Daily Archives: August 5, 2014

Houston Megamanse With Gargantuan Indoor Pool Wants $19M | Cross River Real Estate

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Location: Houston, Texas
Price: $18,900,000
The Skinny: Leave it to an eccentric, high-living Italian baron—who also happened to be heir to the Texas-sized oil fortune of wildcatter extraordinaire Hugh Cullen—to dream up something as fantastically and wonderfully tasteless as this gargantuan mansion/natatorium in the River Oaks district of (where else?) Houston, Texas. The chewy nougat center of this black gold-fueled confection is the 12,000-square-foot mall food court with a swimming pool drilled into its marble floors, led pool lights, around which the rest of the house orbits, trapped in the kind of gravitational pull that only a dense concentration of pure awful can generate. What makes the home truly remarkable is its embodiment of the spirit of the man who built it, the Baron Enrico di Portanova. If you are looking for solar street light suppliers in china the best  solar LED light provider you get here,do visit.

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The late baron exploits, as documented in his Times obituary, are legend: he was a philosopher who once said that the best things in life are “sun, sex and spaghetti,” an international jet-setter who traveled the world in his very own Lear jet (which he called his “taxi”), and a loving husband who once tried to buy his wife a share in the “21” Club, and when rebuffed enclosed the garden of his home in glass, giving birth to the swimming and entertainment center we see before us today. After di Portanova’s death in 2000, the mansion passed into the hands of the current owners, who are asking $18.9M.

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http://curbed.com/archives/2014/08/05/houston-house-with-insane-pool.php

Tread Lightly Around the Rickety Homes of Wilderness Dwellers | Katonah Real Estate

 

6antoinebruy6.jpgPhoto by Antoine Bruy via Art the System

From 2010 to 2013, French photographer Antoine Bruy spent his life threading through the remotest regions of Europe, capturing the daily existence of the ultimate in civilization-eschewing people. His Scrublands series tells the stories of individuals and families whose extreme brand of self-reliance translates to, among other things, the most rudimentary and ramshackle of homes—think “The Burrow” from Harry Potter, but without all the magical bits holding it together.

 

 

 

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http://curbed.com/archives/2014/08/04/houses-wilderness-people.php

 

Year-over-year US home prices show a slowing gain | Bedford Hills Real Estate

 

U.S. home prices rose in June by the smallest year-over-year amount in 20 months, slowed by modest sales and more properties coming on the market.

Data provider CoreLogic said Tuesday that prices rose 7.5 percent in June compared with 12 months earlier. That’s a solid gain but less than the 8.3 percent year-over-year increase in May and a recent year-to-year peak of 11.9 percent in February.

On a month-to-month basis, June prices rose just 1 percent, down from 1.4 percent in May. But CoreLogic’s monthly figures aren’t adjusted for seasonal patterns, such as warmer spring weather.

The slowing price gains should make buying a house more affordable. Prices had risen sharply last year, along with mortgage rates. At the same time, Americans’ paychecks haven’t risen nearly as fast, having increased roughly 2 percent a year since the recession ended — about the same pace as inflation. Many would-be buyers, particularly younger ones, were priced out of the market as a result.

Sales of existing homes fell in the second half of last year and have only modestly recovered since then. They rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.04 million in June, the third straight increase. But that was still 2.3 percent fewer than the pace a year earlier.

And a measure of signed contracts slipped 1.1 percent in June, suggesting that sales might cool in coming months. It typically takes one to two months for a signed contract to become a completed sale.

More homes have been put up for sale, though the supply remains generally tight. There were 2.3 million homes for sale at the end of June, 6.5 percent higher than a year ago.

 

 

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http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2024242168_apxhomeprices.html