They are atrocious. If I had a billion dollars, I would build something like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuschwanstein

(Actually, that is practically the perfect example of atrocious living quarters, but if you're going to do bombast, do it right.) If I had 10s of millions, I would pick up one of these, which are sometimes surprisingly cheap:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau