Deciding If Mansion Fits in Your Life

It was a marvelous place in Anaheim Hills--what realty people call a “Fantasyland home.”

Built into the side of a steep hill, this towering Mediterranean-style house featured two large master suites--plus four other bedrooms and a game room with a pool table. At the top of a spiral staircase above the second floor was a rooftop terrace perfect for sun bathers and stargazers.

But just three years after the stockbroker and his wife, a preschool teacher, ordered construction of their ultimate dream house, they decided to sell the 5,300-square-foot property.

Why? Not because they couldn’t make the mortgage payments with ease. Rather, it was because keeping up the property proved too demanding--even with the help they hired.

More to the point, the couple’s new goal was to travel abroad extensively. The idea of owning the ultimate trophy home had lost its glitter for the pair, who decided to move to a 3,100-square-foot property in Yorba Linda.

“Their attitude was ‘Been there, done that,’ ” said Pam Minier, the Prudential California Realty agent who sold the Anaheim Hills home for the couple.

While most yearn for larger quarters, some affluent individuals have decided that having a huge house--with 4,000 square feet or more--is not always the best choice.

“Once you achieve your goals, sometimes they change. I meet very wealthy people living in small houses,” said Minier, who has been in real estate for 14 years.

Indeed, in their book “The Millionaire Next Door” (Longstreet Press, 1996) co-authors Thomas Stanley and William D. Danko wrote that the remarkable truth about many of the very rich is how modestly they live.

In their research, the authors discovered that many millionaires are frugal souls who would rather invest surplus funds in stocks and bonds than monumental housing or country club memberships.

For others who are somewhat less wealthy, the purchase of a Herculean-sized home is a financial trade-off they choose not to make--when compared to different yet still costly goals.

“Everybody has something they have always wanted to do. If it’s not to buy a big house, maybe it’s to get a Porsche, go to Antarctica, or take the summer off and roam through Europe,” said Minier, of Prudential’s Anaheim Hills office.

Then, too, there are other categories of affluent people who put intangible expenditures ahead of tangible ones, said Scott Wood Blagman, who sells homes Through Re/Max Beach Cities Realty in Santa Monica.

Some homeowners with healthy incomes would rather spend their discretionary cash paying for the private-school tuition for their offspring. Maybe they’d rather “buy” more time with their children by deciding that one of the parents should forgo a professional salary and stay home. Or perhaps they want the freedom to travel without having to cover the cost of gardeners and cleaning services.

Even so, many wealthy people still consider a gigantic home to be the fair reward they seek for their success, said Blagman. “Most Americans have an appetite for more space--not less,” he said.

Are you in the economic stratosphere but wonder whether an enormous house is worth the trade-offs? Then these four suggestions could prove of value.

* No. 1: Consider your lifestyle preferences as a totality.

Faith Popcorn, who heads Brain Reserve, an organization that tracks consumer trends for major corporations, says more Americans are coming to view the world as a forbidding place and therefore seek retreat in their homes.

The “cocooning” trend, which Popcorn first identified in the 1980s, is advancing with the aging of the U.S. population, she believes. A larger segment of the country is now focusing life around their homes and seek properties that provide both safety and luxury.

If you love entertaining, relish family gatherings, are a collector or have hobbies that require extra rooms then owning an oversized space may be just what you need for domestic bliss--presuming the size of your payments doesn’t keep you up at night.

Among Blagman’s clients are prosperous people who have deliberately purchased gargantuan homes with extra bedrooms--not for sleeping, but for their collections.

One client has a room dedicated solely to his electric train collection; another uses a bedroom to store works of art--including an original Picasso. Still others have “junk rooms,” where they can stash miscellaneous accumulations that seem to fit nowhere else.

Nevertheless, if you’re part of a dual income couple of workaholics who has little time for hobbies and no live-at-home children, then owning a huge house could be the equivalent of buying a museum that’s rarely visited, Blagman pointed out.

* No. 2: Factor in the home’s floor plan as well as its size.

Do you love to be surrounded by family members--without feeling crowded? Then a home that clusters together a large kitchen, family room and living room could be just what you’re seeking, Blagman said. Indeed, a mid-size home with such a configuration could be a better choice for you than a large one with a poor floor plan where family members inhabit widely separated spaces.

“Some houses just ramble. They go on and on and on with no purpose. You can rattle around in them and not see your mate,” Blagman said.

* No. 3: Consider all the true costs associated with a huge house.

Some people stretch for their trophy home and achieve it--only to discover that it’s more expensive to keep up than they first imagined. That’s because huge houses usually bring with them large utility, tax and maintenance bills.

Suppose you buy an oversized home with an exterior of stucco or wood that needs painting every few years. Then watch out for your painters’ bill, Minier said.

“People don’t realize that it can cost $10,000 just to paint a big house,” she said.

* No. 4: Don’t buy a home so expensive it makes you crazy or a work slave.

Blagman said he once sold a mansion to an entertainer who was driven to distraction by the lavish lifestyle he had created for himself. To meet his payments, the star had to work under such pressure “he was just jumping out of his skin,” Blagman said.

Eventually, the entertainer reordered his priorities, cut out some of his high-pressure work and moved from his 6,000-square-foot mansion to a home about half the size in a less prestigious area. And was a much sunnier person in his smaller abode, as Blagman remembered.

The moral of the story?

“A big house ain’t a home unless you’re happy there,” he said.

Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.

‘Everybody has something they have always wanted to do. If it’s not to buy a big house, maybe it’s to get a Porsche, go to Antarctica or take the summer off.’