You might be excused if, reading the paper today, you wondered what on earth is going on with the housing market.

On the one hand, there are owners of larger homes having a hard time downsizing because -- agents say -- it's a hard-hit part of the market. On the other hand, the Ritz-Carlton Residences just sold a nearly 12,000-square-foot penthouse condo -- a unit that was originally three separate penthouse condos -- for a record-setting $12.6 million.

Does the really, really high end have more going for it than the merely high end?

Before you start adding thousands of square feet to your home in hopes of attracting a buyer, remember that few have the financial heft of novelist Tom Clancy, who (The Daily Record reported in a keen scoop) is the buyer of the huge penthouse.

How big is 12,000 square feet? As big as five typical new U.S. houses.

But the prevailing trend is smaller, not bigger -- as you might expect during a prolonged downturn. Last year, the median new house was smaller than it was the year before, the first drop since 1995.

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Categories: For sale, Housing market experiences, Unusual homes
        

According to the Telegraph, "Plans for Legoland to move it to their theme park fell through because transport costs were too high and despite a final Facebook appeal for someone to take it, no-one came forward."

Number of Lego bricks: 3.3 million.

It was built for James May’s Toy Stories, a BBC series. If the house followed the original plan, its interior sported a Lego shower and toilet.

Geekologie noted the teardown on a post tagged with these pointed categories: "You fools!" and "You should have donated it to Geekologie!"

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Categories: Housing humor, Unusual homes
        

With all the attention on smaller homes nowadays, you might think nobody wants a big place. Well, Mark Patzschke does. In today's Dream Home feature, he says he bought his 6,700-square-foot Fallston home because of its spaciousness.

You could fit six moderately sized condos in that sort of house. Heck, you could fit a condo on his "1,200-square-foot, multilevel deck."

This is the exact opposite, size-wise, as an earlier Dream Home that is six rooms in total.

Would you want a huge home if price wasn't an issue? I'd find it exhausting just to decorate, but I'm not the decorating sort.

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Categories: Unusual homes
        

Million-dollar homes aren't unusual anymore, but $11.9 million is a different story. That's the asking price for a spread in Annapolis that sits on about 20 acres and looks out over the Chesapeake Bay.

The listing, which went up last week, says the brick-and-stucco Tudor house has a two-car garage, five bedrooms and four-and-a-half bathrooms. (No standing in line for the loo!) There's also a guest house and a waterside patio.

The home is assessed by the state at a much lower value for property-tax purposes -- $1.5 million -- but then the use is listed as agricultural.

Thanks to reader Ted Kluga for noticing that this property hit the market.

According to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, 801 of the homes for sale in the Baltimore metro area in July were priced at $1 million or more. Just 20 were listed for at least $5 million.

It's not an easy time for the luxury-home market, which has to contend with financing constraints plus potential buyers with their own pricey homes they'd need to sell first. Not that this is news to any of you.

Seen any interesting homes on the market lately?

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Categories: Unusual homes
        

The listing for the Ellicott City house pictured above is getting a lot of hits on Realtor.com, and you can probably see why. It's the sort of thing that people, once stumbling upon it, will forward to everyone they know with "can you believe this?!" in the subject header.

In a sea of Colonials and split-levels, a geodesic dome does tend to stand out.

I talked this week to real estate agent Kevin Willner, who represents the couple selling the home, and he said eight or nine people had been to see it since it hit the market two weeks ago. It's listed at $340,000.

What do prospective buyers think of the place, I asked?

"Either they love it or they hate it," said Willner, who is with ReMax Sails in Federal Hill and supplied the photo above. "One couple came in and it was funny -- he loved it, she hated it."

He passed this detail on to one of the owners, who quipped: "Well, that means we're halfway there."

Continue reading "For sale: three bed, three bath geodesic dome" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Housing market experiences, Unusual homes