Ron Childress

This 14,000-square-foot house on the St. Johns River is coming up for auction on May 24 with no minimum bid. The owners used to own the Jacksonville Jaguars football team, thus the painting of three jaguars that hangs over the fireplace in the living room and which comes with the house.

This 1,947-square-foot Victorian home with three bedrooms and three bathrooms in San Francisco's sunnier Noe Valley neighborhood is asking $1.7 million.

Three New York apartments owned by the late heiress Huguette Clark sell for about $55 million; Michael and Roxanne Klein buy in San Francisco for $27 million; a Colorado ranch lists for $49.5 million.

A sprawling brick brewery, built in 1891, had been a graffiti-covered ruin before the owners helped convert it into a loft complex. This 3,300-square-foot unit with five bedrooms and three baths asks €1.6 million ($2.1 million).

A new development is catching home buyers off guard as the spring sales season gets under way: Bidding wars are back.

Two homes in Naples, Fla., sell for over $40 million each; Marc Jacobs's President Robert Duffy Lists in Savannah, Ga.; Donald J. Pilner sells in Miami Beach.

This waterfront home is on Thetis Island, one of the southern Gulf Islands between the coast of British Columbia and Vancouver Island.

This home in Old Town Alexandria dates back to 1803, says its owner. It's asking $5.5 million.

The former home of Scott Rothstein sells for $5.1 million; a South Carolina plantation asking $25 million sells for $11 million; Bill Kurtis's Kansas ranch goes to the auction block.

This 9,805-square-foot, six-bedroom home is asking $9 million, down from its prior asking price of $10.5 million.

Julio Iglesias buys in Florida for $15.2 million; the late Andy Rooney's home goes on the market; Art Linkletter's former estate sells for close to $10.3 million.

A Mendocino County ranch of about 6,240 acres, with a 2,000-square-foot main house with three bedrooms and three bathrooms, is asking $14 million.

A retired California couple threw "caution to the wind" and moved to New Zealand. They're going to stay in the country four to five months a year, but now want to spend more time with their kids in the U.S. Their 5,790-square-foot home is asking $4.5 million New Zealand dollars ($3.7 million).

Sales of investment and vacation homes surged last year, the latest evidence that investors and higher-income households are taking advantage of low home prices to scoop up bargains.

Owned by Edgar M. Bronfman, the former CEO of Seagram, Georgetown Farm in Charlottesville, Va., is on the market, asking $3.8 million for the house and 120 acres or $10.3 million for the house and 540 acres.

The owners spent two years designing this traditional New England-style home and giving it a classic feel, but with the latest energy-saving technology. This five-bedroom, 5½-bathroom house is asking $9.5 million, or $1,704 a square foot.

This property is on the west coast of Japan's main island and includes extensive gardens that were built around the end of the Meiji period.

Mellon estate in Antigua goes on the market for $14.5 million; hip-hop artist Drake sells two condos in downtown Miami; the Palm Beach estate of Paul Romanoff Ilyinsky, the great-grandson of Czar Alexander II of Russia, has hit the market for $8.9 million.

A Massachusetts house combines references to New England barns with midcentury-modern design and a window to outer space.

Once asking $69.9 million, this 48,000-square-foot home in Hickory Creek, Texas, is coming up for auction on March 30 with a reserve of $10.3 million.

Hedge-fund manager Edward S. Lampert is in contract to buy on Florida's Indian Creek Island for nearly $40 million.

Best-selling novelists Jonathan and Faye Kellerman write at their four-building compound outside Santa Fe, N.M.

This modern loft in Washington, D.C., features kid-proof industrial surfaces, bright-blue floors and a makeshift basketball court.

This steel structure in Healdsburg, Calif., was built by its owners using mostly reclaimed materials.

A look at three homes in Colorado, California and New Jersey that have tree houses.

Beachfront homes in Dana Point, Calif., Osterville, Mass., and Loveladies, N.J.

Homes with indoor pools, in Millbrook, N.Y., Austin, Texas, and Paradise Valley, Ariz.

Off-campus living in New York, Washington and Los Angeles.

Three small homes with appealing outdoor space, in East Hampton, N.Y., Spring Island, S.C., and Okeechobee, Fla.

Modern homes in Montauk, N.Y., Houston and Laguna Beach, Calif.

Federal tax credits for home buyers are some of the best deals around—but you'll have to jump through some hoops to get one before the deadline.

Millions of homeowners haven't benefited from the lowest mortgage rates in nearly a half-century because they can't or won't refinance.