A 3br resale condo in Manhattan, OR...

It’s an 80 minute drive to midtown with zero traffic, not commutable with traffic, and no train service on the west side of the Hudson up there. So unless you’re remote forever or you can do one day a week in, it doesn’t work. And at that point, if this sort of home is appealing why not just move even further out and get more for your money?

Could you please post a link with more for your money elsewhere? I just cannot even imagine it...

Let's say 3-4 days a week at the office and the rest of the week remote. One could drive to east side of the river and park at the train station..

Admittedly, one major downside of this castle is 50k in property taxes per year!

I don’t know, I’m not in the three bedroom Manhattan market. It’s just more of a general commentary that it would realistically take you north of 2+ hours door to door to get from home to office in Manhattan each way, 4+ hours a day. That’s simply unacceptable even at two or three days a week in the office. I’d rather commute from Philly on Amtrak at that point. There’s also probably very little overlap in the type of buyers making up the $2mm Manhattan/Brooklyn market and buyers for that house. “More for your money” includes location, of course, so it’s completely subjective.

How much for utility bills, insurance, and maintenance/repairs annually? Perhaps one can maintain the landscaping and lawn themselves. Another 50-$75k?

The 50k/yr of RET isn't horrible. An entry-level townhouse in the city will pay the same.

Problem with these white elephants is the sheer size. This house would be fine -- better -- at half its size. It's just caverns of unused space.

How many Record Houses are this size? None? Give me better design and less than 5000 sq ft and I'll be happy.

I love the design of this castle, actually. Especially the piano room, with views of the Hudson. Unused space is such a luxury (although I probably would change my mind after attempting to vacuum clean 10k square feet once).

George, you might prefer this more compact house. A bit higher budget, but less RET, so monthly payment is similar if not lower. Much further away from NYC though. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/17422-N-60th-Pl-Scottsdale-AZ-85254/8016131_zpid/

Wow, tract houses for 2.5m. Straight out of HGTV. The size is better but this still feels flabby. The open kitchen with huge double islands is too much. Kitchens in high end homes should be enclosed spaces where the staff works. Without a floorplan, it feels like a random collection of spaces jammed onto a tiny lot.

I'll try to find something that I like and post it. I'll start with the Thursday Design Appreciation on r/mcmansionhell

I'm not sure how much 'staff' a family living in a 2.5 million dollar home in Scottsdale will actually have. Maybe a couple of cleaning people at best?

George, for some reason, they never seem to post floorplans in Arizona. Like, 99% of listings don't have one. Guess, they don't need to try so hard to sell houses, unlike NYC brokers. They seem to be flying off the shelves with no floorplan in 2 weeks or less.
I thought that design was cohesive throughout the house, and since the kitchen was a showpiece, with all that marble and hood and lighting, it was better enjoyed open than in a separate room. Agree on the double island though. I would rather have one big island instead - hope this trend passes soon.

Back to Hudson River Castle, what are the maintenance costs outside of RET and utilities? How many staff to look after the lawn/garden and 10k square foot house? If tons of staff needed, maybe this isn't really comparable on costs to a 3br condo in Manhattan.

The floorplan may be an attachment on the MLS along with the survey of the land, perhaps a deed, a list of recent renovations, etc. Doesn't get picked up by Zillow.

Perhaps my beef with the AZ house is that I don't believe a functional area such as a kitchen should be the focal point. There are two functional areas of a house: kitchens and bathrooms. These are private areas, to be visited when satisfying a functional need. The focal point of a proper house is a comfortable seating area -- the "salle de réception" as the French say - with a separate area for children, games, or daily living. In a 5000 square foot house, why should all 5000 square feet be one giant room like an airplane hangar?

The Hudson Castle maintenance depends on how well it has been maintained so far. A 61 year old building has exceeded its useful life. Could have enormous problems - e.g. has the land shifted such that the pool doesn't drain properly, and does the whole yard have to be dug up to fix it?

" A 61 year old building has exceeded its useful life. " Gotta disagree here. There are plenty of people living in far older buildings. The one I'm in at the moment has been occupied almost continuously for the last nearly 200 years. The best have been maintained and upgraded as needed, but there's no inherent limitation of usability based purely on age. (Though banks will assign a 'useful life' to a structure for their own internal risk and loss calculations).

Plenty of BK townhomes which are more than 100 years old but they do need fair bit of renovation if you want level floors, enough bathrooms, updated electric etc.

Krolik, I’d allocate something like 20 hours weekly for cleaning the inside of a house that size if you live like me (sparse & neat). Add more time if you have more stuff or people, less if you care less about spotlessness, aren’t living in it full time, etc. No idea on yard care, having a handyman on call, etc. Really up to you on what you want to do yourself vs outsource.

re: maintenance costs
A freestanding home has many costs associated with it that you don't worry about in a condo/coop.

Categories include:
Externals: Roofing, siding, decking, more windows = more leaks
Infrastructure: Boiler, water tank, well&pump, septic, chimney, AC system, sprinklers/irrigation, generally more plumbing all of which is your responsibility vs some being common elements
Services: Lawn care, tree trimming, landscaping, pest control, driveway plowing, power washing, trash removal, etc

You save on the $1-3/sq ft monthly maintenance and instead pay lump costs in the $1k-30k range here and there.
A lot of these items have useful lives of 20-30 years, however there's enough moving pieces that something is alway breaking.
Older the house the more things break, bigger the house the more stuff there is to break.

Views are to-die-for. House is tasteless and tacky. And if I'm moving up-river I'd want more space than a measly 1.2 acres. The neighboring house is too friggen close on this one. Might as well just stay in the city in that case.

Bramstar, not too many huge lots AND Hudson river views within 1.5 hour driving distance.

You might like this castle with over 5 acres better, though it is further away from the city than the first one:

https://www.redfin.com/NY/Newburgh/656-River-Rd-12550/home/54921423?fbclid=IwAR1_7HCvw931bDCsvofNC7S9JnZyajVSOYsuJLc9YwzvfBHEE3BrNqmXNfk

Funny, this older looking castle was built in 1999.

I think the bullet proof glass is a nice extra.

Didn't Roger Ailes have a place like that somewhere up there?

The Newburgh castle is also a McMansion. French houses don't actually look like that, not even chateaux. Look on any French wine bottle for a better example.

I went looking for a house that I consider extremely tasteful but which is also over 5000 square feet and which was built in the heyday of McMansions, 1970 to 2000. It was hard. It's easy to find great houses built before the dawn of suburbia, well before 1970. The "Aspen to wonderland" thread inspired me to look there, and I came up with this:

https://www.masonmorse.com/real-estate/200-w-bleeker-street-aspen-co-81611/152443/51837642

I haven't seen the house, but the stats are almost 6000 square feet on a 0.23 acre lot, built in 1985.

- Graceful old porch with rocking chairs
- Simple single-story entrance (no lawyer foyer)
- 2 car garage (apparent from streetview - not even shown in the listing photos)
- The only excessively large room is the reception room which is still human-scaled and tasteful
- There is a curtain to close off the kitchen, which itself is not enormous
- Good use of space with vaulted ceilings, lofts, etc.
- Outdoor space is tastefully designed and separated into functional areas - table, hot tub, grass, fire pit

Why is it so hard to build tasteful houses like this?

>> There is a curtain to close off the kitchen

So tasteful.

George, will have to agree to disagree! Firstly, the house you linked is almost $20 million, not $2 million! Is it good value for money? There are amazing houses one could buy for $20million, and this one would not be at the top of my list. It certainly has lots of curb appeal and is well maintained, but there is no Hudson river view (or any view at all as far as I can tell except for own backyard), and the lot is much smaller. The house uses space well, but has no extra space for a grand piano, home gym, or indoor pool...

The houses on the Hudson are basically trading for the value of the land, maybe even less. The structure itself has little value or even negative value.

My point is that once you get over 5000 square feet, it becomes really hard to design an attractive house, and you easily risk having a white elephant.

The house I posted is expensive for two reasons: (1) it is well-designed, (2) it is on an expensive plot of land, (3) it isn't too huge.

Just for the fun of it I also thought about looking an Aspen, unfortunately can't find anything for less than $10 million ( ;

When I lived in Washington Heights Nyack was on my route up to Hudson on my bike. Free pandemic there was a glut of houses just languishing, not anymore. Still a nice community, significantly less expensive than say Alpine, pretty commutable with houses that the 1-5% can afford?

https://www.redfin.com/NY/Grand-View-On-Hudson/135-River-Rd-10960/home/65574411?utm_source=android_share&utm_medium=share&utm_nooverride=1&utm_content=link

https://www.redfin.com/NY/Grand-View-On-Hudson/223-River-Rd-10960/home/65574374?utm_source=android_share&utm_medium=share&utm_nooverride=1&utm_content=link

Really just very attracted to the position of the homes near the Hudson. Without a floor plan it's very difficult to get a feel for the layout.

Keith, I am with you regarding the position on the Hudson. Views, nature, and proximity to the city all in one. Great finds!

Somehow I struggle with the notion of too big a house. In the city, there are plentiful amenities outside one's apartment, but not in the country side. So an indoor pool or a home gym seem useful to have. Does not seem like much of a problem outside of cost to maintain.

The cost to maintain the square footage adds up, some of it in hidden ways (heating, cooling, electric, more little things to maintain, the time to clean, more extensive infrastructure to troubleshoot and service, more roof area for trees to fall on, etc.). The heating / cooling costs for some of these Hudson River homes can be astronomical (on a hilltop, with large expanses of windows (even insulated), in a sub zero blizzard? Great expanse of window facing the setting summer sun?). The older the house generally the poorer the insulation (I've probably spent nearly $10,000 on insulation alone as part of my renovation, but it can stay below freezing for a month where I am).

Actually, were I in the market to drop $2.7m on a second home, I'd ignore the commute question and go for this, 6,900 sf, on a 2ac lot. And it's got a hell of a lawyer foyer -- from 1810. And appears to be nowhere near the end of its useful life.

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1-Lake-St_Cooperstown_NY_13326_M38729-15149

I know Cooperstown very well as I used to have a house in a town called summit not too far from cobleskill. Probably about an additional 45 minutes, I believe it was west of there. I haven't been to Cooperstown in 15 years, $2.7 seems awfully expensive for the area. I actually had a cabin that I built myself on 10 acres, and then I had a little camp on a lake called Bear gulch lake in Jefferson.

It used to take us three and a half hours to get to summit, and I think Cooperstown is about four and a half.

I know Summit - I'm about 45 minutes south-ish from there. Coooperstown is an hour north-ish of me. I'm in Cooperstown often. I think part of the asking price is for the history of the home. And it's a huge lot, in town. But then, there's the taxes (~35k/yr). Cooperstown and the lake have always been a summer retreat for the very well off (and lots of kids with baseball fever), and this is the sort of trophy house that would appeal to the historically minded, ones with lots of cash pay for a renovation back to a private home. A place where you would "summer", host charity functions, summer houseguests, and pre-opera parties (Glimmerglass is 15 minutes north).

Yes I think there's a little town called Cherry Valley as well nearby? There's some very old school waspy, old money people that have been there for many generations. I remember buying a baseball bat at the hall of fame when I was eight or nine! Definitely beautiful country up there, my property and the little house I built are still there just off of route 10. Another really cool place up there with some interesting history is Charlotte Valley road that cuts across to Oneonta. Beautiful drive, I bought those 10 acres in 1983, I believe it was $150 an acre. I really loved it up there, much different vibe than being down around Woodstock etc.

Not to throw cold water on the party, but a property of that age and condition is what people call a "labor of love". Maybe you love it, but many ppl don't know what they're getting into. I know a guy who bought an old mansion of something like 7000 square feet for $4M (negotiated down from $8M) and then sunk in a couple million over several years to fix it up. When buying old houses, smaller is definitely better.

As for buildings' useful life, I was on a physical plant planning committee at one point. We had a bunch of buildings in a bunch of locations ranging from urban to rural. The way we managed buildings was to plan ahead to demolish them after 40 years. The maintenance costs after 40 years soared while their utility declined rapidly. It was critical to get buildings demolished before anyone thought to designate them as historic. Maybe one or two that were really well-designed (e.g. early work by a famous architect) would get multi-year renovations, but everything else came down.

Also it's easy to underestimate the expenses of these white elephant houses. To take one example, the cost of relining a custom indoor swimming pool can easily run $50-100K. And if the mechanicals have problems, that can be many tens of thousands. Remember, it's more expensive to renovate than to build new.

Nobody buys a 1980 Rolls Royce with 150,000 miles even for $10K. Why would you buy the equivalent of such car in house form?

As someone who spends a lot of time in the Hudson Valley, I'd like to point out that there's a lot less "there" there than you would think given the cost of the houses. What is there to do in Grand View (a place that is, admittedly, gorgeous) other than sit on your property? And now poor Peter X. Kelly is scrambling to save his remaining restaurants...

Does that Cooperstown house owner really think the property appreciated from $1.6MM since 2011?

@george I think a big part of it is a labor of love as well as preservation, just considering the old housing stock in New York City as well as most of Europe.

On one of the houses I own in Palm Beach County, which was built in 1960, it was certainly much more economical to renovate and add on than to buy a new house or knock this one down and build a new house. Perhaps in some circumstances and maybe for commercial applications a total tear down after 40 plus years is more economical. But if you do that in Paris it would wind up looking like Dresden!

The house we stay in in Paris was built in the 1700s, not sure what the renovation history is but I'm glad they didn't knock it down! I also have family in Toulouse, not particularly wealthy, and it was a small (financial) nightmare for them managing their dream home which was a 17th(?) century building. Mainly because no one that owned it ever did proper upgrades.

@ali when we spent time at our cabin in schoharie County, lots of hiking, some would fish and hunt, golf, cross country ski, ice skating and on my property I had an orchard of apple trees a very large garden and endless amounts of blackberries! We also really enjoyed the antiquing up there. And of course lots of baking and home cooking, not a lot of places to go out for a fancy dinner or brunch!

FYI Palm Beach house is cement block and stucco.

@tbg: Yes, Cherry Valley is just a little ways away.

@george: Yes, old houses usually are a labor of love and significant money pits. I bought mine for just over 100k (it was in barely ok condition), and have put twice that into it. I've had it 20+ years, and intend to be carried out of it (30 more years?). The Cooperstown house is worthy of preservation (history, construction, location), and should have an owner with deep pockets to keep it in good condition. It is like buying a quality vintage car: you buy it in order to restore it to what it was. It's completely irrational, not recommended for most people, but it can be deeply satisfying.

Is 1 Lake Street overpriced? Maybe. Cooperstown is an unusual place. Lots of multi-generational money around, a tourist destination, but not central to much of anything. You could turn the place into a B&B and probably do quite well.

@ali: There are 'things to do', but not many, and the summer crowd mostly eats out a bit (not many choices), entertains guests, golfs, and relaxes at home. For a certain type of New Yorker, this is what they want out of a second home: the ability to get out of NYC and have some down time at home with the family.

IDK. This weekend I hiked, set up the hammock, visited with friends, grilled, practiced driving on twisty mountain roads, gardened, went to the hipster coffee place, read, and then rode the blessed train back into town to work, because I truly can't imagine stringing together even two whole weeks of that. It will be better when the weather is warmer and there's more swimming and boating, but I guess I'm just not a vacation person.

ali r.

Someone bought that Cornwall-on-Hudson house with a view for under 2M. https://www.redfin.com/NY/Cornwall-On-Hudson/9-Taft-Pl-12520/home/54879335

Wonder if prices in Hudson Valley will start to come down soon, now that everyone wants to go back to the city. Does anyone have color on the market conditions in the suburbs? is it still bidding wars and houses selling within few weeks? Are prices going up or down?

don't forget the crooks added tons of money into the system

What do you think about this castle:
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/46-Ledgerock-Ln_Hyde-Park_NY_12538_M37553-43181

Ah, thanks for bringing this thread up again. I had at times wanted to remind myself of how depressing I found George’s notion of a “great house” and whether I was too harsh on it in my own mind. Now with the passage of 9 months of associated collected wisdom, I find it … depressing still.

As to your $45M place on the Hudson, I like it. Do I like it $43M more than the original place you posted? Not really. I foresee many years of chops & re-listings.

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/a-hudson-valley-riverfront-home-that-could-never-be-built-again-lists-for-45-million-11635966209

Much closer you can get a private island in an "upscale" gated community.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/20-Premium-Pt_New-Rochelle_NY_10801_M33273-11884

OMG I want the New Rochelle house!!!

Agree about the 45M castle - not sure I understand the price, given the location.

Apropos of the other thread: How much effort do you think the HOA of that 'gated community' put into making sure only the 'right' sorts of buyers passed through the gates?

I do rather like the house, though it's not quite my thing. Hate the 45m Hudson thing.

@Aaron2 what levers do they have? I thought this problem was limited to coops (+ condos if they exercise ROFR)?

Agreed - I think at best non-condo HOAs have right of first refusal, if even that.
Mostly they collect fairly small fees (compared to NYC coop/condo) to cover common landscaping & then enforce goofy lawn care / house paint / front door style rules :-) and generally have no staff.

These days, probably very few levers. When the community was set up (100 yrs ago) there may have been deed restrictions (now illegal), or simple social pressures on brokers and sellers and brokers to not show or sell to the 'wrong' people.