SELLERS: Teresa and Joe Giudice
LOCATION: Manahawkin, NJ
PRICE: $315,000
SIZE: 1,350 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: “Real Housewives of New Jersey” headliners Teresa and Joe Giudice, who will soon to be sentenced for their guilty pleas to mortgage and wire fraud, hoisted their 10,000-plus-square-foot Towaco, NJ faux-chateau up for sale last week with an asking price of $3,999,000. But, children, that’s not the only piece of their real estate portfolio they’d like to unload. They also have their rinky-dinky vacation house in Manahawkin, NJ, on the market with an asking price $315,000.
This is not the first time the Giudices have attempted to unload their shore house. It was listed from early November 2009 to late February 2010 at $375,000. Property records show they acquired the modest house in late 2005 for $347,000 and subsequently mortgaged it to the moon and back. (Per their 2011 bankruptcy filing, they secured three mortgages against the property that totaled $314,162.)
Current listing details describe the existing, 1,350-square-foot residence as a “Contemporary 5 Bedroom and 2 Bath Ranch” but, let’s be honest, children, there’s nothing contemporary or ranch about this outlandishly embellished home of prodigiously ambiguous architectural style. The existing dwelling, four miles from the beach in the Beach Haven West area, was originally built in 1970s and was last renovated by the Giudices after Hurricane Sandy mercilessly ripped through the area in 2012.
The almost complete lack of landscaping in the front of the house conveniently makes for minimal upkeep expenses and lots of additional off-street parking. Listing photos show the Giudices keep their boat trailer in the front yard but before any of y’all get too cranky about that know the lots in Beach Haven West are minuscule and the Guidices’ are hardly the only people on the block park their boats and trailers in their front yards. It’s really sort of local custom.
The small house has a wee but proper front hall that opens into a open-plan main living/dining/kitchen area with the exact sort of depressingly ubiquitous if admittedly very practical mottled beige ceramic floor tile one can reasonably expect will always be on discount at their local home improvement superstore. There’s a vaulted ceiling over the dining area — Did the children spot the ever-so-practical clear plastic tablecloth? — and the itty-bitty but sufficiently functional kitchen looks recently if inexpensively refreshed with white Shaker style cabinetry and simple, budget-minded appliances.
As with the front yard, the Giudices also opted for a low- to no-maintenance backyard scheme so they covered it entirely with concrete pretty ineffectively stamped to look like cobblestones or something. Inset red bricks make a kooky grid pattern that further vexes Your Mama such that we need a nerve pill. Not surprisingly, there’s a tiki hut bar and a patio dining table underneath the metal framework of a semi-permanent cabana structure. (Presumably the cabana covering was removed for the season but anyways…) The concrete switches to decking along the 50 feet of vinyl bulk headed canal frontage that has a dock for swimming and watercraft parking.
The Giudice’s, bless their fandangle-loving hearts, really went to town with outré embellishments on the rear façade. Besides all the whackadoodle stone tiles that ring every window and door — and only serve to highlight all the equilibrium upsetting roof angles — Your Mama spotted a number of silhouetted shapes that include a couple of birds in flight, a dolphin, an anchor and a cross. Have mercy! Children, is it really necessary for Your Mama to make a rule about this sort of thing? It really should be self-evident but let Rule #197 read, “No person who purports to have a smidgen of style and/or decorative taste will affix cutesy appliqués or other beach-themed chingaderos to the exterior (or interior) of their home, even and especially if it’s a vacation home near the beach.” Okay? Okay.
As far as Your Mama can tell, in addition to their liberally gilded and marble lined faux-chateau in Towaco and their much less gilded or marbled house in Manahawkin, the Giudices still own a small cottage in Lincoln Park, NJ bought in October 2005 for $170,000 and — as per our research — mortgaged to the hilt including a couple of loans from a man who, coincidentally enough, pled guilty to mortgage and wire fraud himself in 2009.
Listing photos: Century 21 Pacesetter
