Searching for the perfect location to have a Halloween party in central Connecticut? It won't get much better than this.

A home in an unassuming Hartford suburb has gone slightly viral in the last week after well-followed Twitter users found the listing and tweeted about it, noting its abnormal appearance. While some said it looked like Hellmouth, others compared it to something from "American Horror Story Season 8."

The home isn't a murder scene, however — it's actually a project by Fermata Arts Foundation founder Nikolay Synkov, who wrote a poem for each room of the house. 

It's for sale for $339,900, but the Coldwell Banker listing asks for "serious inquiries only."

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This Avon, Connecticut, listing is not your typical suburban home.

"Unique one of a kind finishing completed by a professional!" boasts the listing.

That's one way to put it.

Once again, billionaire hedge funder Steven A. Cohen is seeking a buyer for his Manhattan duplex penthouse.

The mansion in the sky is now up for grabs for $67.5 million — down $4.5 million from its last listing price in May. He first put it on the market in 2013, when it was offered for $115 million. He later listed it for $98 million, then again for $79 million, and then for $72 million.

Cohen, who runs Point72 Asset Management — formerly SAC Capital — picked up the apartment for $24 million in 2005. He hired the late architect Charles Gwathmey to redesign the 9,000-square-foot space, which has five bedrooms and six baths. Located at One Beacon Court — part of the Bloomberg Tower complex — it's in a prime location on the southeast corner of Central Park.

It's listed withRichard Steinberg and Matthew Slosar of Douglas Elliman Real Estate. 

Raisa Bruner wrote an earlier version of this post.

SEE ALSO: Nobody wants to buy this creepy Connecticut house that looks straight out of a horror movie

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The modern, two-story penthouse is filled with light.

It's part of the Bloomberg Tower complex, which means that restaurants like Le Cirque are just steps from the base of the building.

The kitchen has stainless-steel appliances and contemporary fittings.

Wealthy Chinese buyers have been buying so many homes in the United States that they are the top foreign country purchasing property in the U.S – for the fourth year in a row. Those home sales totaled more than $27 billion.

But in South Florida, the response hasn’t been so strong. Vanessa Grout, president of CMC Real Estate, told the Washington Post the share of the Chinese market in South Florida is ready to grow.

CMC is marketing its Brickell Flatiron project, a 549-unit 64-story tower in Brickell, to Chinese buyers.

“Chinese buyers typically buy in groups and buy more than one unit at a time,” Grout told the newspaper. She attended the Beijing Luxury Properties Showcase last year, and said, “we’ve learned quite a bit about the market for Chinese buyers coming to Miami, and we think it will only grow.”

Chinese investment in U.S. real estate is expected to reach $50 billion by 2025, according to a report cited by the Washington Post.

While China represents only 2 percent of foreign buyers in Miami, other developers and brokerages expect business from Chinese buyers to grow, especially when demand from other regions like Latin America has dwindled.

Miami is also more affordable than cities like San Francisco and New York, Grout said.

CMC isn’t alone in its efforts to bring in Chinese nationals. ISG and Cervera Real Estate have both inked partnerships with Homelink International, one of China’s largest brokerages. ISG World also launched its own Chinese division earlier this year, led by Don Pingaro. OneWorld Properties has also traveled to China to sell its Paramount projects.

Last year, The Real Deal reported on a local push for Mandarin-speaking Realtors, including American Da Tang, Douglas Elliman and Beacon Hill Property Group. 

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The king of Thailand, the world’s longest ruling monarch, died this week. He also died one of the world’s richest monarchs, and a nice chunk of his billions came from…guess where? Real estate.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej ruled Thailand for 70 years and during that time he amassed a $30 billion fortune – according to a 2011 Forbes estimate. And according to Fox News, a large chunk of that fortune was made on the Bangkok property market – as well as interests in two of the country’s biggest companies.

The Crown Property Bureau’s holdings cover 3,320 acres in Bangkok and more than 13,000 acres in the rest of the country, with some 40,000 rental contracts, according to Fox. The high estimate of the value of the Bangkok property alone is roughly $28 billion — although the bureau values it at less than a third of that.

The Crown Property Bureau is, however, quick to point out that the property assets are not the king’s personal property, and are “held in trust for the nation.”

SEE ALSO: The yuan is at a 6-year low against the US dollar

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2250 Vallejo, a circa-1901 mansion that was previously San Francisco's most expensive home, has finally sold, according to Curbed SF. 

The mansion-turned-contemporary dream home was built on one of San Francisco's highest streets and was most recently asking $25 million, making it the priciest in the city limits. It first listed for $28 million in November 2015. Last week, an unknown buyer closed on the house for $21.8 million, according to public record.

Though another mansion, 2820 Scott Street, was listed at a higher price in June, that listing expired in September, making 2250 Vallejo San Francisco's most expensive home at the time of sale, even after a $3 million price chop earlier this year.

That price also makes it San Francisco's most expensive sale in 2016, Curbed says.

Meticulously refurbished on the outside and completely recreated on the inside, the 9,095-square-foot home is a rare mix of modern luxury and historical character. It has seven bedrooms and seven bathrooms spread out over three floors. Neal Ward Properties had the listing.

SEE ALSO: Nobody wants to buy the world's largest log cabin — and now the price has been slashed by $20 million

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Welcome to 2250 Vallejo Street, the most expensive home sold in the city of San Francisco in 2016.

The building was originally built in 1901 for wealthy fish-packing mogul James Madison — no, not the president. Its facade was completely restored to its original beaux-arts beauty.

The top-to-bottom restoration of the property took two years to complete.

Amit Haller is living the American dream. He sold his startup for $42 million in 2006 and became a Bay Area real-estate tycoon. Now he has launched another tech startup taking on the real-estate industry with a new way to buy and sell homes — entirely though an app.

The new company, Reali, came from the experience he and his business partner, Ami Avrahami, had as real-estate investors.

"We bought and sold hundreds of houses and rental properties, and did development from the ground up. We saw many different angles in real estate. I've walked with, and I'm not exaggerating, over 100 different agents," Haller told Business Insider.

These days in the Valley's insane real-estate market, every purchase is a frustrating bidding war that relies too much on the real-estate agents, he says.

"Why does a simple negotiation become so complicated? Our agent needs to negotiate with the other agent, who needs to negotiate with the seller, and many times it's going nowhere, and you never know where the message broke," he said.

He tells the story of his friends who lost out on their dream house because their agent went to a party for a few hours. By the time the agent saw an email from the seller's agent, the seller had already accepted a counteroffer.

And there's no way to tell if you are losing a bid for a relative pittance, Haller says.

"To find the perfect home takes time, and then to lose it by $10,000 to someone else is very frustrating," he said. "If I could just know it would take another $10,000 to win it — that's nothing when Bay Area pricing is $2 million for a home."

So Haller and Avrahami built an app for their own use that would put them in control and move the human real-estate agent into a supporting role. They liked it so much that they released it to the public and launched a company.

Self-service real estate

Lots of apps let you browse a home online, and Reali matches them.

However, with Reali, you apply to become a qualified buyer through the app, submitting the documents of your prequalified loan. A person reviews those documents and validates them.

Once you're qualified, you go shopping. If you see something you like, you schedule a tour. The app can unlock the door, so a real-estate agent doesn't have to accompany you. And "info beacons" placed around the home will alert the app to the home's unique features so you don't miss them.

"When I buy a house, I want to be there myself to see it, feel it, sense it. If you have a question, you can click, and someone can answer," Haller said — a person is standing by to answer questions about the property.

If you like the house, you submit your offer through the app, too. You conduct the bidding through it and are informed of counteroffers.

"It's a broker in your pocket," Haller said.

On top of that, Reali charges a flat fee of $2,950 to be the buyer's agent, and reimburses the buyer's agent commission, at closing, of 2.5% minus the fee.

On a $1.7 million home, that rebate would put around $40,000 cash in your pocket, according to Reali. Reali charges 4% commission on houses it lists as the selling agent.

The downside: Reali is currently available only in California, with listings only in the Bay Area. California is the company's first brokerage license. However, the company plans to expand to more cites and states starting in about a year, Haller says.

Here's Reali's promo video to give you a better sense of what working with an app instead of a real-estate agent is like:

SEE ALSO: Google's nit-picky interview process is a huge turnoff for some experienced coders

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C.J. Watson's mom pushed him at a young age to get ready for the "real world," making him learn how to write checks, do mock job interviews, and accompany her to work.

Watson wasn't sure if he was going to keep playing basketball, much less make the NBA, and his mom wanted him to be prepared after his playing days ended.

"You never know with basketball — you can get hurt or get cut or something like that," Watson told Business Insider. "So, you always have to be prepared and keep it in the back of your mind and just always keep your options open."

That's why Watson, a 32-year-old guard in the second year of a three-year, $15 million deal with the Orlando Magic, took his mom's advice to heart and spent part of his summer job-shadowing at Google and Douglas-Elliman Real Estate in Miami, Florida.

He wasn't the only one. As part of the NBA's Career Crossover program, Watson was also joined at Google by Cleveland Cavaliers forward Dahntay Jones, Denver Nuggets forward Wilson Chandler, and former NBA Development League guard Moses Ehambe. Jones and several other players also spent days with Douglas-Elliman in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles.

The Career Crossover program, which NBA Senior Vice President of Player Development Greg Taylor estimates is in its sixth or seventh year, is meant to educate and expose players to fields outside of basketball. Alerted by the number of players looking only into basketball-related jobs after their playing days were over, Taylor and the NBA began to find corporate partners that players expressed interested in learning more about. In total, the NBA had 13 players take part in the corporate program (there are other programs for basketball-related jobs, from front-office work to refereeing), which also featured companies like Esquire and 2K Sports.

"I'm certainly not suggesting that basketball-related careers aren't important, but there’s a whole world out there," Taylor said. "So, the specific purpose of the Career Crossover program really was about exposure, exposing the guys to different career options and then letting them know what marketable skills they had to develop, what education they needed to have in order to be competitive in those new career endeavors that they expressed interest in."

Players dive into Silicon Valley and beyond

The tech field, in particular, was a popular choice amongst players, which led Watson and Jones to Google.

"It’s the best company in the world right now, and I just wanted to see how it operated, what the culture was," said Jones, a 35-year-old forward in his 12th season in the NBA. "I just wanted to see the intricacies of what made it such a great company."

Jones, Watson, Chandler, and Ehambe spent the day touring the campus, sitting in on meetings, learning about YouTube's analytics, social media, the company's hiring process, and testing the self-driving cars. Watson enjoyed the self-driving car. Jones enjoyed learning more about YouTube and added, "Google Ventures was dope."

Watson was impressed with the company.

"It’s a fun environment" he said. "They’re not really strict on a dress code or certain ways they have meetings and stuff like that. They do things outside of the box, which is pretty cool."

Al-Farouq Aminu, a 26-year-old forward with the Portland Trail Blazers, visited Facebook for the day, after also expressing interest in tech. Though he enjoyed testing the Oculus Rift and touring the "beautiful" campus, he was ultimately looking for a more hands-on experience.

"In an internship, you kinda like push papers, you know, you do work sort of thing," Aminu said. "For what I was intending it to be, it was not." Still, Aminu came away with some valuable lessons, noting he's interested in further exploring "the design aspect of technology."

Taylor said that up until the interest in tech companies this year, real estate was the most popular job-shadowing choices, and it continued to be in-demand this year, with six players accompanying Douglas-Elliman.

Watson spent his days with Douglas-Elliman looking at high-rises, condos, and multimillion-dollar homes while he picked the realtors' brains in Miami. Jones, who spent four days in New York, also saw some properties, ate lunch with the CEO, and had a meeting with the chairman. Jones said he's taking online classes to pursue his broker's license.

According to Taylor, there have also been some surprising requests from players to look into other fields and companies.

"We have a lot of guys who like doing outdoor things, fishing primarily, so I know there were some guys that wanted to spend some time at the Outdoor Channel," Taylor said. "I would not have selected that one."

"We had a player who was interested in going into mortuary science."

He continued, "We’re fortunate at the NBA to be able to kind of pick up the phone, create internships and job-shadowing opportunities to expose them to the various fields. And then really giving them resources is important if they choose to pursue careers in those areas."

Yet, breaking into the tech or real estate world is difficult — do NBA players actually have a shot at being hired by Google or Facebook or Douglas-Elliman?

"There’s no question that if you’re going to be competitive in those kinds of markets that there’s certainly going to be an education component of going back to school and doing internships and really gaining real life professional experience," Taylor admitted. "But I also wanna be clear that we know our guys come to those jobs already possessing what we believe are marketable skills: teamwork, grit, time management, conflict resolution. These are all what we believe are transferable skills from their career as players. And now it’s about supplementing their existing education levels with the requisite education that it takes to pursue in those areas.

"So, that’s a really important message that we try to share with the guys. You’re not starting from scratch. You are a professional — happens to be in a different field."

The mystery of life after basketball puzzles many players. While it may seem like an afterthought, as players devote much of their time to honing their on-court skills, it's always a present factor. Taylor estimates that between mandatory twice-a-year "team awareness meetings," and formal and informal "touch points" with each team, the league talks to players about "financial education and career management" up to seven times per year.

Despite the constant pressure from the NBA, however, players don't necessarily begin thinking of what's next right away. Jones, who has played on eight different teams during his career, estimates he began thinking about life after basketball about five or six years ago and decided to use his summers to look into other fields. Watson was four or five years into his career when he began to think about it. Aminu had something of a revelation after he was traded following his rookie year.

"After I got traded my rookie year, it kinda like hit me that this is a business and there’s no guarantees, so to say. It kinda opened my mind up to other possibilities," he said.

"I mean, I remember just thinking after my rookie year, like, 'Wow, I really don’t have any other skills,' like, that just would cross over, that could make me anywhere close to the amount of money that I would kinda want to look out for my family."

Clippers guard J.J. Redick said he began thinking about his post-NBA career sometime between the ages of 26 and 30, in between getting married and having children. Redick is an interesting case-study, seemingly already juggling a second job as the host of his own podcast on Yahoo's "The Vertical." Redick said he accepted the offer from Yahoo despite having never listened to a podcast beforehand. He insists it's been a valuable experience, though he's not positive a career in media is in his future.

"I never expected to be at this point in my NBA career and having to create an hour of content every week," Redick said. "But it’s what I’m doing. ... I’ve learned a ton about it and it’s been an overall just an amazing experience."

While Redick has never taken part in the Career Crossover program (scheduling conflicts have often gotten in the way), he said he's taken a valuable lesson from meetings with the league and NBA Players Association: networking. According to Redick, Clippers point guard Chris Paul has an "amazing" Rolodex of contacts across sports media, and he's tried to follow his lead as far as "picking people's brains."

"I think Kobe [Bryant] used to cold-call people; I’ve never gone to that extreme," Redick said. "But that’s the sort of thing that’s been really interesting to me and really fun for me."

One such contact is David Solomon, co-head of investing at Goldman Sachs. During a conference in Napa Valley, California, Redick said Solomon gave him "simple, but profound" advice that has stuck with him.

"He said, 'If you’re an athlete and you’re lucky enough to play, you know, 10-15 years, and you retire at 35, like, you can have a whole 'nother career of 30 years.' And I guess I had always thought, like, well, depending on how much money you make or what your kids are doing, you can really actually have a whole 'nother career.

"And I guess that was a great way to sort of summarize the way I was thinking the last five or six years of my life is, what do I find to do for 30-plus years that I’m gonna enjoy doing, that I’m passionate about doing in the same way that I’m passionate about the craft of basketball?"

Redick said if basketball were to cease to exist, he would like to pursue his MBA.

Despite the quandary of picking a second career, numerous players have gone on to meaningful, if sometimes odd, work after their playing days are over. Jones said he knows of former players who have taken up entrepreneurial pursuits;  some become franchisees; Watson said his former teammate Keith Bogans opened up a pet store and tried to convince him to do the same; Redick recalled the story of former NBA forward Adrian Dantley taking up a job as a crossing guard at an elementary school; Aminu was inspired by former player Maurice Ager, who became a music producer.

"They do things different, I guess, because they don’t wanna have the standard 9-to-5," Watson said of former players' jobs. "So they try to start their own business and do things that way to be successful that way."

Watson said he "definitely" wants to work in real estate and may consider becoming a franchisee of a restaurant like Subway or Jimmy John's. Jones, aside from real estate, believes he could do something entrepreneurial. Aminu may also look into manufacturing, apparel, and music.

A big lesson in all of it is getting an early jump. Redick remembers advice an older player gave him that he would share with any incoming rookie.

"If there are people you wanna talk to, if there are opportunities that you wanna pursue, do them now. In other words, if I want to talk to a CEO of a company... if you wanna do that, do that while you’re an active player. It’s much easier to get someone to pick up a phone call or to get invited to a program if you’re an active player. There’s weight, there’s juice in being an active player, being an active NBA player, being an active NFL player, as opposed to being out of the game for six months or a year and being retired and saying, 'Oh my God, I gotta figure out what I wanna do.' I would say, if you are a rookie, I would say start thinking about these things right away."

Jones feels the same way, saying he would tell a rookie to take advantage of the NBA's programs.

"Don’t wait 'til it’s too late to be able to try to gather something for when you’re done, because you’re gonna ultimately be done at some point in time and you’re gonna have to move onto something."

It's not an easy transition, but it's one the NBA is trying help make a little bit easier with its programs.

"I'm not sure yet," Watson said of his next career, "still thinking about it, but I know it’s in the back of my head."

SEE ALSO: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? The players of the Miami Heat Big 3 teams

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US real estate is so large and complex that it can sometimes be hard to get a good view of the health of the market. Between the boatload of data and the nearly 70 million single-family homes, it's rare to get a full picture of the state of the housing market.

Ryan Marshall, CEO of the homebuilder Pulte Group, however, laid out the state of the US housing market in one succinct quote.

"With US new home sales for 2016 on track to grow in excess of 10% over last year, we believe housing demand remains on a sustained path of recovery fueled by ongoing job creation, low unemployment, a supportive interest rate environment, and a limited inventory of homes," Marshall said in a press release announcing Pulte Group's third-quarter earnings.

Let's break that down a bit.

Marshall is correct that new home sales are on track to grow by over 10% this year. In fact, single-family home sales grew over 20% for June, July, and August compared with the same months in 2015.

To Marshall's job creation point, what may be even more important than an unemployment rate hovering at or below 5% is that wage growth and pay raises are starting to come through for American workers. This even showed up for Pulte Group, which saw new orders increase 17% in the third quarter — much higher than the 11.2% expected by analysts. Thus, with a tight labor market leading to higher incomes, more people have the ability to purchase a home.

Additionally, the low inventory is indeed supporting prices and well below demand. While this may be a good thing for homebuilders like Marshall, it is also making it difficult for first-time homebuyers to find affordable houses as the high demand and low supply push prices higher.

The low interest rate aspect is interesting. It's true that low interest rates are making it more affordable to get a mortgage. These low mortgage rates, however, may not provide incentives for people to move from their current homes, as we've noted before, keeping existing home sales a bit lower and worsening the supply issue.

For new homebuilders like Marshall's Pulte Group, the low interest rates are most likely an unequivocal positive, but for homebuyers and the overall housing market, low rates may be as much a curse as a blessing.

Other than that, Marshall hit the nail on the head with his assessment of the US housing market.

Pulte Group's earnings came in just a hair under expectations — at $0.43 a share, versus analysts' expectations of $0.44 per share. Revenue was also nearly in line, at $1.94 billion against expectations of $1.95 billion. The firm's expected backlog sits at $3.7 billion currently.

SEE ALSO: Skyrocketing apartment rents are finally cooling off

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One year ago the Liberal Party won a majority, making Justin Trudeau our Prime Minister. He’s high profile, appearing almost daily in every Canadian newspaper. Heck, he even has seven staff members making YouTube videos so we uh…know he’s doing stuff. We know him and his press releases are telling us how well he’s doing, but we thought we’d run the numbers anyway. Blame it on our millennial skepticism.

So today we’ll look at house prices across Canada, and the indicators that impact them. What we found was rising home prices, more demanding borrowing conditions, GDP growth, and an improving dollar. What? You thought it was going to be all negative?

Housing Prices Are Skyrocketing

Housing accelerated at a breakneck speed, right across Canada. The average benchmark Canadian home moved from $503,100 to $576,100, a whopping 14.44% gain. The 10 years average of annual appreciation was 5.4% before this administration.

It’s kind of a mixed blessing. Homeowners certainly aren’t complaining about increasing their net-worth on paper. But affordable housing activists are worried that housing is propelling too fast.

Average Canadian Benchmark Home

Source:CREA

Borrowing For A Home Is Harder

To cool down the rapid rising prices, new Federal regulations were created. The biggest change is the stress test that for insured borrowers. They now have to qualify at a higher mortgage rate, reducing the amount they can borrow. Theoretically, this is a great idea.

In practice, we’ll have to see how it works out. Insured mortgages are required for anyone with a less than 20% downpayment. This creates a 25% decrease in borrowing power for the median Canadian household. With a downpayment of less than 20%, they’re not looking at a mortgage large enough to buy a home in Canada.

Normally rising home prices accompany rising incomes and a booming economy. Rising interest rates are a natural consequence of this, bringing down borrowing risk. Instead, we artificially created a system that acts like interest rates are rising. The system itself isn’t a problem, but it reads of pessimism for their own economic plan.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Grew…Kind Of

The good news, the economy is growing. We added 0.5% to our GDP from a year ago, which is better than shrinking. The bad news is the growth in places like British Columbia andOntario are around real estate. In the event of a real estate correction, these gains (and a further portion of the GDP) will be wiped out.

Employment Is Up, Just Not For Millennials

While the country did add jobs, it appears millennials aren’t the recipients of them. The percentage of full-time millennials dropped by 0.37%. In total, millennials saw a 0.32% reduction in employment. This contrasts with the 1.97% average growth over the past 10 years. There’s no other way to look at this one, it sucks.

The Canadian Dollar Improved…Or The US Dollar Got Weaker?

The Loonie finally started improving, having gained 1.25% against the US dollar. This contrasts with a decline that averaged 1.65% over the past 10 years. A modest but solid win over previous years.

This is actually more likely due to the US ending its Quantitative Ease (QE) programs in late 2014. The period after the recent QE round, and before Trudeau, saw the loonie drop by 20%. So, this likely isn’t because people started to prefer Canadian dollars, but would that have been nice?

If you’re happy with those results, great. If not, go easy on him – it’s his first year. Most of the plans he announced begin in 2017, so this year was a write-off apparenlty. Don’t you wish you could go to work and just have everyone get you up to speed for a whole year? Seems like a sweet deal. So what do you think, how’s he doing? Drop us a comment below.

SEE ALSO: Real estate prices across the Commonwealth are soaring

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If you were wealthy enough to afford whatever house you wanted, what would be first on your list? 

According to a recent survey of the world's wealthiest people by real estate company Luxury Portfolio International, the answer to that question is most often privacy.

Luxury Portfolio partnered with market research firm YouGov to conduct the survey of a representative sample of the top 10% of consumers in 12 countries globally: United States, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, France, Germany, United Arab Emirates, China, Japan, Australia, Korea and Singapore.

The research team completed more than 5,000 online interviews of wealthy people, in addition to focus groups and in-person interviews.

When asked about the characteristics they typically seek in a home, 61% of those surveyed said that having lots of privacy was important to them.

Privacy was the most commonly named characteristic in the survey, beating out high-end kitchen appliances, en-suite luxury bathrooms, and master bedrooms with dual walk-in closets.

"We know that those of means regard home as a refuge and a place to spend time with family and those who have achieved a similar level of success," Stephanie Pfeffer-Anton, executive vice president of Luxury Portfolio, told Business Insider. "The desire to enjoy the lifestyle that their wealth affords them with a certain level of solitude and discretion drives the demand for privacy."

That desire for privacy often leads to the installation of high-tech smart home systems and high fences, and sometimes even the hiring of security guards. For some of America's wealthiest, it could also mean purchasing the home next door so that no one else moves in.

In November 2013, Elon Musk paid $6.75 million for a teardown across the street from his $17 million Bel-Air mansion. A year later, Mark Zuckerberg did a similar thing, buying four houses surrounding his Palo Alto home in a purchase that has since brought him a fair amount of legal trouble. In addition to another home in San Francisco, Zuckerberg also owns 750 acres of secluded land on the North Shore of Kauai — big enough for a set of villas or even a resort, but he apparently plans to build only one home.

The practice of using LLCs to hide a buyer's identity is also fairly common, and it is legal. In January, the Treasury Department announced that it would begin tracking the masked buyers of high-end properties in New York City and Miami-Dade County. The new initiative will require real-estate companies to reveal the names of people who purchase properties behind shell companies, often in all-cash transactions.

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After the infamous $140 million Hulk Hogan lawsuit, Gawker founder Nick Denton owes $1.73 million on the mortgage of his Soho loft with a monthly payment of $14,985, according to court filings uncovered by the Wall Street Journal. Just as Univision took over his former company in August, he tried to rent the pad, but a bankruptcy judge denied the transaction. He's now listed his home for $4.25 million, which would certainly make a dent in the $10 million that he owes as part of the invasion of privacy judgment.

The 2,556-square-foot, two-bedroom condo has 12-foot ceilings, original cast iron columns and wood ceiling beams, and a private entrance on Spring Street. The corner living/dining room has seven tall windows flanked by built-in shelves and each with its own window seat.

The sleek black kitchen is open to the living space and boasts a six-burner Viking stove, wine cooler, double sink, double oven, and a stainless steel island that can seat five.

The master suite has two walk-in closets, a separate reading area/"zen room," and a tranquil bath complete with a square teak Japanese soaking tub. There’s also a second bedroom that has its own bathroom and could function as a den or media room.

Denton bought the loft in 2004 for $1.87 million, and now said in court documents that it's one of his only assets. He originally listed it in May for $15,000/month, but in August was willing to take $12,500. A bankruptcy judge denied this deal, however, stating that it would be merely "a short-term solution to what is a long term problem."

SEE ALSO: The most expensive home in San Francisco has sold for $21.8 million in the city's biggest sale of the year

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The best way to build wealth is to prioritize assets over income. But ensuring that your assets outweigh your liabilities can be impacted greatly by the city you call home.

This week, online personal finance consultant Bankrate.com released a report ranking America's best and worst metro areas for building wealth.

To create the list, Bankrate.com ranked the 21 largest metro areas in five categories that contribute directly to an individual's ability to build their wealth:

• Savable income: average income after taxes and expenditures
  
• Human capital: unemployment rate, educational opportunities, and productivity
• Debt burden: non-mortgage debt per capita and average credit score
• Homeownership: average annual change in home prices, foreclosure actions, and homeownership rate
• Access to financial services: Percentage of workers with access to retirement plans

San Francisco came out on top as the best place to build wealth, followed by Minneapolis and Washington, DC.

“In some metro areas, like San Francisco, homeownership can be prohibitively expensive, but higher-than-average salaries can help residents stash more money away in tax-advantaged retirement accounts," wrote Claes Bell, a Bankrate.com analyst and the author of the study. "On the other hand, Minneapolis-area residents don't earn as much, but the area's affordable housing and recovering real estate market provide opportunities to build wealth over the long term through home equity."

Read on to see how the 21 largest US cities stack up for building wealth, as well as the average savable income, homeownership rate, and non-mortgage debt per capita for each city. 

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21. Riverside-San Bernardino, California

Savable income: $9,790

Homeownership rate: 62.6%

Debt burden: $27,682

20. Miami

Savable income: -$3,613*

Homeownership rate: 58%

Debt burden: $25,645

*Analysis showed a negative average savable income for the Miami metro area. This may be attributable to the high population of retirees in the area who are spending more of their savings than they're earning.

19. Tampa-St. Petersburg, Florida

Savable income: $3,437

Homeownership rate: 62.7%

Debt burden: $27,015

A Los Angeles mansion that was listed earlier this year for an eye-popping $150 million just sold in a complex deal to Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores.

According to The Los Angeles Times, Gores will be trading several properties in the area in exchange for this new home, which was built on speculation on the same lot where Barbara Streisand's "Mon Rêve" estate once stood. The deal is estimated to be worth $100 million. 

Located in the ritzy Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, the new structure covers a whopping 38,000 square feet and has 10 bedrooms and 20 full baths. Additional amenities include private hiking trails and a movie theater complex with its own guest valet entrance. 

It was developed by Gala Asher of Dream Projects LA, who purchased the land from tech entrepreneur David Bohnett for $13.25 million in 2014. Streisand's original home was demolished shortly after she sold it to former music exec Les Bider in 2000. Bider then sold the empty lot to Bohnett. 

Ginger Glass of Coldwell Banker Previews International had the listing.

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The massive home can be found on Carolwood Drive in Holmby Hills, one of Los Angeles' most exclusive neighborhoods. Walt Disney, Clark Gable, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra, Rod Stewart, and Elvis Presley all called Carolwood home at one point, according to a press release from listing agent Ginger Glass.

The home is set behind a gate at the end of a private road.

Heavy vegetation adds to the secluded feel.

The Bishops Avenue — otherwise known as 'Billionaires Row' — is one of the most exclusive streets in London. It was recently reported that Justin Bieber had begun renting a £108,000-a-month mansion there.

Less recently, residents have included Sir Billy Butlins, the Sultan of Brunei and the President of Kazakhstan.

In an interview with The Observer, Trevor Abrahmson — Managing Director of Glentree Estates — said, "among the wealthiest circles in the world, The Bishop's Avenue is better known than Buckingham Palace."

Despite being one of the most exclusive places to live in the world, The Avenue is hardly out of the way — just a stone's throw from East Finchley underground station. It's also surrounded by some of London's highest performing, most exclusive teaching establishments, including Highgate School and St Margaret's.

Exorbitant streets like The Bishop's Avenue have often drawn criticism in the past for acting as a safety deposit box for the foreign uber-rich, meaning that the opulent houses are often empty and the streets left deserted.

Indeed, during the First Gulf War, a large proportion of the mansions on the road were bought up by the Saudi Arabian Royal Family. In 2013, however, they were sold to LJ Capital for £80 million — driving development of the once muted streets. 

The Bishop's Avenue residencies have changed a lot over the years, but they have always retained their incredible luxuriousness.

Take a look inside the £25 million Stratheden house below, complete with a 12-metre indoor swimming pool, spa, and 3,000 sq ft ballroom.

Nestled between Hampstead and Highgate Golf Clubs, The Bishops Avenue is a leafy oasis, just minutes from East Finchley station.

The £25 million Stratheden House is one of its impressive properties. According to Stratheden's brochure, "the mansion is a majestic fusion of original features and 21st Century cutting-edge design."

Let's go inside and downstairs to the 12 metre indoor swimming pool, which is adjoined to a spa/hairdressing salon, sauna, steam room and gym.

Just like her father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Oscar-nominated producer Megan Ellison is turning out to be quite the real estate mogul.

According to property records, she has listed for sale a five-bedroom home in Los Angeles' Mount Olympus neighborhood. She bought the home — which happens to be next-door to a much larger estate she also owns — for $5.25 million in April 2015. She's now hoping to get $5.9 million in what would be quite the profitable sale, assuming she didn't perform extensive renovations on the home. 

This wouldn't be the first time Ellison successfully flipped a home in Los Angeles. In 2013, she netted $14.15 million in a three-home sale in the Bird Streets neighborhood above the Sunset Strip. According to Variety, she also recently found a buyer for a home she had purchased for $13.5 million and listed for $14.995 million just a few months later.

The home that's currently on the market has 5,240 square feet of space and gorgeous city views. Let's take a look inside.

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Huge glass panels open to patios on both of the main floors.

Those patios stretch for most of the length of the house and make the most of the location.

A set of stairs leads down from the patio to the pool deck.

When Chip and Joanna Gaines— now the stars of HGTV's hit home-renovation show "Fixer Upper"— returned from their two-week honeymoon in 2003, they were met with some harsh realities.

Their New York City vacation left them "basically out of money," forcing them to move directly into a vacated house they'd been renting out to college students back in Waco, Texas, they write in their new book "The Magnolia Story." The house smelled of rotting food and desperately needed new flooring and paint, so the newlyweds got to work. While Chip was a seasoned pro at renovation, Joanna was just discovering her passion for design.

The pair now run Magnolia Homes, a real estate, renovation, and design company, transforming run-down properties into character-rich homes for families in the Waco area.

But as their post-honeymoon disaster indicated, the path to success wasn't easy. Chip and Joanna found themselves in deep financial trouble on numerous occasions, including one incident where Joanna had to empty the cash register at her retail shop to bail Chip out of jail, and another where the couple found themselves $100,000 in debt after starting a large residential-development project in the wake of the financial crisis.

Time after time, they were able to move beyond the hardships.

"Jo and I don't quit. We don't quit, we never give up. Failure is not an option, losing is not an option. We fight and we have fought through some really tough, challenging times," Chip told Business Insider in a recent interview.

Chip believes the pair share two qualities that keep them moving forward.

"Somehow, even though we we're so different, so wildly different, the two things that were our common denominators ... we both love to work. We're passionate about what we do, we love waking up in the morning and giving it our best bet," Chip said.

"And the second thing is, we hate to lose. When we woke up some mornings, realizing we don't have the money to pay back some of these debts that we had accumulated over the years, we realized we were going to have to be very creative, very quickly, and really fight for this. We didn't want to quit, we didn't want to declare bankruptcy — some of those things were just literally not options for us," he said.

"And here we are, at a place that we're really proud to say 'Look, we're really proud of some of the accomplishments we've made.'"

In addition to Magnolia Homes, the couple now owns several small businesses under the Magnolia brand, including a retail shop, bakery, furniture line, paint collection, and a "Fixer Upper"-style bed and breakfast. The Gaines' book, "The Magnolia Story," debuted October 18 and chronicles the growth of their small business empire.

Watch more from the Gaines' interview with Business Insider below:

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Forget the megamansions being built in the Hamptons and south Florida — America's most opulent homes were built decades ago by titans of industry like Alfred I. du Pont and William Randolph Hearst.

The largest historic homes in America, all built before 1952, are sprawling estates located around the country. Many others have been demolished, and are not included on this list.

Some are now publicly owned, others are still in private hands. Quite a few belong to universities, and one even belongs to a presidential nominee.

16. WHITEHALL, PALM BEACH, FLA: 60,000 square feet. Henry Flagler, a co-founder of Standard Oil who built this mansion 1902, died after falling down a flight of marble stairs in the home at age 83.

15. THE BREAKERS, NEWPORT, RI: 62,482 square feet. The mansion, completed in 1895, was built as the summer home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II.

14. MAR-A-LAGO, PALM BEACH, FL: 62,500 square feet. The estate was built by Marjorie Merriweather Post in 1924, It's currently owned by the Trump Organization and run as a private club.

The sweet spot of the Hamptons housing market is cooling down.

Sales of homes in Wall Street's playground that cost between $1 million and $5 million fell 24% year-over-year in the third quarter, according to a report by Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

Jonathan Miller, CEO of the real-estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel, said this price range is the "sweet spot" of the market, according to The Real Deal. The cluster did not have the largest share of sales, however, with most buyers still choosing homes that cost $1 million or less.

Miller said this slowdown can probably be linked to the punishing year that hedge funds are having. The Hamptons, near the easternmost end of Long Island, is a popular vacation-home choice for finance professionals who work in New York City.

Hedge fund returns have been weak for some time, criticized for their relatively high fees and lackluster performance. Last quarter, investors pulled out the most cash from hedge funds since the first quarter of 2009, bringing total redemptions in the past year to $87 billion, according to an eVestment report released on Wednesday.

Because Douglas Elliman's report is one quarter's data, it's impossible to draw any definitive conclusions on a trend. But this could be an early effect of Wall Street's falling profits, bonuses, and headcounts this year.

The so-called Hamptons sweet spot was the only segment of the market where prices fell year-over-year in Q3. They jumped 29% on the luxury end — vacation homes costing more than $5 million.

That's in clear contrast to Manhattan, where the luxury end of the market has cooled. Across Manhattan, prospective homebuyers pushed back against expensive prices, prompting sellers to offer more concessions, like one month rent-free.

The median sales price of a luxury house in the Hamptons rose 17% from the same period last year, to $6.2 million, according to Douglas Elliman.

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Should you keep renting, or buy a home?

It's an age-old dilemma nearly every American adult wrestles with at some point. No one wants to throw their hard-earned cash away on rent payments they'll never see again when they could be investing in a home that will grow in value and potentially provide a nice return one day.

If that line of thinking sounds familiar, Todd Sinai, a real-estate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, would like to stop you right there.

A number of crucial factors go into the rent-versus-buy equation — myriad calculatorsexist for just this purpose— but a house's potential return on investment shouldn't be your focus. In fact, you shouldn't think of it as an investment at all, according to Sinai.

"People get caught up in this notion of 'Oh, if I buy a house it's an investment, so I can do it at any time,' but it's not," Sinai told Business Insider.

Housing is a consumption decision, not an investment decision, Sinai said. The amount you pay for housing should comport with your needs, goals, and budget, regardless of housing market trends and potential growth in home value.

If what you're spending each month on housing jumps when you move from renting to owning, that's not necessarily a wise financial move just because you're getting equity. You need to make sure the additional space and amenities you're consuming are worthwhile expenditures on their own merits, not for the theoretical payout they might afford later.

"If you spend twice as much on a house, you're not making twice as big an investment, you're spending twice as much on housing," Sinai said. "That's a mistaken way to approach it."

Let's say you time your local market correctly and home prices rise after you buy. If you decide to sell that home, you'll still need a place to live, and you're buying in that same market with expensive home prices unless you go back to renting.

Moreover, the process of buying and selling a house is expensive. The taxes, fees, and closing costs you'll pay when you buy and sell that home eat into any profits you reap.

"Buying that house cheap and selling it once it's gotten expensive is an expensive way to make money, because the round trip [cost to you] is about 10%, so you take a huge hit," Sinai said.

If you want to make an investment in housing, Sinai says you're better off doing it in the markets — such as buying shares in a real estate investment trust or an exchange-traded fund.

For buying your own home, just ensure it will match your needs for many years to come, independent of what happens in the markets.

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Earlier this year, Redfin looked at the price premium for Trump condos and whether it had been adversely affected by the polarizing political campaign. The results were mixed. Yes, the premium for condos sold in Trump-branded buildings had gone down slightly in 2016, but it wasn’t clear if it was the result of his new-found role as the Republican nominee or sluggishness in the luxury real estate market in general.

But what about how real estate agents market homes in Trump-branded buildings? Are agents altering their marketing techniques to either draw more or less attention to the Trump brand associated with the listing?

It’s not that hard to find out. Hundreds of Trump condos go up for sale every year. Every time a condo goes up for sale, the listing agent and home seller write up a description of the property in an attempt to entice potential buyers. We were curious. After Trump entered the political arena would agents and homeowners view the Trump brand as a selling feature to highlight, or would they opt to leave Trump out of the listing description entirely?  

Also, it’s worth mentioning that stating the name of the building is a brief and accurate way to describe a condo’s location, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many listings would mention the brand. However, we wanted to see if the rate of those mentions has changed over time in any significant way.

From 2012 through 2015, agents mentioned the Trump brand between 69.7 percent and 71.5 percent of the time. That remarkably consistent level of mentions was upended this year, when 75.5 percent of sold listings mentioned Trump’s brand.

However, sold homes are no longer currently on the market — in many cases, they were listed and under contract months ago. What are agents and home sellers doing right now? Only 67.1 percent of listings mention his name, lower than any other sample period.

How do currently-on-the-market Trump properties vary? Look at several listings in a Trump building in your city and you can see. Some listing agents pointedly don’t include building images that have TRUMP lettering and don’t mention his name in the notes, even when it would make sense to do so.

Others agents make the enormous TRUMP that is plastered across many of his buildings the listing’s main image and have no problem at all touting the fact that it’s a Trump-branded property.  

Yes, different agents have different strategies, but why the recent drop-off in Trump mentions? Branding is a complicated thing — Trump himself last month started a new hotel brand, Scion, that breaks from his tradition of using his own name on his buildings. Was it connected to how his name is now perceived? Or did it have to do with another, unrelated marketing strategy? It’s unclear.

Similarly, it’s unclear whether the drop in Trump mentions is meaningful. But, what we do know is that Trump condos that are currently listed for sale are less likely to have the word “Trump” in the listing remarks than were Trump condos that sold in the past five years.

— With Taylor Marr

METHODOLOGY

Using data from real estate multiple listings service, Redfin examined condo listings from January 1, 2012 through October 22, 2016. We pulled the listing descriptions for every property listed in a Trump Tower, then searched for mentions of “Trump” within each description. After excluding listings containing no description, we counted the number of listings containing at least one mention of “Trump” and divided that by the total listings sold in that year.

Redfin’s analysis was limited to sales in Hollywood Beach, FL; Sunny Isles Beach, FL; Honolulu, HI; Chicago, IL; Jersey City, NJ; Las Vegas, NV; New Rochelle, NY; Shrub Oak, NY and White Plains, NY. Multiple-listing data was unavailable for transactions of Trump properties in Manhattan, Stamford, CT and outside of the U.S.

Trump’s real-estate portfolio is listed here.

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