Most Expensive Home For Sale

Selling the Priciest House in All the Country
(June 5, 2006) -- Anyone who wants to tour the house with the highest asking price in the country better be prepared to prove a net worth of $500 million or annual salary of $10 million.

The house is a 30,000-square-foot mansion known as Portabello perched on a cliff in Corona del Mar, Calif., south of Newport Beach. It’s priced at $75 million.

Some local real estate professionals are shaking their heads. ''Every agent in town is talking about it,'' says real estate associate Mark Whitehead, who sells homes in Corona del Mar. "It's a joke. It's an image thing. It's an ego trip to sell the most expensive home on the market.''

Bill Cote, owner of Cote Realty Group in Newport Beach, noted Portabello's asking price is 300 percent more than the highest amount paid for an Orange County home.

The Listing Agent declined to comment but released a statement saying that the house was reasonably priced considering the land was worth $45 million and it would cost up to $1,500 per square foot to rebuild the home.

The estate belongs to Frank Pritt, who in 1982 founded software maker Attachmate Corp., a large privately held technology company in Bellevue, Wash.

Source: The Los Angeles Times, Mai Tran (06/04/2006)