We've looked at this before and wondered if the name and the price combined to be an omen for markets at large. Links below.
From American Luxury, February 13:
House-hunting in the Cannes, France, area and find modern linearity staid, or downright stolid? Then you may want to take a tour of Pierre Cardin’s 1970s fantasy of a mansion: Palais Bulles, the ‘Bubble Palace’ that the late fashion czar owned for the past three decades. The home is looking for a new owner, and first hit the market in 2017 for $420 million. The current price is available on request.
The residence was custom designed and constructed in the 1970s and 1980s for French industrial distributor Pierre Bernard. Cardin purchased it following Bernard’s death in 1991.
The style looks similar to more modest ‘bubbletecture’ homes in the U.S. that came about in the 1970s during the crest of surrealism and back-to-the-land pragmatism. Notable among them is the shotcrete Flintstone House in Hillsborough, California, which hit the open market most recently in 2014, and was relisted about two years later. Other examples went up in Pasadena and elsewhere, courtesy of famous California architect Wallace Neff; many have been razed.
The Palais Bulles is of course far more refined, although its structural fundamentals are essentially the same: a frame sprayed with concrete. It is the work of Hungarian-born, French transplant architect Antti Lovag; other Lovag projects include Maison Yvonne Murard, a project which was planned but never constructed. Lovag considered himself to be a ‘habitologist’, and he despised conventional architecture....
....MUCH MORE, including pics
And back on May 30, 2016:
This May Be A Sign: Pierre Cardin's "Le Palais Bulles" Is Still On the Market at $456 Million
That's pretty hard to misinterpret.
In the same way, having a house topping the 'For Sale' league table named The Bubble Palace is, as the Hollywood types say, maybe a bit on the nose.
The Bulles tidbit is from Wolf Street's link to the big New York Times May 28 story on the surfeit of residences asking $100MM and up:
Last Time this Happened, the Housing Market Collapsed
In 2015 we linked twice to the only property asking more, in May's "Signposts: Movie Producer/Developer Expects Spec Home to Fetch $500 Million" and then in November's vaguely desperate-sounding "Builder Says $500 mil Mansion Should be Seen As a Bargain".
Of course there's always "Now It Can Be Told: The Story Behind L.A.'s Billion Dollar Trophy Property... plus a Special Bonus!" should the bull market last a couple years longer.
Here's the Daily Mail on Cardin's listing last fall, not to my taste but in a nice 'hood, down the road from Antibes and Cannes.
