Luxury in hard times

The two-story home under construction in Dana Point is plenty large enough - 6,100 square feet - but it's the creature comforts that stand out. The OC Register's Jon Lansner provides a few snippets:

Sea breezes: A master bedroom with giant pocket doors that disappear into the walls, opening onto a 10-foot-deep deck overlooking the beach and blue Pacific beyond.

His-and-Her bathrooms: Not one, but two flat-screen TV’s in his portion of the his-and-her master bathrooms, one of which sits at eye level above a urinal in the WC. Electric panels pop up from an island in the man’s closet, displaying the owner’s watches, cufflinks and jewelry.

Beach bath: An elevated tub in her master bathroom with a bay window looking out to the sea, right beside the full-length walk-in closet.

Swim-up bar: An infinity-edge pool with underwater sound systems and stools next to a swim-up bar that connects to an outdoor kitchen.

The kitchen has a 16-foot island with seating for six, and an audio-visual system pipes music and movies to rooms throughout the house. Price? The spec house, being built by Monarch Estates, is listed for $20 million to $24 million (the Register has pictures). All of which might have looked pretty impressive a few years back, but the timing seems off. Same with the Pelican Hill development just south of Newport Beach that has been heavily promoted (a special advertising section stuffed into today's WSJ, a bunch of wraparound ads in the Sunday LAT, etc.). Not to get class conscious or anything, but being reminded of folks leading these gold-plated lives doesn’t go down very well at a time when so many others are trying to save their houses. Writing in Forbes a few months back, well before the worst of the collapse, Joe Queenan noted that when bad times arrive, the very rich go into hiding.

These days, ostentatious displays of wealth are out. Nobody is allowed to talk about how much money they are making; no one is even allowed to talk about how much money they have lost. No one dares to be seen lounging around a golf course, skydiving out of a private jet or booking passage on the space shuttle, not while the four horsemen of the apocalypse are ripping through town. Everyone is expected to stay at home moping and eating celery stalks. If people who don't have money are hurting, people who do have money are expected to act as if they are not. This defeats the whole purpose of having money.