This is, of course, a hypothetical. If I won a huge lottery jackpot, I'd of course want to live in Austin, and be close to things. I'd probably start off in a highrise condo (downtown) and get another degree from UT! But then, I'd want the space of a house - but a bad-*** house. Have a music room, indoor pool, huge game room, etc. Not a McMansion, an actual mansion. I'd just prefer to live in the city, not the outskirts. (Not that any of this will happen anyway).
There's a neighborhood just south of 24th st and west of Lamar, that has fairly big lots. I'm sure you could find a place there, or, if you wanted, tear down whatever is on the lot and build your new mansion. Ideally, you would want to buy the Pease Mansion, and use it's property since it's basically on an entire block, but I think it's a historical landmark and thus you'd be unable to tear it down. edit: It's on 3.8 acres, and the current house is just over 10,000 sqft. Again though you'd have trouble adding the music room and whatnot I'm guessing... The Link
10,000 sf is 0.4X of 25,000 sf, which is 0.57 of an acre. In the past, there have been several acre-plus lots hit the market on Balcones just north of 35th Street. I don't know if any remain. You could be neighbors with Mack Brown.
i think mack moved out to the mount bonnell area, but his previous house is in a great neighborhood. several of those homes appear to be 7k-10k sq ft.
The freak around the corner from me is slowly buying up his entire block and annexing the existing homes into one big structure. So it's doable in central Austin. You just have to tear down one house at a time so your neighbors don't catch one to what you're doing until it's too late.
Well, you also have to hope that the Count from Sesame Street does not live on your street. That guy would be counting your purchased homes everyday and you can bet he would notice if one were missing or torn down immediately. He is an obsessive freak that way.
There are plenty of big *** mansion type homes up there behind Rollingwood. I was shocked in disbelief the first time i went driving in there with a Rollingwoodian. (I forget what that area is called) There are also giant homes just off SW Pkwy next to Travis Country (Regents). Not sure if that's close enough for you, but I'd consider both of those areas close enough. I mean, do you really want to have the riff raff driving by and taking pictures all day long? When's the housewarming party?
Ah, no problem. I was thinking 3 acres easy. Gotta' have yard! Beautifully landscaped yard. With a carp pond.
I think you're looking at the elementary school. It's not the right address, but look at 3264 Churchill Dr. on Google Maps street view: Link The big blue structure on the left was a cute house he refurbished with metal and attached to his original house, supposedly to house his motorcycle collection and for a playroom upstairs for the kids. To the right is now a large red metal garage-looking thing, also attached to his original house. He also has an industrial size electric meter in his front yard.
there's a house on Matthews, Scenic Dr is behind it. 4 stories, walkway across Scenic to a boat house w/ helipad. Boathouse has got to be about 2k sq ft. House has to be close to your 10k requested.