Leona Helmsley's Greenwich estate, Dunnellen Hall is now under the 50 percent off mark. The estate which first hit the market for $125 million has gone tumbling down the entire time it has been on the market. Last we looked it was at $75 million. But a kind gentleman let me know that the home has now been reduced to $60 million.

The traditional brick mansion is approximately 23,0000 square feet with seven upstairs bedroom suites, a glass-walled music room, a wood- paneled library with a 15th century fireplace mantel, formal dining room, family room with a bar and much more. The back wing is home to the staff area which has six bedrooms. The indoor pool has four exposures and includes areas for sitting and changing. There is also a 75-foot outdoor pool with a terrace and a cabana with a kitchen. There are also brick cottages with an additional six bedrooms total. The Helmsleys bought Dunnellen Hall in 1983 for $9 million (paying an extra $2 million for the furniture) and later picked up another 14 acres bringing the total to 40 acres. How low will it go? Rumor has it that the home will require a lot of work to transform it back into a showplace.

Five months ago when Forbes ranked the world's most expensive houses (in terms of current listings) only three of them clocked in at over $100 million. And in fact, one of those, Leona Helmsley's Dunnellen Hall in Greenwich, CT which started out at $125 million had already been reduced to $95 million by the time the list was published (it's currently being offered at $75 million). The other, Fleur de Lys in Beverly Hills listed at $125 million, was therefore the world's most expensive and one of only two $100 million-plus properties officially on the market.

Re-surveying the field now we've decided it's time for a new World's Most Expensive list, mainly because despite the recession - or, perhaps, because of it - there are now seven properties in what we've dubbed the Hundred Million Club (N.B. - those listed at only $100 million don't make the cut), three of which are in the U.S. These are the modern-day equivalents of the magnates' great estates we wrote about back in February.

Some recent market activity which regular Luxist readers will be aware of makes a new ranking imperative. For starters, last month Candy Spelling listed her Holmby Hills mega-mansion at $150 million, making it the world's most expensive estate. Then just last week a mansion at No. 10 Belgrave Square in London hit the market for around the same price - £100 million, or about $149 million (depending on exchange rates), while a second Belgrave Square property finally completed renovations and has been listed at £80 million, or about $120 million.

We also received confirmation this week that an incredible 40-room private mansion in Paris' Place des États Unis (above), built in 1890, has been listed at €105 million, or about $138 million. Fleur de Lys, whose "world's most expensive" status (though not its "legendary estate" status) was also usurped by the $135 million Manaplan Residence in Palm Beach now languishes in 5th place (sorry, Mariah).

Here is our new ranking of the world's most expensive estates (in terms of current verifiable listings), all members of the Hundred Million Club:

1. The Manor - Holmby Hills, CA: $150 million
2. No. 10 Belgrave Square, London, UK: $149 million
3. Place des États Unis, Paris, France: $138 million
4. The Manalapan Residence, Palm Beach, FL: $135 million
5. Fleur de Lys, Beverly Hills, CA: $125 million
6. No. 31 Belgrave Square, London, UK: $120 million
7. Updown Court, Surrey, UK: $110 million

From the Real Estalker:
--Celebrity hairstylist Serge Normant has put his New York penthouse on West 16th Street, shown above, on the market for $4.49 million. The listing is here.
--John McCain's former home in Phoenix, Arizona will now be sold at auction on October 25. It was our estate of the day back in July.
--Teen actress Vanessa Hudgens has picked up a home in Studio City for $2.75 million. The home has six bedrooms and over 5,000 square feet.
--Rumor has it that Kimora Lee Simmons has bought herself new house in Beverly Hills.
--Will and Grace co-creator Max Mutchnick and his partner Erik Hyman have sold their Manhattan apartment for $4.1 million.
--The Harvey Mudd estate in Beverly Hills is for sale. It is our estate of the day later today.

From the NY Post's Gimme Shelter:
--Natali Portman has gone to contract to sell her apartment in Richard Meier's tower at 165 Charles St. The condo last had an asking price of $6.55 million.
--The price of Dunnellen Hall, Leona Helmsley's Greenwich, Connecticut home, has been lowered by $30 million to a still astounding $95 million. Check out the pictures from when it was our estate of the day back in June.
--The listing of the "Astor Suite" at the Plaza for $55 million was pulled after one day and other listings have disappeared without buyers but 26 apartments are still listed.
--The $70 million listing at the Pierre Hotel has been pulled from the Brown Harris Stevens website.

From the LA Times Hot Properties:
-- Screenwriter, crime novelist and political blogger Roger L. Simon has listed his home in the Hollywood Hills for sale at $2.625 million. The listing is here.
--A Beverly Hills home built in the 1920s for Errol Flynn and now owned by composer Lee Holdridge is listed at $3.2 million. The listing is here.

From the Wall Street Journal's Private Properties:
--Lehman Brothers Holdings' former chief financial officer, Erin Callan, is in contract to sell her two-bedroom condominium in New York's 15 Central Park West which had been listed at $12 million. Callan paid $6.48 million around three years ago.
--Ronald Tutor, chairman and chief executive of building contractor Perini Corp., paid $36.7 million for a massive, not-yet-completed house in the Beverly Park gated community which had been listed at $49 million.
--The widow of Steven T. Florio, the former CEO of Condé Nast Publications, has listed their waterfront Key Largo, Fla., vacation home on the market. We'll check this one out on Monday.

From Berg Properties Big Time Listings:
--via the Chicago Tribune, Ty Warner, founder of the Beanie Babie empire, reportedly has gone to contract to purchase the Chicago Spire's penthouse unit, which had been on the market for $40 million.
--Vivica A. Fox has her put her home in the Granada Hills area on the market for $1.45 million. Records show that the bought in 2002 for $825,500. The virtual tour is here.

From the NY Observer's Manhattan Transfers:
--Lehman's ousted president and chief operating officer Joseph M. Gregory has already his home on Park Avenue. He bought the two-bedroom apartment for $2.85 million back in 2004 and sold it earlier this month for $4.4 million. His Hamptons estate was previously our estate of the day and is on the market for $32.5 million.
--Mark Goldstein, a veteran Bear Stearns leveraged finance banker who became the co-head of its European investment banking last year has listed his apartment on Park Avenue for $12 million. He spent $5,275,000 in 2006 to buy two apartments which have now been combined. The listing is here.
--Hairstylist Guido Palau spent $1.9 million on a Chelsea brownstone duplex on West 22nd Street, according to city records
-- Democratic Party fund-raising stars Carl Spielvogel and Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel are in contract to sell their seventh-floor apartment at 720 Park Avenue for around $37 million, though they paid only $20 million just two years ago.
--Last week, while the Fed was agreeing to bailout A.I.G., recently retired AIG executive vice president Robert M. Sandler bought a $3.45 million apartment at the Hampshire House on Central Park South. He and his wife, Annette, paid in cash.

From Newsday's Real LI:
--Interior designer Lorraine Kirke has lowered the price of her East Hampton mansion to $11.5 million, the latest stop on a slide down from $14.5 million last year. The listing is here (no interior pics).

From the Daily Mail:
--The Candy brothers want to convert the US Embassy site in Grosvenor Square into luxury flats after the American Ambassador announced it was moving to south London. These could become some of the most expensive units in the world.

From the Dallas Morning News:
--An interesting piece on Terrell Owens real estate investments. T.O. owns six townhouses and condos in the city, valued at more than $2.5 million based on tax records.

I first mentioned back in February that Leona Helmsley's Greenwich estate, Dunnellen Hall had hit the market for $125 million but at that time I hadn't found the listing. But it turns out that David Oglivy has the listing and some pictures giving a good look at this huge mansion. Like many other homes in Greenwich, it's a traditional brick mansion, it's just incredibly large and lavish. The entrance features iron gates and a long driveway culminating in a courtyard with a 70-foot marble reflecting pool with a three-tier fountain. Once inside there is a huge entrance hall with a cove ceiling and a cross arched center hall with a travertine marble floor, and limestone walls running the 86 foot length and a double-height plaster tracery ceiling. And then there's that stairway, a decadent marble, red-carpeted expanse crowned by a crystal chandelier. At 1,125 square feet the living room is larger than some homes.

The home is approximately 23,0000 square feet with seven upstairs bedroom suites, a glass-walled music room, a wood- paneled library with a 15th century fireplace mantel, formal dining room, family room with a bar and much more. The kitchen and pantry include plenty of storage, serving and cooking areas and there is a separate staff dining and sitting area. The back wing is home to the staff area which has six bedrooms. The indoor pool has four exposures and includes areas for sitting and changing. There is also a 75-foot outdoor pool with a terrace and a cabana with a kitchen. There are also brick cottages with an additional six bedrooms total.

The Helmsleys bought Dunnellen Hall in 1983 for $9 million (paying an extra $2 million for the furniture) and later picked up another 14 acres bringing the total to 40 acres. It's one of the grandest homes in the area but $125 million would stretch the budget even in a town famous for its lavish homes. After all, Mel Gibson's Old Mill Farm is only $39.5 million and that's been sitting on the market for nearly a year.

UPDATE: This home has now been reduced to $75 60 million.

From the NY Post's Gimme Shelter:
--Heath Ledger's rental apartment in SoHo is already being quietly shopped around. Ledger had been renting the three-bedroom apartment for $22,000 a month and it is apparently being offered now for around $25,000.
--Clothing magnate Leslie "Les" Wexner, who founded The Limited and owns Victoria's Secret, Express and Henri Bendel has picked up a four-bedroom condo at 15 Central Park West for $13.1 million.He and his wife have a $50 million, 1,000-acre estate in Ohio.
--Heather Randall, the widow of Tony Randall, is also moving into a similarly sized four-bedroom apartment at 15 Central Park West.
--A $32 million sale at the elite 740 Park Ave. co-op building. The estate of Mosler Safe heiress Janet Coleman sold the 14-room duplex apartment to David Randall Winn and his wife, Tamara Sarah Winn.

From the NY Observer's Manhattan Transfers:
--New York City has presented finalists for its contest to design emergency temporary housing. The ideas include inflatable apartments, putting housing atop the sidewalk scaffold sheds that fill the streets of Manhattan, and lugging in buildings on tugboats. Ten were given $10,000 to further develop their designs.
--A peek into the life of Steven Green who in 1990 was named one of the NYC's 10 worst landlords, and spent almost a month in jail after not providing Queens tenants with hot water.Green later moved to Florida, started a charter airline and early last year failed to get back a $780,000 divorce settlement from his partner, who cited cruelty. He was then sentenced to nearly three years in jail for fraud and tax charges. In May, a month before jail, he was leaving a West Side club when a hit-and-run put him in a coma. Green is recovering from brain damage, and won't have to report to prison for another few months. His condo at the Essex House was sold off last month for $3 million. After using a a phony Social Security number to get a loan from Wells Fargo he was forced by a U.S. District Court to pay $4.11 million in restitution. So far he hasn't paid anything but the Essex House condo was highly mortgaged so likely the court will not get much money from the sale.
--Seagram liquor heir Edgar Bronfman Jr. bought his East 64th Street townhouse in 1994 for $4.375 million, and sold it to his Warner Music Group colleague Len Blavatnik, the oil magnate, for $50 million last October. Now he's hoping for another flip in a much shorter time frame. On Jan. 18, he paid $19.5 million for an 11-room sprawl at 1040 Fifth Avenue. On Jan. 25, without having done any work, he listed the apartment for $24 million, $4.5 million above his purchase one week earlier. Wow, if he gets it, that's one heck of a payday. The listing is here.
--The chairman of the Metropolitan Art museum's board, James R. Houghton, has sold his two-bedroom tower apartment in the Majestic on Central Park West last month for $4.9 million.
--Karen Assante, Armand Assante's ex-wife, has sold her two-bedroom apartment at the 20's-era co-op 118 Riverside Drive for $2.45 million.
--Listings for the Mark, the 1927 hotel at 25 East 77th Street, have hit the Internet. Corcoran shows 12 listings for the building including the $60 million penthouse, with 12 rooms, five bedrooms, eight baths, and a $35,477 monthly maintenance.

From the Nashville Post:
Singer/songwriter Michelle Branch bought a home in the Belle Meade area of Nashville, Tennessee, several months after selling her house in Calabasas, California. In 2006 she bought a condo in Nashville's Werthan Lofts.

From the Wall Street Journal's Private Properties:
--The widow of author Sidney Sheldon has listed their Palm Springs compound for $7.9 million, plus a house across the street for $4 million. Sheldon and his wife, Alexandra, owned a total of four houses in the Old Las Palmas neighborhood. The Sheldons lived in a midcentury modernist seven-bedroom home and also owned a six-bedroom Mediterranean-style guest house. A four-bedroom home with a glass-enclosed indoor pool and a poolside kitchen is also for sale for $1.45 million. Brook Ashley, Scott Palermo and Jim Sanak, all of Prudential California Realty's Estates division, have the listings (no pictures yet).
--Owners have cut the price of two apartments at New York's Plaza condominium, the redesigned Plaza Hotel. Fred Farago, the president of a fruit-flavoring company, is now asking $5.9 million for a one-bedroom apartment there, around the same amount he paid for the unit in July and Italian-born architect Teresa Sapey has trimmed $200,000 off the initial $10 million price for her 13th-floor unit which she bought for $6.9 million in July.
--At 15 Central Park West, Evan Cole, who co-founded ABC Carpet & Home, has agreed to sell his 15th-floor three-bedroom apartment there for over $9 million (he paid $4.83 million). In the same building,Michael Holtz, a travel-agency owner, recently signed an agreement to sell an identical apartment for more than his $8.5 million asking price.
--Actor Rupert Everett has listed his Miami Beach pied-à-terre for $1.15 million.

From the Real Estalker:
--Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has sold his Back Bay Boston condo for $5.285 million. Brady paid $4,125,000 for the 3,412 square foot condo in June 2004.
--Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck have been spotted house hunting again. Rumor has it they are looking in the $20 million range in the Holmby Hills area.
--(via the NY Daily News) Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner and his boyfriend Matt Nye have bought Teviot, a 69-acre estate in Tivoli, New York.
-- Australian actors Rebecca Rigg and Simon Baker sold their Santa Monica house in December of 2007 for $2,895,000 and purchased another Santa Monica home with six bedrooms that cost the couple more than $4.5 million.
--The estate of Leona Helmsley has put her Greenwich, Connecticut home on the market for $125 million, shown above. There is a great slideshow at the Greenwich Time that shows the home.
--Ricky Martin already has a home listed in Golden Beach, Florida for $22.5 million now he has relisted his Miami Beach home for $19.5 million. Both listings are with Pablo Alfaro.
--Michael Jackson has paid more than $600,000 in back taxes for the neverland Ranch. He still owes $23 million in loans on the home which is expected to go into foreclosure.
--via the NY Post, Veronica Hearst's Manalapan, Florida mansion, which has been sitting on the market for $27 million, is scheduled to be auctioned off on February 25th to pay off $45 million in mortgages.
--Megan Ellison, daughter of billionaire Larry Ellison has paid $12.6 million for a three-bedroom contemporary home
--via the Palm Beach Daily News, even in this tough real estate market the lavish Palm Beach home of Howard Gittis sold in around six weeks for a rumored $22 million, not too far away from the $23.5 million asking price.
--Famous restaurateur Peter Morton has put a Malibu home on the market for $6.795 million. The listing is here.

From Berg Properties Big Time Listings:
--Rick Allen, the drummer for the band Def Leppard, and his wife, Lauren Monroe, have paid $1,660,000 for a single-family house in Calabasas.
--Actress Paz Vega has paid $1,900,000 for a three-bedroom house in West Hollywood and has listed her Hollywood home for $1,149,000. The listing is here.
--Devo singer Gerald Casale has paid $2,000,000 for a Richard Neutra-designed house in the Hollywood Hills.
--Musician Joe Walsh has paid $4,500,000 for a three-bedroom home in the Beverly Hills post office area that once was owned by Monkee Mike Nesmith.

From the LA Times Hot Property:
--As was previously reported by Big Time Listings, Carlos Mencia and his wife Amy have bought the Encino home of actor Eddie Cibrian for close to its asking price of $4.4 million. The Mencias decided to keep their former home for his family.
Former UCLA head football coach Karl Dorrell has put his five-bedroom home in Stevenson Ranch home on the market for $1.25 million. The listing is here.
--Musician Robert Cray and his wife, playwright and filmmaker Susan Turner-Cray, have sold their Los Feliz house for nearly $3.5 million and bought a 5-acre Santa Ynez Valley ranch four around $2 million. Other real estate columns including Big Time Properties have suggested that Jason Lee may be the buyer of the Cray home.
--A Neutra-inspired home belonging to Dr. William Bondareff in Bel-Air is listed at $2.195 million. It is our estate of the day later today.


From AOL Real Estate and Home Improvements:
--How to make a bathroom bigger without remodeling.
--Seven smart home improvements
--

Leona Helmsley's dog Trouble may have walked off with a $12 million inheritance but the little pup has no use for artwork, silver, furniture and other items so these are being sold off at Christies. Around 500 lots of goods belonging to the late billionaire will be sprinkled throughout Christie's auctions this spring. Christie's has said that they expect to bring in a total of $4 to $6 million from the sales which will go to the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. The first sale items will hit the auction block this Friday in an auction of important American silver. You can pick up her Tiffany silverware which is estimated to sell for $20,000 to $30,000.

Leona Helmsley may have received lots of attention for leaving $12 million to her dog, Trouble, but clearly she isn't the only one dropping lots of cash on a beloved pet. According to Russ Alan Prince, of Prince & Associates, super wealthy "pet-focused" families spend an average of $328,000 per year pampering their pets. He came to this figure after surveying 304 affluent families who have a mean net worth of $46.7 million and describe themselves as pet lovers.

I would be hard-pressed to figure out how to spend that much on my own pets, but apparently it can be done. In addition to high-end food prepared by famous chefs, wealthy pet-lovers drop big bucks on "life enrichment" services for their cherished little ones. These services can include $2,000 an hour pet massages, psychic readings and life coaches. Hey, I guess even a pampered pet can get stressed out and need a little direction in life.

Another big expense for the pets of the super rich is, of course, the clothes. Can't have Fido running around looking average. Twenty-five percent of the wealthy pet lovers Prince surveyed say they spend $25,000 or more on their pet's wardrobes each year. Sixteen percent report spending that much on pet birthday parties alone.

And what about when the master or mistress has gone on to that big mansion in the sky? Price says that 78% of wealthy pet lovers provide for their pets in their wills - generally leaving in trusts an average of $30,000.

Some may refer to Leona Helmsley as the 'Queen of Mean', but I think her dog would disagree. Helmsley died last week at the age of 87 and on Tuesday her will was made public. In it, she provided quite nicely for her dog Trouble, creating a $12 million trust to ensure that the Maltese lives out the rest of her life in the luxury she is no doubt accustomed to. The trust will be overseen by her brother, Alvin Rosenthal, to whom she left $10 million. When Trouble's days on earth are over, she is to be buried next to her mistress in the $1.4 million mausoleum in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Westchester County, New York. Talk about a pampered pooch.

She was less generous to her late son Jay Panzirer's children, cutting Craig and Meegan Panzire out completely for "reasons which are known to them" and leaving a relatively paltry $5 million each to David and Walter Panzirer. But even that generosity comes with a catch. In order to receive the money, David and Walter must visit their father's grave once a year, "preferably on the anniversary of my said son's death." In order to ensure they abide by that stipulation, she has ordered a guest book installed at the Helmsley Mausoleum.

Lest you think she's all bad, it is important to note that she did leave billions to various unnamed charities.

You may not be able to take it with you when you die, but you can sure spend a lot of it getting there. Leona Helmsley, who died this week in Connecticut, will be buried alongside her late husband, Harry, in a $1.4 million mausoleum in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Westchester County, New York.

Although Harry died in 1997, he is somewhat new to the Sleepy Hollow neighborhood. Three years ago, Leona became dissatisfied with Harry's original resting place at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx when a public mausoleum was constructed, blocking Harry's view. She then did what any self-respecting billionaire would do - she built a new mausoleum and moved Harry into it. The 1,300 square foot granite monument features Doric columns and a recreation of the Manhattan skyline in its stained-glass windows. Oh, and a great view.