Tasteful Friends: 30K square feet of living space, 65 acres of land, just $5.5MM

And since you will speculate, the house is owned by a 50-something man who lives there with his (at least) second wife and her three children.

He owns what appears to have been a family business that manufactured industrial equipment that was acquired by a much larger multinational firm.

Neither spouse appears to be of any readily identifiable ethnicity

Well, the greenhouse is nice

Wouldn't the Sussex couple have been better off buying something like this? More bang for their buck.

Once I saw the double stained entry, I quit. That same entry is copied exactly in every tacky new mansion.

My eye didn't know where to land, far too much stuff. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Is this RHONJ Teresa Giudice's house?

If it's not, they used the same Italian mob-wife decorator.

More is more and too much is never enough...

*Is the realtor required to disclose the bodies buried on the property

I hope you all made it to the children's playroom photos

(this should link you directly to photo 37 and then click back to photo 36)

I think its highest and best use would be a school for the blind.

There is good hiking near that area at the Delaware Water Gap. The land the house is on is very pretty. That is my kindness of the day.

Mafioso retreat? Haven't seen such kitsch in a while. Pool is being "renovated". It could be used as a school for wayward girls.

Isn't this the in default Giudice Mcmansion?

An infinitude of money wedded to a nadir of taste.

The whole time, the phrase “baronial splendor” was running through my snickering mind.

Nothing exceeds like excess.

This house is NOT a McMansion it's a MEGA MCMANSION.

It looks like a casino. I can’t imagine living in a house with a movie theater, and a hair salon. It must be weird wandering around those empty spaces.

It looks like the set of The Sopranos.

No thanks. I'd rather have a much smaller home (though fabulous & full of wonderful features). The land is really what I'd be after.

There aren't a lot of places in Jersey that can actually be considered rural, but parts of Warren county do qualify. At this location you are still 20 miles from a train stop to take you into NY.

Bizarrely my reaction was to think of ways it could be salvaged. For example

The corinthian columns need to be replaced with Federal square or Doric columns. The portico must go. The double staircase must go. The odd stone fireplaces. The wallpaper treatments everywhere. Except why not keep the hallucinatory playroom.

The house has somewhat pleasing volumes and it's symmetrical. I like the cupola. I know the windows are sort of a disaster but I feel it the whole affair needn't be as vomit inducing as it is in the present condition.

what the hell is this?

Strangely enough this could probably go for the same price in Iowa.

I know this area of Jersey well. People are either very well off, or crushed under generations of poverty.

A wonderful representation of America-opulence and hopelessness.

The original Friday the 13th was filmed in this town, I believe. Too bad they don't have a room dedicated to THAT.

Damn, even in far Western rural “WASPy” NJ, the houses are apparently still decorated by guidos.

God gives the wrong people money

What are those things against the wall with stools next to them in the Medieval Play Room at R8?

Slot machines?

Rapa Valley

This place looks like a shitload of work.

This is Indian, dot not feather. I can smell the curry from here.

R31 did not read R1

#FAIL

It’s part cowboy fantasy, part colonial, part baronial, part cheap. The master bathroom with the four undersized, matching Walmart bath mats? The gigantic painting at the top of the right staircase? The ceramic leopard in the purple massage room? Then you have the very narrow bathroom - in a 30,000 SF home?

Feh.

The Victorian-style front doors! The oval windows give it away every time. Basic Home Depot.

Saw those everywhere in western NJ in McMansion developments. Huge lots, crazy roof lines, stone-facing on the front, vinyl siding on the back and these friggin’ doors.

As my Aunt Jenny used to say, “All their taste is in their mouths.”

Built in 2006 and decorated that same year in a quasi victorian/tuscan theme that was already a decade out of date. Kitchen and baths need to be gutted and redone. You can work with the rest once you get rid of every stitch of furniture and decor, including those awful chandeliers. It's a big property. Plenty of room to set all that junk ablaze on a bonfire.

BTW - anyone else notice the life sized statue of a nun at the top of the stairs (left)?

That was my thought R36 -- for someone who wanted a weekend country property near NYC, it's hella closer than the Hamptons, Litchfield or Hudson Valley, very pretty country and with 65 acres you would certainly have your privacy and the ability to build whatever you wanted--an outdoor pool, tennis courts, stables. greenhouse. It's near enough to places like New Hope and Lambertville that you'd have stuff to do on weekends too if you wanted to go out.

The price is low compared to what you'd pay for that much house and land elsewhere. and I suspect you can probably get it for less.

While the decor is pretty awful, it's all mostly cosmetic and would cost maybe another $200-300K to redo the kitchen and baths and redecorate.

$200k to $300k to redo kitchens and bathrooms??? Lmfao!! Have you ever renovated a house of that size?

To redo the kitchens and bathrooms and redecorate

It's a big house, but there aren't that many bathrooms.

A kitchen befitting a multimillion dollar house these days could easily run you $200k plus. And bathrooms are expensive too. Those are the things that people really look at in expensive properties.

Does it come furnished?

It's funny how many of this thread thought exactly the same as I did - Mafia interiors. Tacky Italian.

However, it's owned by Mark Malick (there's a similarly named guy who has a vineyard in Virginia). Not an Italian name, but you never know.

Interestingly, it was sold for $1 in 2005. At the height of the real estate boom, it sold for a dollar. Hmmm...was it passed down to the children or...?

I don’t care how fucking tacky a home theater is. I want one! Also, I’d spend time on edibles in the hallucinogenic playroom. And, oh, the purple room massages.

See R1 R42

Each picture is worse than the last.

"Zestimate® $802,784"

BAHAHAHAAAAA

I am trying to figure out if there is ANY way to make it presentable? Remove the fountains and the lions first, Then what? Is there any hope?

[quote]It’s part cowboy fantasy, part colonial, part baronial, part cheap. The master bathroom with the four undersized, matching Walmart bath mats? The gigantic painting at the top of the right staircase? The ceramic leopard in the purple massage room?

What would it be like to go to one of these homes? I guess you are supposed to act like it's SO FABULOUS, but it's not. It's weird. Or the homes with a bar (that's tries to be like a real bar with a bunch of tables) or a movie theater with a popcorn machine cart? When they have people over do they say, "let's go to the bar"? and then they all have to go to that bar room and act like they are having a great time (when everyone would really rather be watching tv or a movie)

It's grotesque.

I LOVE the Polar Bear!!!

Maintenance will be a breeze.

I can't see it -- I get an error message saying I need to zoom in. I zoom to no avail.

Can someone post the address, pretty please?

don't see an address, it's "max the roomba cat" on facebook but I don't use facebook.

Only four bedrooms in 30k sq ft and that pokey narrow bathroom. The pool's not done and there is so much ugliness in that house. I'm another one who wondered if the owner works in waste management.

I like the area, hate the house.

I concur with R54, first photo of house; not bad. Then I went through the entire photoset. Tacky.

[quote]Spectacular Georgian Colonial estate reminiscent of 'Gone with the Wind.'

Architectural literacy is not the strong suit of Americans. I think the architect-builder or the client may have have a vision of another if infinitely better half-baked house, Edith Wharton's 'The Mount,' of 1902 in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Squint your teary eyes at the aerial view and there's a glint of promise, maybe. A strong massing tight under a high hopped roof that recall's Wharton's exploded vision of the form and massing of a few important 18thC New England houses, but wipe the tears from your opened eyes and cry again at this pile of schlock.

That is 30K square feet of hot mess. Another Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Soprano mansion. One asks oneself why do people do this? I mean it isn't as if NJ is totally devoid of beautiful historic mansions to base a custom built home upon. That and or where are these people hiring decorators and architects? The New Jersey Bada-Bing directory?

Exterior is unfortunate but with a few changes might not be so vulgar. However the interiors would simply have to go; hold a yard sale for people from or ship things down to Manalapan, Marlboro, or some other parts of Monmouth County.

They ought to rent out that master bath suite complete with massage table to "Massagecocks.com"

R24 wasn't kidding; see link for property just down the road.....

0 baths?

R42

Property was sold in 1998 for $112k to someone, and house was built in 2006. The $1 "sale" you saw was recording of deed transfer from INDIAN VALLEY DEVELOPMENT, INC % MALICK 19 WHIPPORWILL BUDD LAKE NJ

to:

MALICK, MARK, 19 WHIPPORWILL ROAD, BUDD LAKE NJ

You will note as per record land was still classified as "vacant".

Interestingly like many other parts of this area property is classified as "farm land" not residential.

It’s a tear down. The land is beautiful

Mostly I want to hear the conversations that went down in the designing of those two playrooms.

Who had the original idea, how it was conveyed to whatever contractor built it, where the various decorative items were sourced , etc.

Ditto the tented bed in the bedroom

I suspect there are additional bathrooms that did not make it into the 57 photo gallery

Also, that pond looks really small for swimming--looks like it would be a mass of brown water and weeds

I don't understand only having four bedrooms in a 30k square foot house. There's Mom and Dad's master suite, little Ashleigh Veronique's room, little Farnsworth Jayden's room and one guest bedroom. That's it.

The main bedroom appears to balf the second floor. The big canopied bed is lost in the space, like a grain of rice in a swimming pool.

There are a whole lot of rooms we're not seeing R64 if that house really is 30K square feet or six times the average mega-McMansion

There are lots of rooms and lots of empty space. It still is only listed as a four bedroom house.

The self hating Trumptards on here just jizzed their pants over this house.

R58

Looking at that property from another listing you can see while the house is unfortunate (built in 1971 IIRC), land OTOH has much to offer.

All over north, central and south NJ you see similar one or maybe two story "shacks" that went up in 1960's or 1970's on what one guesses was either once farmland or just vacant rural.

What many of these areas didn't want then, and certainly not now is someone buying up large tracts of land for subdivisions a la Levittown..... You want to purchase acreage and put up a single family home, that would be another story.

CHRIST this is tacky. It looks like a wedding venue in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.