Though most of the housing market is still struggling, a Russian businessman paid $100 million for a California house with views of San Francisco Bay, the Wall Street Journal reported today. What does $100 million get you? A French chateau-style house with nearly 26,000 square feet, indoor and outdoor pools and a regulation-size ballroom. While such sales are clearly out of whack compared with the rest of the market, sales of upper-bracket houses during February were up 4 percent compared with last year, according to the National Association of Realtors. A similar trend is happening in the Twin Cities metro area, I wrote a bit about this issue last week.
