How I wish I could win lotto this week!

My neighbour is selling his castle. It sits on 10 acres. He hand built it. It contains lots of wood carvings he did himself. I will be going to the open house tomorrow but in the mean time - here are the real estate photos.

Ohhhhh.....my....(words fail me)

Ummm....Idril, exactly what kind of neighborhood do you live in??!
(Obviously there is no HOA)

That aside, I wish I had won the Lotto or Mega-Millions.
What a perfect home to display a collection like N2D's or Val's!

Oh, we wants it, precious!..yes, indeed, we do!

[quote=""Deimos""]

Ummm....Idril, exactly what kind of neighborhood do you live in??!
(Obviously there is no HOA)
[/quote]

. I don't really know what you mean by HOA but here is the background story

I live in a normal house in a normal suburb but 10 years ago is was bush, or forest as you may call it. When the owner sold it to a developer, he subdivided it and sold it off as house blocks. This castle's 10 acres wasn't part of the land the developer bought and sits on the ridge of a hill with what would have been the best views and therefore the most e xp ensive blocks for the developer to be able to make money on. The developer tried everything to get him to sell. Even reporting that the construction was unsafe to the authorities. They inspected it and reported a hurricane wouldn't bring it down. For years the owner used to sit at night and whittle to create gargoyles, elves etc to decorate the castle. I hope to get some photos of that tomorrow.

Interesting local history, Idril. Thank you .
The owner is a pretty talented (and patient) woodcarver.
I do like hearing about frustrated developers too.

HOA stands for Home Owners Association
They may not exist outside the US, or if they do, they may be called something else.
An HOA consists of about a dozen or so [elected or volunteer] home-owners in a neighborhood who don't have anything better to do than "police" the neighborhood for things like parking your car on the street rather than in the driveway, having your grass too long, not having the "right" color curtains on windows visible from the street, leaving your trash can on the curb too long after trash collection.

In theory, they ensure the homes in the neighborhood are kept up so as not to cause overall property values to fall.
In reality they are a bunch of short-sighted, unimaginative busybodies.

They especially don't like people who build or add on "unusual" structures onto their homes.
They would have taken legal action against the owner of the castle to prevent him from even starting to build it.
Which is why I said that your neighborhood must not have an HOA.

I deliberately bought a house where there is no HOA because I intend to put 3 foot high gargoyles on either side of my driveway.

Sigh...if only...
Absolutely gorgeous!

Now that is something I wish I could live in! My collection would look GREAT in there!

That is one of the most beautiful newly built homes I've seen! I'd take that over just about anything that wasn't an actual castle or manor. Well, contigent upon what the rest of it looks like. but regardless, that's really sweet.

This is a lot more than just beautiful,this is stunning to live in with the biggest collection and be happy for the rest of your life.

If only the damn money wasn't such a big problem.

My first question is: Why is he selling?
A house like this doesn't get done part time, so I assume he is older/retired, or as we can see, very well to do financially independent.

It is a work of art, and definitely a collectors dream.

Sorry, saving up for my scaled down Minas Tirith in New Zealand