Jack Nicholson has put his Victorian house in Aspen, Colorado, on the market for a cool 15 million dollars.

The veteran actor, 74, was last seen at the property, in the ski resort area, with daughter Lorraine over Christmas.

According to Realtor.com, the estate was added to the National Register of Historic places in 1987, boasts of five bedrooms, eight bathrooms and overlooks Hallam Lake in Aspen’s West End, the Daily Mail reported.

The green gabled home is known as Newberry House and was built in 1895 for one of Aspen’s early residents, William Shaw.

The 5,790 square foot property has a 2 1/2-story wood frame, and a large veranda, and boasts of a vernacular interpretation of the Shingle style and an unusual carriage house which was incorporated into the overall design of the home.

For the majority of Serbian citizens, buying an apartment is an elusive goal. With an average salary of 400 euros, customers are barely lying awake at night deciding which loan to choose. It is rather more often the case of which lender will even consider their application.

“They are not expensive housing loans due to high interest rates; [it is] because of the obscene price per square meter,” Association of Serbian Banks general secretary Veroljub Dugalic told SETimes.

Per square meter, the average cost of an apartment in Belgrade is 2,000 euros. For an apartment offering 70 square meters, a 20-year loan installments without interest — is over 500 euros per month.

“We need an apartment, but my wife and I do not dare take [a loan] because the euro is more expensive in Serbia,” Darko Lakitic of Belgrade told SETimes. He is a young doctor, with a monthly salary of 550 euros.

Interest rates on housing loans in the euro range are between 4% – 8% annually, while the banks argue that there are no conditions to lower them. Loans in local currency are available through the Societe Generale Bank, but the interest rate is 17.63%.

Serbia lacks 20,000 to 30,000 new apartments per year, but builds less than 10,000. Minister for Planning, Environment and Mining Oliver Dulic has described the situation as disastrous for the construction and building materials industry. He blames this lack of residential construction on the National Bank of Serbia, which has tightened lending, forcing buyers to put 20% down of the total amount of loan in cash, rather than 10% as before.

“The sale of apartments has been reduced by nearly 30%,” Dulic told SETimes.

Since the middle of last year, the number of commercial mortgage loans approved has plunged by 15.3%. Before this credit crunch, about 1,000 apartments were selling per year in small towns. In contrast, across all of Serbia last year, there were only about 2,000 contracts.

To help the construction industry, the government adopted a decree on relief for the purchase of subsidised housing, offering a lower interest rate to everyone, including couples over the age of 45. Before, only 20-year mortgages were available. Now, 30-year terms are available.

“While property prices in the world fell more than 50% because of the crisis, in Serbia, despite falling sales, vendors do not want to give up their profits,” economic analyst Radojka Nikolic told SETimes.

Comparisons show that in Zagreb and Ljubljana, the average salary requires a potential homeowner to work ten years to buy an apartment of 60 square meters. In Serbia, that same person would take 20 years.

Apartment sales are off in Croatia as well, but for a different reason, a glut of available homes. There are nearly 50,000 dwellings built, for which there are no customers. Croatia enjoyed a construction boom in recent years, but the economic crisis took a toll on customers’ savings. So in the last three years, prices have skidded more than 15%, and it is estimated that they will fall further over the next five years. In Zagreb, the price per square meter has dropped from 2,050 euros to 1,750.

EU membership in 2013 may attract some buyers, but not enough. “It will be interested foreigners, but they certainly will not buy all the apartments that are now empty and losing value,” Vjekoslav Dolac, a construction company owner from Dubrovnik, told SETimes.

In Montenegro, apartment sales are virtually flat. Prices are lower by up to 30%, compared to the “golden” year of 2007, when a wave of Russian buyers swooped in. Five years later, there are no more foreign buyers, and for locals, the prices are too high.

The government initiated a campaign “1.000 plus” to address the housing problems of young people, but interest has been low. The number of new apartments sold is down by more than 60%. Buyers simply don’t have the money, even for an average price of 1,200 euros per square meter.

“We’re selling an apartment of 68 square meters for 70,000 euros, but haven’t had a customer in nine months,” Podgorica resident Smiljana Dedic told SETimes. Her family bought their home four years ago for 83,000 euros, but is forced to sell it now because Dedic lost her job.

As a political bloc in Finland pushes for a federal bill to limit the purchase of real estate to Finns and other European Union citizens, Russians wanting to buy property in their northern neighbor are facing a cold gust of Nordic air.

Though both precedent and political sentiment in Finland give the bill little chance of becoming law, the proposal suggests mixed feelings about Russians, who in 2010 bought more than 400 properties in Finland for a total of 56 million euros ($75 million).

The bill, spearheaded by the Center Party, a bloc that makes up about 18 percent of Finland’s parliament, makes the case for EU-only real estate ownership by citing national security and heritage. It was drafted in November and introduced to parliament this month.

There is little doubt that it’s targeted at Russians, as Norway, Switzerland and Iceland, which aren’t EU nations, are exempted, while Russia, other CIS countries and the countries of the former Yugoslavia would be affected.

Pertti Salolainen, vice chairman of the Finnish parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a member of the National Coalition Party, told The Moscow Times that his party isn’t backing the proposed legislation. The country’s new president, to be sworn in March 1, is a National Coalition member.

“We think that it’s a good thing that there are more Russians buying in Finland,” he said in a telephone interview Friday.

News articles in Helsingin Sanomat, a Finnish publication owned by the same company as The Moscow Times, have commented on Russians who “bring revenue to eastern Finland but also arouse suspicions,” as one headline read. According to Salolainen, Russian purchases of homes have raised speculation about money laundering, while at the same time improved the economics of Finland’s east, which had experienced an exodus of Finns.

According to 2010 figures from Finland’s National Land Survey, Russians bought 413 properties in Finland that year, with more than 300 of those purchases concentrated in two regions. There were about 400 properties picked up by Russians in 2009 and 780 properties in 2008, the Land Survey’s Mervi Laitinen said by e-mail.

Though Salolainen’s National Coalition Party doesn’t like the anti-foreigner sentiment in the bill, it does have its own concerns with Russian-Finnish real estate: It wants the Russian government to give Finland “reciprocity” by allowing Finns to buy property close to home.

Since January 2011, when President Dmitry Medvedev banned foreigners from acquiring land in the republic of Karelia and other northwest border areas, Finns have been prohibited from owning property in some of the territories nearest to them.

“We don’t think that [such] large border zones are necessary,” Salolainen said, referring to the buffer that Russia has effectively established between it and Finland.

Finland’s dominant party also wants Russia to make its land registry more transparent, so that it will be easier to determine if Finns can acquire a given property, Salolainen said.

Jeffrey D. Butler, the Connecticut Light & Power chief who resigned after he became the lightning rod for criticism of the company’s power restoration attempt after the Halloween snowstorm, put his Avon house up for sale Thursday for $1.6 million.

Butler and his wife Susan bought the 6,800-square-foot Colonial on Pembroke Drive in 2009 and are listing the 5-bedroom, 5.3-bathroom home for approximately the same price they paid for it.

Just eight houses priced at $1.5 million or higher have sold in Avon since the Butlers purchased the home, and there are at present five other homes in the town on the market in that price range, according to Rob Giuffria, president of Prudential Premier Homes in Farmington.

“The market for $1.5 million plus homes in Avon and the nearby area is still in transition, and I would anticipate the Butler home to sell for much less than the list price,” Giuffria said. “Who knows, maybe somebody will buy it because they believe they won’t lose power to the house.”

The listing agent, Ellen Seifts of Prudential Connecticut Realty in Avon, did not instantly respond today to an e-mail seeking comment. A call to Butler’s home was not immediately returned.

The brick Colonial on two-acres boasts views of the Heublein-Tower and includes a game room, wine cellar, a gunite pool with hot tub, a waterfall and koi pond, a guest house with full bath and kitchenette and a 4-car heated garage.

Butler, an engineer by training, resigned in November among a firestorm over CL&P’s handling of the storm recovery and aftermath. Charles Shivery, CEO of CL&P parent Northeast Utilities, said Butler was not forced out or asked to step aside, but offer to leave because it seem his remaining on the job could become an issue that would hinder the company’s efforts to move forward.

Butler moved to Connecticut to take the CL&P president job, after a long career in the energy industry, nearly completely in California at Pacific Gas and Electric.

Butler became well-known to the state residents during twice-a-day, high-profile, televised news conferences after the Oct. 29 storm that left hundreds of thousands of customers in the dark for a long as 11 days.

The listing did not talk about that the house has a back-up generator, but Butler told reporters at one briefing that he had a generator but it failed during the power outage, also leaving Butler in the dark.

Are you house hunting, or do you just like to see how others live? Here are a few of the homes for sale in New Rochelle.

Maybe you’ll discover your dream home.

Here are a few homes on the market in the Queen City. 76 Chauncey Ave. Listing price: $385,000. 4 bedrooms, 3-1/2 baths. 1,700 square feet. Listing office: coldwellbankermoves.com. Information from trulia.com

70 Cortlandt Ave. Listing price: $850,000. 4 bedrooms, 4 full baths & 2-1/2 baths. 3,200 square feet. Listing office: BH&G Rand Realty.

76 Chauncey Ave. Listing price: $385,000. 4 bedrooms, 3-1/2 baths. 1,700 square feet. Listing office: coldwellbankermoves.com

New home sales rose a bit in October, but the level of demand is historically very weak because of high-unemployment in the U.S. and competition from cheaper existing homes.

Sales increased by 1.3% to a seasonally adjusted annual-rate of 307,000 from a downwardly revised speed of 303,000 in September, the Commerce Department said.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had estimate sales would slip by 0.3% to an annual-rate of 312,000.

The average price in October for a new home was $212,300, higher than the level of $204,200 a year earlier and as yet down from the month earlier.

Uncertainty in the direction of home prices can give would-be buyers second thoughts, with some of them waiting for a better deal. Owners who want to sell, on the other hand, tend to take their property off the market until prices steady a trend that adds to inventory in the future and depresses-prices further.

New homes are, generally, more expensive than previously owned property. People have been particularly attracted to foreclosed homes because of the low-price tags.

New-home sales amount to about a quarter of their peak before the bubble began deflating around five years ago. Sales are way below healthy levels, considered to be an annual rate of around 750,000.

Year over year, new-home-sales were 8.9% above the October 2010 level.

Because many people have much of their net worth tied up in their homes, the bursting of the price bubble made consumers feel less wealthy and discouraged spending. The economy slouches from late 2007 to mid 2009. It has been trying to retrieve strongly but unemployment stays high.

For the housing sector to recover, the economy needs to create more jobs and housing prices must steady. But economists think prices will keep falling because the foreclosure-pipeline is long. Falling prices pull more homes “underwater,” which mean the owners owe more on their mortgages than the property is worth. That leads to more foreclosures and lower prices.

With builders pessimistic, the no of new-homes listed for sale at the end of October was 162,000, which is historically low. That supply would take 6.3 months to reduce at the current sales speed and is around a healthy-level. The supply in September was 6.4 months.

The Commerce statement said October new home sales were mixed. New home Sales rose 14.9% in the West and 22.2% in the Midwest. Sales were flat in the Northeast and fell 9.5% in the South.

DLF surged 8.23% to Rs. 216.90 on BSE on information that the company has sold 10.8 acres in Gurgaon as part of its efforts to reduce the debt burden.

In the meantime, the BSE Sensex was temporarily up 472.80 points, or 2.95%, to 16,523.90.

On BSE, 17.36 lakh shares were traded the counter as against average volume of 12.43 lakh shares above the past one quarter.

The stock hit a high of Rs. 218.45 and a low of Rs. 205 so far throughout the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs. 397.35 on 4 October 2010. The stock strike a 52-week low of Rs. 173.40 on 17 August 2011.

The large-cap stock had outperformed the market above the past one month till 26 September 2011, gaining 13.96% compared with the Sensex’s return of 1.28%. The scrip had also outperformed the market in past one quarter, going down 7.44% as against 12% decline in the Sensex.

The country’s biggest real estate solid in terms of market capitalization has equity capital of Rs. 339.60 crore. Face value per share is Rs. 2.

DLF has allegedly sold 10.8 acres in Gurgaon to a Dubai-based Indian investor for Rs. 280 crore.

The company is also in talks with other investors to sell another 20 acres in Gurgaon, which is projected to fetch around Rs. 400 crore.

DLF’s debt stood at Rs. 21524 crore as on 30 June 2011. The company plans to decrease this by Rs. 7000 crore this fiscal, reports added.

On an amalgamated basis, DLF’s net profit fell 12.8% to Rs. 358.36 crore on 20.6% raise in net sales to Rs. 2445.82 crore in Q1 June 2011 over Q1 June 2010.

Tags: DlF land sale, real estate, Real Estate Market, share investment