December 9, 2001

5:01 AM

House hunting for the rest of us. A 280 sq. m. Parisian apartment: FF20.5m. ‘Lazybones’ on St. Peter: $6m. ‘La Barakat’ on the coast of Portgual: $11.5m. James Island, Vancouver, Canada: $49.9m.
posted by raaka (18 comments total)

Nice find. However, if you're a more "America First" type, you might be interested in using the Dupont Registry where you can find:
a simple little home in California for $7.25 million, a nice set of wheels for $165K (cheap for a Lamborghini Diablo driven sparingly by Al Bertoni), or a nice little 80 ft dinghy for $1.2 million.

The Dupont Registry, where you'll find something to match the size of your wallet (but probably not your ego).
posted by MAYORBOB at 6:20 AM on December 9, 2001

Good god! I knew the house place my mum and aunt had been brought up in was in an exclusive area, but not that it was this expensive? £4.5m and you actually get to have it for for whole 75 years before the lease is up!

I'm about to undergo a big change in life and relocate to Manchester (people here in the UK don't seem relocate quite so readily as people in the US seem to). The main reason for this is a recent report (sorry about the mini ad, it disappears, I couldn't find an article about this in my usual read, The Grauniad) that detailed how expensive the capital is for people who are looking to buy property for the first time.

After all I don't want to rent for ever, there's only so many anally retentive inventories one can blag their way through in life ("I swear that wine stain on the carpet was there when I got here, we just moved the sofa" or "I have never smoked in this house, so that can't be a burn hole mark the shelf").
posted by davehat at 6:39 AM on December 9, 2001

For Anglophiles, Country Life is essential fantasy material.
posted by Carol Anne at 7:09 AM on December 9, 2001

At the other end of the scale it is possible to buy a three bedroom house in New Zealand for US$4000
posted by dydecker at 7:17 AM on December 9, 2001

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous.
posted by Hildago at 9:30 AM on December 9, 2001

Cheers, raaka. The one in Cascais sounds good. If I could effort it I would spend the rest of my life in and around Bar do Guincho surfing and getting drunk on Superbock.
posted by arf at 9:54 AM on December 9, 2001

Well you can buy a three-bedroom country house with swimming pool in the South of France for around £60,000. Which is half the price of my two bedroomed flat in London. And with flights to the South of France with Ryanair currently at around 1p, there's no better time to invade, er, I mean move.
posted by Summer at 10:06 AM on December 9, 2001

This is all nice, but what really matters is what celebrities are buying. This weekly column is my only required reading in the Sunday LA Times.
posted by thebigpoop at 10:12 AM on December 9, 2001

I was thinking of doing a post asking people's guilty pleasures on the web but this discussion seems like a fitting place to post it because one of my guilty pleasures happens to be visiting real estate sites and looking for $1 million+ plus homes that feature pictures, 360 degree videos or other promotional materials (click on the film reel beside the last property on the page to download an executable slide show tour of the home).
posted by Jaybo at 10:15 AM on December 9, 2001

Well iPix just crashed my PC. Serves me right for looking at house porn.
posted by Summer at 10:50 AM on December 9, 2001

Hildago, if you think that's ridiculous, welcome to Connecticut. Though houses in my neck of the woods tend to be around $250-300k range (and much larger than that house in Greenwich). My parents' house, a modest three bedroom raised ranch which they bought in 1976 for $60k or so is now worth at least four times as much.

Then there's homes like this which someone will inevitably buy as a second home. I would never leave it.
posted by kittyloop at 3:24 PM on December 9, 2001

If I could effort it I would spend the rest of my life in and around Bar do Guincho surfing and getting drunk on Superbock.

arf: you never appreciate your own turf, do you? I grew up in Cascais, go to Guincho about three times a week, am a regular at the Bar there and, sure enough, after reading your comment, where did I end up tonight, with my wife, mother and two daughters?
Right! Thank you for a most enjoyable evening is all I can say and, next time you're over, you're my guest at the Hotel Fortaleza do Guincho's superb restaurant(click on "bar and restaurant") supervised by Antoine Westermann, a 3-Michelin-star chef.
I was married there in September of last year and the Hotel actually asked to use a photo of me and my wife gazing out at the Atlantic, for their honeymoon programme, which is still there!(click on "honeymoon")

Cheers!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:55 PM on December 9, 2001

word! i'm planning to go to lisbon after christmas to visit friends of mine. i don't think i'm gonna buy the house, though ;-)
posted by arf at 4:25 PM on December 9, 2001

An automatic email has been sent!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 4:43 PM on December 9, 2001

One slight problem with the Parisian cite (and site)- 80 sq. meters is not 250 sq. feet. You have to multiply both dimensions by a little over 3. Say the room is actually 10 m by 8 m. This means it is about 32 feet by 25 feet, or 800 square feet. Quite a difference, no?

Vaca
posted by vaca at 5:45 AM on December 10, 2001

Oops, should have read more carefully. It's early. Sorry.
posted by vaca at 5:46 AM on December 10, 2001

The Calhoun Mansion, right down the street from my office.

Between fifteen and twenty million dollars, I have heard.

My parents lived in this cool old house (circa 1850's) which they sold in 1971 for about 30 grand. It just got sold again in early 2001. 1.95 million. I called my mom to bitch, and she said "How we were suppoed to know?"

Maybe if I start saving my change now, and figure out how to live to be about forty thousand years old, hmmm...
posted by ebarker at 7:33 AM on December 10, 2001

My parents bought a 2-bedroom house on San Francisco's Potrero Hill for $19,250 in 1962--long before the then blue-colllar, racially mixed, nearly fogfree neighborhood was fashionable. Today, it would probably bring $500K.
posted by Carol Anne at 10:53 AM on December 10, 2001