Condominiums

Drive through California's sprawling inland suburbs and you'll spot the familiar mileposts of a real estate bust: foreclosure signs, brown lawns and abandoned subdivisions. To see the damage in downtown San Diego, walk a few blocks. Then look straight up. There you'll see hundreds of unsold luxury condominiums stacked in vacant high-rises. Some units downtown are now selling for less than half what earlier buyers had paid during the market peak.

More than 170 people crowded the ballroom of a Long Beach hotel for what amounted to an upscale fire sale. The event was an auction. The products were 38 posh waterfront condominiums. And bidders like Mike Murphy came looking for bargains. The Internet marketing worker snapped up a two-bedroom unit for $376,000, less than half the original price. In all, he and other eager buyers ponied up $14.9 million in less than 90 minutes.

Plans for a 45-story, wisp-thin tower of ultra-luxury condominiums between Beverly Hills High School and the Los Angeles Country Club are set to be unveiled today. Developers say it would be one of the most expensive residential buildings in the West. The $400-million tower along one of the area's toniest corridors would be the first building in California designed by renowned Paris architect Jean Nouvel, known for his daring designs.

A three-story Abbot Kinney Boulevard work-live space is about as cool as real estate gets in red-hot Venice. This brand-new, three-unit complex of artists' lofts -- an Elaine Carhartt painted-tile mural depicting the area's favorite pastimes spans the facade -- offers a street-level work studio with living quarters above it. The lofts are geared to those who want to incorporate the neighborhood's trendy cafes, art galleries, clubs and clothing boutiques into their domestic lives.

A unit on the 38th floor of a still unfinished luxury condo tower in Century City sold recently for a record $15 million, but the new owner still won't get a view from the top. Four flights up, the asking price for the penthouse is $30 million. On Thursday, the developer of the Century high-rise said an unidentified local buyer had agreed to pay $2,700 per square foot for a unit filling half of the 38th floor.

They used to call Monterey Park "the Chinese Beverly Hills," a suburb east of downtown Los Angeles that for three decades has been synonymous with the explosion of Chinese immigration and trade in the San Gabriel Valley. But in recent years, some of the luster once associated with Monterey Park has moved east to newer communities including City of Industry, Walnut and Diamond Bar. And that's left city leaders debating the town's future. Enter developer Jason Chung.

A fire that raged through a five-story condominium complex under construction at Warner Center in Woodland Hills on Monday was accidentally sparked when a piece of molten metal fell from a welder's torch and ignited tar paper, authorities said. The blaze, on the 21300 block of Erwin Street at the 191-unit Ascent at the Warner Center complex, was battled by more than 200 firefighters, said Brian Humphrey, spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department. The fire was reported about 8:40 a.m.

If you hate to sit in traffic at the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards, prepare to discover your inner reserves of patience. To the dismay of residents wary of overdevelopment, the Beverly Hills City Council has approved a high-rise condo and retail project for the eight-acre site of the defunct Robinsons-May department store.

When Don and Gigi Maurizio set out to gut and redo their condo in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, they didn't have to hold a yard sale or haul stuff to a thrift shop or the dump. The Claremont couple simply alerted the staff at La Paloma, the gated development where their beachfront condo is located, that whatever was in the two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit -- sofas, televisions, cookware, dishes -- was free for the taking.

The top two floors of a Century City residential tower still under construction have been sold for a record $47 million to Candy Spelling, the widow of TV mogul Aaron Spelling. A $47-million price tag may seem like an enormous sum, but this is all about downshifting in the fast lane.