Filed under: Estates

Big construction is going on in downtown Pittsburgh. The downtown area which has long been in a say of slow decline is looking to be revitalized thanks to a couple of major projects especially the Piatt Place project. Piatt Place will be a redesign of the Lazarus department store building. Two upscale chain restaurants, McCormick and Schmick’s and the Capital Grille will anchor the building and the rest of the building will be turned into offices and condos. The residential units are new construction, built on a new slab on top of the roof. The condos start $330,000 to $1.5 million each and in an article on KDKA it has been reported that 40% of the units are under contract.

But in a nationwide market that is not, for the most part, favoring condos, there may be trouble ahead. For example at another high-end project in Pittsburgh, 151 First Side, owners have closed on more than half of the 83 units but a handful are already up for resale. At the Carlyle, a project that has currently a 6,000-square-foot penthouse listed at $2.195 million, half of the 60 units are under contract but many of those buyers are investors and the second phase of the project is on hold. It seems that the problem in Pittsburgh isn’t so much a condo glut of the type that has affected so many other cities, but instead is a question of changing people’s perceptions of life downtown and whether or not people are willing to pay these types of prices when for the same amount of money they could get a fairly huge home in the suburbs.

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Filed under: Estates

This home in the village of Indian Hill in Cincinnati, Ohio has me smitten for one reason “the Canterbury room.” This home built in 1933 has a two-story library wing called the Canterbury room which features raised quotations in stone above the fireplace from Chaucer, Dante and Shakespeare and looks like an English great hall. The home is approximately 13,000 square feet and sits on nine acres. There are nine bedrooms total and the home includes all sorts of stained glass, carved stone and wood details that add to the feeling that this is a treasure from another era. At $8.7 million, it’s a high price for the area but this is a truly stunning home right down to the stone carving of the home and its name, Cobble Court, on the wall.

Related: This isn’t the only Cobble Court around, check out Cobble Court in Glen Cove, New York, an estate we featured in October 2006.

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Donald Trump’s billion-dollar Scottish golf course might be on hold, so he has turned his rapacious attentions to Ireland and the remains of the Mountpather House. The 170-acre estate once boasted one of the finest country houses in Ireland but now the 18th century country house has fallen into disrepair. The elegant facade remains but the home’s roof was removed over 30 years ago so the owners could avoid paying tax rates on the property. The fireplaces and interior fittings have either been removed or have collapsed leaving a crumbling shell of a home.

Mountpather Home is just one of several properties that Donald Trump’s representatives have looked at while scoping out the right spot for Trump’s Irish golf course development. The estate is located in an area with other esteemed golf courses and is located around 40 minutes drive away from Belfast and two hours from Dublin. The property is listed at

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Envision owning your own ancient Italian monastery. Antico Monastero is an old monastery dating back to the 13th Century. It is located on the top of a hill in the countryside around Perugia. It has been restored into a luxury accommodation. There are 11 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms as well as an owner’s apartment with a reception room, studio, kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms. There’s also an old church, and stables which have been converted into a restaurant with professional kitchen. The restoration preserved the original structure with its arches and vaulted ceilings and used original materials, like terracotta and stone to pave the floors and wood for most of the furniture to maintain the consistent look of the property. The land includes both chestnut woods and pasture land. It is listed at 2.3 million euros.

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Filed under: Estates, Celebrity Shopping

Just a week ago, we mentioned the opening of the Beatles hotel in Liverpool, for those with more cash and a deeper case of Beatlemania you can own a flat once rented by the Beatles in London for

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Filed under: Estates

This New York City co-op is located at 77 Bleecker St is three levels and has some great open spaces. The great room has high ceilings, three exposures, and a wood-burning fireplace. The open kitchen adjoins a dining conservatory. The home is configured as three bedrooms plus a large home studio. The master bedroom suite includes a master bath, dressing room with a skylight and laundry, and its own private south-facing terrace. The innovative windows (I love the circular window in the bathroom) make this home a step above the generic white box apartment. It is listed at $4.995 million.

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High-end real estate in London is alive and well. Last March I mentioned that Sheikh Hamad, the foreign minister of the Gulf Say of Qatar had picked up an apartment for a rumored

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Filed under: Estates, Celebrity Shopping

You might not recognize the name of Paul Oakenfold but you’ve likely heard his music. Oakenfold is a popular techno DJ and has had his music and remixes featured on a variety of soundtracks. His home, which recently hit the market, is a musicians paradise. Oakenfold purchased the home in 2003 for a price in the $2.5 to $3 million neighborhood. The home sits a promontory above the Hollywood Bowl and has some truly incredible views. As the Real Estalker Mama notes, the exterior isn’t particularly notable but the interior is lovely. French doors abound and the master bedroom is particularly stunning because the French doors basically open up the entire room, check out the night shot in the gallery of listing pictures, it’s incredible. There are four bedrooms total. The home has a massive recording studio and there is a lovely pool, spa and patio area and a nice patch of grassy lawn. Oh, and about that Hollywood Bowl view, the home has bleachers so that, with a set of binoculars, you can watch the show for free. Maybe that savings would help defray some of the $10 million asking price.

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From the NY Post’s Gimme Shelter:
–The double-wide, 22,000-square-foot Upper East Side mansion at 14-16 E. 67th St. which belonged to Bob Guccione has been on and off the market for the past six years for prices over $50 million finally has an accepted offer. The reported buyers are edge-fund manager Philip Falcone and his wife, Lisa. The final price is unknown but the home’s $59 million listing figure is well above the current record of $53 million for a 25,000-square-foot townhouse on East 75th Street bought by investment banker J. Christopher Flowers nearly two years ago. Guccione was forced out of the townhouse in early 2006 after he failed to pay off a high-interest loan in a last-ditch effort to avoid foreclosure a few years earlier. Even with the high price the home is stated to need work.
–European soccer star Robbie Elliott’s two-bedroom, two-bath condo at 205 E. 59th St. is now listed for $1.9 million. The listing is here.

From the NY Observer’s Manhattan Transfers:
–The independent news program Democracy Now! has paid $6 million for a raw loft at 217 West 25th Street. Records show the group took out a $6 million mortgage paid for by the literary Lannan Foundation, run by J. Patrick Lannan Jr.
–More news on the homes billionaire Ira Rennert bought for his daughters. He bought two apartments, each over $30 million, for his two daughters, Tamara and Yonina. The first daughter’s duplex at 740 Park Avenue shut for $32 million and the latter daughter and her husband closed on designer Vera Wang’s old 14-room apartment at 778 Park. The closing price was $33.6 million. There are no mortgage records filed for either deal, which suggests that Mr. Rennert not only spent $65,600,000 on his daughters’ apartments last month, but he paid $65,600,000 in cash.
–Actor Frank Langella closed on a $2.1 million, fourth-floor condo at 336 Central Park West this week.
–The old Stanhope hotel which was turned into multimillion dollar apartments was stalled for sales for a couple of years but now all but five of the 26 units have gone to contract since April. Cristina Carlino, the founder of Philosophy cosmetics, paid $11.97 million for the first unit and so far wo other buyers spent about $13 million each with the the second spending part of that amount on an $848,000 one-room, first-floor maid’s studio. The biggest listing at 995 Fifth, the custom-built, five-bedroom penthouse, still sits on the market for $47.5 million.
–Steven Feder, the man once known as the Psychic Hotline King and his partner, Lou Thomas Trosclair, sold off for a huge profit the Time Warner Center apartment that they purchased from Ricky Martin. They paid $9.75 million in September 2006 for the 3,050-square-foot space and sold it for $15.85 million to a neighbor. They bought a combined-unit apartment exactly 10 floors up, paying $24.48 million. Their seller at the $24.48 million apartment paid just $12.5 million in 2006.
–Trump SoHo, the 46-story glass tower at Spring and Varick streets, has already sold a slight majority of its units-53 percent, even though sales began just in September, and the building isn’t scheduled to open until 2009.
–Robert Toll, the CEO of Toll Brothers Inc. the largest luxury home builder in the U.S. reportedly had his compensation cut from $19.2 million in 2006 to $8.4 million for the last fiscal year, as his company’s net income fell 95 percent. Toll was planning to move into the three-unit penthouse at One Ten 3RD, Toll’s rectangle-paneled new condo on Third Avenue, but his wife vetoed that idea. Instead, the Robert & Jane Toll 2002 Children’s Trust, “for benefit of” their 27-year-old son, Jacob, paid $2,235,672 for just one of those three penthouse units.

From the Wall Street Journal’s Private Properties:
–Kanye West sold his Beverly Hills teardown for around $8 million, less than a year after he purchased it for $7.15 million. As I’ve mentioned in previous columns there is a house on the property but the home was sold for land value and includes plans for a two-story contemporary home.
–The former home of Joseph Hirshhorn, who gave his name to a renowned Washington art museum, has sold for $30 million in Greenwich, Connecticut.
–Jet-charter company owner Todd Rome has agreed to sell his Southampton, N.Y., home, fully furnished, for $11.5 million which is lose to double what he paid for the 1.8-acre property in 2005.

From the Real Estalker:
–Rumor has it that Nancy Daly, the estranged wife of Los Angeles’ really rich ex-mayor Richard Riordan, has very quietly sold her Carbon Beach Malibu compound to a young hedge fund honcho and his wife for somewhere in the neighborhood of $50-$55 million.
–Actress Michelle Johnson has put her Buddha-themed modern home on Blue Jay Way in West Hollywood on the market for $6.35 million. Check out the gorgeous view at the property website here.
–In 2007, actress Diane Keaton spent $9,100,000 for the Lloyd Wright (the son of Frank Lloyd Wright) designed Alfred Newman Estate on Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades. The six-bedroom home sits on a 2.625 acre property. Keaton, who is a famous property flipper in Los Angeles, has put the property back on the market for an undisclosed amount.
–I think I saw a billboard in Los Angeles advertising this one, 138 acres of Hollywood hilltop including Cahuenga Peak, shown above, for $22 million.The listing says that the land can be developed into one big estate with 360 degree views or that five huge estates can be constructed.
–Screenwriter Naomi Foner and television director Stephen Gyllenhaal (yes, parents of Jake and Maggie) have put their modern Runyon Canyon adjacent house on the market for $4.2 million. The listing for the five-bedroom home is here.
–DJ Paul Oakenfold has put his Los Angeles home on the market, it’s our estate of the day later today.
–Actress Beverly D’Angelo has bought the allegedly haunted home in the Hollywood Hills that belonged to Donna Dixon and Dan Aykroyd for $3.8 million (it was listed at $4.2 million).
–Singer Dido might have already found a buyer for her charming home which is listed at $4.6 million.
The Beverly Park mansion belonging to property developer Robert Bisno and his wife Jeanette appears to be headed into foreclosure. The scuttlebutt is that they are in default on a $4,000,000 mortgage and February 29th auction date has been set.
–CSI: Miami star Khandi Alexander has but her home in the Hollywood Hills on the market for $4,495,000. The listing is here (no pictures yet).

From Lexis-Nexis:
—-Russian star tennis player Maria Sharapova has purchased a luxury penthouse apartment worth $ 2.1 million in the beach city of Netanya in Israel. (Thanks, Lana)

From the LA Times Hot Property:
–Former baseball star Mike Piazza and his wife, the former Alicia Rickter, a 1995 Playboy Playmate, have bought their second property in the Miami Beach area for $10 million. It had been listed at$12.5 million.The seller is Sophia Marcovitz, ex-wife of Marshall Marcovitz, the founder of the Chefs Catalog.
–Jaime Pressly has re-listed her Tarzana home at $1.299 million. Check out the photos at the virtual tour here.
–Rick Caruso, developer of open-air shopping malls including the Grove in Los Angeles, has bought a Malibu home for just under $12 million.
–Lisa Hollingshead, a producer who worked on Madonna’s “Truth or Dare” movie has listed a Malibu house she owns near the Getty Villa for close to $3 million.
–Before his death in 1982 at age 84, car designer Howard “Dutch” Darrin had planned to develop eight acres he owned in Beverly Hills, the undeveloped residential land was sold and is now available again. The asking price is $5.75 million.

From AOL Real Estate:
–Best American cities for bargain hunters.
–Top improvement projects by cities.

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Despite the fact that I once lived on in a condo on a golf course I tend not to be a fan of golf course homes. This one however, is quite charming. it is located in the Knollwood area of Southern Pines, North Carolina, nestled midway between the picturesque town of Southern Pines and the Village of Pinehurst, bracketed by the Donald Ross golf courses at Mid-Pines and Pine Needles. The Ivy Cottage was built in 1925 as a part of architect Aymar Embery’s Mid-Pines Inn and golf resort. It sits on a hilltop overlooking the 10th and 11th holes of Mid-Pines, with views of three additional fairways. The Ivy Home and Cottage underwent a big renovation in 1995, turning the former Mid-Pines lodging quarters back into a residence.

The main home received a new cottage style entry that opens to a spacious kitchen. The kitchen opens to a breakfast room with French doors and a wall of windows with access to expansive tiered decking on the southwest side of the home. The home also has a formal dining room which overlooks the terraced deck and a brick floored Carolina/family room opens to a brick patio. A downstairs guest suite has anew tiled full bath and a dressing room. The second floor master bedroom has a master bath with Jacuzzi tub and there’s an additional second floor bedroom. The guest house has been newly renovated and includes views of the 11th hole tee box and 10th fairway beyond. Glass French doors lead to a sun filled bedroom with fireplace and newly tiled full bath. Downstairs is a roomy bedroom/sitting area, also with full bath. A cottage style garden is between the main house and guest-house on one side and a view of the golf course on the other. This home is listed at $845,000.

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