Popular search engine giant Google, signed a contract to buy office building in New York at 111 Eight Ave. for about $1.8 billion which will serve as the company's Manhattan headquarters. Google already leases 51000 square meter of space in this 18-story building, which was built in 1932. This sale will be the biggest transaction for a single building in the U.S. this year and the largest commercial real estate purchase by a tenant in U.S. history. The building at 111 Eighth takes up an entire block between West 15th and 16th streets in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, south of Midtown. The former industrial warehouse has 270000 square meter floor space, more than the Empire State Building has. Google Inc., according to the latest data, with market capitalization of $188 billion is the third valuable technology company in the world after Apple and Microsoft. Google Inc. was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Later in 2001, Eric Schmidt from Apple, currently CEO of Goole, jointed the team of two founders. According to the latest company regulatory filling, Schmidt and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, all of whom own significant amounts of company stock, will continue to receive a symbolic $1 salary next year.

In August this year, movie star Nicole Kidman and her husband Keith Urban purchased luxurious apartment with stunning views of the Hudson Bay in Manhattan Chelsea (New York). Starting price for penthouse apartment on the 12th floor with 302sq.m surface was 12.5 million dollars, but maybe the charm of Nicole helped pull down the price to $ 10mln. The apartment consists of 3 bedrooms, 2 terraces, library, double height Great Room , kitchen and a garage... Yes, the 32.5sq.m garage, which reside on the same floor with a kitchen. This innovation was first used in New York and looks like this: a special car elevator lift the car to the owner's floor and then you can enter garage with entrance to the kitchen. This feature is really very handy, especially after heavy shopping. It is also very much helpful when renovating and furnishing the apartment. Nicole and Keith live most of the year in Nashville, Tennessee, but also own homes in Australia and Los Angeles.

Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones purchased a two-storey "country house" for $ 5,075,000. The estate is located in New York State, near Bedford. The total area of the house is 585 square meters, and it has five bedrooms, five bathrooms and five fireplaces. The vintage house also contains a country style but contemporary and fully equipped kitchen, a large living room, dining room and library. At one back corner of the property, on 2.3 hectares land, is located guest house, pool and tennis court. It is reported that near the house there is a large horse farm, but it is not specified, whether the Douglas and Zeta-Jones are its new owners. The research made by realestalker shows that in addition to the apartment in the Big Apple and now the country estate in Bedford, NY, Mister Douglas and Ms. Zeta-Jones Douglas own (or owned) a home base in the Bahamas, a ski house in Aspen, a cliff-top compound in Majorca, an apartment in Los Angeles' Century City, a large house in her native Swansea (Wales) and a 5 bedroom beachfront hideout on a private island in the Turks & Caicos islands.

Recent study of Forbes identified the most expensive home markets to live in the U.S. by ZIP Codes. As we see from the list below, the first three places belong to California. But Beverly Hills did not enter into the top three positions of the list and took only the sixth. The new hot spot for multimillion-dollar mansions is Duarte, Calif., home to the 91008 ZIP code, a small suburb northeast of downtown LA, near the Los Angeles national forest. The median cost of a house in this town is a $4,276,462, making it the most expensive housing market in the country. It ranks No. 1 on Forbes' annual ranking of America's Most Expensive ZIP Codes. There are 1391 houses in Duarte but only 12 homes are currently on the market. As can be seen from the list, US most expensive homes are mainly in California and New York. As noted by Forbes, if in the real estate market prices for ordinary houses fell 7%, for expensive ones it has dropped down only by 5%. 1. 91008, Duarte, Calif. 2. 94027, Atherton, Calif. 3. 90274, Rolling Hills, Calif. 4. 07620, Alpine, N.J. 5. 10014, New York, N.Y. 6. 90210, Beverly Hills, Calif. 7. 10065, New York, N.Y. 8. 94920, Belvedere, Calif. 9. 10012, New York, N.Y. 10. 93108, Santa Barbara, Calif. See list of top 100 expensive U.S. ZIP codes