Mansionmania Tournament: Round 3, Heat 6

[Rain Man]

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

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

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?

[ThaVirus]

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.

[blake5676]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

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'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.

[burt]

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

[PHOG]

Originally Posted by lawrenceRaider

Satellite view is clearly out of date.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

Oh, I know that.

[Shiver Me Timbers]

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

[ThaVirus]

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

From Wikipedia:

Originally, haint blue was thought by the Gullah to ward haints, or ghosts, away from the home. The tactic was intended either to mimic the appearance of the sky, tricking the ghost into passing through, or to mimic the appearance of water, which ghosts traditionally could not cross. The Gullah would paint not only the porch, but also doors, window frames, and shutters

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:

But while enslaved Africans of the Lowcountry and their descendants believed in the protective power of haint blue, the cultivation of indigo to produce the dye energized the 18th-century transatlantic slave trade, thereby increasing the enslavement of Africans.

[Zebedee DuBois]

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.

[DJ's left nut]

A little 10 minute primer on it:

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

And yeah, it's everywhere down south.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Otter

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

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.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

...

Big ****ing oof here though:

Well, that backfired big time.

[Peter Gibbons]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

How are you going to keep the ghosts out?

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

[TinyEvel]

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.

[Buehler445]

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

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by TinyEvel

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.

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

Outdoor kitchen? Yes please.


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