“Everything on the lower end of the scale was either a total teardown, which would make a mortgage impossible, or in an undesirable area,” said Mr. Maplestone, 34, a video editor based in Brooklyn.

They had all but given up the hunt earlier this year when Ms. Fisk, 32, a sales strategy director, found an online listing for a $499,000, two-bedroom house on nearly half an acre in Montauk that had just been reduced. Not only was it in walking distance to the beach and town, the yard abutted nearly 40 acres of protected land, ensuring privacy.

“I had a contractor take a look to make sure I wasn’t missing something because I thought for sure this was too good to be true,” Mr. Maplestone said. The couple bought the house for $450,000, put in a new kitchen and bath, doors and windows, and began using it as a weekend getaway earlier this month. “We definitely feel we got a deal,” Mr. Maplestone said.

Not so long ago, half a million dollars wouldn’t buy half an acre in much of the Hamptons. But now that the market has recalibrated and prices have begun to stabilize, a growing number of modest but more affordable properties are popping up for $500,000 or less, creating opportunities for second-home buyers who were previously priced out.

“It’s slowly begun to come back to where prices are of relative value and people can justify them,” said Joseph De Sane, a senior vice president in Corcoran’s Bridgehampton office. He pointed out some listings he called “top values,” including a four-bedroom renovated Cape for $499,000 on nearly an acre at the edge of East Hampton Village that recently went into contract and a $455,000, move-in-ready three-bedroom with central air-conditioning, hardwood floors throughout and a large deck spanning the full width of the house in North Sea. “We’re seeing a bit more in the way of quality,” he said.

There were 720 homes listed for $500,000 or less in the second quarter of 2012, down slightly from the same period last year, but up 11.8 percent from the second quarter of 2010, according to StreetEasy.com. The median listing price was $385,000, down slightly compared with the second quarter of 2011. Though most homes for less than half a million are small, you can now get slightly more space for your money. The size of a home in that price range increased by 10 percent to 1,102 median square feet in the second quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2010, according to StreetEasy.com.

Sure, more affordable places have long been available in less-sought-after neighborhoods west of the Shinnecock Canal, including the hamlets of East Quogue and Hampton Bays. But attractive properties are now available in more coveted locales east of the canal, which cuts across the South Fork at Hampton Bays, demarcating the more exclusive hamlets and villages running from Southampton to Montauk.

Take the well-maintained three-bedroom cottage with a wraparound deck on a shy half-acre a block from Otter Pond, tennis courts and Main Street in Sag Harbor Village, listed by Sotheby’s International for $480,000, recently reduced from $499,000. Or the three-bedroom with an updated kitchen, gas fireplace and large backyard in Southampton Village, listed by Prudential Douglas Elliman at $495,000, down from $549,000 in 2011.

Outside the villages the deals get better, including larger properties with more amenities for less money. Consider a refurbished three-bedroom, two-bath Southampton home with a wood-burning stove, eat-in-kitchen and a new deck near Big Fresh Pond, listed by Corcoran for $420,000. Or a three-bedroom, two-bath contemporary in Clearwater Beach, a private beach community in East Hamptons Springs, with central air conditioning and a heated pool on nearly an acre listed by Corcoran that was reduced by $20,000 to $495,000.

America may have glamorous socialites and reality-show celebutantes like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, but when it comes to seriously conspicuous spending, it’s hard to top Britain’s Ecclestone sisters.

Especially when it comes to real estate.

The Ecclestone heirs, Petra Stunt, 24, and Tamara Ecclestone, 28, have spent well over $200 million between them on homes — and home makeovers — in London and Los Angeles. And their spending sprees seem to have fuel to burn.

Their father, Bernie Ecclestone, the 82-year-old billionaire owner of Formula One racing, set aside $4.5 billion in Bambino Holdings, a trust fund primarily intended to be used by his ex-wife, Slavica Rasic, and daughters for real estate investments.

But are these extravagant homes and renovations what Mr. Ecclestone had in mind?

Mrs. Stunt, the younger sister, made waves on this side of the Atlantic two years ago when she bought the late television producer Aaron Spelling’s “Manor” in Holmby Hills for $85 million — still the highest price ever paid for a home in Los Angeles County. She then spent close to $20 million renovating the 57,000-square-foot home, a project that involved some 500 workers who toiled around the clock, according to brokers involved in the sale. What was the rush? She had only three months to get the job done before her wedding to the British entrepreneur James Stunt.

Mrs. Stunt also reportedly owns a town house in the Chelsea neighborhood of London that she bought in 2010 for about $90 million.

Not to be outdone, her sister in 2011 ordered the opulent renovation of the London home on Kensington Palace Gardens, the most expensive street in the country, that she had bought for $70 million. The plans, whose price tag The Daily Mail put at about $27 million, called for a bowling alley, a hair salon and a dog spa.

Lately Ms. Ecclestone has been renting a home in Bel-Air (not far from her sister’s mansion) for $150,000 a month while she house-hunts in Los Angeles. Her search has taken her to Fleur de Lys, a $125 million listing in Holmby Hills modeled after a French palace. More recently she toured a home nearby built on the site of the former Walt Disney estate, now owned by Gabriel Brener, the scion of a Mexican industrialist, who is asking $85 million for his 35,000-square-foot home, once the site of a one-eighth-scale train that Disney used to give neighbors rides on.

Is this a case of sibling rivalry? The British tabloids and some Los Angeles brokers have speculated as much. A better question might be whether Ms. Ecclestone is a real buyer, or is just looking for attention.

The British media have generally portrayed the sisters as spoiled publicity hounds, and have quoted their father criticizing the way they were spending their trust funds. He was none too pleased in 2011 when his elder daughter did a three-part British reality show called “Billion $$ Girl,” which chronicled her lavish lifestyle. That same year she posed naked on her bed fondling £1 million in cash for the photographer Tyler Shields. (Efforts to reach the Ecclestone sisters through business representatives were unsuccessful.)

Perhaps a little too serendipitously, TMZ reporters have been able to interview Ms. Ecclestone as she has been spotted leaving a few majestic estates around Los Angeles.

One broker familiar with her search said Ms. Ecclestone thought the Brener home was too small. “She liked the grounds but found the house not grand enough,” said the broker, who declined to be identified, citing client confidentiality.

She also toured the 24,000-square-foot compound that the “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest bought from the comedian Ellen DeGeneres last year for $37 million. “It was different,” she told TMZ

Brokers in Los Angeles are itching for someone — a billionaire heiress would do nicely — to break the $100 million barrier on a home sale. Two homes in the San Francisco Bay Area have sold for $100 million or more, the most recent being a house in Silicon Valley that sold for $117.5 million, reportedly to a Japanese billionaire.

It’s not as if owners in Los Angeles weren’t trying, though. Some of the best estates in the Bel Air/Beverly Hills/Holmby Hills triangle, where most of the priciest homes are, have been listed above $100 million, including Fleur de Lys, the Beverly House ($115 million) and the financier Gary Winnick’s eight-acre spread in Bel-Air, which he wants to sell for $225 million, brokers said.

Coeur D'Alene is special. And you can see it the moment you turn off Highway 90 from Spokane.

To your left lies a little town with cobbled sidewalks and gas-lit streetlamps and green awnings and red-brick storefronts, behind which lie attractive little shops, eateries, and galleries. In front of you, shooting up into a clear azure sky, lies Coeur D'Alene Resort, one of the Northwest's premier resorts. And to your right lies an ice-blue alpine lake, from which rise 7,000 foot- mountains covered in deep-green forest.

Tucked up in the Idaho Panhandle, about 90 miles south of Canada, Coeur D'Alene is one of the prettiest towns in the Northwest. And the lake upon which it sits - Lake Coeur D'Alene - has 125 miles of shoreline.

Coeur D'Alene means "Heart of the Awl," a reference by early French traders to the earrings worn by the native Salishan people. And the Heart of the Awl is situated amidst a setting that no doubt took these French traders' breath away.

Telluride is "real."

It's an authentic, unspoiled Western town with a colorful heritage. And it maintains a kind of casual, small-town charm that has long since been lost in more "hip" spots.

Mother Nature has blessed this small town with a stunning setting. Sitting at the end of a box canyon in southwest Colorado's San Juan Mountains, Telluride boasts seven waterfalls - all visible from downtown. Bridal Veil Falls, at 365 feet, is the tallest free-falling waterfall in Colorado. And the town is surrounded by the highest concentration of 14,000-foot peaks in North America.

The entire town is actually a National Historic Landmark District. Fortunes were won and lost here, in the mines that once surrounded the town. Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch kicked off their bank-robbing careers here, at the San Miguel Valley Bank on June 24, 1889, making a "withdrawal" of $20,000. And George Westinghouse, L.L. Nunn, and Nikola Tesla built the world's first AC power plant here...making Telluride the first city in the world with electric streetlights.

If you've ever wanted to get up-close-and-personal with the most fearsome creature on Earth - which may be gone by 2050 because of Arctic warming - now's the time to do it. Adventure Life, a Missoula, MT-based company, is taking a select group of travelers on the journey of a lifetime - a Polar Bear Fly-In. But this opportunity will only last until the end of November.

First, you have to get yourself up to Winnipeg, Canada. There, you'll connect with the group leaders and guides from Adventure life. And if you think it took a long plane ride - or rides - to get to Winnipeg, that's only the first leg of your journey!

From there you fly to isolated Churchill, in far Northeastern Canada. After landing there, you'll board a charter aircraft for the 45-minute flight into the lands of Canada's Native Inuit people.

While the most popular U.S. states retained their tourist appeal this year ( Florida, California, Hawaii, N.Y. and Alaska) among American travelers, the allure of several other domestic destinations has increased.

For example, Louisiana, Michigan, Oregon and Washington, D.C., were the beneficiaries of increased tourism, while states like Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona and Tennessee saw slight decreases in interest.  At least that's what travel experts at MMGY Global/Harrison Group learned during their newly released survey, "2012 Portrait of American Travelers."