Phoenix City Living

Dubai: money and leading-edge construction to make your head spin.

A glimpse into a astonishing transformation in the desert.

Check out this video tour.

Let me see if I've got the extra change in my couch for a downpayment

Wow, I could afford these. I really can! Assuming that I could transport back in time 6-12 months, I would be able to "state" my income in the high 8 figures (no documentation of course) and qualify for a no down, interest-only payment. And just like everyone else playing the housing market I'd focus not on the fact that I couldn't carry the payments, but rather, I'd spend all my time trying to decide what next to buy when I "realize my capital upside" when I quickly flip the house.

But sadly, now, out here in the real world I realize that looking at these houses is a little like reading a fairy tale to my child. "Yes, my little one, it is a really big castle with a billion little rooms. But it's just a tale with painted little people and fantasy landscapes that don't really exist in the real world". Unless of course you have the cash not only to pay the downpayment but more likely to pay full cash. Welcome to today's new "royalty" that live in these bizarrely huge palaces. The architecture on some of these may be suspect but the asking price is real. Check out the lives of the rich and richer: Five houses vie to become most expensive home sale.

Eye Candy Living: when money just doesn't matter

Our new Phoenix City Living category is for those that want a peak at homes that may be just as exotic as if from around the world. There seems to be no limit on size, location, or price on a trend that started humbly in America as a simple log cabin many hundreds of years ago. Now a home has become a branding, a logo, an extension of what the owners want to state to the world. It's my money baby: watch me spend. Whatever reasons for your interest, your reactions may be more predictable:
1.    That house is really stupid. Who'd ever live......oh cool, celebrities! I wanna' live like them too! Their house is really nice...shuddup....I never said it was stupid!
2.   I'm just checking out the Jones and now I realize the Jones have a WHOLE lot more cash than I could print in a thousand lifetimes and now I'm really, really depressed!
3.    I hate them! I hate them! I hate them! What......they want me to come to their party? What will I wear?
4.   Thank goodness gracious for your site. Now Muffy and I have a chance to review potential move-up options from our smallish Paradise Valley estate. Muffy, bring our dogs Snuffy, Buffy, and Gruffy and check out this 5-acre home on PhxCityLiving. It's perrrrrfect daarling!
5.    I was just reading your blog and I accidentally clicked on this article and now I think America's really lost it and I'm going to move into a small cabin in Alaska with no heating or running water and I'm going to play checkers each and every day with a friendly moose because I don't get humans.
6.    Cool!

Whatever your reaction, we'll be posting a regular blog category "Eye Candy Living" on the more opulent, bizarre, and architecturally progressive and significant homes that are in the news. From the latest celebrity spin-off to outstanding American residences we'll give you a peak at someone else's unique, and typically expensive, lifestyle.

In our blog UrbanVertical's new category, Vertical Eye Candy, we'll be exploring some of the "WILD!" in high-rise residential living. Architecture has become unrestrained, limited only by an architects vision and the pockets of its benefactor. When money flows freely, and today stands unique in the amount of free cash floating around in the global economy, stunning new buildings become the new trophy: today's face of any number of invisible, or some very public, billionaires or their companies. Vertical Eye Candy is peek at what designs dominate today and what's in store for tomorrow's living.

Our other new PhxCityLiving category, "FutureDesign", looks at emerging trends, technologies, and forms as humans balance new realities and explore new opportunities in more radical residential design.

Check it all out. We're dancing up a storm!

Eye Candy Living: Cox & Arquette sell trophy Malibu home

This is living in style with returns that would make a venture capitalist blush. Courtney Cox and David Arquette have sold their Malibu home for $33.5 million dollars. Purchased in 2001 for $10 million, the John Lautner home was originally built in 1979 on Carbon Beach in Malibu and is considered one of the more standout architectural pieces on the local coastline. The 5,500 square foot house with huge glass exposure to the 80 feet of beach frontage, has four bedrooms and incorporates exposed concrete, natural wood, skylights, and curved roof line and a pool. The maverick architect, John Lautner, who died in 1994 at the age of 83, studied with Frank Lloyd Wright. Although known primarily for his residential designs, Lautner created a new commercial genre, Googie, which combined progressive engineering techniques with a space-age aesthetic.