They routinely tear down $5 million houses down here to build bigger ones. I’m working on a project for the owner of the Phillies. He bought a $24 million house on Palm Beach and tore it down. Tony Robbins bought a $24 million house in Manalapan and tore it down. Elin Woods tore her $12 million house down. Happens all the time.
I think they’re all crazy, but it’s their money.
In Vancouver, a $3,000,000 house is called a bungalow.
Three million dollars for a fifth of an acre?
I have no problem with this since it’s being done by the property owners. While it sounds a bit crazy to me, it’s their property. (If they were required to tear it down because of some government edict, that would be a whole different situation.)
My parents retired and sold their house in Atlanta. It was ultramodern in 1956 - designed by a Viennese architect with Bauhaus leanings - they got a pretty decent price for it.
The buyers immediately tore it down, shaved about 50' off the hill it was built on, and erected a gigantic pseudo-Italianate monstrosity that I understand (from the contractor's lawyer) cost upwards of $15M to build.
It's on the market for $5.4M (reduced from $6.5M!) so I guess there is justice in the world after all.
Hell, we have 2400 square feet on 1.1 acres, and the place seems so big, I swear each room has it’s own season and micro-climate. That yard would be a breeze to keep up, but I wouldn’t want to dust and vacuum the house. This place is enough as it is. *WHEW*
We have 1280 square feet on 6 acres. We use about 600 square feet and love the 6 acres.
Trend Alert: Americans Want Smaller Homes
http://www.motherearthliving.com/the-good-life/americans-want-smaller-homes.aspx#axzz31eOzJ44t
(2009)
Small House Movement
http://www.pinchauser.com/small-house-movement.htm
If I could spend a few mil on a house, I would not buy this one. BUT, it looks sound enough to be moved to a new location, which would be much cheaper than building a similar house from the ground up.
I know a woman who had her lovely old brick home moved from Seattle all the way across the Sound to an island. Amazing photos of it on barges. Anyway, if that house could be successfully moved, so can the one in this article.
If it was previously owned by Progressives, the only way to get the smell of hypocrisy out is to tear it down, salt the earth and rebuild.
Nothing unusual... when I first moved to Stockton, one of the houses I looked at was slightly out of my price range at $160,000 (this was 36 years ago) and we bought a few blocks away. It was a nice home on the corner of Parkwoods and Meadow. it sold the same week we bought our home. A week after escrow closed I was driving on Meadow and saw a bulldozer plowing through the picture window of that house. They proceeded to knock it down, fill in the swimming pool, and turn it into an empty corner lot. . . a $160,000 empty lot, where they built another slightly smaller house for the buyer’s mother. Who, you ask? The buyer also bought another piece of property the same week. The TransAmerica Pyramid in San Francisco... He owns the San Diego Chargers Football team. Alex Spanos. He lived in a modest house a couple of blocks away, and wanted a “mother’s cottage” close by. You know the three prime determiners of value in real estate: location, location, and finally, LOCATION.
If I had that kind of money I would want enough land where I couldn’t SEE another house.