to move up and down
Nasty neighbour note didn’t stop Nova Scotia family from embracing ‘tacky’ Easter decor
Lori Perron was intrigued. A trip to the community post office box not far from her Peachtree Hill home in Halifax, N.S., typically yields a stack of bills, some coupons, junk mail and nothing more.
But on March 4 there was something more. Tucked amid the standard correspondence was a plain white envelope with “Home owner” typed across the front.
“I thought we must have won something,” Ms. Perron says. “It is pretty exciting whenever you get something in the mail that isn’t a bill.”
The excitement, alas, was fleeting, and it vanished altogether after the 45-year-old stay-at-home mom sat down on her front porch to read the envelope’s contents, a letter consisting of three sentences.
“Dear Home owners,” it reads.
“Before Easter comes the community asks that you do not demoralize our subdivision and street with yet again your very tacky decorations. Halloween and Christmas was enough.
“Perhaps you should consider that this area is a step above you.” The letter was signed: “A Concerned Neighbour.” (Devaan Ingraham for the National Post)
Want to live like Wayne Gretzky? 13,000 sq.-ft. mansion built for hockey great hits the market for $15M
A sprawling, 13,000 square-foot mansion complete with two guest houses, its own movie theatre and a tennis court — all designed for hockey great Wayne Gretzky — has hit he market for the low price of $14,995,000 in California.
Gretzky owned the Thousand Oaks, California, home until 2007, when he sold it to former baseball star Lenny Dykstra for $18.5-million at the U.S. housing bubble’s peak. Dykstra tried to flip it for $24-million, but couldn’t find a buyer. He’s since gone bankrupt and the house is back on the market. (Redfin.com)
In one Chinese province, the government literally paves a highway around homeowners who refuse to move
The new highway Wenling, Zhejiang province in China is wide, well paved and almost finished. Almost finished except for the five-storey house sitting right in the middle of it.
Luo Baogen and his wife from Xiazhangyang village did not feel they were being offered enough compensation to relocate when Chinese government decided to build a highway where their house was. So the government build the highway … leaving the house in the middle of the road. (REUTERS/China Daily)
For only $100K a month, rent an 8,000-square-foot apartment in Manhattan. Take a tour of the most outrageously expensive apartments for rent in New York
Living in New York City can be ridiculously expensive. While the average New York apartment goes for $3,400 a month, there are some penthouses and townhouses asking staggering amounts rents equal to some New Yorkers’ annual salaries, if not more.
We rounded up the most expensive luxury real estate rentals we could find in Manhattan. (Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate; Sotheby’s Realty)
‘Monstrous and unnecessary’: Canadian millionaire angers U.K. neighbours with proposed four-storey basement
A plan by Canadian cable mogul David Graham to dig a sprawling underground lair beneath his U.K. mansion is prompting the residents of one of London’s most posh neighbourhoods to decry the project as overly-extravagant.
“These plans are absolutely monstrous and unnecessary … no one needs that much space,” the Duchess of St Albans, a neighbour, told the London Evening Standard.
In mid-October, Mr. Graham’s contractors went before officials at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and presented the blueprints for a gargantuan underground addition descending four storeys into the ground.
Yours for $6.5M: The man-made ‘island’ that can be towed to any ocean in the world
An Austrian firm has come up what it hopes is the next big thing for the mega-rich: a man-made, floating “island” with a list price of 5.2 million euros ($6.5 million), the company’s founder said Monday.
An Austrian firm has come up what it hopes is the next big thing for the mega-rich: a man-made, floating “island” with a list price of 5.2 million euros ($6.5 million), the company’s founder said Monday. (AFP/Getty Images)
Photos: Celine Dion’s opulent mansion is the most expensive home for sale in Quebec
Celine Dion and her husband Rene Angelil have listed their Montreal-area mansion for nearly $29.7 million, making the private island estate the most expensive residential property up for sale in Quebec.
The couple put the custom-built stone mansion on the market Friday because Dion’s “intensive performance schedule” will not give them much time to spend in it, according to the president and CEO of Sotheby’s International Canada, Ross McCredie.
“It took them a long time to make this decision,” he said. “It was a passionate thing for them to make. And in the end, they just haven’t been using it enough… They plan to purchase another home in Montreal that’s much smaller.” (Photos: Courtesy Sotheby’s Real Estate)
Here’s what $1-million will buy you in Toronto
Despite reports this week that Canada’s housing market is ready to deflate slowly, there continue to be examples in Toronto of homes that sell for more than the casual observer might expect.
Consider the two-storey house at 34 Playter Cres., just north of Danforth Avenue in Greektown. The red brick house is clearly in a state of disrepair: Wire hangs from the front porch awning and paint is peeling from the garage door trim.
But the home was listed for $949,000 and sold for just more than $1-million Monday. That’s a lot of money for something the new owners will likely tear down and replace.
A night on Muammar Gaddafi’s bed: ‘I slept like a self-assured dictator’
While I lay in silence, my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I could hear the fighters talking excitedly next door — I felt like a child who had been put to bed early.
Muammar Gaddafi’s room was large, but not enormous and his monstrous bed took up the majority of the room. Two tacky chandeliers hung from the ceiling. (Photo: Oliver Holmes/Reuters)
Paint colours given masculine makeover
Real men don’t paint their basements in Butterscotch Tempest. They colour the walls with Beer Time.
The original names were geared toward women, just as nail polishes are marketed with witty shade names (Essie’s “Ballet Slippers,” “Not Just a Pretty Face,” and “Sole Mate,” for example).
“When it comes to paint names, it’s all about the emotional connection and our research shows that men and women tend to relate to paint names differently,” Alison Goldman, a spokeswoman for CIL Paints, says.
‘‘Studies show that while a larger percentage of women tend to choose paint colours for their home, it’s often men who give the colours a final nod.”
Dream Home
Few of my neighbours go to church. But they do attend Sunday services. The proceedings take place in the early afternoon, at shifting locations around the city. Congregants are called to worship with signs proclaiming “Open House.” Inside, real estate agents share the Gospel According To While You Were Out. Some of the visitors are looking to buy a roof over their heads — but most are there for what might be loosely described as spiritual reasons: Having shunned God’s house, modern yuppies instead worship their own, travelling from open house to open house, proclaiming to one and all the Good News of granite countertops and imported-tile backsplashes.
As my wife and I learned last month, when we put our own house on the market, this is not that old-timey real-estate religion. In my parents’ day, getting a house ready for sale meant vacuuming the carpets, mowing the lawn, doing the dishes, tidying the bedrooms. These days, it means constructing a full-fledged alternate reality — a beautiful, surreal plane from which everything and everyone you love has been expensively airbrushed out of existence.
No matter how professional and well-mannered your stagers are, there is no getting around the fundamentally humiliating nature of the client’s experience. Implicit in the stager’s recommendations is the fact that the way you live is undesirable — ugly — to prospective home buyers. When the stager enters your house, you hope that this will be an easy job for her, your house being so tasteful and uncluttered. “I wouldn’t touch a thing!” you imagine her saying as she admires your carefully chosen decor and furnishings. Instead, you hear a parade of euphemisms. “This couch, uh — it has that studenty look, don’t you think?” or “A bed made of rattan! I love it! But, you know, not everyone has our avant-garde tastes.” (Illustration: Kelsey Heinrichs)
3 beds, 2 baths, but who’s next door?
Are homeowners obliged to reveal to the young family buying their house that a sex offender lives across the street?
An Ontario judge recently concluded that sellers may have such a duty, giving the green light to a lawsuit that raises intriguing questions about honesty in real estate and the treatment of some of society’s most reviled criminals.
One lawyer familiar with the case said the latent defect principle was really meant for physical problems with a house. “Where do you draw the line?” said the lawyer, who asked not to be named. “What if your neighbour displays psychiatric problems? Do you have to disclose that as well?” (Image: Fotolia)
Folded-paper interiors: Art wow
German artist Simon Schubert may have found a way to revolutionize the art of architectural rendering. Over the years, as technology has improved, the preferred art form has changed: We’ve gone from blueprints and pencil art to watercolour art and on to computer graphics and video animation. And seeing this art, I’d make the case that stepping back from high-tech might be the way for some builders to go.
Using hand-crafted slow-lane art may not work for the marketing plan for a hyper-urban condo, but it could be an intriguing way for a custom builder to present a luxury, one-off home to, say, a Lorne Park or Bridle Path buyer.
To achieve this effect, the 35-year-old Cologne-based Schubert painstakingly folds the paper to create the lines and shading. See more of Schubert’s work here.)
