While a tough 2009 made people reset their expectations, Pamela Liebman, the Corcoran Group’s president and CEO, told the Palm Beach Daily News she thinks the number of transactions nationwide will likely rise this year, though the dollar volume will not. Palm Beach, in particular, has been slow to recover. “It still feels the drag of the overall housing glut in Florida,” Liebman said. Her near-term outlook for Palm Beach and Delray Beach, however, is upbeat. Corcoran, which was the listing broker for the 2009 record $24 million sale of La Bellucia mansion and is also marketing Bernard Madoff’s five-bedroom Palm Beach home, has worked on getting buyers and sellers on the same page. “I think for a long time in all of our markets, whether it was Palm Beach or the Hamptons or New York City, there was a lot of talk about people wanting luxury and ‘the biggest’ and ‘the best’ — the biggest apartment, the best views, the most oceanfront,” Liebman, 47, said. “People are buying properties again for themselves to enjoy, not to make a statement about their life and how much money they have.” Liebman, who said she stays in her Miami home at least twice a month, said that international buyers — many from South America and Russia — are in the market, as are Europeans “but not as strong as they were.”
[Palm Beach Daily News]

From the South Florida Web site: It’s a Palm Beach mansion already linked to financial infamy, but Bernie Madoff’s 410 N. Lake Way five-bedroom house also gets the sharpest sort of dismissal — it lacks curb appeal. The vine-obscured, wood framed house is on the market for $8.49 million, but veteran Palm Beach real estate agent Douglas Rill called it a very ordinary property. Jim McCann, senior sales associate for Corcoran Group, the Palm Beach real estate firm handling the listing for the U.S. Marshals Service, said the house is in good condition and could appeal to a buyer not interested in drawing attention to himself. He added that he has been showing the home almost every day, and has already received a number of offers, though none have been accepted.