This old, very expensive, house

By Matt Woolsey

updated 4:14 p.m. ET June 13, 2008

A little over two years ago, when Donald Trump listed Maison de L'Amitié in Palm Beach, Fla., for $125 million, it was a sign of the times.

Real estate prices were on the rise, and even though it was $50 million more than the next-highest listing, there was a sense that Trump would get his price. After all, everyone else in America was getting his.

Once again, Maison de L'Amitié points to the state of the housing market. In March, Trump knocked $25 million off the price, the biggest discount ever for a single residence not related to bankruptcy proceedings.

But that hasn't pulled other sellers off the $100 million-plus ledge. At the top of our list this year is a $165 million Beverly Hills, Calif., mansion once owned by William Randolph Hearst; a Jacobean manor on 40 acres in Greenwich, Conn., and a Los Angeles château, commended by former French President Jacques Chirac for its architecture, both priced at $125 million; and perhaps the finest property in Nevada's Lake Tahoe on 210 acres of land with its own private cove. Price tag: $100 million.

The ultramodern Portobello estate in Corona del Mar, Calif., which has a listing price of $75 million and was, in 2006, the second-most expensive home in the country, rounds out the list. Even though it has eight bedrooms and 30,000 square feet of interior space, not to mention its own private beach, it barely made this year's elite group.

To compile our list, we spoke with brokers and consulted listing agents and real estate appraisers and scoured real estate listings. Most of the homes on this year's list are newcomers that have entered the market with high eight-figure or $100 million-plus prices. Estates like Three Ponds in Bridgehampton, N.Y., the Pierre Penthouse in Manhattan and the Portobello — which in previous years seemed excessive at $70 million to $75 million — are now second tier when it comes to price.

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Our list did not include land properties. The $115 million Bell Ranch in San Miguel County, N.M., boasts an impressive 10,832-square-foot, eight-bedroom main house, and its own airstrip. But at 250,000 acres, it offers buyers mostly land. That, and 3,200 Red Bell cows and a horse herd.

We also didn't include private listings, also called pocket listings, because they're quietly shopped around among elite buyers. One rumored example: Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia's $135 million Hala Ranch in Aspen, Colo. It had been on the market for two years but is no longer publicly listed.

While sellers nationwide are suffering, the highest segment of the luxury market, in trophy property corners like Palm Beach, Fla., Beverly Hills, Calif., or the east end of New York's Long Island, has performed well. Setting the tone for this year: a $60 Southampton, N.Y., buy to an unknown buyer. And there's John Thornton, a former Goldman Sachs partner and chairman of the Brookings Institution, who last month bought a $81.5 million Palm Beach spread.

"Inventory is relatively tight for trophy-type properties," says Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, a Manhattan real estate appraisal firm. "It's a contrarian element to some of the slip-off in sales, because the bulk of the market is down largely due to a weaker economy."

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