Congratulations! You've just purchased a $7.6 million home. So what do you do now?
If you answered "tear it down," you would be correct!
Filmmaker Tyler Perry, whose roster of hits includes “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” and “Madea’s Family Reunion,” recently bought a 32,000 square-foot megamansion in suburban Atlanta for $7.6 million.
The house, which sits on 58 acres and has its own 18-hole golf course, cost the original owners $25 million to build and $1 million a year to run. They were, at one point, hoping to sell it for $40 million. But after a whopping 17 years on the market (see, there’s hope for your home, too) they finally accepted Perry’s offer of $7.6 million.
Real-estate agents in the area said the land was worth more than the actual home.
It is a McMansion in the truest sense, not just for its size but for what the New York Times described as an “incongruity of interior styles, combining Egyptian, Renaissance, Vegas and more,” which “has been a source of amusement, if not horror, to some who have attended charity events there or seen pictures online.”
Even Joan Rivers used the house for a punchline. In an episode of “How’d You Get So Rich?” featuring the original owner, Rivers suggested that a gold sink — real gold sink— resembled “Flavor Flav’s mouth.” (Who's Flavor Flav?Click here.)
The original owner, Larry Dean, offered this explanation on the show: “I grew up in a four-room house with no indoor toilet so I guess I overcompensated.”
A photo gallery is available on the house’s Web site, http://www.deangardens.com.
A Web site for a house? Well, hey. After 17 years, I guess they had some time for marketing.
Perry has said he plans to tear down the home and build a new, more ecofriendly home made out of concrete.
Personally, if I were Perry, I’d have kept the house for a movie set, and chosen somewhere else on the 58 acres to build a new home. Can you see it? Tyler Perry’s House of Tack! Or Madea Family Reunion: The Family That Golfs Together, Stays Together!
Hey, honey? Where do you think the reunion should be this year — the Egyptian Room or the Peacock Room? Whoa, hey — don't you hit me with that golf club!
And, scene.
What do you think — should he tear it down? Use it for a movie set? Just move in and dial-down the tack? Drop a comment in the box below. Or, email ponyblog@cnbc.com.
More from the Pony Blog at ponyblog.cnbc.com.
