Estate perched on a Hawaiian cliff gives new meaning to 'over the top'
Scott Watson wakes up to a sharp crack. Gunfire?
He peers out into the inky night, moonlight glinting on the sea. Not to worry: It's only a whale breaching just outside his window. It's like a "shotgun going off when they hit the water -- the blubber," he said.
It happens a lot where he lives.
Watson, a developer in Hawaii, built the 10,000-square-foot Waterfalling estate, perched on a cliff on the Big Island's Hamakua Coast, over the course of four years. Well, make that seven years, start to finish; four years were spent on the main structure alone.
The home has a high-dive platform, a two-story water slide, a three-chopper helipad, a space-age vacuum-tube elevator lined in Louis Vuitton leather, a nine-tee golf course, a 450-seat tennis stadium -- oh, and of course you can whale-watch from the bedroom. (Click here or on a photo to go to a slideshow with photos of the home, including a few before-and-after pictures.)
He wrapped up the project in 2012 and has been living there for about a year and a half now. He likes to do that: test-drive the homes he builds, "make sure everything is just so." It is, which is why it's heading to auction this weekend. He originally listed it for $26.5 million, but it hasn't sold at that price, so now he's offering it to the highest bidder -- a risky strategy, maybe, but the team says many people have expressed interest and "the house speaks for itself."
Truth be told, he'd love to do even more to the property. It has enough land -- about 10 acres -- to build out a second house just like the first and make a "super trophy home for a Donald Trump or a Larry Ellison or Oprah," he says.
He's so confident he issues an open invitation: "I dare any one of those guys" to visit the property. "I'd put this house up against any house anywhere in the world." It's such a fantastic property that Trump could buy it, slap a giant T on the helipad, and turn around and sell it the next day for twice as much as Watson can get for it, Watson says.
The property will go to the highest bidder Saturday, March 22. Registration is open through Concierge Auctions until Friday, but bidders are eligible for early incentives if they register by Wednesday.
Are you listening, Donald Trump? Larry Ellison? Oprah Winfrey?
Also from Yahoo Homes:
• Rupert Murdoch's new penthouse has jaw-dropping views
• Dick Clark's Flintstones-style Malibu estate is back on the market
• Paradise for sale -- bring your best offer
