John Paulson’s and Phil Falcone’s bets that house prices would fall helped lift them to the No. 1 and No. 2 spots in Trader Monthly’s latest survey of the best-paid hedge fund managers. The Paulson & Co. founder’s savvy moves on the housing market laid the foundation for a 2007 payday of more than $3 billion – twice as much as the 2006’s winner, John Arnold of Centaurus who collected $1.5 billion for his Amaranth Advisors bet. Falcone of Harbinger Capital Partners also demonstrated that a hedge fund’s home bet is his golden castle, pocketing $1.5 billion. In general, the top 100 HF managers collectively were paid $30.3 billion in 2007, up 26% over the year before, with the top five seeing 10-figure paychecks and the poorest of the bunch recording $75 million. Rounding out the top 10 were Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies Corp. (estimated $1.5 billion-$2 billion), Steve Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors ($1 billion to $1.5 billion), Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group ($1 billion to $1.5 billion), Chris Hohn of The Children’s Investment Fund ($800 million to $900 million), Noam Gottesman of GLG Partners ($700 million to $800 million), Alan Howard of Brevan Howard Asset Management ($700 million to $800 million), Pierre Lagrange of GLG Partners ($700 million to $800 million) and Paul Tudor Jones of Tudor Investment Corp. ($600 million to $700 million.) Last year’s No. 1, John Arnold, fell out of the top 10 with just $400 million and $450 million, and Edward Lampert of ESL Investments disappeared from the top 100 altogether.