Real estate (3)

This (warning: eye-assaulting use of high-saturation photography, plus Sotheby's website with a bit of a mind of its own) is the height of Hollywood kitsch, except it's new—built 2012–21, some interiors still incomplete—and it's in Granite Bay, a Sacramento suburb that appears to be the equivalent of Atherton: almost entirely residential, very wealthy, and still very white. It was apparently built on spec but using European craftsmen with some mumbo jumbo about the builders' royal ancestors. Given those statements, the battlements are to laugh at. And there's such an emphasis on huge and exotic ablution facilities that I was unsure some things are, in fact, for bathing, and so many dramatic bow and bay window spaces that there don't seem to actually be any rooms, but apparently we're being teased with only seeing a tiny bit of the property. The asking price now is $7m, but it was up for auction in March, with even fewer pics, after having apparently been up for sale at $28m until January. So while I like that it's Strawberry Hill Gothic and that they have a black swan in one of the three ponds (I imagine having flatter land and more water was why they built in Sacramento rather than SoCal), I assume they're losing their shirts on the gold leaf, polished stone, and water bill.

( Potted succulents. )