By SARAH TILTON

STATS: A home of about 2,286 square feet, according to the owners, with three bedrooms and 2½ bathrooms, asking $2.3 million, or $984.25 a square foot. Property taxes in 2012 are $27,291, say the owners.

DETAILS: The owners say this house, built around 1925, was “worn and in need of updating” when they bought it in 1998. They did a 10-month remodeling that included making a television room out of a screened porch while preserving original details like the pecky cypress ceilings in the living room and library, the handblown stained-glass panes in the powder-room door and the Cuban tile floors in the dining room. The owners planted Cuban royal palms in the front yard that neighbor and interior designer Campion Platt says make the house. “It’s very sculptural from the outside, it has great curb appeal because of the palms,” says Mr. Platt, describing the house as an adapted Spanish-style. While Mr. Platt hasn’t worked on the house, he says he likes the interiors, though “there’s no place that I don’t go into that I don’t mentally rearrange.” He calls the one-bedroom, one-bathroom guesthouse overlooking the pool “a necessity” as it lets guests have their own schedule. The family uses the living room in the guesthouse as a gym.

NEIGHBORHOOD: It’s just minutes to the Palm Beach Recreation Center where you can sign up for French, Spanish or Italian lessons.

OWNERS: Neil and Luiza Kozokoff. Mr. Kozokoff is a real-estate developer.

WHY WE’RE SELLING: The Kozokoffs would like a larger home in the same neighborhood.

WHAT WE’LL MISS: “The charm and the location,” says Mr. Kozokoff, who likes being able to walk to the beach, Starbucks or the nearby tennis courts in 10 minutes. Mrs. Kozokoff will miss her combined dressing room and office suite.

WHAT WE WON’T: “I’d like a garage,” says Mr. Kozokoff, adding that you can fit six cars in the driveway, so it isn’t a question of hunting for parking.

WHAT WE PAID: The couple paid $505,000 for the house in 1998 and estimate that they put $1 million into updating and restoring it. “A lot of the money was spent on preserving the character of the home,” says Mr. Kozokoff.

COMPS: A 3,685-square-foot house on the same street sold for $2.7 million in 2010.

OTHERS SAY:
Ted Ward of Barrett Welles Property Group has shown the house and calls the price fair. He says it “lives like a newer house,” though it has original details. Listing broker Paulette Koch of Corcoran Group Palm Beach Real Estate also points out the period details. She shares the listing with Dana Koch.

Write to Sarah Tilton at sarah.tilton@wsj.com

By ELIOT BROWN

Associated Press

One World Trade Center, 90 floors up so far and scheduled for completion in 2013, rises above the lower Manhattan skyline and the Hudson River.

The price tag for One World Trade Center, the signature skyscraper under construction at Ground Zero in New York, has risen to more than $3.8 billion, making it by far the world’s most expensive new office tower, according to people familiar with the matter.

The new figure, up $700 million from the latest public estimate, marks another twist in the rebuilding of the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The process has been marked by thorny political challenges and ever-lengthening construction delays.

The price tag for One World Trade Center, the signature Ground Zero skyscraper in New York, has risen to more than $3.8 billion, making it by far the world’s most expensive new office tower. Eliot Brown has details on The News Hub. Photo: Getty Images

One World Trade Center is being built by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the regional transportation agency that owns the 16-acre World Trade Center site. A series of cost increases at the site, totaling billions over the years, has been reverberating in the area’s economy in the form of higher bridge and tunnel tolls and reduced spending on transportation infrastructure.

Continuing delays also have caused the site in the middle of Lower Manhattan to be boarded up for more than 10 years.

Driving the latest increase: construction-cost overruns and a decision by the Port Authority to now include leasing expenses in its public estimates. Those leasing costs are higher than the Port Authority had privately anticipated, people familiar with the matter said. The higher number is expected to be released as early as this week in an audit by the agency.

One World Trade Center’s construction is vastly more expensive than a traditional office tower, in large part due to security costs associated with building the tallest building in North America on a site that has been the target of two separate terrorist attacks (the site was also bombed in 1993). Once known as the Freedom Tower, the 1,776-foot skyscraper sits atop a heavily reinforced, windowless podium. It also has a thick core of concrete and steel around its elevator shafts.

By comparison, other-high profile buildings around the world have been far less expensive. The developer of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower, in Dubai, has put its cost at $1.5 billion.

The Port Authority long ago gave up hope that One World Trade would be a profitable investment in the short- or mid-term. In 2010, when the agency sold a minority stake in the tower to the Durst Organization, a major developer in New York, the agency pegged the tower’s value at $2 billion.

While political wars have mired the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site for most of the past decade, construction there is proceeding.

A memorial plaza opened on the 10-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Construction of One World Trade Center has reached 90 of its 104 stories, and 4 World Trade Center, a 72-story office tower being built by private developer Larry Silverstein, has risen 61 stories. Both are slated to finish construction at the end of 2013.

The costs for the overall site, which includes two buildings, rights for two more towers, a memorial and museum and a $3.4 billion transportation hub, have largely been borne by the Port Authority, which is funded by both airports and toll payers of the region’s bridges and tunnels. The agency has been forced to divert resources away from transportation projects that have long been planned. Those include redevelopments of aging and crowded airport terminals.

This summer, the Port Authority approved a plan to boost its bridge and tunnel tolls 56% gradually through 2015. The agency cited a need for additional revenue—in part due to costs at the World Trade Center site.

The Port Authority’s new executive director, Patrick Foye, in a speech last week called the focus on rebuilding “mission drift.” Calling for a return to infrastructure and economic development as the site nears completion, he said, “I believe the agency must refocus on its core mission.”

The Port Authority has previously put the price tag for rebuilding the public portions of the World Trade Center site—everything but the Silverstein project—at more than $11 billion, which includes some federal funds and insurance proceeds. That figure is expected to rise higher with the new audit.

When first proposed, One World Trade was expected to cost about $2 billion. The most recent public estimate, from 2008, was $3.1 billion.

From the early days of rebuilding, One World Trade Center was driven by symbolism and a desire to rebuild, rather than by its soundness as a real-estate investment.

“It was as much about making a political statement as it was an economic decision,” said Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit organization focused on planning and infrastructure around New York. “This is not a project that’s standing on its own—it was never intended to be.”

Of the $700 million in additional costs, about $350 million comes from costs associated with leasing such as money given to tenants to build out their offices and commissions for brokers, the people said. That figure assumes the building would be nearly fully occupied.

Other increases come from unexpected construction costs, financing costs, fees to consultants and the Durst Organization, and other contingencies.

Leasing at One World Trade has been going well. Publisher Condé Nast has signed a lease for one million square feet. The federal government and a Chinese real-estate firm have committed to take space as well, bringing the building up to about 50% leased. To lure Condé Nast, the Port Authority agreed to cover the final years of its lease at the publisher’s current Midtown location. The amount of this expense—tens of millions of dollars—is included in the $700 million of additional costs.

Write to Eliot Brown at eliot.brown@wsj.com

By J. S. MARCUS

The weather, architecturally speaking, continues to be cloudy in Spain. Caught in the aftermath of a burst housing bubble and facing a new era of slashed budgets and austerity measures, the country, which had been transformed into Europe’s architectural playground over the past few decades, has been transformed again into a landscape of canceled projects and laid-off architects. But in Pozuelo de Alarcón, a northwestern suburb of Madrid, the skies look clear from the offices of A-cero, an architecture studio that is bucking the trend by breaking the traditional mold.

Founded in 1996, A-cero has made its name specializing in high-end, single-family residences, an emphasis almost unheard of on a continent where most architects aspire to design public buildings and commercial developments.

Closely associated with its co-founder and majority owner, Madrid-born architect Joaquín Torres, A-cero counts among its clients everyone from former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González to bullfighter Francisco Rivera Ordóñez. The firm, where Mr. Torres’s business partner Rafael Llamazares is a principal, is best-known for creating luxury houses for the football players of Real Madrid. La Finca—a gated community not far from the studio’s offices, with elegant limestone villas designed by A-cero—is home to several players, including Portuguese-born superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, and team manager José Mourinho.

Mr. Torres, 41 years old, is something of a star himself in Spain, with his own television show called “Supercasas,” in which he and a TV crew drop in on some of his celebrity clients. The hype may be good for business, but it doesn’t do the actual buildings justice. A-cero’s unique emphasis has created a stunning body of residential work that manages to resolve one of the great stylistic divides of modernist architecture.

Critics and acolytes distinguish between the early and late work of the pioneering French-Swiss modernist Le Corbusier, whose austere villas from the 1920s, like Villa Savoye outside Paris, seem a world away from his primitivist, sculpted-concrete work from the ’50s, such as the government buildings he created for Chandigarh, India.

A-cero’s villas, which seem to combine the geometric flow of early Le Corbusier with the textural flourish of his later work, also demonstrate a keen eye for the simple grandeur of expensive materials, like stone, that characterizes the early work of Mies van der Rohe.

The firm’s synthesizing riff on the history of modernism is gaining respect among Spain’s architectural community, and commissions are coming in from places as diverse as Dubai and Beirut, where A-cero is building a number of luxury homes. “I must admit that 2011 has been a great year for A-cero,” says Mr. Torres, speaking this fall at his office. In spite of the real-estate crisis, the firm has launched a series of prefab houses and opened a Madrid furniture showroom, which highlights its increased interest in customizing clients’ interiors.

A-cero

One of La Finca’s limestone villas.

The symbols of Spanish architecture’s recent boom were, almost without exception, great public structures like Seville’s Santa Justa train station (1992), built by Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos, and Musac (2005), a contemporary art museum in León, built by Mansilla + Tuñón. But high-end private homes have been conspicuously absent from most portfolios of the country’s greatest architects. “They thought it was a low level of architecture,” Mr. Torres says of his peers. “They thought it was more important to do official buildings, like museums.”

A-cero, which now includes a staff of around 80 in offices in Spain and the Middle East, tends to avoid architectural competitions. Instead, the studio chooses to work closely with private developers, like Procisa, their collaborator on La Finca and their neighbor in the development’s industrial park, where A-cero-designed glass-cube offices are set off by external stairwells of swirling concrete.

La Finca’s security-conscious community, where houses come with servants’ wings, is a new idea in Spain, and local real-estate professionals regard it as a great success. Construction began in earnest over the past decade, and more than half of the 180 planned homes have been built. The resale value of finished homes is stable, says Marbella-based realtor Kristina Szekely, president of Kristina Szekely Sotheby’s International Realty, a firm specializing in luxury Spanish properties. On her books, she currently has a 1,500-square-meter La Finca villa on a 5,000-square-meter lot, for an asking price of €9 million.

Some of the houses are designed from scratch, although many are built according to studio-generated templates. As it turns out, the Real Madrid players like the ready-made versions. “Football players are not very creative,” says Mr. Torres, who first began working with athletes after a chance run-in a decade ago with former Real Madrid star Fernando Hierro at a Madrid clothing store. “When they see a design, they want to copy it.”

Merche Gracia, however, built her home from scratch. “I moved to La Finca two years ago,” says the 36-year-old, who relocated from a smaller home nearby with her husband, the general manager of a technology company. Their 900-square-meter, single-story house includes several A-cero custom designs, including the dining table and the couple’s bed. The 3,500-square-meter lot requires two gardeners, and the couple has two live-in maids. Although the development’s homes blend together beautifully, the residents keep a respectful distance from each other. Ms. Gracia says there is no real sense of community.

“We all know the people who live in each house,” she says. “But there is no close relationship.”

Projects like La Finca and other new villas in nearby areas have brought A-cero closer to Spain’s architectural establishment. “At the beginning, I felt separate,” says Mr. Torres. “But not anymore—now we know each other.” The studio’s name, which means “at zero,” recalls the fact that Mr. Torres and his partners started with nothing. Now, they seem to have everything.

By SARAH TILTON

An 11,145-square-foot house with six bedrooms and eight bathrooms in Beverly Hills can be your for just $14.8 million, or $1,323.46 a square foot. John Edwards has details on Lunch Break.

STATS: An 11,145-square-foot house with six bedrooms and eight bathrooms asking $14.8 million, or $1,323.46 a square foot. Property taxes in 2010 were $108,924. Dues for the homeowners association were $2,500 a month in 2010.

DETAILS: Located behind the guarded gates of Beverly Park, this house sits at the end of a stone driveway with its own gate. Built in 1988, it was remodeled by the current owners in 2005. The owners say that they spent $110,000 on the five 1920s Art Deco-style chandeliers in the bar and are happy to keep them if a future buyer doesn’t like them (it took almost two years to find the matching light fixtures). The garden includes a pool, spa, north-south tennis court (so you can’t blame that missed shot on the sun being in your eyes) and a climbing structure for kids. There are two master baths, one with a mosaic of a peacock made from hand-cut Italian stone. The his-and-hers walk-in closets each have an island and the husband says that he can fit 100 suits behind the glass doors in his closet. Two of the bedrooms have their own lofts, where the kids like to play.

SELLERS:Paul Daneshrad, founder and chief executive of StarPoint Properties, and his wife, Shadi.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD: It’s an easy drive to the shops on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills if you need to fill your new closets. For some culture, it’s about 25 minutes to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

WHAT WE PAID: The Daneshrads paid $6.5 million for the house in 2005 and say that they put another $3 million into a two-year remodeling.

WHY WE’RE SELLING: “We found a piece of land that we fell in love with and we want to build another home,” says Mr. Daneshrad. “We have four young kids and we want to build a home that’s specific to our needs. The major difference is that the new house will be geared much more towards our kids.”

WHAT WE’LL MISS: “The area is beautifully taken care of and manicured,” says Mr. Daneshrad. He says he will also miss his walk-in closet but plans to duplicate it in the next house.

WHAT WE WON’T: The deer that jump over the 7-foot fence in the backyard and make a mess.

OTHERS SAY:Billy Rose of Rose+Chang says that the market in Beverly Park is good and that the price is fair considering the neighborhood, the scale of the house and the landscaped gardens. Mauricio Umansky of Hilton & Hyland, who has the listing, says that the house is a good entry-level home for this area and the price is reasonable considering the scarce inventory. Mr. Umansky says that his company has closed on four homes in Beverly Park in the last eight months. His other current listings in Beverly Park are asking $25 million and $29 million.

Write to Sarah Tilton at sarah.tilton@wsj.com

BIG TIMBER, Mont. $2.9 million

A 379-acre ranch with a 1,200-square-foot, one-bedroom, one-bathroom home about an hour outside of Bozeman.

DETAILS: Known as Twisted Stick Ranch, the property is home to wildlife like whitetail deer, antelope and upland birds. The small log home has mountain views and is built from recycled timbers.

RIVER side: About a quarter of a mile of the Boulder River, populated with wild trout, runs through the property.

nearby nosh: The Grand Hotel in downtown Big Timber has a restaurant that serves Montana rib-eye steak for $30.95 and Rocky Mountain trout for $17.95.

FRIDAY’S FORECAST: Partly sunny, high 61.

SOURCE:Tim Murphy with Hall & Hall, 406-587-3090,

tmurphy@hallandhall.com.

NEW YORK $2.5 million

A 1,900-square-foot, three-bedroom, 2½-bath cooperative apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

DETAILS: Located in a small prewar building with a doorman, the apartment has 10-foot ceilings and 15 large windows. There’s a hand-painted mural in the formal dining room as well as a kitchen with original wood cabinets and new granite countertops.

river side: The apartment overlooks the Hudson River, which divides Manhattan and New Jersey, as well as Riverside Park.

NEARBY NOSH: Tom’s Restaurant, the diner made famous by the TV show “Seinfeld,” is a short walk from the house.

FRIDAY’S FORECAST: Sun with clouds, high 70.

SOURCE:Andrew Phillips and Amelia Gewirtz at Halstead Property, 212-381-2227, aphillips@halstead.com.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. $2.8 million

A 4,300-square-foot, four-bedroom, 3½-bath home on about 0.6 acres in the Ortega neighborhood.

DETAILS: Built in 1918, the two-story house is situated on a bluff overlooking the water. It has tall ceilings, large rooms and original millwork, crown moldings and hardwood floors.

RIVER Side: The home is on the St. Johns River, which flows south to north. It’s popular with sailboats and motorboats.

nearby nosh: The Avondale area is home to restaurants like ‘town, which serves black-truffle tater tots and pan-roasted duck breast.

FRIDAY’S FORECAST: Thunderstorms, high 90.

SOURCE:Caroline Powell and Allison Steilberg, of Prudential Network Realty, caroline.powell@prudentialnetworkrealty.com, 904-463-1898; via Realtor.com

—Candace Jackson