Mansionmania Tournament: Round 2, Heat 3

[Rain Man]

Mansionmania continues with our 32 2nd-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:

Arizona:

https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...3_M18775-78835

California:

https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...7_M18383-06951

[JohnnyHammersticks]

As cool as it would be to have that house, with that pool, in PV right by Camelback Mountain, the Bel Air house is just too incredible. So is the location, except for the Cali politics. Tough choice, gotta go Cali.

[Buehler445]

Love the Cali house, but I have done a mountain of shit that's not as good as living in that Arizona house for much MUCH less than a million bucks.

I'm definitely whoring out for the cash on this one.

[Rain Man]

This one is a very interesting matchup, because the stipend comes into play strong.

My choices are:

Pretty much perfect house in California, where I have enough money to live very well, but not extravagantly.

Very nice house in Arizona, where I can be a big dog on my $1 million a year stipend.

I look around, though, and what can I buy with my $1 million a year? A lot of stuff, but I can't buy year-round perfect weather to enjoy my mansion.

California for me.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

This one is a very interesting matchup, because the stipend comes into play strong.

My choices are:

Pretty much perfect house in California, where I have enough money to live very well, but not extravagantly.

Very nice house in Arizona, where I can be a big dog on my $1 million a year stipend.

I look around, though, and what can I buy with my $1 million a year? A lot of stuff, but I can't buy year-round perfect weather to enjoy my mansion.

California for me.

But you're in Phoenix.

You're getting $1 million AND year-round perfect weather.

AZ for the win.

[lawrenceRaider]

Cali wants to steal my guns. Don't really like that home anyway.

AZ for me.

[oldman]

I voted for both houses in the 1st round and I hate to see them head to head at this point. But I have to go with the CA house.

[osumatt]

This may be the toughest selection yet. Goin' to California with an achin' in my heart where I can smoke my stuff and drink my wine with this one. That house is damn near perfect.

[JohnnyHammersticks]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

But you're in Phoenix.

You're getting $1 million AND year-round perfect weather.

AZ for the win.

Tell us you've never spent May through September in Phoenix without telling us you've never spent May though September in Phoenix.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by JohnnyHammersticks

Tell us you've never spent May through September in Phoenix without telling us you've never spent May though September in Phoenix.

This is fair.

But is it THAT much worse than Bel Air?

And I figure being tucked in/around those mountains would help a bit as well.

I mean ultimately I just can't convince myself to live amongst those weirdos in/around LA. I just find weather to be a relatively unpersuasive distinction here as we're not talking SoCal vs. Wyoming.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

But you're in Phoenix.

You're getting $1 million AND year-round perfect weather.

AZ for the win.

Phoenix is perfect for five months a year and pretty good for two months. But for five more months it's not my cup of tea:

https://www.google.com/search?q=para...hrome&ie=UTF-8

Los Angeles? Well, in August it might be a tad warmer than perfect, but the other 11 months were created by the climate gods just for me:

https://www.google.com/search?q=los+...hrome&ie=UTF-8

[mr. tegu]

Arizona for me. The only thing really better to me about the California house is the ocean access but that doesn’t overcome the more homey Arizona house with much more land.

[ThaVirus]

That California home is probably my favorite in the whole tournament

[scho63]

That CA house was featured on Million Dollar Listing.

I think it started at $150,000,000.

AZ all the way. **** CA

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

This is fair.

But is it THAT much worse than Bel Air?

And I figure being tucked in/around those mountains would help a bit as well.

I mean ultimately I just can't convince myself to live amongst those weirdos in/around LA. I just find weather to be a relatively unpersuasive distinction here as we're not talking SoCal vs. Wyoming.

I agree on the weather comment, largely. I mean the weather in LA is better (Let's be real here, I'm relying on Joe Rogan's testimony here), but I mean it's not perfect. That part of the Pacific is cold, that really knocks some shine off living by the Ocean, and there is LA smog, fires the whole bit that kind of ****s up life in LA. IMO, when my buddy was stationed at Pearl, we had a pretty in depth discussion on the weather and I concluded that Hawaii is perfect weather. LA isn't that, but mother****er, it gets 105 here, and I hate life. And I have dry heat too. Now, when it gets 115 in Phoenix, if I'm living in that house, I'm not doing what I'm doing here, so my life is invariably better, but man, 110+ for months is far from perfect weather for fat boy.


The interesting thing here is weirdo component. Man, there are a lot of whackadoodles out there. No denying that. And just a passive following of local government...hoo boy. We'll call that a tough hang. And that's without listening to the narratives they push.

After we've established that, do we think we can't isolate ourselves? Especially in that house? I mean, I live in a MUCH smaller house and my next door neighbor got a divorce, got a new girlfriend, which I mistook for his ex and said something dumb (not egregious, but dumb) when he did the closing for the land purchase. And on the other side, she's a nice old widow, but I never see her. Across the alley is a giant farmer who I'm friendly with, but I literally never speak to. His house takes up pretty much that side of block so that's it for my neighbors. I know one guy that lives across the street here. So I can get by without doing any neighboring in my not-mansion.

And there are some whackadoodles here too. I have a buddy that's convinced shit is going to hit the fan (he's not a RWer...he's a gun loving super liberal guy... odd combo. Whatever). He's not from around here, but he monitors whackadoodle shit on Social Media, and then asks me who these people are. Frankly there is a shocking amount of dumb****s here. And not just believing some weird shit and being quiet about it, posting about it on Social Media.

I'm actively trying to avoid it so I don't have to have it in my life, so I'm not going to seed out any per capita whackadoodle studies or anything, but I feel like I could get away from the Cali whackadoodles, because I'm doing it here. The obvious difference being a lot of the whackadoodle is narrative pushed by public servants (I LOLed when I typed out "servants" in regards to these ****leheads) I'm open to being wrong though.

I'm far from casting stones, I came to the same conclusions, albiet strictly for my propensity to be a whore for money.