Mansions

There are homes. And then there is Candy Land -- all 56,500 square feet of it. Candy Spelling, widow of legendary TV producer Aaron Spelling, has put her 4.7-acre residence in Holmby Hills up for sale. Priced at $150 million, it's currently the most expensive residential listing in the U.S. Whether Spelling will have to take a haircut on that asking price in today's market remains to be seen. If so, she'll be prepared: The home has its own barbershop. Plus a whole lot more.

Neighbors along the beachfront strand of Manhattan Beach, where a few homes recently sold for $8 million, have grown accustomed to the sight of a few double-lot homes and a parade of bizarre new construction -- Italian villas, English castles and glassy modern cylinders. But nothing has struck fear into the hearts of neighbors like the latest addition: the Strand's first three-lot mansion.

In Beverly Hills, a 32,000-square-foot beaux-arts mansion that will be sheathed in Portuguese limestone and adorned with gold-plated doorknobs fashioned in France is rising on Sunset Boulevard. A few miles away in Bel-Air, businessman Eri Kroh has requested permits to lop off the top of a hill, fill in a canyon and then, after moving some 68,000 cubic yards of dirt, replace the chaparral-covered lot with a 30,000-plus square-foot single family home with Pacific Ocean views.

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs lost a bid to demolish a Spanish Colonial Revival-style mansion he owns about 30 miles south of San Francisco. A California appeals court ruled Wednesday that Jobs and the city of Woodside, where the 17,250-square-foot mansion was built in about 1925, didn't consider alternatives to destroying the home. Jobs said he never liked the 30-room Jackling House -- named after its original owner, copper magnate Daniel C. Jackling -- which he bought 21 years ago.

Dorie-Ann Kahale and her five daughters moved from a homeless shelter to a mansion Thursday, courtesy of a Japanese real estate mogul who is handing over eight of his multimillion-dollar homes to low-income native Hawaiian families. Tears spilled down Kahale's cheeks as she accepted from billionaire Genshiro Kawamoto the key to a white, columned house with a circular driveway, a stone staircase and a deep porcelain bathtub. Her family will live there rent-free, but must pay utility bills.

NEAR the 18th hole of the Bighorn golf course in Palm Desert, publishing tycoon Duane Hagadone laid out his vision for a dream home to his architect. It would be set high on the bald mountain rising near the green yet be so inconspicuous that he'd have to point it out even to golf buddies.

Joyce Rey stands in the soaring marble entryway of a palatial Bel-Air estate, ticking off its selling points. Master suites? There are five of them, along with three living rooms, a gymnasium and a library. The dining chamber is "embassy-size," and the pool and gurgling fountains are on par with those at the finest hotels. "There are six bedrooms under the tennis courts, and nine more above the 10-car garage," Rey tells a cluster of fellow sales agents scouting the place on behalf of clients.

Fed up with seeing outsize houses popping up in open spaces or overwhelming the scale of established neighborhoods, cities and counties across the United States are declaring war on McMansions. Famously eco-friendly Boulder County, Colo., is considering forcing people in some rural areas to pay extra to build homes bigger than 3,000 square feet. Atlantic Beach, Fla.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler on Wednesday granted a defense request to allow only one reporter to accompany jurors in the Phil Spector murder trial to the reclusive music producer's Alhambra mansion. Jurors are scheduled to tour the home, the scene of actress Lana Clarkson's shooting death four years ago, this morning. Fidler had tentatively decided to open the visit to Associated Press reporter Linda Deutsch and Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Hong.

To protect the character of neighborhoods being dwarfed by the construction of oversized homes, Los Angeles officials are weighing a law that would radically limit the square-footage of new or remodeled houses across the city's flatlands.