Hamilton Hall is just one of the luxurious estate manors built by The Gage Organization in its Estates at Valhalla community in Morris County, N.J. Each home is fully furnished and decorated, with no expense spared.

By choosing design and furnishings that will never go out of style, The Gage Organization creates true investment homes for anywhere from $3 to $5 million.

On average, roughly half a million dollars is spent on furnishings for a home in the Estates at Valhalla in New Jersey. After seeing the interiors of too many homes remain unfinished for too long, The Gage Organization decided to finish everything for homeowners who most likely won’t make time to do it themselves.

Larry Gage works only with a handful of architects and doesn’t sell off his lots, to maintain control of the look and feel of each estate in the community. Here, the Chateau Margaux sits within a forest that surrounds the community.

Kitchens in the Estates at Valhalla are designed to be big and beautiful. Each home has 10-ft. ceilings on the main level, with 9-ft. ceilings on the second level.

It takes between a year and a half and two years to complete the spec homes built by The Gage Organization. The goal for these trophy homes is to provide instant living for CEOs, entrepreneurs and professional athletes.

The planets had aligned; he had the money, the land was beautiful, it was large enough for almost 30 homes, and he could afford to let it sit for 10 or 15 years. So Larry Gage seized the opportunity, bought the land and 25 years later is building the 12th home in the community known as The Estates at Valhalla, which sits in a canyon surrounded by a forest in Morris County, N.J.

Larry Gage, owner of The Gage Organization, is building luxurious spec homes on 3- to 4-acre lots, and selling them for between $3.5 and $5 million. But these are no ordinary spec homes. Each estate is custom designed and fully furnished with half a million dollars in bedding, furniture, artwork, decorations and hundreds of other details that make a house a home.
“I’ve owned this land since 1985. I put developing it on hold until the timing was right,” Gage says. “There has been quite a lot of expense in site improvements, walls, excavations. We had to make sure we would be able to get my money out of the land and be able to build high-quality houses on it, too.”

The land is approved for 27 homes and to date Gage has completed 11 of them. The homes range in size from 9,000 to 14,000 sq. ft. Two new homes are under construction, and another is on the market.

Taking a year and a half to two years to build, creating the Estates at Valhalla would not be profitable if Larry Gage didn’t own the land 25 years ago. “I couldn’t have done this,” he says. “There is no one who is putting the outlay into projects like we are. We don’t use mortgages; it’s all my own money to build these homes. A lot of builders want to turn money over more quickly. For me it’s more of a hobby.”