REAL ESTATE

Wondering what to do with your tax refund? Then you may want to take a look at Elizabeth Taylor’s hideaway in Puerto Vallarta. The price tag is $1 million, with a replica of Venice’s Bridge of Sighs included.

The estate is one of several celebrity homes listed in the first issue of Limited Editions, a new magazine published in Laguna Beach to market expensive residential properties.

Other celebrity homes in the first issue include John Wayne’s former Newport Beach estate, with two-thirds of an acre and its private dock, at just $8.5 million, and the former home of Gen. George S. Patton Jr. in San Marino near Pasadena--a downright steal at just $2.9 million, including the hand-carved woodwork that took a master shipwright months to complete when the house was built in 1910 by Patton’s father, San Marino’s first mayor.

The concept of a magazine to market lavish homes isn’t new; the British auction house Sotheby Parke Bernet publishes one. But Sotheby takes a cut on the sale of each property from local real estate brokers. Limited Editions is designed to provide local brokers with wider markets for their very expensive homes but is strictly a marketing tool and doesn’t get a commission on a sale.

“There were very few options for local independent brokers to market their luxury homes,” said Kay Coughlin, publisher of Limited Editions and a former Sotheby employee. “The magazine was designed out of necessity to fill an unmet need.”

Limited Editions will come out twice a year and costs $5.95, though most of the first run of 20,000 copies has been mailed free to upscale addresses across the country or distributed as complimentary copies in expensive hotel rooms. Average price for the 40 properties in the first issue: $2.5 million. Two have already sold, Coughlin said.