If you've forgotten what a housing boom looks like, check out the luxury home market.

The luxury home market includes the vacation home getaways of the rich and famous and continues, for the most part, to enjoy record-level sales and prices in many locations.

That's according to a survey by high-end real estate brokerage Christie's Great Estates.

Listing-Beverly Hills Villa:

Whether it's a $50 million, 30,000-square-foot, Italian villa in Beverly Hills or the $70 million Penthouse at The Pierre, with a 360-degree view of Manhattan, high-end homes are hot.

Christie's says the same desires that drive demand for fine art also put luxury homes on a pedestal. The emotional rush that comes with heightened visual appeal is simply priceless. Toss in a stellar location and luxury homes are the stuff of dreams.

In the fourth quarter 2007 survey of its regional markets Christies found:

• Manhattan apartments achieved a record average price of more than $1.4 million for a 34 percent gain over the same period the previous year.

• Single-family luxury homes in Palm Beach, FL rose in price by nearly 16 percent to $5.3 million.

And in California's Beverly Hills, properties that sell for $10 million or more are selling for more than they would a year ago, according to Jeffery Hyland of the Hilton & Hyland in Beverly Hills.

Hyland said that's because there's lots of cash, but too few luxury homes.

But all is not well in Tinsel Town.

Some celebrities are having problems unloading multi-million dollar estates.

Young Canadian rocker Avril Lavigne; former Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash (Saul Hudson), Johnny Carson sidekick Ed McMahon and Vidal Sassoon all have or had homes on the hard-to-sell list.

The toughest sell has been one of the nation's most expensive residential listings, Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar's 56,000 square foot, 96 acre Hala Ranch in Aspen, CO. Listed for a cool $135 million, it's been on the market for a year.

The New York Times recently featured the sprawling estate in a recent story.

Published: February 28, 2008

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.