NINE months after the billionaire British heiress Petra Ecclestone set this city buzzing with her purchase of a 123-room estate for $85 million, the real estate community here is hoping the sale will help propel prices high enough to crack the elusive $100 million barrier.

Even in this town of fast fortunes and extravagant mansions, the record purchase price, for Candy Spelling’s Manor in Holmby Hills, by Ms. Ecclestone, the daughter of the Formula One chief executive Bernie Ecclestone, was a showstopper. Ms. Ecclestone was only 22 years old, after all, and already owned a 20,000-square-foot home in the London neighborhood of Chelsea valued at $87 million.

One interesting twist in the script is that the deal to buy the Manor from Ms. Spelling, the widow of the producer Aaron Spelling, would most likely not have been possible — especially in the mere 48 hours it took to finalize — without another prospective buyer’s negotiation on the home with Ms. Spelling nine months earlier.

In late 2010 Dmitry Rybolovlev, the Russian potash fertilizer billionaire, quietly made a visit to Los Angeles with his eldest daughter, Ekaterina. He made offers on at least two of the most famous mansions in Beverly Hills and Holmby Hills, including the Spelling manor, before deciding not to buy a home on the West Coast, at least for now, according to people familiar with their deliberations who declined to be named for confidentiality reasons.

Instead, Ekaterina, using a trust linked to her father, bought the former Citi chairman Sanford I. Weill’s penthouse at 15 Central Park West for $88 million, a record price in New York. Since then Mr. Rybolovlev’s messy divorce has put that apartment and a home he bought for about $100 million in Palm Beach, Fla., in the crosshairs of his wife’s lawyers.

While to some the $85 million sale here may have been an outlier, to brokers it is a hopeful comp that has helped heat up the high end of the Los Angeles market.

“The market is just on fire the last several months,” said Rick Hilton, a co-owner of Hilton & Hyland, a brokerage in Beverly Hills and an affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate. (Mr. Hilton is also the father of the celebutantes Paris and Nicky Hilton.)

Mr. Hilton said the inventory for premium properties was in short supply. For those following Manhattan real estate, it’s a familiar story.

“You have a lot of wealthy people that are nervous about the stock market,” he said.

As in New York and Miami, foreign money is pouring into Los Angeles — from Russians and Chinese, as well as Germans, Britons and Indonesians — who are eager to park their money in real estate, brokers said.

Bidding wars are back, as are New Yorkers. One Brentwood home Hilton & Hyland listed about three weeks ago for $10.25 million drew three potential buyers, all investment bankers from New York, Mr. Hilton said. It went into escrow after 10 days on the market, he said.

Last year Hilton & Hyland handled $1.2 billion in real estate transactions, up from $1 billion in 2010, and they have about $250 million in pending transactions this month, said Jeffrey Hyland, Mr. Hilton’s partner at the firm.

There have been some big transactions recently, including Jennifer Aniston’s $35 million sale of her home in the Trousdale Estates section of Beverly Hills to a co-founder of an investment firm in Orange County, a record per-square-foot celebrity sale, brokers said. In fact, three of the top five sales in the city in the past decade have happened in the past 18 months, brokers said.

But none have rivaled the $85 million Ms. Ecclestone paid Ms. Spelling, even if her original asking price had been $150 million. The French-chateau-style mansion, with 56,000 square feet, sits on more than 4.6 acres, and includes a screening room, a bowling alley and a parking lot for 100 vehicles.

Since the purchase she has “Petra-fied” the home, as W magazine put it, painting many of the rooms dark colors, including her 7,000-square-foot master suite, which is now black. With the help of the celebrity designer Gavin Brodin, the house was transformed from “an old ‘Dynasty’-like set to a massive V.I.P. lounge,” W wrote.

The Spelling home often received poor ratings from architecture critics and others who said it dwarfed other estates in Holmby Hills. Still, Ms. Ecclestone actually found it homier than other mansions she toured last year, said Mr. Hilton, her broker on the purchase.

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Q I recently bought a co-op that was gut-renovated in 2005. It is a duplex that has no heat on the lower floor. I have since discovered that law requires that there be heat in the entire apartment. Since the board approved that renovation, are they responsible for fixing the problem?

A Sandor Krauss, a Manhattan real estate lawyer, says that a previously approved renovation does not necessarily impose liability on the co-op. But the state’s real property law implies a warranty of habitability in every residential lease, which means the tenants should not be subjected to conditions that are dangerous, hazardous or detrimental to their life, health or safety. “Courts have held that inadequate heat can be considered a violation of this warranty,” Mr. Krauss said. It would appear that the co-op would be responsible. But another thing to consider is the alteration agreement signed by the previous owner. “The cooperative may argue that the uninhabitable condition was caused by the previous shareholder,” he said, “and thus, it is now the responsibility of the current owner.”

Stabilizing a Tenant’s Status

Q My apartment was destabilized because my rent was over $2,000 and my family’s gross income exceeded $175,000 for two consecutive years. But I am still under my previous stabilized lease, which expires in a few months. My income was well below the new $200,000 income cap imposed by the Rent Act of 2011, and my legal rent is also below the new cap. Can I be reinstated as a rent-stabilized tenant?

A “Whether or not the rule changes will apply to this tenant will depend on when the luxury deregulation process was initiated by the owner,” said Jonathan H. Newman, a Manhattan real estate lawyer. If the paperwork was filed with the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal on or after July 1, 2011, an apartment can be deregulated only if monthly legal rent is $2,500 or more and the tenant’s total household income — reported on state income tax returns — exceeded $200,000 for each of the two preceding calendar years. If the paperwork was filed before July 1, 2011, the landlord need show only that the monthly legal rent was $2,000 or more and assert that the tenant’s household income exceeded $175,000 for each of the two previous years. But the statute is not retroactive, so if paperwork was filed before July 1, 2011, it is unlikely the letter writer would be able to regain stabilized status.

Covering Up the New Floors

Q I want to install wood flooring in an apartment I just bought, but the co-op is requiring that 80 percent of the apartment be carpeted. There is no such requirement in the house rules or proprietary lease. Can the board do this?

A “We would need to know the board’s premise for making this demand, considering that the house rules and proprietary lease are silent on the topic,” said Pierre Debbas, a Manhattan co-op and condo lawyer. Most house rules prohibit shareholders from activity that interferes with other shareholders’ comfort and use of their spaces. If such a provision is in the house rules or lease, and the writer is creating a disturbance, the demand for carpeting is within the board’s authority, even though governing documents have no specific requirement.

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