A lawsuit filed Monday by a group of buyers who lost their deposits in a Baja California resort charges Donald Trump and his executive children with fraud and negligence.

The seven plaintiffs say they were “duped” into buying hotel-condo units in the Trump Ocean Resort, a 526-unit, twin-tower project planned for 17 coastal acres a short drive south of the Mexican border. When the project collapsed in 2009, dozens of buyers lost their deposits, totaling more than $32 million.

Trump only licensed his name to the project's developer, Los Angeles-based Irongate. In the wake of the project’s demise, Irongate said there was no money to return—the deposit money was used to fund early development in the project, which was allowed by its contracts, the company said.

NoHo Square was a fabled project in London, a boom era splash of decadence and luxury targeting the city’s growing international affluent class.

Promoted by the flamboyant Candy brothers, Nick and Christian, the plan was to turn the former Middlesex Hospital site in Fitzrovia into an array of offices and posh residences. Backed by Kaupthing, the Iceland bank, the Candy’s paid £175 million ($262 million) for the property in 2006 and won approval for an 890,000-square-foot development the next year, including more than 200 luxury apartments.

Now the site is nothing more than an empty lot, a symbol of an ambitious development that never happened.

Sunday’s Oscar tribute to late director John Hughes served as a reminder that the Ferris Bueller house is still on the market.

In the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” the steel and glass house in the forested Chicago suburb of Highland Park was used as the home for Bueller’s friend, Cameron. A glass pavilion overlooking the wooded hillside served as a garage for Cameron’s father’s ill-fated Ferrari.

Known locally as “the Ben Rose House,” the property was designed by architects A. James Speyer and David Haid, well-known protégés of Mies van der Rohe. The house was built in 1953 and the pavilion added a few years later.

Despite concerns of widespread defaults, only 11 buyers have walked away from their purchases in the Trump Ocean Club in Panama, the project’s longtime sales director says.

A total of 870 condos have been sold in the 70-story, 1004-unit tower, which is set to open within a year, according to Jack Studnicky, who now serves as a consultant for the International Sales Group, the master broker on the project. About 95 buyers have registered to resell their units, but there hasn’t been the run of defections some feared, he says.

The Trump Ocean Club is seen as a bellwether for the Panama City condo market, as well as the region. The project, which licenses Trump’s name, tried to set a new high-end price range for condos, at a time when dozens of planned tower projects never got off the drawing board.

A Miami firm promoting Florida real estate investments was actually running a $135 million Ponzi scheme, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged this week.

Gaston Cantens and his wife, Teresita, founders of Royal West Properties, promised investors returns between 9 and 16 percent a year on property in southwest Florida markets like Cape Coral, Port Charlotte and Lehigh Acres. But when the bottom fell out of the market the Cantens began using new investor money to pay off earlier investors, the SEC alleges in its civil complaint.

A French court this week refused to return a Russian oligarch’s $53 million deposit on a French Riviera estate, which is believed to be the world’s most expensive property.

In 2008, mining billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov reportedly offered €390 million ($531 million) for Villa Leopolda, the cliff-top mansion outside Villefranche-sur-Mer built in 1902 for King Leopold II of Belgium. If the sale had completed, there is little doubt Prokhorov would have earned bragging rights for paying the highest amount in history for a single residential property.

“The sale marked the zenith of the real-estate follies among competing oligarchs,” The Times notes.

A new marina near Quepos is set to open in April, adding oft-requested boating facilities to Costa Rica’s Pacific coastline.

The 55-acre Marina Pez Vela project will eventually include more than 300 slips, ranging from 35 to 200 feet; dry storage facilities and a full-service boatyard, as well as 200 residential units. The first phase opening next month features 100 slips, with a wet slip priced at $175,000.

For a tropical country with a spectacular coastline known for its fishing, Costa Rica offers relatively few options for the boating world (and the population of boating second home owners). Last year, the ultra-lux Penninsula Papagayo in Guanacaste in north Costa Rica opened its own marina, the country’s first catering to super-yachts.

A subsidiary of Dubai World turned over ownership of New York’s famed Knickerbocker building to lenders this week, after defaulting on mortgage payments.

Istithmar World Capital, an investment arm of state-controlled Dubai World, paid $300 million for the Times Square icon in 2006. The company said it wanted to turn the office building into a luxury hotel.

Instead, Denmark-based Danske Bank assumed control of property this week and hired Jones Lang Lasalle to sell it. Danske took over the mortgage in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Reuters reports.

New York-based King Penguin Properties, which controls property in the United States and Europe, says it is moving away from luxury condo units to focus on multi-family properties.

“Affordable multi-family units present less downside risk that a prolonged period of slow economic growth may present,” managing partner Michael Mikelic said in a press release.

As part of the move, Mikelic says the company is selling the company’s interests in the Trump Place in New York, where Mikelic sat on the board and served as treasurer. In an earlier statement the company said it would invest most of the proceeds into a distressed property fund.

Courtesy: Tourism Vancouver

Before the Olympics, real estate executives in Vancouver downplayed the impact of the Games. Any boost to sales occurred years ago, when Vancouver was named a host city, conventional wisdom suggested.

Conventional wisdom may have been wrong.

Instead of grinding to halt during the crazed hoopla leading up to the Games, sales in the greater Vancouver area actually surged in February, jumping 67.1 percent from February of 2009 and 28.6 percent from January, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.