Ernest Beck

If real estate brokers in the U.S. are feeling upbeat about a recent run of good sales in the luxury end of the market, then their colleagues in London must be positively giddy over the recent sale of a $220 million penthouse in the city -- the highest-priced residential property ever sold in the U.K., or just about anywhere it appears. Ever.

The mystery buyer, believed to be (take your pick) a Russian oligarch, a Middle Eastern sheik, or a Nigerian oil mogul living it up on rising oil prices, will be the proud owner of a two-story, six-bedroom spread at One Hyde Park, a new development with park views, bulletproof windows, a panic room and, according to the developer's website, "ultimate perfection," when it comes to amenities and decor.

Even compared to some recent eye-popping sales in New York -- recall Mexican uber-billionaire Carlos Slim's $44-million contract for a Fifth Avenue townhouse -- the London price is a whopper, and reflects a return of super-rich buyers looking for trophy homes, brokers there say, while the overall market remains wobbly.

Sounds like a familiar story if you look at real estate on this side of the pond.

When Oliver Stone's sequel to his 1987 hit "Wall Street" opens in September, viewers will see some familiar characters and an updated plot of complex financial shenanigans -- as well as a dramatically altered map of New York City real estate.

Where, for example, is Gordon "greed is good" Gekko (played again by Michael Douglas) living these days?

When "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" opens, Gekko's 1970s-era Hamptons beach house is gone. (Well, he just gotten out of jail). So he's holed up on the Upper West Side, in the west 60s near Lincoln Center -- in a rented penthouse apartment with, ugh, rented furniture, says the film's production designer Kristi Zea.

As for the young and ambitious trader character, now named Jacob and played by Shia LaBeouf, he splurges bonus money on a 2,500-square converted loft in (where else?) trendy Chelsea, in the West 20s, to be exact.

Fashion mogul Calvin Klein isn't known for skimping on anything -- except for some underwear designs -- so it came as a surprise that he just downsized plans for his soon-to-be-built Hamptons beach house.

He isn't alone in wanting a more humble vacation retreat. While we already know about the great shrinking single-family home for average folks, now comes word that second homes aimed at the most affluent buyers are also slimming down.

A sales slump and bloated inventories are forcing developers to build smaller, less expensive houses, especially in resort communities, the Wall Street Journal reports. From Caribbean islands to ritzy Rocky Mountain retreats, prices are being slashed by as much as 44 percent -- along with, of course, square footage, acreage and some amenities.

It's easy to see why: Vacation home sales peaked at around one million in 2005, but dipped to about half that last year as the overall real estate market tanked. There's been a bit of an uptick this year, but that's coming off of deep lows.

So will smaller, cheaper cottages help kick-start the depressed market for second homes?

After years of conspicuous consumption when it came to our homes and what we put in them, Americans are rethinking their priorities in the recession-induced Age of Austerity and paring down their possessions and what they spend.

We won't be living in cold-water yurts, of course, but some recent numbers suggest that shifting consumer priorities will have a profound impact not only on the real estate market and homeownership but all the industries associated with housing.

Today we're buying less furniture and washing machines and other durable home items. We're living in smaller houses with less overall square footage. Our remodeling projects are smaller and we like energy-efficient and sustainable products more than, say, a new AC unit that comes in multiple colors.

Are we just being practical (and cheap) in a scary economy, or are Americans finally coming around to the small-is-beautiful mentality?

Gas-guzzling weed-whackers and toxic chemicals are so yesterday when it comes to eco-conscious lawn and garden care, especially when homeowners can now use goats to do the dirty, dangerous work.

A cottage industry of entrepreneurs is flourishing by renting out goats to home warriors battling weeds, prickly underbrush, and other unwanted vegetation -- including nasty things like poison oak that you wouldn't want to get near yourself.

Don't worry PETA, this won't hurt the goats: They enjoy a diet of nutrient-dense, broadleaf plants and brush. That's the idea behind companies like www.rent-a-goat.com, the Goat Lady and Rent a Ruminant LLC, which bring the animals right to your front door or to your overgrown front acreage, as the case may be, where they forage on stuff you want to get rid of with no chemicals and only a tiny carbon hoofprint. (Sadly, you can't just buy some goats and keep them in the backyard.)

But how cost-effective and environmentally-friendly is goat weed control?

You might not notice it while cruising down the Long Island Expressway on the Hampton Jitney, but Long Island, N.Y. -- once the epitome of the suburban dream -- is having something of a midlife crisis as politicians, civic organizations and developers debate how to create more affordable housing.

Yes, the place that brought the world Levittown, the ultimate post-1945 mass suburb with cheap housing, has fallen behind in its ability to offer affordable homes, especially apartments. In fact, only 17 percent of the Island's housing stock is rental (compared to 38 percent in tony Westchester County, N.Y.).

The Island is certainly a place for those in the upper income bracket: Home values, even after the real estate bust, are five times household incomes, making Nassau and Suffolk counties among the 10 least-affordable counties in the U.S.

Who or what is to blame, and how do we move forward?

The world's richest man, Mexican telecoms mogul Carlos Slim, is expanding his portfolio of New York City properties with the purchase of the landmark Duke-Semans Mansion on Fifth Avenue for $44 million, according to the The Wall Street Journal. It's a price considered something of a discount but still the fourth highest price ever paid for a Manhattan townhouse.

At just under 20,000 square feet, the home on 82nd Street is in spitting distance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but is said to be in need of some repair and redecorating. Slim can afford to transform the place from fixer-upper to grand palace as Forbes estimates his net worth at $53.5 billion.

Surprisingly, however, Bloomberg quotes Slim's spokesman as saying that the businessman won't actually live there. The mansion, built in 1901 by tobacco magnate Benjamin Duke, is an investment, like another property he picked up last month: a $140-million office tower, also on Fifth. Slim is buying up bits of New York, including a chunk of The New York Times Co. and retailer Saks Inc.

Even if he doesn't move in and put up his own drapes, Slim is probably buying at a good time, savvy businessman that he is.

Carol and Hugo Rizzoli and Josh Kilmer-Purcell (pictured at right with his partner Brent Ridge) are not household-name authors, but if you love real estate and home renovations you might be devouring the stories these people are telling in their new books -- the latest of many new publications in what is affectionately known as the house-porn publishing genre.

You know the plot: fantasies that many of us had had about buying an old wreck out in the wilds somewhere and slaving away at remodeling and renovating and along the way gaining insight into our very selves. That is, you get new insulation, a snazzy kitchen backsplash and perhaps a spread in Country Living as well as self-knowledge.

Kind of like "This Old House" meets "Eat Pray Love." Or as Joanne Kaufman put it in The Wall Street Journal, "The take-home message: If you get your house right, you'll also get your life right (or vice versa)."

But does a house makeover always lead to introspection and internal renewal?

An uptick in sales of high-end mountain real estate in Colorado has prompted a critical question: Are the rich really returning to the real estate market and buying luxury homes? Or are they still hoarding their wealth after getting burned in the crash?

Mixed signals about what the wealthy are doing with their money are everywhere. One day we hear via Scorpio Partners that the rich might have as much as $26 trillion stashed away that they're not giving to banks and wealth managers. Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that a growing number of homeowners with million-dollar-plus mortgages have simply stopped making payments.

On the other hand comes word that high-net-worth buyers are apparently loosening their wallets a bit to purchase homes in swanky Colorado resorts like Vail and Aspen. It's not a bellwether market like Manhattan, or course, but some say the flicker of activity in this micro-market favored by high fliers could be a signal that the end of the Great Recession is near and a real estate rebound is on the way.

It's more like a blip, as high-end buyers cherry-pick discounted properties while the getting is good.

The wobbly economic recovery is looking a bit wobblier, if you consider the Architecture Billings Index put out by the American Institute of Architects, which reflects not only how much work architects are getting but also suggests the status of construction spending and the overall health of the housing and real estate markets.

After three months of climbing out of a recession-induced hole, the index suddenly sank back in May to 45.8 from 48.4 the previous month, a relapse from what was touted as a sure signs that business was improving for designers, contractors and developers.

"This caught us off guard after a string of good months in the right direction," says Kermit Baker, the AIA's chief economist.

India is emerging as a global economic power, with a rising middle and wealthy class with money to burn, which is good news for Lodha Developers, a Mumbai company about to break ground on the world's tallest residential tower -- and, no doubt, one of the city's priciest real estate offerings.

With 117 stories, the 1,450-foot World One Tower will dwarf the Empire State Building and the Willis Tower in Chicago (née the Sears tower) in the overall skyscraper stakes, and easily rise higher than the Q1 Tower in Australia's Gold Coast City, the current reigning world champion of residential structures.

Of course, the nearly 300 apartments in the $450-million World One Tower won't come cheap. Residences will start at around $1.5 million and top out between $10 and $12 million, according to the developer. That may be chump change by New York City luxury real estate standards, but it definitely ranks high in India's big cities, where property prices have nearly doubled over the past year, Indian Realty News says.

Still, who might be in the market for such high living?

Baltimore seems like a cool place, the gritty bits from "The Wire" and John Waters movies notwithstanding. And now you can live there in the lap of luxury for a pittance, compared to some high-priced real estate markets like New York and San Francisco.

Because Baltimore's luxury market took a dive in the recession, 11 properties at a newly built development called Pier Homes at HarborView -- described in breathless terms as "the only waterfront community of its kind in the world" (our italics) -- are being auctioned on June 28, with prices starting at up to 75 percent off the last asking price.

That's right: a 3,523-square-foot, 3-bedroom, 2.5-bath home has a minimum bid price of $375,000 -- down from $1.48 million. The bidding for an even bigger place, with 3.5 beds and 2.5 baths, starts at $665,000, instead of the original asking price of $1.9 million.

Quite a bargain for waterfront living that the website claims is "inspired by the homes of Venice." OK, except for the water views, they don't exactly look like Venetian dwellings (although we did spot an Italianate-looking baroque fountain in what appears to be a courtyard). But that's still good value for money ... if you want to live in Baltimore.

It may look like Newport, R.I., but it's actually New Jersey -- the Jersey that Manhattanites and Americans of all stripes love to mock. But Alpine, N.J., is far from the Jersey Shore of "Snooki" and "The Situation." Just six miles away from Manhattan, it is the most expensive zip code in the United States, according to Forbes.

A current listing in Alpine, a 30,000-square foot mansion with a price tag of $68 million, has also set a record. It is the highest-priced free-standing residential property currently listed in the United States.

The property has so far attracted the interest of four buyers from the world of business and finance, broker Dennis McCormack of Prominent Properties Sotheby's Realty told HousingWatch.

The prospects remain anonymous, but imagine the buyer as someone who covets a grand, Newport, R.I.-style spread, complete with requisite ballroom, library with vaulted ceiling, a 2,000-square-foot pool house (next to the 65-foot pool), a slate roof and tons of substructural steel, for added stability.

But is this house --or any house, for that matter -- worth $68 million?

Something unusual is happening at architects' offices: The phones are ringing.

After a long recession-induced downturn that caused massive layoffs and agony for architects and designers of all stripes, potential clients are starting to ask about new or iced projects, they say. This could boost the real estate market and construction activity -- if those tentative inquiries lead to commissions, that is.

Any glimmers of hope are helpful, like those found in the American Institute of Architects' Billing Index, which tracks activity in the industry. The index has trended upward over the past four months, suggesting that the situation is at least not as awful as it was. While the index remains stuck below 50, which means it's in negative territory, the AIA's chief economist, Kermit Baker, wrote in a press release that the industry could be "nearing an actual recovery phase."

Would home buyers be enticed to invest in a prefab house over a custom-made one if the home had all they ever wanted in a sustainable home: from solar panels to a green roof and LEED certification?

As the greening of the real estate market continues, and buyers scale down their square footage and focus on energy-efficient living, prefabs are entering a new phase of potential popularity.

But these aren't the cheesy, cookie-cutter prefab (aka modular) homes of the 1970s and 1980s.

Consider Nationwide Homes' Eco-Cottage, a 523-square-foot, one-bedroom, one-bathroom dwelling that boasts bamboo floors and a tankless water heater. It has a base price of $59,500. Then there's the solar-ready mkGlidehouse from Blu Homes, with its formaldehyde-free cabinetry, for between $250 and $350 per square foot.

Good prices, to be sure, for all those premium green extras that can jack up prices on any house. But are these prefabs a bargain -- and greener -- than custom-built homes?