Great Estate: Most Expensive Home in Texas Is Pure Splendor for $65M

The most expensive home in Texas is listed for $65 million.

The 22,000-square-foot Houston mansion, dubbed The Lodge at Hunters Creek, was completed in 2005 after several years of construction.

“If you couple the setting with the structure, you have something that is so unique, it cannot be replicated,” says listing agent Billy Dolan, with Dave Perry-Miller – Preston Center.

“To find a residential piece of land with nine acres in that location in Houston is near impossible,” Dolan explains. “It’s surrounded by a bayou, so it has water features and views. It has views of the downtown skyline and is within minutes to downtown Houston. When you’re there, you feel like you’re in the country but in a prime residential location.”

The main house sits behind guarded gates and has six bedrooms and eight bathrooms. Dolan says everything inside and out is of the highest quality.

“The house is magnificent,” he raves. “It’s not something that you can explain until you walk in and feel the quality. There’s mahogany everywhere you look throughout the house. What was spent to build that house was incredible.”

He says he has an idea of what it cost but wouldn’t elaborate.

The limestone for the steel-framed exterior’s cladding and the interior floors came from the same Indiana quarry that provided the stone for the Pentagon and other high-profile projects.

A 3,500-square-foot, two-bedroom guest lodge has its own pool and is situated down a tree-lined, gravel road, close to the main home. It was on the property when owner Colleen Romanov bought it. Romanov’s ex-husband is tech entrepreneur, Michael Holthouse.

“It was a hunting lodge originally,” Dolan says. “My client rebuilt it, renovated it, and lived [in] it while she built the main home. When you’re looking outside of the bedroom windows, you have this flowing bayou river water feature around you. You can hear a pin drop. It’s like being in nature, it’s very peaceful. It would be hard to get any guests to leave.”

Actress Shirley MacLaine reportedly stayed in that structure while filming parts of the 1983 movie, “Terms of Endearment.”

The property also has five showcase auto garages, two pools, a glass elevator, an outdoor kitchen, and plenty of space for entertaining.

The price on the estate actually increased by $5 million when it officially hit the market, after another agreement expired. The price hike leap-frogged the home beyond the $60 million Dallas estate that had claimed the most expensive home title for the state just last month.

“The owner of the property was not fully in agreement with what they were offering it for at the time,” Dolan explains. “She’s done a lot of research and looking around and feels very strongly about the value.”

The one-of-a-kind residence is difficult to price, as there’s nothing exactly like it.

“You really have to go with the approach of replication and the cost approach to appraising,” Dolan notes. “The truth of the matter is you probably couldn’t [build] it again. It’s that special. If you look at the cost per acre, site development cost, the cost of construction, and you pull all that together, we arrive at a value. The buyer we’re looking for knows what’s there and can understand and appreciate it.”

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