It's possible because we can pretty much afford to spend whatever we want on a house.

Originally, we thought we'd get more house for the money, moving from the northern NJ area, and started looking at around $2 million -- but that really wasn't the case, and we upped our range to $3-5 million. We have cars and dogs and our main criteria is privacy with a big piece of property.

We wandered into an open house that was $8 million, without knowing where it was priced -- we followed signs, checked in at the gate (Prado) and walked through the 10,000 square feet on our own. I also looked at the Toll Brothers' homes -- 6,000 square feet on less than an acre. They are offering incentives of hundreds of thousands of dollars -- but I don't want to look into my neighbor's pool for any price. The builders' homes were priced better, but still very high it seemed.