Mansionmania Tournament: Round 1, Heat 32
 

Mansionmania continues. I'm going to show you the most expensive homes in every state and a few territories, with a few extras thrown in from the largest states to get the tourney up to 64. It'll be a single-elimination tournament.

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:

Texas:

https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...4_M79784-98460

Oregon:

https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...3_M97304-10007

**** Oregon.

The house, the state, or the dead bodies littering the home?

How are the pictures getting worse? They showed us nothing of either house.

But it’s Houston going away.

I’m just totally not into horses or taxidermy. In fact, I farm around horse people and while they rarely give me any trouble the whole “lifestyle” or whatever I find abrasive. So it’s probably reasonable to assume I have an irrational hatred of horse people.

And taxidermy’s shine has wore off on me. At Cabela’s I audited the Taxidermy department. I had to learn all the associated risks and required management which is a giant drag, and then… I got to see what it cost, 12 years ago. So I’d waltz into every room and be pissed off at what I paid for.

Gimme Texas. That Oregon house pretty much creeps me out.

I don't even know where to start on this one. I'm too traumatized by seeing a world where every animal except horses is extinct. But I'll try.

Texas - It's a nice house, very clean in design. Almost too clean. Some of these houses seem like no real person lives there. I like the stairs and the wooden bathtub is nice, and the lap pool seems nice. But is that a second pool in Photo 12? It's on a nice 9 acre lot, and is convenient to Houston stuff, but it doesn't really speak to me. It's too sterile for my tastes.

Oregon - Do you know how I know that a divorced male owns the house? Seriously, that's overkill in every sense of the word. Stop it with the dead animals, dude. Just stop it. It's actually a decent house if you can get past the decorating, though. I can't discern what the kitchen is like, but it's got some nice rooms. I'd have to make some changes, but it's got good bones. (There I go with the carcass jokes again.) The big problem here is that the house has no access to much of interest. You can't reach Portland or even Salem, you can't get to the coast, and there doesn't seem to be much tourist infrastructure anywhere. The best you've got is Bend, Oregon, which has about 93,000 people. Ugh on that.

I like the Oregon house better, and I'd like the Oregon climate and culture better, but the Texas house has a huge advantage in setting. I want to pick the Oregon house, but if it came down to a choice I'd have to pick Texas. I'd go batty in rural Oregon for the rest of my life.

How many dead animals are in that Oregon house? We should try to count them, like a jelly bean in a jar contest.

As a dude that has 2 wild beasts as kids that can make a mess out of anything, give me clean lines, symmetrical design and open space.

I'm bummed about the Oregon choice because there are some really awesome houses in the Portland area that I like way better than the option shown. But I don't want to corrupt the contest with my own preferences, and this house barely had enough photos to qualify.

The Texas house was kind of the same deal. It barely had enough to qualify, and it was in a different part of Houston than the earlier entry so I couldn't justify kicking it out.

And what does taxidermy cost for a full size animal like a bighorn sheep?

I don’t remember specifics other than A bunch. Most of it depends on quality of they hide horns and mount but I’m guessing over 5Gs. Could be upwards of 20. But I’m a million miles from an expert. I just did one audit, found a giant (to me) variance, and decided taxidermy is for the birds.

The real kickers are polar bears. Every freaking store has one, but they’re illegal to hunt, so it has to be documented how it died, where blah blah blah. Those things bring a mint.

The rich in this country have an unhealthy obsession with horses.

I guess white goes with anything.

But man, if you're talking $5,000 for stuffing, and then you add in a license and guide and travel and stuff, that's an expensive stuffed animal.

I do not understand that at all. It can't be that every rich person develops horses as a hobby. It's got to be merely a status symbol to own horses. But that's a lot of money and hassle to just be a showoff piece.

Of course, so are the mansions, I guess.

Texas. Would probably rather live in Oregon, but not that house in that spot.

Both houses are ugly as hell and insanely decorated...