It is also home to one of the city’s longest-running construction projects, the Second Avenue Subway, which has disrupted residents, merchants and traffic farther to the east for the last seven years. But the end is in sight. The project is slated for completion in 2016. And the removal of those barricades and final silence of the jackhammers will just be harbingers of the renaissance of a transportation corridor, and the neighborhood surrounding it. The advice of many a real estate professional: Buy soon if you can, rather than kick yourself later with 20-20 hindsight when the subway is done.

In recent years, the Upper East Side has, according to some experts, lost some of its luster as the magnet for the young, the hip and the cool arriving in New York to make their mark. But with its great schools, parks and amenities, it remains a draw for families, and others looking for a good value in a city that, even through a severe downturn, remains strong, vibrant and safe, and where owning even a tiny piece of the pie is an investment that seldom goes sour.

Robert Schulman, associate broker and executive managing director at Warburg Realty, says that now is a great time to buy on the Upper East Side, because the neighborhood is where you can get the best value. “In the past few years, it wasn’t appreciating as fast as other neighborhoods, so you get the most for your money,” he says. At the same time, he cautions that the opportunity to get great value won’t last long. “Prices on condos, co-ops and townhouses are steadily increasing.”

Even in this past winter, the season when the market typically slows, Jacky Teplitzky, managing director, Douglas Elliman, and leader of the Jacky Teplitzky team, says open houses have attracted steady traffic, and sales have been strong. She only expects those numbers to improve with spring.  “In relative terms, there is more to choose from in terms of housing as there is more inventory, unlike most of Manhattan,” she says, explaining why the Upper East Side will always be popular. “The options are diverse and there is a range of price points.”

Today’s buyer wants everything in mint condition. “They don’t want to do any remodeling,” Ms. Teplitzky says. “The ideal properties are move-in-ready. Buyers are specific in what they want regarding amenities as well, such as a doorman building, gym, storage and bike room. Buyers also want views and plenty of natural light.”

And they want condos. While 75 percent of the housing on the Upper East Side is co-op, luxury condo developments are what are really on the rise, so to speak, and large apartments in these brand new structures are selling out at the highest numbers. Among those buildings and developments are: The Skyline Development at 200 East 79th Street, The Lucida at 151 East 85th Street, The Brompton at 205 East 85th Street, the Georgica at 305 East 85th Street, 135 East 79th Street, and The Chatham, new luxury townhomes on East 65th Street, and The Helmsley Carlton House at 21 East 61st Street, formerly a hotel, now a condo building offering the luxury amenities of a hotel.

“In the case of The Lucida, The Brompton, Georgica, and 170 East End Avenue, we see that luxury condominium offerings are moving north and east,” say Adrienne Albert and Jacqueline Urgo of The Marketing Directors, a development advisory and master property marketing and sales force that works on behalf of owners and builders of new homes. “Expanded retail offerings and higher demand from a greater number of market segments means that the coming years will be good ones for residential real estate on the Upper East Side.”

Among the developments moving north and east, the Azure at 333 East 91st Street is a sort of hybrid co-op/condo (it’s legally a co-op but has condo rules). With its far east address, on First and 91st, the building might be seen as off the beaten track, but that is not what its co-developers, The DeMatteis Organizations and The Mattone Group, are finding. For one thing, several private schools in the area, Spence, Sacred Heart and Trevor Day, are all building athletic facilities nearby, which will further enhance the neighborhood. And the building is already 75 percent sold, with two-, three- and four-bedroom units on the 21st through 34th floors remaining. The developers built the building so that two two-bedroom apartments can be combined for larger family apartments, and the developer offers to do the combining itself, saving potential buyers many contracting headaches. The building also offers some 6,000 square feet of amenities, including a large dining room with catering facilities that residents can reserve and use for entertaining.

“The area is very popular among families because the neighborhood has the best public and private schools in the city,” says Douglas MacLaury of the Mattone Group, “and because it is near both Carl Schurz and Central Park.” The development even included the building of a public school, M.S. 114, a middle school with 530 seats, and a totally separate entrance, under a program which helps the city to get new and needed schools, and developers to get certain tax breaks.

The completion of the Second Avenue Subway will benefit those who buy into the Azure, and many others. “We predict that by the time the construction is complete, the face of Second Avenue retail will have changed completely, making way for high-end stores, markets and restaurants,” say Albert and Urgo of The Marketing Directors. “This will cause property values on Second Avenue and the nearby streets on the Upper East Side to rise. Plus, the new subway line will create easier access from the Upper East Side to other neighborhoods in the city, making it a great place to live.”

One57

Remember the days when a Barbie Dream House seemed like a splurge?

This week, a Chinese mother paid $6.5 million for a condo in Midtown’s One57 for her two-year old daughter to use when she goes to college, according to the Daily News.

As Kevin Brown of Sotheby’s international explained in an interview, “She said, well, her daughter was going to go to Columbia, or NYU or maybe Harvard, and so she needed to be in the center of the city and that was why she was picking this one particular apartment." Presumably they’ll have ironed out the kinks in the Ivy League bribery market by then.

After inquiring about the age of the future scholar, Mr. Brown was shocked to hear that the prospective inhabitant was only two-years old and wouldn’t be inhabiting the apartment until, you know, 2029. Which is totally foolproof, because it’s not like the New York real-estate market has changed much in the past sixteen years.

The tallest residential building in the city, One57 will stand 90 stories tall when it reaches completion next year, and has attracted wealthy investors from across the globe, including China, Russia and South Korea. According to Mr. Brown, Chinese buyers make up a quarter of his client base, a number that has grown in recent years (no word on how many of these buyers are old enough to tie their own shoes).

So, in case you needed convincing that the New York real-estate market is completely out of touch with reality, there you have it. While the rest of us steadily employed adults struggle to find rat-free lodging in the wilds of Bushwick, Chinese toddlers are gearing up to be able to throw the sickest house parties imaginable. Woo, Harvard Spring Break 2029!

Luxury sales were way up, but the rest of the market lagged.

At first blush, the fourth-quarter Manhattan market reports would seem to be evidence of a holiday miracle: co-op boards were overwhelmed by contracts, inventory plummeted, prices skyrocketed and a tremendous amount of money changed hands.

Manhattan ended 2012 with a grand finale: more fourth quarter sales than it has seen in 25 years, according to Douglas Elliman, and the lowest level of inventory in more than a decade. Alas, as is increasingly the case in the Manhattan real estate market and the city at large, the wealth was not spread out evenly in the end-of-the-year closings. The trophy market, while shining brightly, is something of a false beacon when it comes to the Manhattan real estate. It illuminates the seemingly unshakeable good fortunes of the world's wealthiest, but does not reveal the decidedly uncertain recovery and unstable footing of the financially struggling masses.

These were not one-bedrooms facing air-shafts or second-floor studios changing hands at such a hurried speed during the last three months of the year, but sprawling co-ops in white-glove buildings. The fourth quarter saw 37 closings above $10 million, the majority of them on the Upper East Side, according to Streeteasy. There was also a 142 percent increase in the number of contracts for properties above $10 million. And buyers certainly had their pick: in 2012, 644 properties priced above $10 million came on the market, the highest number in the last five years.

Viewed purely as an increase in sales volume and prices, the numbers might seem more encouraging than they really are: high-end sales pulled the average Manhattan sales price up 7 percent (to $1.48 million) over the fourth quarter of 2011, according to the Halstead market report, and the media price up 6 percent (to $836,000). Both time on the market and price cuts decreased. It was, as the Streeteasy report notes, the best year for real estate since 2008 (even if the median price in 2008 remains 9 percent above the 2012 median price).

It's too bad that the frantic pace of fourth quarter closings was not a sign of economic optimism, but rather pessimism: a last ditch attempt on the part of the haves to have more before the tax codes changed on January 1. And while no one would buy or sell a luxury condo for a favorable tax rate alone, the change means that many sales that might otherwise have closed in the first quarter of 2013 now belong to the previous year's tally. Fear of the fiscal cliff caused a flurry of activity, which is unlikely to be repeated in the New Year, despite the fact that we did not fall over said cliff. In 2013, the capital gains tax will go from 15 percent to 23.8 percent, reducing any sense of urgency to sell trophy properties. Low mortgage rates, which helped to fuel sales in 2012, are also likely to rise this year.

“With the upcoming changes in tax laws, record low interest rates and the inventory of available apartments at 30% below where it was a year ago, the incredible activity in the fourth quarter was not surprising,” Hall. F. Willkie, president of Brown Harris Stevens Residential Sales, said in a statement about the market reports, noting that the brokerage's report does not include the few substantial sales that closed in the very last days of the year, which would likely bring the total even higher.

However, other market analysts cautioned that the activity at the very top and bottom of Manhattan's real estate market does not mean that the market is healthy or well within recovery mode. Besides the luxury market, the only other strong category are entry-level apartments, largely purchased by people who were pushed into the sales market by record-high rental prices. Mid-range apartments remain oddly untouched. "At best, the recovery is nascent, fragile and fragmented," the Streeteasy report warns. "In a healthy market... buyers from all segments... would be clamoring to take advantage of the record-low mortgage rates."

kvelsey@observer.com

Don't let the taxman take it away.

Closings can be fraught with tensions between buyers, sellers, co-op boards. But the end of 2012 has brought a new esprit de corps to high-end residential real estate deals. Finally, brokers report, everyone is happy to work together. Is it the holiday spirit uniting this diverse group? Not at all! Just a shared class consciousness born out of the knowledge that capital gains taxes will be increasing next year.

Much like trust transfers, there's a real impetus to complete the deals before we all fall off the fiscal cliff. Capital gains taxes, as of January 1, are expected to rise from 15 percent to at least 23.8 percent, and possibly more.

Brokers and lawyers are scurrying all over the city, rushing to complete closings before January 1. Sellers are more than willing to make a deal. Co-op boards and managing agents are canceling their Christmas plans and both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are reporting on the mayhem. As The Journal puts it, it's the "millionaire's edition of a Frank Capra holiday movie." Everyone just wants to be helpful! Sellers are even offering buyers bonuses of between $100,000 and $300,000 if they can close this year. Because why give the money to the government if you can give it to another rich person?

Well, at least some wealthy New Yorkers are dodging taxes by giving more money to charity.

While brokers around the country are no doubt experiencing a similar rush, few locations have seen as much property appreciation as New York has, nor does any other state have as high capital gains taxes. And few locations have to contend with not only busy lawyers, appraisers and buyers, but also co-op boards and overwhelmed managing agents.

“I am losing my mind,” broker Raphael De Niro told The Times. “In almost 10 years of doing this I have never seen a scramble to close deals in December before year-end like I am seeing now.”

Other brokers are making themselves available for odd tasks to help seal deals: Dolly Lenz spent a late night doing an inventory of a seller's 335 bottles of wine before the movers came in the morning.

“It was a bit of an oversight by the owners, who forgot they had all that wine,” Ms. Lenz told the Times. We suppose such things can slip a person's mind? Although we can't imagine ever forgetting about several hundred bottles of very fine wine.

Apparently, some deals are even being structured to fall apart if they don't close by January 1, so that sellers can relist their properties for higher prices, a real estate version of the Cinderella story. Only rather than rags to riches, it's a riches to riches story.

kvelsey@observer.com

Tinsley Mortimer: Unfazed by hurricane (Getty)

That being said, here is how Tinsley Mortimer weathered the storm.

Ms. Mortimer wrote to us via email:

I have a good friend who lives on the same floor of my building on the UES. We just hung out in her apt with our dogs and made pasta and ate Halloween candy! Nothing much happened up here besides a little wind and rain. We were lucky!

If you remember your Style section or CW shows, Ms. Mortimer has had several address changes over the years: Park Avenue to Chelsea and back to the UES. None of the areas seem to have been touched by Hurricane Sandy, nor, apparently, was her eighth-floor garment district loft where her clothing brand resides.

Lucky doesn't begin to cover it, but we'd watch out for combining dogs and Halloween candy. Only a couple of veterinarians willing to make house calls, and they cost a fortune.

“We all like to think of our home as a mansion, even if it is a humble abode, and we all have the license to aspire, so we have created Mansion to be the home of both aspiration and real estate realization,” WSJ managing editor Robert Thomson said in a statement announcing the launch.

The section bears a subhead with a quote from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet that is uttered by the titular heroine about midway through the play.

“O, I have bought the mansion of a love, But not possess’d it,” reads the subhead.

This expression of unrealized romance seems like a tragic allusion for an aspirational section about houses in a newspaper, but maybe the Journal editors never got to the end.

Mansion is littered with pictures of, well, mansions. In the premiere edition, readers learned that Maya Angelou has three lovely large homes and that Silicon Valley millionaires are going SoCal and buying oversized houses on the beach. Who can blame them? In London, pop idols and footballers are living in a converted mental asylum.

The back page doesn’t feature a mansion, because its subject, William Shatner, once lived in a normal-sized shack! Oh, the horror. It was certainly no starship Enterprise, but we all had to start somewhere.

The section is headed by editor Emily Gitter (formerly a deputy editor for the old Friday Journal). “Many of you already know Emily for her sharp editing skills, her excellent judgment and a wit as elegantly edgy as a rough-hewn granite benchtop in a just-refurbished Old Greenwich home,” said a memo announcing Ms. Gitter’s promotion last summer. Her sensibility sounds appropriate for a rustic mansion.

That isn’t the only change on Fridays. Last week, the Journal also debuted  a revamped—and renamed—arts and culture section, Arena, which takes a look at the art market but also covers sports. It’s an odd mix, but the clashing content is appropriately gladiatorial, considering the title. Arena’s ads are mostly for movies (because what is a theater if not an updated arena) that mansion-dwellers may be inclined to enjoy. A banner ad on the front page of the section quotes Sean Hannity calling Atlas Shrugged a “must-see film.”

Arena and Mansion don’t match the guilty-pleasure ridiculousness of the yuppyish “how we live now” that is the Times Styles or the sheer over-the-top voyeuristic pleasure of the Financial Times’s lifestyle sections (we are especially fond of the “How To Spend It” column), but they were certainly passable reads in the first week out.Even the advertising gets in on the action. Ads in Mansion are mostly all homes—and yes, they are all quite spacious. From our perch high above the fray in the content coliseum, we’ll give these gladiators a thumbs up and let them live to fight another day.

Toshi just wants everyone to have a good time. That’s one of the first things the 38-year-old entrepreneur told The Observer as we sat on the bench outside his Flatiron Hotel. It was only 5:30 p.m., and inside the hotel’s groovy restaurant, brightly colored drinks were passed around as a woman in a sparkly white dress covered a Beyoncé song in a smoky, lounge-y growl.

Through the crowd, you could see into the Flatiron’s lobby, with its two-story cylindrical aquarium filled with exotic undersea creatures, including a remora, a type of suckerfish that resembles a shark and gets around by attaching itself to bigger fish.
The first floor is called Toshi’s Playground. “I just made these signs, look!” said Toshi (real name Robert Chan), pointing to an anime rendition of his dog, Ponzu. Ponzu is a Morkie, we were informed: half Maltese, half Yorkie.

Graphics of Toshi and Ponzu are everywhere: above a red velvet throne that greets customers when they walk in, and almost subliminally painted around the white-on-white minimalist penthouse where Toshi throws his parties.

Unfortunately for non-Ponzus, the Flatiron does not allow other dogs inside.

Ponzu’s ubiquity is more than just a cute gimmick. It’s part of a strategic rebranding of his master as a fun-loving nightlife figure, after Toshi’s last such effort backfired.

He’s currently known as the face of Hotel Toshi, a rash of illegal, short-term rentals that plagued residential buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn, causing otherwise happy renters to flee him faster than a bedbug invasion. “One woman on Mulberry Street got so angry that she posted a picture of the van with my face on it all over Soho,” Toshi said. “In those situations, you’re better off just leaving.”

As the city cracks down on Airbnb-type rentals (illegal in most residential buildings), Toshi is going legit, with two hotels that are actually zoned for short-term overnight stays, and a publicity effort to burnish his reputation.

Not that he’s out of the quickie rental business entirely—his company Smart Apartments LLC has 220 units available in Manhattan and Brooklyn, 17 of them already cited by the mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, a new department that hands out warnings and fines for illegally converted transient hotels. Luckily for Toshi, the landlords are usually the ones who get fined, not the individuals renting out their apartments to overnight guests.

And so there are no bad vibes evident in Toshi’s Playground, which the owner would like to turn into an artists’ hang. On Monday nights, show your Actor’s Equity card and Toshi will actually pay you $25 to get up and sing a couple songs. He records every performance at the bar. “When one of them gets famous, I’ll have the movie ready,” he said, revealing the sort of forward thinking that made him a pile of money in overnight rentals long before Airbnb was a $1 billion company.

Raised in San Francisco, Toshi came to New York to major in math at Columbia, where he wound up taking a bartending class that changed everything.

“Throwing parties was the best way to meet girls, who I had never talked to before,” he said.

Unfortunately, a renegade bottle and an open window at one of his campus ragers spelled the end of Columbia for him. Typing 100 words a minute landed him a job at Citibank, then a gig as a junior math analyst. He spent the next five years hanging out with traders more than eager to find their new friend a place to throw parties.

And what bashes they were. In the mid-’90s, “Toshi Parties” were just a smidge less legendary than Michael Alig’s, and nearly as outrageous. He employed “Toshi-ettes”: young women who would walk around the parties in their underwear, with stickers of Toshi’s face decorating each breast and butt cheek. He played ’70s funk, bartended shirtless and wore plastic clothing.

An aspiring actor, he also pranced his way into a regular gig on Conan as a Speedo-wearing “gay boy.” He even had a small, more solemn part as a Chinese crime boss in Martin Scorcese’s The Departed, this time playing opposite Jack Nicholson. But these cameos were just a precursor to a better-known role as the owner of New York’s most infamous roving hotel business.

The Puck Building ousted his parties in 2009, and Toshi decided he needed a real job. Thinking about his next move, he went on a trip to Brazil and posted a guest room in his Williamsburg apartment for rent on Craigslist. He was amazed by the eager responses. “I realized that renting out one room would be more profitable than renting my entire apartment,” he said. “And I loved meeting new people.”

Before long, Toshi began leasing multiple units, then turning around and renting them out for one or two night stays. The proceeds enabled him to pay landlords premium rents (20 percent over market, according to Toshi), and keep the profits himself. “It went from one guest room to a few hundred apartments in 48 buildings in less than a year,” he said.

Toshi even put beds on his rooftop and rented those. In the summer of 2009, a Daily News reporter spent a rainy night in a Toshi bed he rented on Airbnb for $100. He was given a tent. He gave it a positive review.

Unfortunately, that Daily News item was a rare piece of good press for Hotel Toshi, whose guests frequently complained on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. They claimed that there were problems with bait-and-switch tactics, heat, bedbugs and rude customer service. As one Yelp reviewer put it, “DO NOT stay here!! This was the worst place I have ever stayed in my life—it’s a slum.”

Another complaint pertained to the hotel’s staff: “They arranged to come collect the balance for my apartment three times, and never showed up. After the third time, someone called me and said that if I didn’t pay the next day ‘she didn’t know what could happen.’ After THEY failed to come collect the payment as they arranged with me.”

“Stay away,” reviewers warned. But the prices were too good for many to pass up.

Toshi set up an office at 808 Driggs Avenue and made it home base for his yellow “Toshi Truck,” emblazoned with his grinning mug, which transported guests from HQ to their rentals.

Trouble was, almost all of Toshi’s units were in residential properties, so long-term renters would be sharing their building with total strangers who had keys. The constant flow of traffic made it impossible to keep tabs on anyone. Mail started disappearing. Doors were propped open so friends of guests could come and go. People would book several Toshi units to throw a giant party, keeping residents awake all night.

In May 2010, 20 residents complained to Shlomo Karpen, the landlord at 808 Driggs. According to the Brooklyn Paper, he encouraged them to break their leases and move out if they didn’t like sharing with Hotel Toshi.

“You have to understand how much money landlords are making off of these illegal rentals,” said Thomas Cayler, chair of the Illegal Hotel Committee of the West Side Neighborhood Alliance. “Any sort of fines they get from the city, they’ll just write it off as the cost of doing business.”

For his part, the self-styled hotelier claims the “Toshi effect” isn’t his fault. “I had no idea that the landlords were evicting all of their tenants to give me the space,” Toshi said. “Landlords were coming to me and saying we want you to rent the entire building, because I can get a much bigger loan with you as my tenant. And they would take this money out and buy another apartment.”

Things came to a head when Toshi tried to a open a cafe at 808 Driggs in 2011. The longer-term tenants had had enough. In letters to sites including Gothamist and Curbed, they described the horrors of living in a Hotel Toshi building. The cafe never materialized.

Around the same time, the state began battling faux-tels in earnest, clarifying that it was illegal to rent Class A residential units for less than 30 days. The New York City Council simultaneously proposed raising the fines for those caught Airbnb’ing it. Repeat offenders could go from paying $1,000 per illegal occupancy to up to $25,000 under the new bill. (Two weeks ago, the City Council approved the legislation, which Mayor Bloomberg is expected to sign shortly.)

If there was ever a time to go legit, this was it. Toshi said he turned the newly named Smart Apartments over to a hedge fund to handle the day-to-day. The Flatiron Hotel opened in August of 2011: nine stories with 64 compact units, all of them reasonably priced at $350 or lower. Toshi claims that they are at least 90 percent occupied on any given night. Every bathroom has a TV system and is equipped with either a jacuzzi bathtub or a “rainforest shower.”

Toshi leased the space from an unidentified Chinese billionaire after the man’s son decided that he didn’t want a hotel for a graduation present. “The guy spent way too much money on this place to build it, putting TVs in every bathroom,” Toshi laughed. “It was crazy.”

Toshi refused to tell us the name of the mogul he leases from, which isn’t surprising, given various lawsuits surrounding the property. “You know how Chinese billionaires become billionaires?” he asked us. “By keeping a low profile.”

In July, Toshi opened up his second legit location in a commercial space. The East Village Hotel is a self-service, apartment-style vacation rental at 147 First Avenue, on the corner of East Ninth Street. There are no concierges; guests check in via iPad. Rooms are small—280 square feet each—but there is a kitchen, and more importantly, they go for only $289 a night.

Even more uplifting are the positive reviews. If the TripAdvisor comments are to be believed, even “very skeptical” guests have left “pleasantly surprised.” The most common complaints were noise (it is the East Village), and an odd lack of washcloths.

Still, Toshi holds out hope for his dream space. “The kind of hotel I’d really like is a hybrid that doesn’t yet exist between residential and short-term vacation rentals,” he said. “The hotel portion of the Flatiron is for me a very vanilla project.”

Toshi has a long way to go in remaking his image. But what is New York if not the place for reinvention, where abandoned industrial neighborhoods can become Tribeca and Soho? To most people, Toshi is still a suckerfish, hitching a ride from bigger hosts. But if all goes according to plan, he’ll be a big fish soon enough.

Lindsay Lohan at the Boom Boom Room (Patrick McMullan)

Now that Lindsay Lohan has been kicked out of the Chateau Marmont for not paying her $46,000 bill, it is time for her to pack her bags and move Eastward. Surprisingly, the LAPD is letting her do this, despite the fact that up until yesterday she was the prime suspect in yet another jewel-swiping case. And what of The Canyons? Will no one think of The Canyons?

Just when you hoped that New York City had successfully dodged its last   heat-seeking paparazzo after Los Angeles' native Kim Kardashian left the Gansevoort, the New York Daily News is reporting that LiLo is moving to Tribeca and rooming with her assistant.

But where will she ultimately be hanging her temporary hat? We have some ideas.

The Plaza: She can search for Madeline while participating in Park Ave's  illustrious history of jewel heists.

 Gansevoort Park Avenue: It's got the Kardashian seal of approval. Plus, they have the loudest, drunkest, and  most annoying roof parties, which should act as a homing beacon to Ms. Lohan.

Chelsea Hotel: The used-to-be-cool, asbestos-filled death trap is basically a metaphor for the actresses' entire career, except that Bob Dylan has never been inside Lindsay Lohan. That we know of.

The Standard: They have the Boom Boom Room, which offers Red Bull, and Cat Marnell, who offers angel dust.

Tribeca Grand: There is literally no better place to shmooze with downtown celeb scenesters, potential directors, or Harvey Weinstein.

The Wythe: Where better to listen to Skrillex and party with a bunch of dirty hipsters?

Courtyard Marriott on 92nd: She can get high on the over-chlorinated pool while staying close enough to Dorrian's to chill with Pat Kelly and Shane Spencer. Also the only place on the list she can afford.

Dream Downtown: Owner Vikram Chandal will be sure to give her a discount.

Tribeca Twelve: You know, when she needs to keep a low profile and pretend to be sober for a couple days.

Romney: proudly exercising his property rights.

While it remains to be seen how Mitt Romney might perform if he won the presidency, we know one thing for sure—when it comes to remembering how many houses he owns, Mitt Romney is a pro.

It's a little more difficult for the rest of us to keep track of the Republican candidate's landholdings. We know that everyone in La Jolla hates Mr. Romney's plan to expand his beach house into a sprawling mansion complete with a car elevator, for example, but the other properties are a little foggy. Something in Massachusetts, something else in New Hampshire? Or was it the American dream of having a cabin on every Great Lake?

Fortunately, The Real Deal has put together a handy chart of Mr. Romney's real estate. And while Mr. Romney has not taken our advice to install himself in a Manhattan apartment, there are plenty of properties to ogle. Well, only four, really, but there's lots of other interesting information about the Romney clan's real estate relationships and Bain's real estate investments. And it's way better than a chart of Obama's real estate, which would be ungodly dull with only one house in Kenwood, Chicago. Yawn.

The Real Deal claims that Mr. Romney's real estate is worth a mere $18 million. Some of the prices they use are old purchase prices, so that's probably not totally accurate, but still, only $18 million? That's what a four-bedroom Park Avenue co-op above the treeline runs these days.

Almost all of the Romneys' landholdings involve vacation homes: besides a two-bedroom townhouse in Belmont, Mass. (the family sold the family manse after the kids moved out—just like normal people!), there's also a New Hampshire lake house purchased for $3 million in 1997 and estimated to be worth $10 million now, the infamous La Jolla beach house and a cabin on Lake Huron in the gated beach community of Beach O' Pines that was purchased for $31,900 in 1950 by the Romney patriarch.

The Romneys once owned a Park City, Utah ski chalet with 7-bedrooms, but that went the way of Mr. Romney's support for health insurance mandates. Still, the family has enough getaways around the country that Romney and Paul Ryan would easily have enough places to stay if they wanted to take a road trip, maybe make another road map for America's future?

kvelsey@observer.com