Craig Jackson, of the Barrett-Jackson auction house, is experiencing a serious (and lucrative) case of déjà vu. One of the auction house’s top customers, Ron Pratte, recently consigned his peerless collection of more than 140 vehicles and more than 1,400 pieces of automobilia, which will be offered at Barrett-Jackson’s annual Scottsdale auction from January 10 through 18. Among the most remarkable lots are Carroll Shelby’s personal Shelby Cobra 427 Super Snake (which last sold for $5 million in 2007); an emerald-green 1954 Pontiac Bonneville Special Motorama Concept car designed by Harley Earl (which fetched a hammer price of $2.8 million in 2006); and a 1950 GM Futurliner Parade of Progress tour bus (the proceeds from the bus will benefit the Armed Forces Foundation; Pratte bought it in 2006 for a hammer price of $4 million). All three were sold to Pratte at previous Barrett-Jackson auctions in Scottsdale. “It’s going to be pretty interesting to watch them go all at once,” says Jackson, who serves as chairman and CEO of the auction house. “He bought a lot of our best cars over the last 10 years. This is an opportunity to pick up a lot of crown jewels.” The choicest of those cars, including the ones named here, will reach the auction block on the evening of Saturday, January 17

Build in Outgassing Time and Deep Cleaning to Your Nursery’s Project Schedule and Budget
My biggest overall recommendation for any new nursery project is this: give sufficient time for complete outgassing of new materials.
The reason is simple: the fetus and newborn are sensitive at levels well below what an adult might tolerate.
    •    They are extremely vulnerable to even very low levels of toxic chemicals and other contaminants.
    •    If you’re familiar with EWG’s Baby Body Burden study, maybe you already know that babies are born “pre-polluted”, as cord blood contains almost 300 highly toxic chemicals, proving that whatever the mother ingests, inhales and absorbs is passed on to the baby.(1)
Green products and materials are not necessarily completely non-toxic, and even the least toxic versions, newly installed, are usually too toxic for the developing fetus and newborn until all odors have completely dissipated. Even certifications still aren’t good enough, as their standards are limited in scope and are certainly not developed specifically for the newborn or fetus.
So even though you are decorating with healthy materials and products, make sure that the pregnant mom and newborn are not in the home during the makeover, and they do not inhale outgassing from new materials, no matter how “green” and “non toxic” the products claim to be.
Mom and newborn can re-enter the house only when ALL odors have dissipated 100%.

Pocket Doors

You can find original pocket doors in many Craftsman and Victorian homes. These built-in features come in handy for separating two adjoining rooms when you need privacy or quiet. When not in use, the doors slide into the walls, leaving a wide (usually at least double-width) opening.

Since they’re made from solid wood, pocket doors are effective at blocking sound — perfect if you want to entertain without waking the little ones.
If you are renovating or working on a new build, consider adding pocket doors to a room or two. Doors with glass panels, like the ones shown here, are a good choice if you want to let light through to the rest of the house even with the doors shut.

Shoji Room Dividers

A common feature in traditional Japanese architecture, shoji doors are used to conserve space in homes with small footprints. The doors are made from washi paper on a wood frame, and slide along tracks. Open them all to create one big space, and slide them shut as needed to carve out smaller rooms.The panels are translucent, so they provide privacy without sacrificing light.

Sliding Doors

A sliding door gets put to work in this small space to create a bedroom when needed — and slides away during the day. Paired with a Murphy bed that folds into the wall, it makes this studio feel far larger than its footprint.

Sliding doors are just as useful in a large, open-plan space as they are in a small one. Here large sliding doors can be open or shut to section off private areas from public ones. Or consider a great big barn door for a stylish and functional way to divide adjoining rooms.

Sliding Glass Doors

Sliding glass doors are a good choice when you want to divide a space while maximizing light. The large wood-framed sliding glass doors in this space can slide shut to hide the kitchen after dinner — a nice compromise if you love an open kitchen but don’t want to have your guests staring at dirty dishes after dinner.

Frosted sliding glass doors, like the ones shown here, provide privacy for a guest bedroom while still allowing light through.

On this day in 1981, the Jamaican boxer Trevor Berbick beat former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali in a unanimous 10-round decision, before a crowd of 10,000 at the Queen Elizabeth Sports Centre in Nassau, the Bahamas.

At the age of 39, Ali (born Cassius Clay) was attempting his second comeback from retirement. Crowned as the World Boxing Council (WBC) heavyweight champ in 1964 after beating Sonny Liston, he had successfully defended the title eight times before he was convicted of draft evasion in 1967, stripped of his boxing license and title and sentenced to five years in prison. Though the conviction was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, Ali was inactive for two years and announced his retirement in 1970. He returned to the ring after only a short time, however, and regained his heavyweight title in 1974 after a win against George Foreman in Zaire. After losing and regaining the crown again in 1978, Ali announced his retirement for the second time. He reemerged in October 1980 to fight a championship bout against Larry Holmes, who knocked him out in the 11th round in a one-sided battle. Ali refused to accept the result, however, and pushed to set up the fight with Berbick in the Bahamas in order to prove himself.

Immensely popular with the fans, Ali put in his best performance in the middle of the Berbick fight, seeming to win the fifth and sixth rounds with his combinations and aggressive punches. From the seventh round on, however, control belonged to the 27-year-old Berbick, whose speed and power allowed him to inflict a series of damaging punches, batter Ali in the corner, land a punch to the head in the ninth, and get him on the ropes in the tenth. In the end, all three judges gave the match to Berbick.

Ali retired for good after the fight, finishing his career with an overall record of 56-5 and earning a lasting reputation as one of the 20th century’s most influential sportsmen.

For his part, Berbick won the WBC heavyweight title in 1986 but was beaten in his first defense by the 20-year-old Mike Tyson. Berbick continued boxing for another 14 years but was plagued by issues in his personal life, including various arrests and a conviction for sexual assault. His boxing license was revoked in 2000 after a post-fight CAT scan found a blood clot in his brain.

In October 2006, Berbick was found dead, with massive wounds to the head, in a church courtyard in his native town, Norwich, near Kingston, Jamaica. His 20-year-old nephew and a friend were charged in the killing.

Pacific Palisades Single Family Home Sales
November 2014
Total Sold Dollar Volume:$ 59,211,967
Average Selling Price:$ 3,289,553
Average List Price:$ 3,458,611
Avg Sales Price/Avg. List Price: 95.1%
Median Price:$ 2,539,400
Average Days on Market:74
Number of Listings Sold:18

Beverly Hills Single Family Home Sales
November 2014
Total Sold Dollar Volume:$    54,971,000
Average Selling Price:$     6,107,888
Average List Price:$     6,452,222
Avg Sales Price/Avg. List Price: 94.7%
Median Price:$     6,200,000
Average Days on Market:99
Number of Listings Sold:9

Brentwood Single Family Home Sales
November 2014
Total Sold Dollar Volume:$    53,398,215
Average Selling Price:$     2,810,432
Average List Price:$     2,910,789
Avg Sales Price/Avg. List Price: 96.6%
Median Price:$     2,224,995
Average Days on Market:61
Number of Listings Sold:19

Malibu Single Family Home Sales
November 2014
Total Sold Dollar Volume:$ 22,834,428
Average Selling Price:$ 2,283,442
Average List Price:$ 2,471,400
Avg Sales Price/Avg. List Price: 92.4%
Median Price:$ 2,300,000
Average Days on Market:181
Number of Listings Sold:10

The 23-year-old Brando played the rough, working-class Polish-American Stanley Kowalski, whose violent clash with Blanche DuBois (played on Broadway by Jessica Tandy), a Southern belle with a dark past, is at the center of Williams’ famous drama. Blanche comes to stay with her sister Stella (Kim Hunter), Stanley’s wife, at their home in the French Quarter of New Orleans; she and Stanley immediately despise each other. In the climactic scene, Stanley rapes Blanche, causing her to lose her fragile grip on sanity; the play ends with her being led away in a straitjacket.
Streetcar, produced by Irene Mayer Selznick and directed by Elia Kazan, shocked mid-century audiences with its frank depiction of sexuality and brutality onstage. When the curtain went down on opening night, there was a moment of stunned silence before the crowd erupted into a round of applause that lasted 30 minutes. On December 17, the cast left New York to go on the road. The show would run for more than 800 performances, turning the charismatic Brando into an overnight star. Tandy won a Tony Award for her performance, and Williams was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
In 1951, Kazan made Streetcar into a movie. Brando, Hunter and Karl Malden (as Stanley’s friend and Blanche’s love interest) reprised their roles. The role of Blanche went to Vivien Leigh, the scenery-chewing star of Gone with the Wind. Controversy flared when the Catholic Legion of Decency threatened to condemn the film unless the explicitly sexual scenes–including the climactic rape–were removed. When Williams, who wrote the screenplay, refused to take out the rape, the Legion insisted that Stanley be punished onscreen. As a result, the movie (but not the play) ends with Stella leaving Stanley.
A Streetcar Named Desire earned 12 Oscar nominations, including acting nods for each of its four leads. The movie won for Best Art Direction, and Leigh, Hunter and Malden all took home awards; Brando lost to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen.

Buyers love the allure of a fresh, beautiful bathroom that reminds them of luxury hotels or soothing spas they have enjoyed. And, most important, buyers want to envision themselves enjoying this luxury every day in their new home. However, the reality is that most of us do not have the perfect bathroom. And we know that, in most instances, it is not a wise investment to do a full, costly renovation just for a home sale. It simply doesn’t translate into profit.
A better strategy is to maximize what you already have, on a budget. You want to transform your real-life, everyday bathroom into a five-star hotel experience that prospective buyers will love, without overcapitalizing.

Here are simple ways to create havens with a wow factor:

1. Clear off the counters to create a blank canvas. Remove all of your everyday toiletries and bathroom supplies. This includes soaps, toothbrushes, cotton balls — everything. (And don’t forget the products in the shower.) Buyers do not want to see your personal hygiene products. In fact, this can make them feel as though they are intruding on your personal space, which can be distracting and a little awkward

2. Get rid of cleaning products. Remove all items that imply housework and maintenance, such as toilet brushes, wastepaper baskets, sponges, cleaning products, bath mats — even spare toilet rolls. These are a necessary part of everyday living, but they do not create a beautiful spa-like experience for your buyers.

Tip: Remove the bathroom scale, too. Remember, your buyers want a luxurious bathroom experience, not a reminder of those extra pounds they are trying to lose.

3. Maximize your storage. Storage space sells. Your buyers will be looking inside your bathroom cupboards to see how much space they offer. Make sure they are only half to two-thirds full and well organized. Store the little things you use every day (hair elastics, lip gloss) in a pretty box or basket with a lid to avoid a tidal wave of trinkets on the shelves.

Tip: If you’re running out of space to store your toiletries, keep the overflow in simple wicker baskets. When buyers are coming to inspect your home, just grab the baskets and stash them somewhere else.

4. Make minor upgrades. Rather than spending many thousands completely renovating your bathroom, it’s much smarter to spend your money only where it will show and to make small, inexpensive upgrades that will create a large impact. As a general rule, improvements that can’t easily be seen don’t translate into a higher sale price.

The best bang-for-your-buck bathroom upgrades are: repainting the walls, replacing leaking and worn taps, updating the cabinet hardware, installing new light fittings and updating towel bars.

Note: In some bathrooms it’s also worth considering changing the tiles (large white tiles always make a bathroom feel more spacious and contemporary), replacing shower screens and investing in new cabinetry and countertops. This is often warranted in a higher-priced property, where buyers are looking for (and expecting) a higher level of bathroom luxury.

5. Clean thoroughly. Clean everything to within an inch of its life. No, it’s certainly not exciting, but it’s super important. Buyers will pay a premium for new, so your aim is to create a new feel. Everything must be immaculate, as this creates the impression that your home has been well maintained and well loved.

6. Hang luxurious towels. Any bathroom can be instantly transformed by adding beautiful, soft towels. New is best (once towels have been washed, they never look quite the same). So it’s a great idea to keep your new towels just for display only. Pack them away between buyer inspections and reinstate them just before the prospective buyers arrive.

Tip: If there is a lot of extra counter space, you can also place a neatly folded pile of two or three matching towels on the vanity or side of the bath for extra luxury.

Thick, white, luxurious towels always work well, and there are some beautiful textured options. Funky, brightly colored towels are popular at the moment too; for a more dramatic effect, you could consider adding a splash of bold color.

7. Make your Bathroom Stick with neutrals. If you are going to repaint your walls, upgrade your tiles or invest in new cabinetry, it’s always a good idea to keep to a neutral palette for these larger elements, as it will appeal to more buyers. If you want to add some fresh color, use towels and accessories.

8. Beautify with accessories. Now that you have cleared away your personal bathroom products, bring in a few well-chosen accessories to add a layer of warmth, elegance and luxury. Think about creating a spa-like experience with accessories in tranquil, soft colors. Include fragrant soaps, bath oils, natural loofahs and candles.

It’s important to display these products as groupings rather than scattering them around the room; scattered products can look like clutter. Less is better. Think simplicity. You may want to consider using a wooden tray as a base and group items together in odd numbers. Vary the height of candles and jars, too.

The open floor plan — championed by early modernists Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius, among others — is as relevant today in home design as it was in the early 20th century. But modern life still requires, at varying times, functional, aesthetic, visual and auditory isolation.  These examples can really demonstrate how

Room within a room. The designer of this loft in Minneapolis skillfully addressed the idea of connected separation. Two freestanding leaf-shaped curved partitions conceal an office space in the larger room. The workspace is anchored in the thicker, heavier mass (on the right), while the floating screen wall conceals a collection of books. The freestanding object in space is sculptural and made lighter by the canvas-like floating screen.

The design reinforces the physical separation with different materials used on the inside of the workspace too. Here the warm backdrop of the wood tones picks up on the floor and creates a more intimately scaled space.

The room-within-the-room concept works well when the bounding walls of the space appear to float, as they do here. This allows the larger space a presence on the inside of the smaller space and a sense of the smaller interior space when viewed from the larger room.

Thick wall. A freestanding partition can act as a container supporting the function of spaces. This integrated, thick wall can both conserve the open-plan layout and provide separation when needed. It works well in this kind of configuration, flanked by pocket doors. While the entire space isn’t open to the adjacent areas, it offers a sense of both openness and enclosure. The pocket doors make this marriage possible by lending the ability to completely close off the bedroom.

Small spaces benefit the most from the subdivision of space using the thick wall concept. Rather than making a small space even smaller, the architect here has chosen to use a freestanding cabinetry unit to provide storage, a small concealed changing area and a functional headboard for the bed. By floating the unit and not connecting it to the ceiling, the feeling of openness and light is preserved.

Thin plane. Using thin planes to suggest subdivisions of activity in a larger space works well too. Centering the thin plane in the room allows for circulation at the edges and activity in the middle. Another option for the partition is to position it to one side, which would make the subdivided space feel more room-like.

The planar wall used to separate doesn’t have to be solid. Here a slatted screen bounds the stairs, but one could imagine this screen as a freestanding element in a larger room, positioned to act as a backdrop for various functions. The width of the slats and their spacing could be varied to achieve more or less openness.

A fixed glass plane defines the circulation zone of this room and doubles as a guardrail for the stair. Glass partitions can be quite expensive, but the trade-off is a clean, modern material that diffuses natural light and helps contain sound. Custom etching the glass partition, as has been done here, can alter the degree to which one feels connected to or separated from the adjacent spaces.

Sliding walls. The flexibility this arrangement offers is really appealing. It allows for the transformation between open and closed as the need arises. This method is possibly the most diverse in terms of the types of problems it can address, including noise, privacy and how large a room feels. It also can change the amount of light a room receives and alter traffic patterns

Open shelving. Bookshelves make excellent spatial dividers. Their density can be altered based on the number of books stored. If the clutter of the book spine activates your inner obsessive, you can use translucent materials to soften the effect, as shown here.

Shelving and cabinetry units can be used to partition space without the visual heft of a framed wall.

Two years ago, 600-acre Peace Ranch near Aspen, Colo., hit the market for $49.5 million. The price tag was later reduced to $39.9 million, but when the ranch still hadn’t found a buyer by the end of the summer, the owner decided to turn to an auction. On November 6th, Peace Ranch is scheduled to be auctioned off to the highest bidder–with no minimum price.

A Western outdoor-lover’s paradise of trails, stocked fishing ponds, and abundant wildlife, Peace Ranch is fully surrounded by national forest. Since the only access to the forest land is through the ranch (or up a mountain on the far side of those 20,000 acres), the land is supremely private. The property features five residences with a total of 16 bedrooms and 15 baths, and a 35,000-square foot riding arena. “It’s like paradise on Earth,” says owner Tom Bedell.

So why is he selling? Passions change, and Bedell and his wife Molly are spending more time on their businesses—he an acoustic guitar business in Bend, Ore., she a clothing shop in Nashville, Tenn.—and don’t get to the ranch much. The couple bought it for $12.5 million in 2003, after selling Berkley & Company, the fishing-tackle business Tom’s father founded in 1937. The Bedells poured $30 million in to the ranch, adding roads, reclaiming creeks, building the horse facilities, remodeling and building new housing. After waiting for two years for it to sell, they didn’t want to let the ranch sit on the market through another winter.

As the housing market recovers, more luxury property owners are bringing their homes and ranches to auction, where they can dispose of them more quickly. Properties with multi-million dollar price tags often to take one, two, even three years to sell. “The biggest reason that sellers do an auction is they want to sell in a certain period of time,” says Ed Kaminsky, president of Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based Premiere Estates Auction Company.

The National Auctioneers Association does not have data on the number of auctions that take place in the U.S. each year. However, individual firms say that luxury auctions–which all but dried up in the economic downturn–are back. Before the crash, Kaminsky’s firm auctioned off about 10 to 15 high-end properties per year. “Now we’re doing probably triple what we were doing then,” he says. Daniel DeCaro, president of Naples, Fla.-based DeCaro Luxury Real Estate Auctions, says that between 2003 and 2006, 95% of the properties he marketed for auction sold before the auction even occurred. Then in 2006, the pre-auction sales abruptly stopped. “It was like somebody turned a faucet,” DeCaro says, and “by late 2008 and early 2009, we were seeing the faucet shut off as far as buyers.” The corner turned in late 2011 and early 2012, and now DeCaro is back to selling about 20 properties a year. Gadsen, Ala.-based JP King Auction Company tells a similar story.

Once associated only with distressed properties, auctions gained traction as a way to sell luxury real estate in the late 1990′s and early 2000′s. The uptick in auctions in the past couple of years as the economy recovers may be due in part to some widely publicized luxury sales. New York-based Concierge Auctions (which is auctioning Peace Ranch) has marketed properties of such celebrities as Cher, football stars Kurt Warner and Deion Sanders, and basketball legend Michael Jordan. From 2008 to 2013, Concierge sold more than $500 million in luxury properties, says its president, Laura Brady. This year, Concierge is on track to complete 65 auctions and beat last year’s $194 million sales figure, she says.

Sometimes, an auction can be a way to get a better price. In 2010, Concierge auctioned Cher’s 8,800-square-foot home in the Hualalai resort on Hawaii’s Kona Coast for $8.7 million, $200,000 above the original $8.5 million list price. “This one was a success story,” says Rob Kildow, director of residential sales and principal broker at Hualalai.
But not all auctions result in a better price–or even a sale. After his 11,300-square-foot Contemporary-style home in Paradise Valley, Ariz., sat on the market for two years, former NFL quarterback Kurt Warner auctioned it off with Concierge Auctions. The winning bid was about $2.5 million, half the $5 million list price. Basketball star Michael Jordan fared far worse when he tried to sell his home through a Concierge auction: no bidder hit the $13 million “reserve,” or minimum price, and the home failed to sell. In January, the home returned to the market at $16 million, well below the $29 million price tag it had when it debuted on the market in March 2012.

Concierge tries to avoid such situations, in some cases by delaying auctions repeatedly (Peace Ranch’s auction date has now been pushed back twice), until a sufficient group of bidders is collected. The company also tries to get bidders to show their cards, by offering them a discount on the buyer’s premium–a 10% fee on the sale price that buyers pay to the auction company–if they start their bidding at a particular price. But those incentives don’t lock a buyer in to bidding at that level, and it is unclear how well they work. Ultimately, an absolute auction (where there is no reserve price) is just that: the home will be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Perhaps the most noted recent example is the Versace Mansion in Miami. Once listed for $125 million, the mansion, also known as Casa Casuarina, was expected to break Miami’s then-record price: $47 million for 3 Indian Creek. Instead, the mansion sold for $41.5 million in a bankruptcy auction in September 2013. The winning bid came from VM South Beach LLC, an investor group that included the Nakash family of Jordache jeans. Donald Trump was the back-up bidder, meaning that he gave the second-to-last bid