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

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

I really like that Texas house. Can't put my finger on why (yes, it's undeniably unconventional).

But the Florida house is right on the gulf, man. And while I don't typically favor purely tropical settings - I'm not sure inland central Texas in the summer is anything I'm excited about either.

I really do like both of these options quite a bit, but in the end I'm going to go with the Florida house because summers won't be as ghastly there. Seriously - Texas summers suuuuuuuuuck.

The real bummer is that you're about 10 miles short of being able to get to downtown Miami. That's a tough beat. What are the rules on water routes? If I want to go diving, can I charter a boat 100 miles in any direction over water?

I think on the water routes we should take the distance of the driving routes as the crow flies and assume that's our radius.

Yeah, I don't know on this one. I went Texas, but I'm starting to think that I should have gone Florida just due to the summertime highs. But I really like that saloon and the big covered patio in Texas.

[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.

[lawrenceRaider]

While the Texas spot is within range for Ft Worth, you couldn't go to any pro games because Arlington and Dallas are out of range.

Also, living in the DFW area for 6 + years, all I ever heard about Possum Kingdom was that they had lots of fires, like CA style fires.

I'll take the FL home. Like it better anyway. Miami proper is 117 miles away, but you can get into the outskirts of all the suburbs over that way and Ft Myers is only 45 miles.

[ThaVirus]

Siesta Key is just outside of the 100 mile radius for Naples as well, which is a bummer. That’s my favorite beach.

[MagicHef]

Easy choice. Beachfront wins.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

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.

So you can tap into it if you intend to pay it off? For instance, the necessary cash infusions for the RI place.

Then again, I'm guessing you could simply get a signature loan if/when you show them your guaranteed $250K/yr lifetime earnings. I suppose they'd be able to garnish those?

[Buehler445]

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.

Oh yeah. My unspoken plan that I’m not telling Rain Man about is, as soon as Rain Man shuts the door on whatever property I end up with, I’m wheeling and dealing some lots off, reverse mortgaging the house, putting a regular mortgage on to purchase some income producing assets, something. Somewhere. I’m not letting that giant asset just sit.

But for the sake of the exercise I’m not necessarily including that in my decision. Other than that Sharon Springs house. Because fat boy be farming that.

[Zebedee DuBois]

Wow, this is the closest competition for me. I looked at the Texas house and really, really liked it (other than the Hell's Loop and Possum Kingdom names, as Mr. RainMan mentioned). I didn't think the Florida one would do it for me, as I had passed on the earlier Miami property.

However, this Florida property is quite beautiful, and right on the Gulf.

I'm not anything if not inconsistent. Florida it is!

[kepp]

This is a tough one for me. My very own saloon in Texas or an awesome mansion on the beach. I think I'm going with Florida on this one.

[Perineum Ripper]

Originally Posted by lawrenceRaider

While the Texas spot is within range for Ft Worth, you couldn't go to any pro games because Arlington and Dallas are out of range.

Also, living in the DFW area for 6 + years, all I ever heard about Possum Kingdom was that they had lots of fires, like CA style fires.

I'll take the FL home. Like it better anyway. Miami proper is 117 miles away, but you can get into the outskirts of all the suburbs over that way and Ft Myers is only 45 miles.

Google maps says ATT Stadium is 99.2 miles away when I looked earlier

[lawrenceRaider]

Originally Posted by mac459

Google maps says ATT Stadium is 99.2 miles away when I looked earlier

The stadium itself is a ways off the road, so might be able to hit one end, or at least stand outside it.

[Otter]

Neither

I do have to admire the audacity of having 2 pool tables however.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by lawrenceRaider

The stadium itself is a ways off the road, so might be able to hit one end, or at least stand outside it.

"Hey, stranger. Would you buy me a hot dog if I gave you $20? I'm not allowed in that part of the stadium."

[mr. tegu]

I first saw the Texas house and just assumed it would win for me based on price, size, land, and lake but Florida came in strong. It doesn’t have the lot I’ve generally been looking for but it seems like a pretty quite area for a beachfront property and is a very nice house. The Texas house has a Roman villa feel which is neat but it’s probably just too big and isolated.