Mansionmania Tournament: Round 3, Heat 6
 

Mansionmania continues with our Sweet 16 3rd-round contestants. You will choose among each pair of houses with the following assumptions:

• The purchase price for you is $0.
• All maintenance, utilities, property taxes, HOA fees, and cleaning is included.
• You must live in the home for the rest of your life.
• You can't travel more than 100 miles from home (via google maps drive time) other than 1 two-week vacation each year.
• You get $250,000 per year as a living allowance
• You get an additional living allowance at the cheaper home, which will be valued at 1% of any cost difference annually. I will note this amount in the poll.
• You get the furnishings. If unfurnished, you get an allowance that will give you mid-grade furniture in every room.
• You get any vehicles in the garage. But only the garage - nothing parked outside.

I encourage you to click on the maps in the listings to see the general location and neighborhood.

Also, I will only enter contestants if they have a sufficient number of photos to judge, as determined by me.

Your entries in this heat are:

Florida:

https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...0_M67389-45908

South Carolina:

https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...5_M67832-39919

FL on this one. 100 times better home and location.

This one suddenly throws me off kilter.

I've not been a fan of the South Carolina home and I think I've voted against it in both previous rounds. I've been a big fan of the Florida home and have voted for it in both previous rounds.

But this matchup is weird because it's more apples to apples than one would think.

Both homes are relatively small for mansions. The Florida home is only slightly larger. Both homes are in mild climates, and while tastes may vary I think the South Carolina climate is slightly better. Both places have inadequately sized pools, but they can also be used year round.

I really like the style of the Florida home, and as I age in place it's good to not have stairs. And the style is good, but not great. The South Carolina home is nice, even if its a little generic.

I like Charleston. I figure I would like South Florida even though I've spent very little time there.

The views in Miami blow away Charleston. That's a really nice lot, whereas Charleston is kind of weird with that boardwalk.

But then you've got that stipend. I would dominate South Carolina with that stipend. Given my new philosophy on stipends, that's a real game changer. I'd have to watch my pennies a little in Miami, whereas in South Carolina I'll be brown-nosed by everyone I meet.

I'm going to do a complete 180 here. South Carolina gets my vote based on value. I like the Florida home much better, but I'll buy a condo in Charleston and spend my weekends at the beach house.

While I do love the Florida house kitchen (and I'm a skilled cook) I gotta go with the money and the nice bathroom at SC despite the lesser kitchen. $700,000 more a year is something to take into consideration.</br></br>Rain Man, we sheath our jousting swords this round and put Nevada vs California behind us.</br></br>To the small pool! Damn that ocean!

The SC house, as I remember, was on a weirdly shaped lot with only a few feet of frontage and not a whole lot more on the ocean side. The whole place looks like it's been abandoned for years and someone just slapped a new coat of paint on it. The sand would be everywhere. The FL house is clean and has that old school Miami Vice druglord look to it. Now all I need is a Daytona Spyder and a Testarossa in the garage to complete the look.

We shall have peace in our time.

I do feel like I'm cheating a bit to go SC on this one, though. As mansions go, Florida is the superior house by far. But the cost difference is extreme between the two places, which drives the stipend through the roof. A million bucks a year grabs my attention.

The only thing wrong with the Florida house is my ex lives in Miami.

What the hell, picking it anyway

It would annoy the heck out of her to see you living in an oceanfront mansion.

If a fat man dives in there might cause a flood.

https://ap.rdcpix.com/d8706930af0e17...0_h360_x2.webp

Dude.. that Florida house is going to be WREKT by a hurricane.

Considering the other house is on the coast of South Carolina I'm not sure that's really a deciding factor.

A house in South Carolina without a single scrap of haint blue?

Oh that's just some bullshit right there. No way I can support this one...

I went with Florida, despite the satellite view of an empty lot.

Much nicer locale, IMO

Satellite view is clearly out of date. It shows a home that isn't even there any longer.

This one is easy for me. Charleston is in my top two places to retire so its the Kiawah Island house for me.

How are you going to keep the ghosts out?

That Florida home is really nice, another one of my favorites in the whole competition.

Also, having lived in Florida for over a decade, hurricane concerns are overblown. There's nowhere on Earth more equipped to deal with hurricanes than Florida. Not to mention maintenance and, I'm assuming, repairs wouldn't even be our responsibility.

I'd be shocked if the ceiling of that front porch wasn't haint blue.

SC still gets my vote in this round. I can take my golf cart to 3 different 5* courses in less than five minutes. The house and general style is more my vibe as well....not huge on the modern aesthetic in some of these trendier homes.

I kinda like the understated appearance of the SC house, LOVED it's location....and the $$$

Oh, I know that.

SC all the way.
Florida reminds me of Miami Vice Reruns.

I did some research into haint blue, because I had no idea what you guys were talking about.

From Wikipedia:

Kind of interesting how traditions (or whatever you want to call this) earn their origins. Looks like it started as some Hoodoo kind of stuff, but then spread to the mainstream culture as they mingled with the whites.

Big ****ing oof here though:

I'm going with SC on this one.

Let me point out two less attractive features of the FL house - 1) the palm trees are all on crutches. Maybe because its a new place and the trees aren't established, but it is unattractive, and for my investment ($0) I expect more. 2.) More importantly the location of the house is right on the exit of the bay. I imagine that it is the nautical equivalent of having your house right on the interstate. Boat traffic all day long, and you can be sure that half of them are operated by obnoxiously drunk tourists and the other half by drug dealers either bringing drugs in or taking bodies out.

A little 10 minute primer on it:

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-s...blue-64057722/

And yeah, it's everywhere down south.

I'm also trying to figure out why 1/3 of the pool seems to be concrete that's hidden two inches below the surface of the water. It seems like it's designed to break someone's neck.

Well, that backfired big time.

I am generally hard to live with. I suspect even ghosts and ghouls will bail once I start making passive aggressive comments about them.

I was ready to go South Carolina because damned if I am gonna live in a 79 million $$ home with 2x4's holding all the trees up. I'll be using that stipend for tree replacement in year 1.

But looking at the SC home, the interiors are really weird. So many places with furniture setups you'd never sit in. And that weird bar in the corner that looks like an apartment kitchen. Just poor choices inside., The outside is great, love the boardwalk. But I choose Miami cuz it's Miami and I don't want to live in SC -- in a lot of spaces it looks like the home I had in Fairway on the edge of Mission Hills built in 2008.

This is a tough one. That Miami house is fantastic but the money is too much. It was pretty close but the Carolina house wins

:spock:

There is a lot of cool shit in the Carolina house.

Outdoor kitchen? Yes please.
https://ap.rdcpix.com/87ca719cbd02e7...0_h770_q80.jpg

I dunno what kind of apartments you lived in, but I never lived in one with a kitchen like that.

https://ap.rdcpix.com/87ca719cbd02e7...0_h770_q80.jpg

That just means that the palm trees are newly planted. You can remove them after a while.