Billionaire dream list: helipad and private beach

By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) - Credit crunch? What credit crunch?

More billionaire house hunters than ever are scouring the globe in search of the perfect hideaway.

So how about a Parisian mansion with its own ballroom, a forest-fringed estate in Andalusia complete with helipad or maybe a villa in Anguilla with a "feather-topped beach lapped by deep turquoise waters".

Revelling in the purple prose so beloved by estate agents, the glossy magazine Country Life has picked five of the top properties on the market that even the super-rich dream about.

For $95 million (47.5 million pounds), why not snap up Hillandale, an English country-style estate just 50 miles from Manhattan.

Just four minute's drive from the billionaire's playground of Monaco you could put in a bid for the Domain, a Cote d'Azur mansion with its own stud farm, paddocks and dressage arena.

The credit crunch may have hit big spenders in the City who once happily invested their huge bonuses in property. But the billionaires are not feeling the chill.

"We have more billionaire house hunters than a year ago. There are no signs of that letting up at the moment," said Tim Wright at international estate agent Knight Frank.