From left: Martha Stewart, George Soros, Ralph Lauren, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones

While Westchester County boasts a glut of wealthy and famous residents, high society property owners appear to cluster in the Town of Bedford, according to Shelterpop. The town, comprised of three hamlets, Katonah, Bedford Village and Bedford Hills, claims Martha Stewart, financier George Soros, Ralph Lauren and husband and wife Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas as residents. Lauren, who has lived there since the early 1990s, owns one of the largest swatches of land there. His 17,000-square-foot house sits on more than 250 acres of land. The designer can call Stewart a neighbor — her $15 million, 150-plus-acre working farm sits adjacent to Lauren’s. [Shelterpop] [more]

From the February issue:
Thirty years ago, the notion that the largely industrial area at the foot of the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges would one day command some of the highest prices in Brooklyn real estate might have seemed about as plausible as an elephant taking wing. Nowadays, of course, Dumbo is well established as one of Brooklyn’s most sought-after neighborhoods. So much so that it has weathered the real estate downturn better than Brooklyn as a whole — a reality that the few developers planning projects in Dumbo hope continues. In December, the publicly traded luxury home builder Toll Brothers closed on a parcel of land at 205 Water Street where the firm intends to develop a condo with approximately 70 units. Toll paid $8.6 million for the land and hopes to start building by the end of the year. “Dumbo is fairly unique within the Brooklyn market,” said David Von Spreckelsen, a senior vice president with Toll Brothers. “It’s really been holding value better than the other neighborhoods in Brooklyn, and if you look at [condo] resales they’re at really strong numbers.”  [more]

One Brooklyn Bridge Park is back on top in the race for the priciest condo in the borough. A 9,486-square-foot triplex in the 438-unit Brooklyn Heights building was recently snatched up for $8.495 million by the founder of an investment management firm, who purchased the unit through a limited-liability corporation to veil his identity. The spacious loft actually comprises six units of the original development’s plan: the buyer combined three two-bedrooms, a one-bedroom and two studios to create the space. A previous buyer, who walked away from a $600,000-plus deposit after the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, had already merged three of those units. One Brooklyn Bridge Park is roughly 30 percent sold. The most expensive Brooklyn condo in 2008 was a $7 million loft in David Walentas’ the Clock Tower Building, which is now back on the market for $8.5 million. But neither loft will have a fighting chance for the priciest prize if Walentas manages to sell the Clock Tower’s crown jewel this year, a triplex penthouse listed for $25 million. The unit, which features a four-sided glass-faced clock and birds-eye views of the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, was recently eyed by the likes of Jay-Z and Ralph Lauren. [NYT]

Jay-Z and Ralph Lauren each recently checked out the crown jewel of Brooklyn apartments — a $25 million triplex penthouse at developer David Walentas’ 1 Main Street in Dumbo, the ClockTower Building. The four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom condo — featured in “Bamboozled” by Spike Lee — is located on the building’s 16th through 19th floors and the listing price is more than twice the highest amount ever paid for a Brooklyn home. The record purchase price thus far was an $11 million home in Gravesend. Through four giant glass-faced clocks, the apartment’s residents can enjoy bird’s-eye views of the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. On the roof, there is a 400-square-foot “crow’s nest” deck. Raphael De Niro of Prudential Douglas Elliman has the listing. [Post]