floors, an elevator and six fireplaces. There are also three staff apartments and parking spaces. The outdoor spaces here are delightful with several different levels of gardens. There is a tranquil garden with a fish pond and a cherry tree. There is also a Japanese-style pavilion that is furnished with traditional tatami mats and has one room dedicated to the tea ceremony.

This home is more like a private universe than a home built for one man with very precise tastes. I hate to use the word zen here but that is what comes to mind when looking at this amazing home. Kenzo decided to put the home on the market because it is now too big for him and he wants to find a more modest pied-

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When Henry Ford started the Ford Motor Company he initiated many ideas which were revolutionary for the time.  One of the most denigrated by other industrialists was his the high level of pay he gave to  his workers.  It was socialist thinking. 

Ford calculated that only a well paid middle class could afford his automobiles over the long run.  Other industrialists of the time were paying low wages and keeping the largest possible profits for the stock holders, the capitalists.

Until the ’90’s Japanese companies had a practice of hiring people for life.  This hindered their flexibility as the industrial industrial environment changed, e.g. the emergence of China.  Japan’s economy stalled.

Today, Japan hires temporary workers when it wants to expand so that it can react quickly if the market contracts.  Temporary workers are paid less per hour and receive fewer benefits.  On the surface, it is a reasonable plan.  So reasonable that it has become a way of doing business over the long term.  The strategy keeps cost down and has driven Japanese stock prices up.

With all things, balance is the key.  As reported in today’s Wall Street Journal, Japanese stock prices are being hit because the purchasing power of the middle class is eroding sharping.  This erosion is due to the practice of hiring such a high number of temporary workers in relationship to permanent workers.  I’m sure you see the irony.

What is the lesson for us?  Henry Ford was right.  People can’t spend what they don’t have.  If they’ve tapped out their home equity and their job does not pay well, where will they get the discretionary cash to pay $3.86 for a great big Latte at Starbucks or more importantly at coffee shop you own? 

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Filed under: Estates, Celebrity Shopping

From Berg Properties Big Time Listings:
–via In Touch Weekly, ‘Dancing with the Stars’ co-host Samantha Harris and her husband, Michael Hess have paid $1,600,000 to buy a in Los Angeles west of the Century City area.
–Slash has finally sold his five-bedroom “lawsuit house” in the Hollywood Hills, possibly to San Diego Padres relief pitcher Randy Wolf.
–An update of the real estate moves of Hilary Swank, she paid $5.8 million earlier this year for a place in Pacific Palisades and told W Magazine that she left New York because of the high real estate prices (Swank and ex-hubby Chad Lowe sold their Manhattan townhouse for $7,050,000 million in January) but likely her romance with her former agent John Campisi, who is L.A.-based also had something to do with it. Nevertheless, New York magazine has spotted Swank browsing for a loft and reported that she was looking at a a two-bedroom unit in the Superior Ink development in Manhattan.
–’One Tree Hill’ actors Chad Michael Murray and Sophia Bush have sold their house in Wilmington, N.C. for $730,000.
–Justin Long, who is perhaps most famous for the “I’m a Mac” ads, has paid about $1,400,000 for amid-century modern home in the Hollywood Hills.
–Nicole Richie has sold her condominium unit in the Empire West building in West Hollywood for $2,250,000.

From the Real Estalker:
–via Newsday, Patricia Kennedy Lawford’s estate has sold her Southampton home for $9.8 million.
–via Luxury Real Estate, Eddie Murphy’s ex-wife Nicole Murphy has sold their Sacramento area home for the highest price the Sacramento area has ever seen, $6.1 million.Most of the furnishings, including at least 20 TVs and a sleek, black, $200,000 Schimmel Pegasus grand piano were included in the deal.
–The Real Estalker Mama has nabbed some interior shots of the Golden Beach, Florida house that Ricky Martin has put on the market for $22.5 million.
–The Mama takes a look at Peter Guber’s Kauai Tara Plantation. This home has sat on the market for $46.5 million for nearly 3 years, we covered it way back in February 2005.
–Amanda Peet and her screenwriter husband David Benioff have sold their Angelo View Drive house high above Holmby Hills and have purchased the former James Cagney estate above Sunset Boulevard on N. Wetherly Drive.
–50 Cent has reduced the price of his Connecticut home to $12 million from $18.5 million.

From the LA Times Hot Property:
–Nicolas Cage has pulled his Bel-Air mansion, which was listed at $35 million, off the market.
– St. Louis Rams owner Georgia Frontiere sold her Bel-Air home for close to $30 million.
–Madonna’s former home in Beverly Hills, which was redone by Diane Keaton, just closed at almost $17 million.
–Comedy writer Bill Richmond has purchased a town house overlooking the lake in Calabasas Park for close to its asking price of $1.3 million.
–Gregory Joujon-Roche, a celebrity personal trainer, has listed his Malibu condo for $2.695 million. The listing is here, the home is freshly redecorated and gorgeous.
–Peter Shin, supervising director of the TV show “Family Guy,” has bought a contemporary-style house for $1.3-plus million in the Hollywood Hills.

From the Wall Street Journal’s Private Properties:
–Fashion designer Kenzo has put his Paris home on the market for 12 million euros. it is our estate of the day later today.

From the NY Times Big Deal:
–The buyer of Ricky Martin’s former apartment in the Time Warner Center have signed a contract to flip it for around $17.9 million. Martin bought it in 2004 for $6.8 million and sold it in September 2006 for $9.75 million.
–Fewer than a third of the 201 coveted apartments in Robert A. M. Stern’s complex 15 Central Park West near the foot of Central Park, at West 61st Street, have now closed. But of those, five apartments were put back on the market almost instantly and more listings are likely.

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Enjoyment is not a goal; it is a feeling that accompanies important ongoing activity. – Paul Goodman

I’ve been thinking more about the concept that I mentioned a few blogs ago - Do what you like and like what you do - and how it relates to the decision of “retirement.”

Is “retirement” really a viable concept for baby boomers today? My husband has all the points necessary for a full retirement, but he’s staying at his 25-year job with a large company, but only while he is “having fun.” Easy for him to say this; he has a nice defined benefit retirement package, including health care insurance. Some of us (me included) don’t get health insurance after retirement.

So what about you? What will be the “tipping point” for you, to make you retire? Will it depend on whether you’re ‘having fun’ or will it depend on something more concrete, like having health insurance?

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Filed under: Estates

This home in the seaside village of Watch Hill, Rhode Island seems to have been pressed into service as some sort of hotel or corporate retreat. The Chateau Ste. Michelle Estate is on a 4.82 acre parcel of land. The home was built in 1930 and then renovated in 1992. It has 14 bedrooms total with 15 full baths and another five half baths and there is an industrial kitchen big enough to feed all those people. The home also includes a pool table room, bar room and conference room. Outside there are tennis courts and an in-ground pool as well as amazing views of the Atlantic. It looks like it would take a bit of effort to turn this back into a family home. This estate is listed at $10.9 million.

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It’s the season to make political comments, because the national debate over who will be the next president of the United
States does matter to us personally as small business people.

I’m not particularly a Mike Huckabee fan, but he did hit on something when he commented that people were looking to vote for someone like their neighbor rather than someone who had just laid them off.  That is very populist, but not very Republican.

I get the feeling that people in general are looking for something different in the way of government.  They’ve had enough of Regan-Bush and/or the Clintons.  Now, Republicans and Democrats see the specter of a centrist candidate in Bloomberg with backing from serious Democrats and Republicans.

Personally, I don’t think national government has worked well since just before the Lewinski scandal.  I find people think that Democrats and Republicans as too partisan for the good of the country.  The people understand that there are important issues that must be worked out in a practical manner without regard to anyone’s social or religious sensibilities.  They are looking for someone to tackle the big issues and make the country work better than it is now.

What do you see out in the hustings?

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Filed under: Estates

Homes like this in Boston don’t come on the market too often. This stately brick townhouse is located on Beacon Street opposite the Public Garden. The home was built in 1846 for former Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Crowninshield and must have been the height of fashion and luxury at the time. The home went through a major renovation in 1990. The renovation seems to have included the large kitchen that has French doors opening out onto the garden. Other features include a library, a billiard room with a wet bar, a dining room with a dumb waiter and a caterer’s kitchen. The top floor includes a large modern gym that includes a hot tub and steam shower. There is also a roof deck with great Back Bay skyline views.The listing says that there is outdoor parking on a private street. This might mean some major parking hassles in the winter, but what you are paying for here are all the vintage details, the curlicued plaster medallions on the ceiling, nine Tiffany-designed stained glass windows and some of the most gorgeous woodwork I have ever seen. The staircase alone is worthy of poetry and those tufted velvet built-in seats next to the huge fireplace are so evocative of the time period this house was built in that they seem to be part of an oil painting.. There are five bedrooms total and ten fireplaces. There are some strange quirks, too, such as a rather coffin-like bathtub. But with an old beauty of a house like this, you have to embrace the quirks. It is listed at $6.9 million.

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All Baby Boomers are at that point in their lives where aging parents and relatives need some extra help.  The cost are real and need consideration.

Recently, my mother-in-law fell of a stair and broke an ankle.  My wife has spent the past two weeks down in Chicago helping her out.  Just before New Years my daughter got sick and has been in the hospital.  Suddenly, it was just me shouldering the care giver duties in Milwaukee.  Last year I had two elderly aunts that needed attention.  No whining here, just saying your obligations can jump up on you quickly when family members have health problems. 

Small businesses notoriously are tight on personnel.  Family health care issues extend to more than insurance and co-pay.  You need to think through the obligations you have and their time requirements before you go off to make a financial commitment.

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