Is This the “Greatest Real Estate Listing in Human History”?

While no one will ever accuse Twitter of being a social media channel governed by restraint, an ongoing threat is creating a great deal of response and retweeting by claiming the listing of an Indianapolis mansion represents a new milestone in American housing.

 

According to an IndyStar report, Duke University professor and Indianapolis native Gabriel Rosenberg has dubbed the $1.75 million listing of a mansion in his hometown as “the greatest real estate listing in human history.” The property, which has been listed since 2012, has a somewhat notorious history—its previous owner was a pimp who later went into the construction business—but its bizarre interior and exterior designs became something of a local legend. The 29,500-square-foot property has 11 bedrooms, seven full baths, 15 statues of dolphins, life-size statues of gorillas, and an exuberantly tacky décor that was described by Huffington Post as “Midwestern Vegas Versailles.”

 

"I saw it posted on Facebook in the afternoon and couldn't get it out of my head," Rosenberg said IndyStar. "I thought about it for about an hour while I was swimming laps Friday evening, and then rattled off the actual thread pretty quickly while I was eating dinner afterwards."

 

Rosenberg’s first tweet on this property has been retweeted more than 1,400 times. Rosenberg has entertained his Twitter followers with flippant humor on the property’s excesses, noting at one point, “What's the underlying logic of this staging? Did the stager have only a vague understanding how humans use domestic space? Were they trying to attract a weird sex cult to be the purchaser? What's going on here?”

 

Oddly, the oversized and overstuffed property began its life as a modest ranch house. But no evidence of its humble roots survive.

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