They’re surreal estate listings.
Zillow Gone Wild, which has amassed some 530,000 followers since its late December launch, aggregates a mix of over-the-top homes sourced from listings giant Zillow to showcase some of the nation’s most bonkers dwellings. A quick scroll through its feed shows a quaint Vermont cottage with a jail, an Oregon residence with a built-in trampoline room and even a Florida home that’s inexplicably engulfed in flames.
Great Neck, LI, resident Samir Mezrahi, 38, who also runs the buzzy KaleSalad Instagram and Twitter accounts, told The Post he browses Zillow for fun to find the most “crazy” and “interesting” spreads.
“I had a feeling there’d be interest because a lot of people like to browse Zillow,” said Mezrahi, who now receives upwards of 100 submission a day from fans. “[But] I didn’t think it would be this well received.”
Recently, he tracked down a lavish Minnesota home modeled off the Alhambra in Spain, a California pad seemingly inspired by the Flintstones’ house and a Montana mansion with its own two-lane bowling alley.
Mezrahi said the account isn’t meant to mock the listings. Instead, he aims to celebrate unique approaches to home design.
“People [love to] have fun with their homes,” he said.
Here’s a look at three tristate-area listings that went viral on the account.
Retro active
This 33-acre spread at 32 Watch Way in Lloyd Harbor, Long Island, now asking $12.7 million, includes more than 700 feet of private shoreline along the Long Island Sound — but the splashy perks also extend indoors. Right in between the formal dining room and the living room, there’s an additional entertaining space: a nearly 6-foot-deep pool, surrounded by multiple fake palm trees, with a wraparound bench for underwater seating.
“Outside it’s New York, inside it’s Florida,” wrote one commenter on its Instagram post, which earned roughly 18,700 likes.
The indoor pool is part of the midcentury-modern home’s original design, which was masterminded by architect Edward Durell Stone, who was known for his work on Radio City Music Hall and the Waldorf-Astoria. Known as Villa Riele, it’s just one of the two residential projects he completed.
The owner, socialite Gabriele Lagerwall, otherwise known as Baroness W. Langer von Langendorff, used the pool to relax with guests.
“It was just a little place to cool off,” said John Pierre Morales, of Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty, who shares the listing with Lowell Ackerman.
Lagerwall has owned the estate since the 1960s, when she bought it from Robert and Gilbert Colgate — descendants of Colgate-Palmolive founder William Colgate. This listing includes four already subdivided lots, four bedrooms, five full bathrooms and floor-to-ceiling windows. But it’s the pool that’s earned the most attention online.
“Honestly, this would have been a dream during quarantine,” wrote another commenter.
Mushroom proud
Is it a yurt? Is it Luke Skywalker’s home on Tatooine?
No, it’s a dwelling whose exterior shape is inspired by a mushroom — and commenters on its Instagram post, which got roughly 17,500 likes, largely favored its unusual design.
“Wait I love it,” wrote one. “I actually love this,” chimed another.
The 1,363-square-foot home at 2219 Longwood Drive in Forked River, New Jersey, which has an accepted offer after asking $295,000, has a dome shape that, inside, makes for sloping walls and ceilings that are lined with wood.
“Escape from the ordinary,” said the listing, which is marketed by Jeffrey Connell of Coldwell Banker Riviera Realty, Inc. Features include two bedrooms, one bathroom, two decks outside and a detached two-car garage — the latter of which is not mushroom-shaped.
Meanwhile, snippier critics pointed out that they’d seen more likely mushrooms.
“Looks like an overgrown pizza oven,” one Instagram user quipped.
Musical airs
This 10,500-square-foot Westchester County home at 55 Penwood Road has it all, including a fully equipped gym and a home theater. But its most over-the-top amenity is a 90-foot-long violin-shaped pool.
“They weren’t fiddling around were they?” wrote one commenter on this home’s Instagram post, which netted more than 21,500 likes. “It’s nice when the ‘surprise’ isn’t a basement prison,” wrote another.
The music-inspired retreat reportedly cost some $1 million to build. It’s lined with about 500,000 glass tiles with fiber-optic strands that light up to show the instrument’s strings. A semi-circular spa is designed to be the violin’s chin rest, while two perpendicular koi ponds that run on either end of the finger board together show the violin’s bow.
Former Wall Streeter Jay Dweck bought this spread for $4.8 million in 2012. It’s now listed for $8.5 million with Brian Milton of Compass. And in September, reports emerged that Mariah Carey rented this home beginning in March for quarantining purposes, and for an unknown sum.
This is what you build “when your wife cheats on you with the dude with the Mickey Mouse pool and you try to upstage him,” joked a Zillow Gone Wild fan.
