With the housing market close to bottoming out and property deals abounding, why would anyone pay above market prices for a home? But for America’s one percent, cost can take a back seat to "I want what I want."
PHOTO GALLERY: Click Here to See the Properties.
Last year proved to be a record-breaking year for real estate sales of outlandishly pricy estates and mansions, with the most expensive listing in U.S. history showing up on the American Multiple Listing Service (MLS) Network, at a jaw-dropping $150 million. It makes another record-breaker, the most expensive condo ever sold in Miami, FL for $21.5 million in December last year, seem like pocket change.
The luxury home market saw a healthy rebound in 2011 as well as a promising start to 2012. In Los Angeles, sales for homes worth $10 million and higher nearly doubled in 2011 for Coldwell Banker Previews International, according to agent Sally Forster Jones, and many of those were purchased by foreign buyers ― approximately three-fourths of the showings Forster Jones held for properties worth $20 million or more last year were for foreign clients, mostly from Asia, Russia, Europe and the Middle East, she told Forbes.
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One broker in Colorado, Edie Marks of Kentwood Real Estate, reported that February was an “unbelievable month” for sales of homes between $1.5 million and $2.5 million. “It is the hottest I have ever seen in my lifetime,” Marks told Inside Real Estate News. In addition, Miami saw a 16 percent increase in sales for properties worth $2 million or more in the first seven months of 2011, and Boston and New York are also seeing a spike in median values for properties in the top 25 percent price bracket.
Click here to see 10 absurdly overpriced properties that have hit the market in the past year.
