Mansionmania Tournament: Round 1, Heat 32

[Rain Man]

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

[osumatt]

That Oregon house's living room looks like a Cabela's. No thanks.

[RedRaider56]

I'll take the Texas home, even if it is in Houston..which completely sucks. The one thing i hate about the Texas home, as someone else pointed out, is does someone actually live here?

[Zebedee DuBois]

Deshutes Brewery is in Bend OR. I could be happy there.
....after calling in a dumpster truck for all the dead animals. Yuck.

[Zebedee DuBois]

...and I just do not like Houston. I visited several times for work and got a (apparently very) bad impression of the place. Maybe there are parts of the city that I didn't ever get to see that would have changed my mind - but the parts I did see (mostly industrial) left a mark.
Weather sucks. Concrete everywhere. useless abandoned road and bridge projects. Every afternoon a monsoon rain storm.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

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.

Cabelas was buying all these on the market because at the time they were expanding retail in a big way. Building a pile of stores. Then 2008 happened (to be more accurate, the gas price spike in 2007 happened) and that all stopped. I audited it between 07 and before 08 when the world ended briefly.

They had prices all over the board. They got some stuff bought pretty right, where they were patient and stuff. Other stuff they entered into open auctions and it was more expensive. A lot of stuff they'd go buy a collection, and so there would be a bunch of stuff they couldn't use. Like I said, I'm not nearly an expert.

But if it's worth displaying in a 12 million dollar house, it isn't going to be some deer some hickabilliy killed on the back 40 and got stuffed in the back of some dudes trailer.

There is (or at least was...not really my bag) A LOT of money in taxidermy.

[DJ's left nut]

Man Oregon is desolate.

But yeah - that place is awesome. And choosing Oregon dovetails nicely with my '**** Houston' rule.

I mean seriously - just look at the pictures of the outside around that Houston spot. The one from the concrete bunker is especially 'peak Houston'. Hope you like spotty grass (and that god-awful st. Augustine stuff that feels like weeds at that) along with scraggly ass 'oak' trees. Man I hate Houston.

[JohnnyHammersticks]

Not a fan of snuffing out the lives of animals or living in the middle of nowhere, so that rules out Oregon.

Texas house is killer. Love the kitchen, especially the counter-tops, and the workout room.

[JohnnyHammersticks]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

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.

How do you become a millionaire? Make a billion dollars and then start raising horses.

[Otter]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Man Oregon is desolate.

But yeah - that place is awesome. And choosing Oregon dovetails nicely with my '**** Houston' rule.

I mean seriously - just look at the pictures of the outside around that Houston spot. The one from the concrete bunker is especially 'peak Houston'. Hope you like spotty grass (and that god-awful st. Augustine stuff that feels like weeds at that) along with scraggly ass 'oak' trees. Man I hate Houston.

Been there once and all I remember is concrete, homeless and crazy people, heat and humidity, and monsoon like rain but that's a cool house. Houston and San Francisco are the 2 most anticipated but disappointing cities.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Man Oregon is desolate.

But yeah - that place is awesome. And choosing Oregon dovetails nicely with my '**** Houston' rule.

I mean seriously - just look at the pictures of the outside around that Houston spot. The one from the concrete bunker is especially 'peak Houston'. Hope you like spotty grass (and that god-awful st. Augustine stuff that feels like weeds at that) along with scraggly ass 'oak' trees. Man I hate Houston.

I've only been to Houston a few times, and mostly on the outskirts so it doesn't count. When I lived in Austin in grad school, people would offer sympathy if a person got a job in Houston. I always thought that was kind of funny.

Then I went and spent a couple of days downtown on business, and I couldn't shake a spooky feeling there. I don't know if it was just the weather at the time with weird lighting or something, but the downtown area felt creepy to me. The only other place I've felt that kind of negative energy was Virginia Beach. In both cases it had to just be some fluke of weather, but I've never felt it anywhere else in the other 99.999 percent of my existence.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Otter

Been there once and all I remember is concrete, homeless and crazy people, heat and humidity, and monsoon like rain but that's a cool house. Houston and San Francisco are the 2 most anticipated but disappointing cities.

I'd consider putting Atlanta in that group, but nobody expects Atlanta to not be a shithole.

Seattle was incredibly disappointing. Get 10 miles outside of town and it's incredible, but man - downtown Seattle sucked hard.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Man Oregon is desolate.

But yeah - that place is awesome. And choosing Oregon dovetails nicely with my '**** Houston' rule.

I mean seriously - just look at the pictures of the outside around that Houston spot. The one from the concrete bunker is especially 'peak Houston'. Hope you like spotty grass (and that god-awful st. Augustine stuff that feels like weeds at that) along with scraggly ass 'oak' trees. Man I hate Houston.

I hear you. And largely agree. But it’s hard to cast stones when you willingly move (back to) Western Kansas.

Plus I’ve got a buddy in Houston that needs beer drank with.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

I'd consider putting Atlanta in that group, but nobody expects Atlanta to not be a shithole.

Seattle was incredibly disappointing. Get 10 miles outside of town and it's incredible, but man - downtown Seattle sucked hard.

We're on the same page. The cities that most disappointed me when I first visited them were:

1. San Francisco - Hard to get around, and you'd find yourself in very unpleasant areas without warning.
2. Seattle - I couldn't find a cool neighborhood at all, and it required far more driving than necessary.
3. Houston - Generally spooky feel.

I think I told the story before, but I did a lot of walking in San Francisco for a couple of days back in 2018. I ended up walking down a street that looked like the aftermath of a holocaust. There was some dude walking unsteadily about 50 feet ahead of me and I slowly gained on him.

He turned around to look at me, and I realized that he had covered his entire head with clear packing tape. I mean his entire head, too - he'd taped over his hair, his face, everything. It distorted his features, and for some reason he'd run the tape over his eyes where one eye was taped closed and the other one was taped open. So he turned around and stared at me with that one open eye, and I immediately made a 90 degree turn.

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Then I went and spent a couple of days downtown on business, and I couldn't shake a spooky feeling there. I don't know if it was just the weather at the time with weird lighting or something, but the downtown area felt creepy to me. The only other place I've felt that kind of negative energy was Virginia Beach. In both cases it had to just be some fluke of weather, but I've never felt it anywhere else in the other 99.999 percent of my existence.

I don't mean to laugh at your experience but that is funny to me in a weird way. I wonder if it was some vestigial part of your lizard brain kicking in or something more.

[PHOG]

Oregon for me. No thanks to hot, sweaty, evil Houston.