By Will Higgins

will.higgins@indystar.com

The Jerry Hostetler house is again for sale, and its price has been slashed nearly in half.

The house, at 4923 Kessler Boulevard East Drive, is one of the city's more storied structures, and hands down the gaudiest with its statues, its balconies, its fish bowl-ish fenestration. It sprang from the imagination of the inimitable Jerry A. Hostetler, who at the tender age of 24 may well have been Indianapolis' top pimp. Later he went into the construction business. He died in 2006.

The house is owned by Chad Folkening, a Florida businessman. In June 2012 Folkening put the house on the market for $2.2 million. Today, working with a different Realtor, he asks $1,295,000.

"I came in with that number based on trying to stir up some activity," said Brian Sanders, who listed the property two weeks ago.

The house is actually five garden-variety ranch houses cobbled together to form a 20,000-plus-square-foot campus-o-fun complete with swimming pool, ballroom, guesthouse, even a grotto, with hot tub.

Sanders has been in real estate for 17 years and has sold some big houses. Never has he represented such a property as this, he said. But who has? Unique is an overused word, but in Indianapolis the Hostetler house truly does seem to stand alone (as did Hostetler).

Sanders, wary of merely curious tire-kickers, does not plan to have an open house, and his online listing seeks inquiries from "serious buyers only."

The ideal customer, he said, would be someone, "probably a business owner, looking for something unique, for entertaining on the personal and corporate side, someone who has guests for long periods of time.

"Obviously, it will take someone with a little personality who's not afraid to be a little bit bold in their taste."

>> At his death, 'Mr. Big' left northside home in shambles.

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Contact Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter @WillRHiggins.