Billy Joel selling Long Island mansion because the real estate taxes are “a lot”

Billy Joel‘s Long Island mansion, nicknamed MiddleSea, is on the market for just under $50 million. But one reason why the Piano Man says he’s unloading the 26-acre property is because he feels the real estate taxes are just too high.

While Billy is a millionaire many, many times over, he tells the New York Times that the yearly tax bill — $567,686 — is too much for him to swallow. “It’s not cheap, let’s put it that way,” he said. “As successful, I’ve been financially, yeah, that’s, you know, that’s a lot.”

The other reason Billy is selling is because he’s decided to move his home base to Florida, where his daughters, 7 and 9, are now enrolled in school — which means, Billy says, he’s “kind of locked in.”

But Billy can’t help but marvel at the fact that he ever bought MiddleSea in the first place. That’s because as a teenager, Billy had a job dredging oysters on the Long Island Sound. While out on the water, he used to see a huge brick mansion and think to himself, “Rich b*******. I’ll never live in a house like that.”

And then, in 2002, he bought it.

“The word that applies is ‘absurd,’” Billy tells the Times. “I grew up in a quarter-acre lot house in Hicksville [on Long Island]. And I would ride my bicycle up here and take a bike ride and look at all the rich people and cuss them out.”