Mansionmania Tournament: Round 1, Heat 26

[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:

(In this heat I tried to spread our Texas and Florida entries out a bit from Houston and Miami.)


Texas:

https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...5_M84880-48775

Florida:

https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...2_M59843-60801

[ThaVirus]

I can't tell you how disappointed I am that the Naples home doesn't have a pool.

Meanwhile, that Texas home has a pool area that would be great for hosting. Looks like they've even got beers on tap lol

Still, have you ever been to that part of Florida? It's got the best beaches in America, IMO.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

I can't tell you how disappointed I am that the Naples home doesn't have a pool.

Meanwhile, that Texas home has a pool area that would be great for hosting. Looks like they've even got beers on tap lol

Still, have you ever been to that part of Florida? It's got the best beaches in America, IMO.

Unless that's a koi pond or something, I think Naples has a pool in Pics 1 and 5.

[bdj23]

Texas house reminds me of an apartment complex from the outside

[EPodolak]

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

I can't tell you how disappointed I am that the Naples home doesn't have a pool.

Meanwhile, that Texas home has a pool area that would be great for hosting. Looks like they've even got beers on tap lol

Still, have you ever been to that part of Florida? It's got the best beaches in America, IMO.

Pic #1....I took that to be a pool. Maybe not.

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Unless that's a koi pond or something, I think Naples has a pool in Pics 1 and 5.

Originally Posted by EPodolak

Pic #1....I took that to be a pool. Maybe not.

That's hilarious. That is indeed a pool! Literally the main attraction in pic #5. I glossed over it somehow.

Anyway, that settles it for me. I don't particularly like that pool, but with the stipend I could spruce it up a bit over the years. That means the only downfall of this home for me is the lack of a major metro area in the 100 mile radius.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

That's hilarious. That is indeed a pool! Literally the main attraction in pic #5. I glossed over it somehow.

Anyway, that settles it for me. I don't particularly like that pool, but with the stipend I could spruce it up a bit over the years. That means the only downfall of this home for me is the lack of a major metro area in the 100 mile radius.

I've never been to that part of Florida. Does it have any charming beach communities within 100 miles?

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I've never been to that part of Florida. Does it have any charming beach communities within 100 miles?

I've only ever been as a visitor so I'm probably not the best person to ask, but in my experience that's basically all there is on the southwest Florida coast.

If you're looking for anything more than slow, easy living in small beach towns or rural swampland.. this probably isn't a great location.

[EPodolak]

The Texas design looks incoherent, not a fan of the location or the build. The Florida place on the other hand checks important boxes for weather and ocean front, plus it's a nice house.

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by EPodolak

The Texas design looks incoherent

These were my initial thoughts as well. It's like they wanted Spanish style on the exterior but also included brick/stone and the interior is like a mixture of elegant ballroom/rustic lodge. It just doesn't flow.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by EPodolak

The Texas design looks incoherent, not a fan of the location or the build. The Florida place on the other hand checks important boxes for weather and ocean front, plus it's a nice house.

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

These were my initial thoughts as well. It's like they wanted Spanish style on the exterior but also included brick/stone and the interior is like a mixture of elegant ballroom/rustic lodge. It just doesn't flow.

I think the "living room" is way too much like a hotel lobby. But the rest of the house actually works for me.

[Rain Man]

Okay, let's talk mansions.

Texas - Would it be weird to tell people that I live on Hell's Gate Loop in Possum Kingdom Lake? Yeah. But I can get past that. On the downside, this place looks way more like a hotel than a house. On the upside, I don't understand the saloon but I like it, and the outdoor space is pretty much perfect for how I'd use it. This area is going to get pretty hot in the summer, but it has mild winters. You can't reach Dallas in your daily meanderings, but you can get to Fort Worth, so that'll work for general services. Plus, you get a nice fat stipend with this property.

Florida - It's a nice house and I like the style. I'm not sure about sitting on coolers in the middle of a railroad tunnel, but I presume it makes for a nice cool sitting area. Overall, I like the style a lot, and this place has more mild summers than the Texas place. I'm not sure about humidity, but both are probably not great in that regard. This property is a little more isolated than one would expect, because both Miami and Tampa are beyond the 100 mile range. You're going to Fort Myers for culture, a phrase that probably is rarely uttered.

This is a tough one. I kind of want to say Florida since I like the house and (maybe) the climate), but I really like the clubhouse and outdoor space in Texas. Usually the stipend doesn't sway me much since I can live well on $250,000, but in this case the larger stipend helps me make the decision.

I think I'll go with Texas and will learn to say "Possum Kingdom Lake" with a Texas drawl, but I could easily be swayed either way.

[Buehler445]

Florida is the better place and probably better house, other than the saloon, which is awesome.

But it’s not good enough to overcome the stipend. TX for me.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Buehler445

Florida is the better place and probably better house, other than the saloon, which is awesome.

But it’s not good enough to overcome the stipend. TX for me.

This raises another interesting point.

What's the rule on encumbrances?

You're looking at a $35 million gap in property values here. It'll take nearly a century for you to close that gap based on the differences in the respective stipends.

Or - you just slap a reverse mortgage on the thing and go to town.

I guess the work around would be that you have a life estate in the property rather than take it in fee simple. It solves a couple of problems. In a life estate you can probably get a mortgage set up if the remainderman agrees to it (the person that gets it after you die). So for instance, on the RI castle, you could probably get him to agree to a HELOC if you're going to use it to make improvements to the property.

But if you're going to use it to buy and fly a G5 and spent six figures a year on Cuban hookers in of the Florida house, the remainderman isn't gonna be terribly excited about that.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

This raises another interesting point.

What's the rule on encumbrances?

You're looking at a $35 million gap in property values here. It'll take nearly a century for you to close that gap based on the differences in the respective stipends.

Or - you just slap a reverse mortgage on the thing and go to town.

I guess the work around would be that you have a life estate in the property rather than take it in fee simple. It solves a couple of problems. In a life estate you can probably get a mortgage set up if the remainderman agrees to it (the person that gets it after you die). So for instance, on the RI castle, you could probably get him to agree to a HELOC if you're going to use it to make improvements to the property.

But if you're going to use it to buy and fly a G5 and spent six figures a year on Cuban hookers in of the Florida house, the remainderman isn't gonna be terribly excited about that.

Interesting point, but for the purposes of this we should assume that you can't tap into home equity. Your mansion is your landed estate and must remain in your legacy.