Though seven-figure listings may have dominated this year’s luxury real estate, some mega-homes were forced to downgrade their expectations and their list price. At the same time, other properties and projects still in development held out high hopes for wealthy buyers willing to pay any price for their very own slice of paradise. Palaces, manors and landmarks – they were all up for grabs this year! Say Hello to El Fueridis In Brian De Palma’s 1983 film, Scarface, gangster Tony Montana builds a cocaine-fueled empire that soon lands him in a Miami mansion littered with the flotsam and jetsam of his lavish life of crime. With a beautiful wife, a pet tiger, and more illicit drugs than he can apparently handle, Tony eventually become a victim of his own hubris, uttering his famous last words before tumbling off his ornate balcony into a fountain inscribed with the words, “The World Is Yours.” Though the film was set in Florida, the house is actually located on the opposite coast. The 100-year old haunt, known as El Fueridis to friends and neighbors, was designed by LA Public Library architect Bertram Goodhue and has always been hip to the Hollywood scene. Its “Persian-style” gardens and 24-carat gold ceilings once hosted the wedding of Charlie Chaplin and Oona O’Neil. More recently, the 10,000-square-foot mansion has languished on the market for over a year, its ten acres and innumerable fountains unable to coax potential buyers to fulfill the $35 million asking price. A thirty-percent discount seems to have done the trick: the property finally sold for $12.26 million earlier this year. The Largest Log Cabin on Earth Beyond Abe Lincoln’s wildest dreams, this expansive – and expensive – Granot Loma is technically a “log cabin,” but it’s aspirations are...

Walt Baczkowski thinks real estate listing syndication has jumped the shark. But the CEO of the San Francisco Association of REALTORS® (SFAR) has already figured out how to bring happy days back again. In recent months, sentiment surrounding consumer-facing real estate syndicators like Zillow and Trulia has shifted. REALTORS® and Multiple Listing Services have expressed concern about the practice of “scraping” exercised by some listing aggregators, which entails reusing listing data without permission from the broker or agent representing the property. Another concern is the ability for a prospective buyer to easily reach out and contact the listing broker/agent, whose status as the primary contact for the property listed isn’t always clear. Many real estate professionals are realizing that more control over their listing information is preferred, instead of reckless syndication that may produce no real results. “It jumped the shark because it became a detriment to the REALTORS® when they lost control,” Baczkowski explained. “Their pictures weren’t even appearing next to their listings. And then people were taking their listings, and doing things with them. It started out being this great benefit, but it suddenly turned into a negative. Now, it’s time to take back control of the data.” For SFAR, that meant setting up a consumer-facing real estate search portal site, developed by Point2. Consumers can search for homes and businesses for sale and rent, with all the data sourced directly from the San Francisco Multiple Listings Service website. If updates are made by a broker or agent to the listing – like a pending sale – the consumer site will also be updated in near real-time. In a city with a residential real estate market so hot that there are only 900 active listings, on average, of homes for sale, the timeliness of...