Mansionmania Tournament: Round 1, Heat 22

[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:

US Virgin Islands:

https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...0_M97779-80235

California:

https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...1_M11425-39758

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by MagicHef

Not much to do in the Virgin Islands, but I'm not sure if I'd ever want to leave that place, other than walking down to the beach. The CA location is very hard to beat, but I don't like the house much.

At a million per, I could fly in some Good pitmasters to run me some Q, and I'd be good for it.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by eDave

I'd lease that horse stuff out.

**** that.

**** all that. All I see in that ****ing horse waterer outside my ****ing windows are misquitos.

And you realize horseshit is, you know, shit, right? And smells like it? I don't know that the EPA rules are in Cali, but you might be on the radar with that size operation.

I'm just not a livestock guy. My dingus is enough.

[eDave]

Originally Posted by Buehler445

**** that.

**** all that. All I see in that ****ing horse waterer outside my ****ing windows are misquitos.

And you realize horseshit is, you know, shit, right? And smells like it? I don't know that the EPA rules are in Cali, but you might be on the radar with that size operation.

I'm just not a livestock guy. My dingus is enough.

Alright, alright. Yeesh.

[wazu]

Good lord how is the Virgin Islands home not winning unanimously?!

[oldman]

I just had an old work buddy move back from VI --to Florida. FLORIDA??? The guy was living rent free in a multi-million dollar estate, fished, and drank beer all day. But after 2 hurricanes and weeks on end without electrcity (how do you keep the beer cold??) he'd had enough. I can't say for sure that's his daughter's place, but it was on St. John and they listed it about a year ago when he left.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by oldman

I just had an old work buddy move back from VI --to Florida. FLORIDA??? The guy was living rent free in a multi-million dollar estate, fished, and drank beer all day. But after 2 hurricanes and weeks on end without electrcity (how do you keep the beer cold??) he'd had enough. I can't say for sure that's his daughter's place, but it was on St. John and they listed it about a year ago when he left.

I bet that if called up the local utility or electrician and put $10k on the table your electricity gets restored amazingly quickly. When you have a $1M in income, most problems go away really fast.

[wazu]

Originally Posted by cdcox

I bet that if called up the local utility or electrician and put $10k on the table your electricity gets restored amazingly quickly. When you have a $1M in income, most problems go away really fast.

Yep. Get a generator with that income. This contest should be a no-brainer.

[oldman]

Originally Posted by cdcox

I bet that if called up the local utility or electrician and put $10k on the table your electricity gets restored amazingly quickly. When you have a $1M in income, most problems go away really fast.

Originally Posted by wazu

Yep. Get a generator with that income. This contest should be a no-brainer.

When the power is out to the whole island, it doesn't matter how much money you have. He had a generator, but you need gas to make it work. When your supply runs out, you're screwed because the power to run the pumps at the local gas station is out. That's even if they have gas. Then there's the problem with storm damage. Building materials are in short supply for weeks because ships can't get unloaded because there's no electricty and no gas to get what you can offload to the suppliers.

[Chiefnj2]

USVI. Don’t have to think about it.

[ThaVirus]

This is interesting.

When weighing out options, location is obviously huge. Immediate location is big. Like, just the property itself and everything within eyeshot of the house. Then you have to factor in the additional 90+ miles radius you have outside of that area.

Typically I've noticed I've given preferential treatment to the larger portion of the 100 mile radius and, for me, it's REALLY tough to beat Southern California, South Florida or NYC.

But in this case, has there been a better immediate location in this tournament than this VI home? I'm thinking maaaaaybe the Hawaii home we saw a bit ago and that's probably it. This is also the first one in which the stipend has played a big role in my decision. With $1m every year and living in VI, I could probably afford to spend months per year touring the Caribbean on a mini yacht.