It is a well-known fact that Mr Market, as Wall Street decane Benjamin Graham used to call it, is capricious and that its sometimes-irrational fluctuations can lead to great turbulence. The real estate market is not exempt from this, perhaps more than others subject to the volatility of fashion as well as of finance, so that it sometimes happens that even previously attractive real estate ends up turning into an empty shell waiting (in vain) for a buyer.
To complicate the “ordinary” unsold framework, there are then the “exceptional” cases: properties whose prices are too high even for the swaggering luxury market, often unscathed by crises.
Domus has selected some iconic architecture awaiting a buyer: “trophy houses” that exude blatant opulence (Heathfield House, Palazzo di Amore, Open House in One Barangaroo) or unusual language (Sway Tower, Palais Bulles); “fetish-houses” famous for the people who inhabited them (Frank Sinatra's Villa Maggio, flats of Raffaella Carrà and Pier Paolo Pasolini, John Lennon and Yoko Ono's house, the house-set of the film “Home Alone”, Kanye West's villa) sometimes more than for their architectural value (Michael Jordan's Legend Point); “relic houses” on which the limelight has faded, leaving them at the mercy of decay and oblivion (Liza Minelli's childhood home, Chesil Cliff House).
In case that somebody falls in love with them and puts a hand to the (florid) wallet.