A municipal bond analyst's best friend in the months ahead is going to be the newspapers' and magazines' "Luxury Homes and Estates" advertising sections.

You know them - they contain page upon page of top-tier, multimillion-dollar houses and apartments.

Sometimes they are nice New England-like, Federal-style houses, sometimes handsome Gilded Age piles, more often than not 10,000 or 15,000 square-foot-plus extravaganzas that make you scratch your head and wonder, "Who lives like that?"