The economic decline is reaching the real estate market at the highest levels. Reported to be the worlds most expensive house, Villa 
Leopolda is a 22-acre compund in the French Riviera. At a selling price of $750 million, it was put under contract to a Russian billionaire named Mikhail Prokhorov. Shortly after contracting to buy the house, his investment fortune was reduced in the economic downturn and credit crisis.
He is now trying to get his $55 million deposit back.
In Palm Beach Florida, developer Frank McKinney has put on hold plans to build a $125 mansion in tony Manalapan. The sliver of land between the Atlantic Ocean and the intracoastal waterway is considered one of the best locations in the Palm Beaches, but McKinney says it would be foolish to build in the scary time.
A few miles south in Boca Raton, Dru Schmitt built a 23,000 square foot mansion on an ocean-access canal. In 2008, the palatial 
French-Country styles home was complete, with four kinds of rare onyx in the bedroom, music piped underwater in the resort-style pool, a computerized television system holding 850 movies and hand-shaved walnut floors. The doorknobs and hinges alone cost $160,000. Yet when Dru and his wife and kids moved in, they discovered a problem. It was too big. So days after moving in, they put it on the market. Listed for $24.9 million, it was eventually sold last month for $10 million.
In Greenwich CT, Stan and Dorothea Cheslock built their 26,000-square-foot dream house on 30 acres here. The home featured an indoor pool, 6 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, a wine cellar, a Siberian spruce sauna, an oak-paneled billiard room, a 50-foot lap pool and a 
French birdcage elevator that rises 40 feet from the great room to the cupola.
It needs a staff including a chef and groundskeepers and gardeners to take care of the trees, lawn, gardens, pool, deer-repelling. There are three different kinds of grounds teams.The total upkeep is more than $200,000 a year
With just the two of them living there most of the house was empty. When the merchant banking firm that Mr. Cheslock co-owned lost $100 million in value, the house was placed on the market for $31 million. After almost 2 years and no takers, the house was placed for auction with an opening bid of only $19 million. The house failed to sell at action, as well.
1 Comment
February 24, 2009 at 5:52 pm
26,000-square-feet?! I had trouble cleaning my 1800 sq feet house. Great place to play hide and seek.
It sold for $10 million? Couldn’t the guy just take part of that $55 million deposit he got back and buy it outright?