One Person's Castle Is Another Person's Dream
Out of curiosity and/or boredom I’ve been looking at houses for sale in the greater Tampa area. Hell, we’ve got another 21 months until we can move, I don’t even have a job there yet, much less a job that pays me enough to afford a new place, yet already I’m dreaming of a new house somewhere near the Gulf of Mexico. Nutty, aren't I? But hey – dreams are free. Mortgages sure aren’t, but dreams are.
So anyway, I’ve been looking online at different properties in the greater Pasco County area – just NW of Tampa. We’d like to live somewhere close enough that we can go to the beach after work and walk along the sand. What better way to de-stress after the end of a long day than watching the sun go down over the water. I can’t think of one – well, not one that doesn’t involve a pint of Old Crow, anyway.
Most of the houses I’ve been looking at are what you’d call a Pool Home – yes, I want a house with a swimming pool. Always have. It’d be impractical here in Iowa, where it’d have to be drained, covered, and hopefully intact for 8 months out of the year, but in sunny Florida? It’s swimming season year round! So with a little luck, a decent job, and some hot properties, one of these days you may just find your old pal Tommy floating in his very own pool (hopefully face up and not face down).
But during my search for sunny Florida pool homes, I stumbled across this place in Palm Beach:
http://floridamoves.com/property/propertydetails.aspx?show=1&sid=917&agent=72886&propertyguid=6dfa4464-26c6-472c-9116-ec64180d0c13
Wow, that’s right up our alley. 8 bedrooms, 9 full bathrooms, 19,491 square feet. Hell, I could park a 747 inside there, and still have room for a foosball table. It’s got a pool, walk-in closets (naturally!), a wetbar, an elevator (for those evening where too much time is spent beside that wetbar, I suppose), and even marble floors. From the picture on the site, it looks like you couldn’t be any closer to the Gulf unless you lived in a yellow submarine. And this being Palm Beach, odds are pretty high you’d have neighbors The Donald and Melania knocking on your door hoping to borrow a cup of diamonds on a regular basis.
So let’s go buy it, shall we? I mean, the price tag is only a mere $42 million dollars.
Hell – is that all? Why not buy two of them? At those prices, we should ALL live there.
I played with the little mortgage calculator on the real estate page – if you put 20 percent down ($8.4 million – pocket change!), your payments for a 30 year mortgage would only be $180,372 a month, before taxes and insurance, of course.
You know, there are a lot of us technical writers who pull down $200K a month, so it should be no sweat for the Gressel family to live in the lap of luxury that we’ve always dreamed of. Oh, sure – we’d probably have to scrimp and save in order to pay for the butler, the maid, the cook, the gardener, and the security staff to keep those bratty Trump kids off our lawn, but hey – it’d be worth it.
We’d be socially desirable, and not in one of those “Oh, God – Paris Hilton’s here again. Quick - hide the booze” ways. We’d have all sorts of important and influential friends, who’d come over for a ball or royal gala or even a night at the opera. (No more boxing or football or other “dirty” activities allowed – you might soil the marble floor.) Every move we made would be photographed, and everything I say would be stored in a book of witty rich-people sayings. Our smiles would be Crest white, our clothes wrinkle free, our skin a perfectly golden bronze, and my hair wouldn’t turn any more gray, unless I asked it to.
Alas, while this house is indeed spectacular, it’s probably not for us. We’d probably never be able to afford to furnish a place like this, and I know that I certainly don’t want to spend my weekends cleaning 9 johns. That, and I have enough trouble remembering where I left my junk in my current 1,400 sq. ft. place – how would I ever find where I left my shoes in a home 14 times as large? I’d probably be barefoot and whining to the Lovely Mrs. G. all day long, provided I could ever find her, too.
So I’ll just keep looking for semi-affordable houses in the area, and keep my dreams realistic. Because as a wise man once said, it’s good to hope and dream for a million dollars, but it’s better to wish for a sandwich, because odds are you’re going to get one of those first.
So anyway, I’ve been looking online at different properties in the greater Pasco County area – just NW of Tampa. We’d like to live somewhere close enough that we can go to the beach after work and walk along the sand. What better way to de-stress after the end of a long day than watching the sun go down over the water. I can’t think of one – well, not one that doesn’t involve a pint of Old Crow, anyway.
Most of the houses I’ve been looking at are what you’d call a Pool Home – yes, I want a house with a swimming pool. Always have. It’d be impractical here in Iowa, where it’d have to be drained, covered, and hopefully intact for 8 months out of the year, but in sunny Florida? It’s swimming season year round! So with a little luck, a decent job, and some hot properties, one of these days you may just find your old pal Tommy floating in his very own pool (hopefully face up and not face down).
But during my search for sunny Florida pool homes, I stumbled across this place in Palm Beach:
http://floridamoves.com/property/propertydetails.aspx?show=1&sid=917&agent=72886&propertyguid=6dfa4464-26c6-472c-9116-ec64180d0c13
Wow, that’s right up our alley. 8 bedrooms, 9 full bathrooms, 19,491 square feet. Hell, I could park a 747 inside there, and still have room for a foosball table. It’s got a pool, walk-in closets (naturally!), a wetbar, an elevator (for those evening where too much time is spent beside that wetbar, I suppose), and even marble floors. From the picture on the site, it looks like you couldn’t be any closer to the Gulf unless you lived in a yellow submarine. And this being Palm Beach, odds are pretty high you’d have neighbors The Donald and Melania knocking on your door hoping to borrow a cup of diamonds on a regular basis.
So let’s go buy it, shall we? I mean, the price tag is only a mere $42 million dollars.
Hell – is that all? Why not buy two of them? At those prices, we should ALL live there.
I played with the little mortgage calculator on the real estate page – if you put 20 percent down ($8.4 million – pocket change!), your payments for a 30 year mortgage would only be $180,372 a month, before taxes and insurance, of course.
You know, there are a lot of us technical writers who pull down $200K a month, so it should be no sweat for the Gressel family to live in the lap of luxury that we’ve always dreamed of. Oh, sure – we’d probably have to scrimp and save in order to pay for the butler, the maid, the cook, the gardener, and the security staff to keep those bratty Trump kids off our lawn, but hey – it’d be worth it.
We’d be socially desirable, and not in one of those “Oh, God – Paris Hilton’s here again. Quick - hide the booze” ways. We’d have all sorts of important and influential friends, who’d come over for a ball or royal gala or even a night at the opera. (No more boxing or football or other “dirty” activities allowed – you might soil the marble floor.) Every move we made would be photographed, and everything I say would be stored in a book of witty rich-people sayings. Our smiles would be Crest white, our clothes wrinkle free, our skin a perfectly golden bronze, and my hair wouldn’t turn any more gray, unless I asked it to.
Alas, while this house is indeed spectacular, it’s probably not for us. We’d probably never be able to afford to furnish a place like this, and I know that I certainly don’t want to spend my weekends cleaning 9 johns. That, and I have enough trouble remembering where I left my junk in my current 1,400 sq. ft. place – how would I ever find where I left my shoes in a home 14 times as large? I’d probably be barefoot and whining to the Lovely Mrs. G. all day long, provided I could ever find her, too.
So I’ll just keep looking for semi-affordable houses in the area, and keep my dreams realistic. Because as a wise man once said, it’s good to hope and dream for a million dollars, but it’s better to wish for a sandwich, because odds are you’re going to get one of those first.
posted by Tommy G at
10:18 AM
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