And yet, even at 2005 prices, it remains the Phemisters’ castle. 
 
 “We love living here,” Ms. Phemister said. “It’s just that it’s someone else’s turn to live in a castle.” 
 
 In many ways there is nothing different about the Phemisters’ experience from what has happened to millions of other middle-aged Americans who benefited from a generation of upwardly trending real estate prices only to wake one morning, and, in an awful moment of truth, realize that they had pushed their luck once too often. 
 
 But the fact that it is a castle, rather than, say, a high ranch, is a reminder of how big Americans allowed themselves to dream during the boom times and how long the consequences have lingered. 
 
 For the record, the castle is the Amsterdam Armory, built in 1894 by the state for military training, though no one around here calls it anything but the castle, nor would any real estate broker hoping for a 6 percent commission ever say, “A man’s home is his National Guard armory.” 
 
 From the beginning, the Phemisters understood that flipping a castle would require an elaborate plan. 
 
 She took a corporate job that would assure benefits and a guaranteed income (a vice president for Thomson Reuters). 
 
 Mr. Phemister, 55, has his own business — CD music distribution — which allows him to work out of the castle while anchoring life for their three children, now ages 12, 11 and 9. 
 
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 “Our whole life is a cost-benefit analysis,” said Ms. Phemister, who is 47. 
 
 On Mondays, she is often out of bed before 4 a.m. to drive the 30 minutes from here to Albany. Then she rides the train two and a half hours south to Pennsylvania Station, so she can be at her desk by 7:30. She spends three days in New York, renting rooms in people’s homes for $50 a night. Wednesdays, she is on the 4:40 p.m. back to Albany and for the rest of the week works from the castle. “I love that I can be up at 6 a.m., walking the dog around the castle and answering messages on my phone,” she said. 
 
 Mr. Phemister has 100,000 CDs taking up thousands of square feet of the castle basement. (It would not be fair to say “dungeon,” since there are lots of windows and the Phemisters do not torture anyone, except, given their long days, themselves). 
 
 It wasn’t just the real estate collapse that made castle life so exhausting. 
 
 As the music industry shifted from CDs to online downloads, Mr. Phemister’s business shrank by half. 
 
 To make up the income, they rented out the castle to TV crews (HGTV’s “You Live in What?”) and filmmakers. For the movie “American General,” a documentary about Benedict Arnold, the director used the castle’s 10,000-square-foot gymnasium to restage the Battles of Saratoga. 
 
 But that income was not dependable, so a few years ago they started a bed-and-breakfast, which, they say, brings in $60,000 a year. The only problem is that to maximize revenue, it is run entirely by Mr. and Mrs. Phemister, neither of whom truly needs another job. 
 
 Indeed, Mr. Phemister already has another job, coaching youth soccer. 
 
 So instead of the castle working for the Phemisters, the Phemisters are working for the castle. 
 
 Last year the castle was one of eight buildings — including the TWA terminal at Kennedy Airport — to win an excellence award from the Preservation League of New York State. 
 
 There have been several potential buyers, including a man who was looking for a good place to store his taxidermy collection; a medieval re-enactment group; and a software executive interested in using it as a country retreat and data center. 
 
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 A man who owns a military museum and antiques store spent four days visiting but ultimately decided against it because his wife did not want to leave California. 
 
 When Ms. Phemister talks to people about the joys of castle life, they often roll their eyes and say, “Sure it’s great to live in a castle, but what about the heating bills?” Not as bad as they might be. By setting up a zone heating system, they were able to hold the 2012 utility bills — electric, gas, oil and water — to $13,076.25, though on the coldest winter days, everyone wears a hoodie and loads up on hot cocoa. 
 
 Taxes last year were $17,532.87, about half of what homeowners in the wealthiest suburbs of Westchester County pay for noncastle residences. 
 
 In the end, people can find a million reasons not to buy a castle: Some have complained that there is not enough parking, others would prefer a castle that is deep in the woods. The fact is, the only reason to buy a castle is that you have a terrible yearning to live in a castle. “It’s the supercool factor,” Ms. Phemister said. 
 
 The Phemister children are too young to remember Brooklyn, so castle life seems normal to them. They have friends over for dodge ball tournaments in the gym, sleepovers in the turrets, hide-and-seek in dimly lighted passageways. 
 
 They are known around town as the castle children, which is mostly — but not totally — a good thing. “Sometimes,” says Vivienne, who is in the sixth grade, “people just want to be my friend because I live in a castle.” ||||| Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE Entrepreneur and coder Scott Jones opens his Carmel home up to Airbnb. Take a video tour. (August 2017) Mykal McEldowney/IndyStar 
 
 Buy Photo The home of Scott Jones, now on the market for $4,995,000. (Photo: Mykal McEldowney/IndyStar)Buy Photo 
 
 Scott Jones is simplifying. 
 
 The tech maven with the big house on 116th Street — the one with the indoor tree house, the 25-foot saltwater aquarium, the spiral slide made of the finest mahogany — is selling his stuff. 
 
 Jones has been living mostly in Hawaii for the past two years and has decided that the Carmel house's furnishings must go, all of them. 
 
 This would include his Tyrannosaurus rex skull replica, for which he'll take $10,000, and his Steinway grand piano, $100,000. The sale runs Sept. 14-17, at the house, 1150 W. 116th St. 
 
 It's not an auction; it's a sale. People can walk through the house and check out the merchandise as if the house were a store. 
 
 "Everything will be bar coded," said Lee Parson of Fishers-based Aether Estate Sales Co., who's managing the sale. 
 
 Jones' house — seven bedrooms, 14 bathrooms, 24,000 square feet — is for sale, too. The asking price is $4,995,000. 
 
 You don't have to be Steinway-rich to file through the house next month and acquire a piece of Jones' legacy. Parson said everyday household items will be sold alongside the good stuff, including "half-opened bottles of Windex that'll be 50 cents." 
 
 Jones, 56, has a second home in Honolulu, and a couple years ago, he began spending most of his time there. He kept his Carmel house occupied by running a computer coding school out of the great room and the theater and renting bedrooms on Airbnb. 
 
 ► More on rich people liquidating: The job once fell to Earl Cornwell 
 
 ► More: The dispersal of the vast (and often untouched) treasures of Nancy Irsay 
 
 He moved to Indianapolis as a teenager and graduated from North Central High School and later Indiana University. At 25, while living in Boston, he invented the technology that made voicemail practical. He sold it for $50 million then started several other businesses. 
 
 Jones returned to his hometown in the 1990s and, as a 30-something multimillionaire tech titan, quickly became a major player. He was one of the key voices lobbying for Indiana's move to daylight-saving time, a surprisingly hotly contested transition that he and other business leaders considered critical to aligning Indiana with business interests on the coasts. 
 
 He gave money away, most notably $3 million to The Children's Museum for its "Dinosphere," a dinosaur exhibit. 
 
 Along the way, Jones collected a wide variety of stuff from all over the world: antiques, artwork, a suit of armor, a model of the sailing ship that's the size of a fourth-grader, and a telescope so huge that it takes three people to move. 
 
 Parson predicted dispensing it would be "the best estate sale ever held in Indiana." 
 
 "Everything must go," said Jones' publicist, John Ross. "This will be a nice opportunity for people to see how the other half lives." 
 
 Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE Have you ever wanted to peek inside the Carmel, Ind., mansion of tech guru Scott Jones? Now you can — and you might be able to walk away with a memento, too. Jones is selling all of his possessions from the Hamilton County home. Dwight Adams/IndyStar 
 
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 Contact Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter @WillRHiggins. 
 
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– You don't even need a cool million to purchase a 36,000-square-foot castle in Upstate New York. Just $895,000 will do. The New York Times today takes a look at this most unusual piece of real estate—and the unusual consequences of a common problem: homes that buyers intended to flip and, more than five years later, still find themselves stuck with. Susan and Manfred Phemister had done a few flips before buying the Albany-area castle (in truth it's the 119-year-old Amsterdam Armory, though it does have two turrets) for $800,000 in 2005. Their plan: Sink $400,000 into renovations and list it for $2 million in 2007. "Then we'd sell and make the extra million we’d need to buy a brownstone," says Susan. You can predict where the story goes from here: The home has been relisted a handful of times, with the price sinking ever lower. Now, just $24-a-square-foot will get you, per Sotheby's, a massive gymnasium, two kitchens, and staff quarters. The Times looks into how the Phemisters are managing in the meantime: A second downturn, in the music industry, hurt Manfred's CD music distribution business; to keep their income up they've rented the castle to TV and film crews and now operate a bed-and-breakfast out of it. That helped to pay the not-insignificant $13,076 utility bill last year. And for now, they'll keep paying it. "We love living here," says Susan. "It’s just that it’s someone else’s turn to live in a castle."