Luxury real estate news from around the world. Ups, downs, new developments and disasters abound.

The Wall Street Journal reports on a new luxury development in downtown Houston. The WaterLights District.

The WaterLights District will include a careful planned array of office, hotels, restaurants, boutique retail, and residential structures amid a park setting along the banks of Clear Creek, just south of the world’s largest medical and research center, the Texas Medical Center.

1927 villa for sale, Bucharest, Romania

The Diplomat, a Bucharest-based online magazine announces a refurbished interwar villa for sale or rent.Price - €15,000 per month; for sale at  €3.5 million.

Pache Protopopescu Built in 1927 and completely refurbished in 2007, this interwar villa in the east-centre of Bucharest was built for a Jewish family 80 years ago and is now available for sale or rent. Avoiding nationalisation, the house was acquired by Romanians, whose descendants still retain ownership. The iron entrance gate gives access to an impressive interior court with high walls, arches and two beautiful terraces placed on the ground and first floor of the building.

TRLV Group will be at this year’s Cityscape Convention in New York’s Javits Center, Booth D36, September 10th and 11th presenting a unique project site on the Las Vegas Strip next to the MGM/Dubai/Kerzner future hotel & casino and the Stratosphere Hotel & Casino recently acquired by Goldman Sachs.

A $1.74 billion residential development on the north coast, about a two hour drive from Cairo, Marassi will eventually cover more than 1,500 acres and include a marina, golf course, retail space and 3,000 hotel rooms.

Perth’s millionaires are finding it hard to move their second (or third or fourth) homes. Dunsborough, the premier town of the region and conveniently close to the Margaret River wineries, has seen the median house price fall 11.4% to $655,000 in the year to June.

One of Manteca’s biggest builders - Woodside Homes - has filed for bankruptcy protection. The home builder has housing projects that are part of the 402-lot Tesoro neighborhood bounded by Woodward Avenue, Atherton Drive and Van Ryn Road as well as a portion of the 497-homeUnion Ranch East directly east of Del Webb at Woodbridge on North Union Road.

The purchase is not his first property in Singapore. Modi has two other luxury condominiums in Singapore located in Orchard Road, the city’s shopping district. He also has another penthouse in Sentosa Cove, described as “an exclusive weekend hideout” on Singapore’s Sentosa Island.

An industry source is quoted as saying Trump flew to Bangkok last month to talk with a Gaysorn executive about development plans for a four rai plot located at Ratchaprasong intersection.

The Calgary Herald reports that the US mortgage crisis is hitting Costa Rica’s vacation home market. Sales of the high end are still strong (Albeit after a large drop in prices) but the less expensive condos ($100-$200,000) are not selling. Slump hits vacation homes in Costa Rica

Donald Trump, in an interview with the New York Times, feels that a fall is on the way for the luxury hotel industry “It may be speaking against my interest,” Mr. Trump said, “but I think the industry is headed for a fall.” Terrible timing for a Hotel Boom

Niurka, a “powerhouse speaker,” has been invited to speak at the 13th Annual Luxury Real Estate Conference in Philadelphia. Luxury Real estate conference.

CB Richard Ellis announced its appointment as the marketing agent in Hong Kong for Gemini Grove, a luxury residential project in Beijing. Kerry’s Gemini Grove Beijing Luxury Residences.

Wealthy respondents to the Luxury Institute’s 2008 Luxury Brand Status Index (LBSI) survey rated Sotheby’s International Realty, Christie’s Great Estates , and Corcoran group as the most prestigious real estate companies. Luxury Institute Survey.

Associated Press suggest the the rich are beginning to feel the pinch in a down economy, although it is hard to feel sorry for the former hedge fund manager that has had to drop his house price twice in the last year and it still remains unsold at $7 million. Rich feel the pinch.

An abandoned US Army base in Berlin is being converted into a luxury housing complex with an investment of over $90 million. US Army base become luxury apartments. ‘Ten hut! I wonder if you have to listen to TAPS every night?

International Property Investment reports that luxury property pices are falling on Australia’s Gold Coast. Property investment on Australia’s Gold coast.

The International Herald Tribune reports that luxury property prices in central London are defying both gravity and logic. London luxury property continues to rise.

Curbed NY reveals the Toll brothers latest luxury development at 303 East 33rd. Yet another “green development” that is about as environmentally-friendly as a 747 with reusable sick bags. Toll brothers latest.

And on a lighter note, Magnum ice cream chose Villa Oxygene of Résidence Supérieur in Cannes to shoot their latest commercial which features Eva Longoria. This was such a major event that 140 journalists attended the event. Although, I do wish some one would explain just how annoying poor quality background music that plays automatically when a website is opened is. This was only cool for about 13 milliseconds back in 1980 Richard

The Luxury Property Blog looks at Manhattan, where the luxury real estate market has created a new median record for apartments in Manhattan despite falling sales and growing inventory

Much is being made of the latest news that median apartment prices have reached a new record in Manhattan. But what does this actually mean? A selection of news articles covering the Manhattan real estate market. In no particular order.

Sales are down, but the average price of an apartment in Manhattan is currently just over $1.6 million according to Curbed’s “State O’ the Market Report.

Summer doldrums be damned, it’s friggin’ market report day, people! We’re talking Q2 this time around, and the results should surprise no one. Just like the first quarter of 2008, prices are at record levels but sales are down from this time last year. Miller Samuel’s report for Elliman has the average Manhattan sales price at $1,669,729, a 25.2% increase over the prior year quarter result of $1,333,316.

The IHT blog, “Raising the Roof,” suggests that “Trumplings are busy pitching New York to foreign buyers,” after the International Herald Tribune reported that Donald Trump’s SoHo hotel-condo project will be offering the penthouses exclusively to buyers from the United Arab Emirates.

With the Trump Organization’s continued growth throughout the Middle East, we thought it was only fitting to bring sales of our unique Trump SoHo penthouses to the U.A.E. Trump said in an e-mailed statement.

Peter Comitini offers the latest Corcoran group market trends report which has been revamped and is now being produced in collaboration with Property Shark.

New development closings typically lag behind the market by one-to-two years and are therefore a poor barometer of what happens when a seller lists the home she has lived in for ten years on today’s market. Moreover, brand new, highly-amenitized luxury properties are much more likely to sell at a higher price point than the average property competing on the open market. In this report, therefore, we examine re-sales in isolation while our colleagues at Corcoran Sunshine analyze new development property sales.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the median price of a Manhattan apartment hit $979,000, up from $795,000 in 2007, but also states inventory is up. Strong luxury sales and faltering studio sales had the perverse effect of pushing the median to a new record.

While luxury sales remained very strong, the reports showed slowing sales and weakening prices for studios and one-bedroom apartments, where buyers are extremely sensitive to tighter lending requirements and larger down payments now being demanded by mortgage lenders,” writes Josh Barbanel in the New York Times.

Put simply, the only property selling at the moment is the very high-end luxury real estate - expect a median price correction when the rest of the market eventually comes back to life.

What is happening in the world of luxury?

According to Luxury Clues, the one room in a house associated with extreme wealth is……. A library, implying that the leaders are also the readers. Hard to argue with their reasoning, and a few disturbing statistics about how few people choose either to buy a book, or read.
 

In low income families, you may find a copy of a Bible and the National Enquirer. In middle income family, there may be some books by the toilet. In high income families, there will be a library. In the United States, 85 percent of the population did not buy even one non-fiction book in the last year. Of those who did purchase non-fiction books, 95 percent did not read them.

The full post is here

The International Herald Tribune recently ran a headline, “Lean times for providers of luxury,” in which they suggest that sales of champagne and vodka have dropped 25% this year in a nightclub that caters to Wall street bankers. Not only that, but Bear Sterns recent collapse caused a few upsets in the luxury interior design world.

Less than 48 hours after news broke that Bear Stearns would be bought for a fire-sale price, the wives of two of the firm’s senior investment bankers called their high-end interior designer to cancel their contracts.

It is yet another sign that some American bankers are slashing spending on luxury items as they fear for their jobs and the value of their firms’ shares.

This is not all bad news – apparently, it is now far easier to get a table at any of the high-end restaurants. At least, midweek. And some florists report an upturn in business because of the amount of people sending flowers to the Bear Sterns office to “Cheer them up.” If I had just lost a $2 million a year job, I am not so sure a bunch of flowers would cheer me up much. But there you go….

Full story here.

At the other end of the spend-o-meter, the most exclusive exhibition of automobiles in the world, Top Marques, kicked off in Monaco yesterday, with Damon Hill doing the opening ceremony honors. Luxury, speed and rarity are all on show, with exhibitions from Bugatti, Aston martin and a wide range of other luxury car manufacturers. Tickets are almost as rare as the The SPADA TS “CODATRONCA”, a sports car designed by the Italian studio Spadaconcept which is on display. It combines racing and ‘tourism’ characteristics and represents the latest interpretation of the functional concept of ‘truncated tail.’ As far as I can tell, there seems to be no drop in spending power in Monaco. And it is as hard as usual to get a table in the top restaurants.  This particular blogger will be paying them a visit on Sunday to spend the afternoon looking at cars he can’t afford. According to their press release:

Redefining luxury was not the original objective of Top Marques Monaco when it premiered in 2004. Needless to say the luxury industries already had a long historic of their products’ definition, and we were proud to present them to the public in one of the planet’s great luxury settings, the Principality of Monaco.

Top Marques website.