Home never built, land now for sale

Hughes bought the land from Merv Griffin in 1997 for about $8.5 million. Griffin, in turn, bought the property from a relative of the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran in 1987 and planned an even larger home, which also never materialized.

The home Hughes planned to build -- where he would have lived with Jean-Claude van Damme's ex-wife Darcy LaPier, the woman Hughes married in 1999 -- was to be in the Italian-Mediterranean style, with a large reflecting pool and fountains and a two-acre lake.

While waiting, the couple lived in Grayhall, also owned by Hughes. That more than 20,000-square-foot Beverly Hills residence was built in 1909 for actor Douglas Fairbanks. Grayhall hasn't yet sold either (the asking price is $18.9 million) and is available for lease.

Rick Hilton and Jeffrey Hyland of Hilton & Hyland and Jerry Jolton of Coldwell Banker have the listing.

The Hughes estate did sell one piece of property: his home in Malibu, in 2001, for about $30 million.

Madonna, massages, movies

Producer and agent Brian Bantry has a yen for a villa in Tuscany, his listing agent says. So Bantry is selling his 25,000-square-foot estate in Wainscott, in East Hampton, N.Y. The asking price: $27 million.

The eight-bedroom, 16-bath home on 5.2 waterfront acres, known as Goose Creek, overlooks Georgica Pond, and has an indoor jet-wave lap pool and full-service spa, a Turkish steam room, gym, massage room and tanning salon. There's a two-story central atrium surrounding a garden, a tennis court and an outdoor Celtic cross-shape pool surrounded by linden trees.

Perhaps the home's most famous feature is a 110-seat movie theater. Madonna used the house for her 40th birthday party (Rosie O'Donnell hosted), and Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck rented it for a week this past summer. A few of the other A-list types who have prowled the halls include Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, Danny Glover and Paul McCartney.

The listing agents are Lori Barbaria of Prudential Douglas Elliman in Bridgehampton, N.Y., and Toni Haber of Douglas Elliman in Manhattan.

Stock farm to stock mogul

Financial heavyweight Charles Schwab puts his money where his house is. He's one of the co-founders of a residential retreat -- the Stock Farm Club in Hamilton, Mont., 45 miles south of Missoula. He also owns a guest house on the property.

Since it opened in 1999, the 2,600-acre retreat has seen 72 of its 95 home sites sold, to the likes of ABC sportscaster Brent Musberger, 3M Chairman and CEO W. James McNerney Jr. and Goldman Sachs executive Eff Martin.

There are also 30 sites for large log "cabins" (of which 18 have sold). Lot prices range from $300,000 to $1.2 million, and club membership costs $95,000 with purchase of property and $125,000 without.

The club got its name from Marcus Daly, a 19th-century copper tycoon who established his 22,000-acre stock farm on the site in order to breed thoroughbreds. His mansion, now a museum, is still on the property, as is the heated brick stable he built for his favorite horse, Tammany, with stalls plastered, wainscoted and finished in solid oak.