How could you not smile when your latte comes with a heart on top? This morning I stopped at Kahwa Coffee Shop in downtown St Petersburg for a coffee to go - no time today to enjoy the ambiance of this French coffee spot with tables inside and out. The French owners roast their own coffee at their warehouse plant in another part of St Petersburg. They offer 4 blends, named after winds of the world: SSirocco, Mistral, Boreas and Zonda, and sell it by the cup or by the pound - they also supply not only local restaurants but Paul Bocuse! 

Kahwa has welcoming smiles and places to chat, read or check your e-mail. I wrote more here and here.

$750 Million may be the record home "sale" but the 27 story home that Mukesh Ambani is building in Mumbai is costing over 1 Billion dollars - and some say the cost is nearing $2 billion. 4 years under construction, the Ambani residence will be 550 feet high and have 400,000 of interior space. The home is called Antilla and no two floors will be alike in either plan or materials. Read more and see photos here.

The Ambani home was designed by architects Perkins & Will, the architect for Signature Place, the new condo tower under construction here in downtown St. Petersburg. Contact The Simms Team for more information on Signature Place.

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Contact: Sharon Simms, RE/MAX Metro  (727) 896-1800

Russian billionaire’s purchase of French villa sets new world record for most expensive home — $750 million!

Most expensive home on the market in Pinellas County is listed at $16,999,000 in Tarpon Springs

Most expensive home on the market in Hillsborough County is listed at $25,000,000 in Tampa

August 11, 2008 — The market for the average priced U.S. residence may be soft, but the über rich (especially the Russians) continue to drive prices up at the very top of the world’s luxury market.  Case in point — Villa Léopolda, one of the most historic estates on the French Côte d’Azur, is now under contract by an anonymous Russian billionaire for $750 million (€500m).  This three-quarters-of-a-billion dollar sales price sets a new record for the most expensive home sale in the world. The previous record was set earlier this year by Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, with the reported purchase of a London home for his son for an estimated $236 million. 

“While the French Villa is a fabulous property, this sale does put into perspective the value U.S. properties represent,” said Sharon Simms (www.ssimms.com ), a luxury home expert with RE/MAX Metro in St. Petersburg.  “The most expensive residences on the market locally are listed for just $16,999,000 in Tarpon Springs in Pinellas County and $25 Million in Tampa in Hillsborough County.Both of these homes have between 28,000 and 29,000 sq ft. The record residential sale in the Tampa Bay area was in May of this year, a 13,000 sq ft waterfront home in Belleair that sold for $10,250,000.

Villa Léopolda, a cream-colored, turreted mansion with two guest houses, is midway between Monaco and Nice overlooking Cap Ferrat, near Villefranche-sur-Mer.  The villa was originally built about 1902 by King Leopold II of Belgium. The grounds are regarded as among the most spectacular on the Côte d’Azur.  Fifty full-time gardeners look after 20 acres of gardens and terraces, planted with 1,200 olive, orange, lemon and cypress trees.

The property’s new owner is said to be a Russian oil oligarch but not – despite initial rumors – Roman Abramovich, the highly visible owner of Chelsea Football Club, who already owns a €100m mansion near Antibes.

According to the Nice-Matin newspaper, a contract was signed last week to transfer ownership of the villa from Lily Safra, the widow of Edmond Safra, a murdered banking billionaire.  Rumor has it that Mrs. Safra held out for months as the persistent mystery buyer kept raising his offering price.  The paper also reported that 60 villas or mansions on Cap Ferrat are now owned by wealthy Russians.  

The property has a unique history.  In 1916, King Leopold’s nephew and heir, King Albert I, turned the villa into a hospital for officers wounded during the First World War. It later passed into the hands of the Agnelli family – Fiat automotive tycoons — and became the scene in the 1960s for legendary jet-set parties attended by Frank Sinatra, Ronald Reagan (in his acting days) and other celebrities.

“This sale raises the bar and makes the half dozen or so $100 million U.S. properties on the market seem like bargains,” said Laurie Moore-Moore, Founder of The Institute for Luxury Home Marketing (www.LuxuryHomeMarketing.com), a US-based organization which trains real estate agents who work in the luxury market and awards the international Certified Luxury Home Marketing Specialist designation.  “Today’s affluent are citizens of the world and the successful luxury agent must know how to reach them and what lifestyles they are seeking. It’s an exciting and active market for agents at the top.”

Sharon Simms is a member of The Institute for Luxury Home Marketing. She and her daughter, Tami Simms, are also trainers for the Institute for Luxury Home Marketing.

A Russian billionaire just set a record for the most expensive residential property sale in the world - 500 Million Euros, which is about $750 Million. The price is always driven up when a buyer wants to buy a property that the seller doesn’t want to sell. This property in Villefrance, between Nice and Monaco on the French Riviera, a turreted Belle Epoque mansion with two guest houses sits on 20 acres of grounds and gardens. The news article today shows a photo of The Villa Leopolda.

Note that this is a record "sale", which doesn’t mean it’s the most expensive property. We don’t know the cost of the skyscraper that Mukesh Ambani is building in Mumbai, for example.

Richard Kessler, developer of the Grand Bohemian Hotel & Residences in downtown St Petersburg, Florida, has asked the city of St Petersburg for a modification and extension on his contract with the city to buy the land at the northwest corner of 1st Ave N and 2nd St N. The request eliminates the luxury condos from the project and wants to delay construction commencement to April 30, 2009. Based on that, completion of the hotel would be  Fall 2011.

Originally designed as 82 luxury condos and 166 hotel rooms, the latest redesign had 22 luxury condominiums and 292 hotel rooms. There have not been enough presales of the condos fo close on the construction loan.

The St Petersburg City Council is scheduled to vote on the request today.

Hopefully the council will allow the extension as having the Grand Bohemian Hotel in downtown St Pete would be a wonderful addition to a beautiful downtown.

This Tuscan style Snell Isle waterfront home keeps reappearing in magazines. It was built in 2003 and when I sold it in 2005 it was a record high priced sale for Snell Isle. Located on Snell Harbor, it’s beautiful from both the street and the waterfront.

Earlier this year I was surprised to see it in a magazine ad placed by Jeffery Wolf, General Contractor. Then a month or so later, I saw the same photo in a magazine ad for Bedinghaus Architecture.

Before I sold it, it had been the location for a Great Chef’s charity event, a fundraiser for Family Resources.

That’s one advantage of great design - it doesn’t get old.

Robert Frank, this morning in his blog, wrote about the number of London mansions that are expanding their homes underground. Apparently zoning restrictions make it easier to expand down than up for their recreation, parking, and staff quarters. Neighbors are concerned about structural issues and any effect on the city’s water table - power lines get cut during the digging as well.

You can generally see buildings from the ground or the air - I wonder how encroachments would be determined under the ground …

Luxury Market Update - June 2008 - Pinellas County, Florida
St. Petersburg, Florida … July 7, 2008

May was a hard month to follow, with its record high priced sale at $10,250,000. May also had the highest number of monthly single family luxury sales (over $1 Million) this year. June is less on both counts, but still the second highest number this year. The number of luxury condo sales also decreased, partly due to the season and partly due to the new building closings. What’s more relevant, though, is the number of properties going to contract.

As you can see, recent sales have favored resale condos rather than new ones.

There is less luxury inventory now in Pinellas County than in any month this year, both in single family and in condos.

In the fall of 2005 when I sold a waterfront property listed at $4,250,000 it was a record high sale - keeping in mind of course that custom homes built by their current owners never were "sold" and generally appear on the public records only at the lot price, since the construction is a contract between owner and builder. Buyers always wonder if they’ve bought too high (just as sellers wonder if they’ve bought too low).

Despite a "declining market" the past few years, 5 additional homes have sold for higher prices, two of them selling over $5 Million. One of those two, a historic property, was not a tear down, but was certainly a complete restoration - I think construction crews were working there for 2 years, but oh, what a beauty it is now.

Snell Isle currently has five waterfront homes listed over $4,000,000 with the highest price being $6,900,000 for a 7,000+ sq ft home built in 2007.

Snell Isle has curving streets, mature landscaping, and a wonderful variety of homes, some dating back to the 1920s and some currently under construction. Neighbors walk or jog along the streets before dawn and again at dusk. It’s a peaceful area with character, and yet is just 5-10 minutes from downtown St. Petersburg. Some of the homes have a view of the downtown St Pete skyline.

For information on any Snell Isle homes, Contact The Simms Team.

p.s. in this "declining market" Pinellas County recently had a record sale of a waterfront home at over $10 Million.

Russian billionaire, Dmitry Rybolovlev, is buying Trump’s mansion in Palm Beach through one of his investment companies, according to the Wall Street Journal’s article today.  The  anticipated sale, reputed to be about $100 Million, will set a record for a Palm Beach residence. The purchaser is rumored to be tearing down Trump’s 33,000 square foot mansion. Obviously the value is in the 6.5 acres with 475 feet of frontage on the Atlantic Ocean. Too bad Trump didn’t save the costs of his cosmetic renovations and sell it when the market was hotter 2 years ago. He might have sold it faster if he’d torn the house down instead of renovating it - it wouldn’t be the first time that happened in Palm Beach.

In St. Petersburg (Florida, not Russia), we’re finding that the value is often in the waterfront lot and the house is just a bonus. Here, too, homes are being purchased and torn down so that new homes that meet the buyers desires can be built there.

For information on prime waterfront teardowns, as well as desirable homes, contact The Simms Team at RE/MAX Metro.