The White House Listed On Real Estate Website

Forget visiting the White House, if you have $10 million you can own it. At least that is the price for the president's home on the real estate website Redfin. From the article: "Obviously this is an error. It looks like Redfin software pulled an example listing from the website Owners.com by mistake. That example listing was the White House. We have e-mailed Redfin for comment." I know it's historic but it still looks a bit on the high side according to the comparables in the area.

Comments

The answer....

[Pharmboy]

Is the White House for sale? No, but you can certainly *rent* it for four years at a time, if the price is right.

Comes with the debt?

[courteaudotbiz]

If so, I don't want it even if they give me a billion to own it! ;-)

Deficit solution

[ollie231]

I didn't know the US budget was in such dire straits =P

Re:Deficit solution

[DeusExMach]

Then you haven't been paying very close attention...

Check Comparable Sales First

[DieByWire]

I think the price is a little high. You can buy a senate office for a lot less than that.

Re:Check Comparable Sales First

[Nemyst]

I think the price is a little high. You can buy a senate office for a lot less than that.

Hell for that price the office with come complete with your own Senator.

Yeah, that's why the price went down that much.

Re:World Wide Wed of Scraping Data

[Myopic]

It might be 'to' pricey, but you can buy 'to' of them if you want 'to'.

Re:Cheap at twice the price

[tomhath]

Ten Million is a steal if you realize how much you can make off renting it out.

Heck yes!. Clinton was getting $100k per night for the Lincoln Bedroom alone.

Wow

[damn_registrars]

I didn't think things had gotten so rough for Halliburton that they would need to start selling some of their properties...

Re:that's pretty cheap....

[shikaisi]

Well, property values have gone right down ever since those colored people moved into the area.

Re:Cheap at twice the price

[Stephen Samuel]

... not to mention the prestige factor of being able to say that you live there.

It's also an incredible place to base your business. If you leave a message saying "Pleasd call Bill Smith at The White House 773-555-1376", You're almost sure to get a callback.

How much would it really cost to duplicate?

[192939495969798999]

This does prompt a good question: How much would it really cost to make a copy of the white house, including the known grounds and security stuff presumably inside, as accurately as possible minus the one-of-a-kind artifacts?

Re:How much would it really cost to duplicate?

[cowscows]

It's pretty tough to come up with an accurate number for a building that complicated without a decent amount of work, but we can ballpark some numbers just to give us something to think about. According to whitehousehistory.org, there's about 55,000 sq. ft. worth of space in the building. The typical american stick-frame house usually runs somewhere between $100 to $200 per square foot, depending on the design/finishes/etc. If we split that, and go with $150 per sq. ft., we're already up to $8.25 million. I think once you add on the fact that it's not 2x4 wood framing (there's actually a steel frame that replaced the original heavy timber framing), and that you've got stone facade rather than vinyl siding, probably some very nice finishes, plus the fact that a bunch of people work there all day, plus all the security stuff, plus facilities for tours coming through, etc...you'd probably be looking at at least three or four times that. Buildings are expensive.

Re:How much would it really cost to duplicate?

[Dahamma]

Yeah, but that's just for duplicating it as a "normal house". I think you MASSIVELY underestimate the "security stuff"... ie, the giant underground bunker underneath the East Wing known as the "Presidential Emergency Operations Center". Not to mention all of the security systems (laser blinders? Stinger batteries? Flying monkeys??) we don't know about...

(also, it's probably not necessary for a back of the hand calculation like this, since it seems to have been done by expert real estate appraising companies already - they estimated it at approximately $300M - again not including any bunker(s) or security systems they don't know about)

Seems like a steal.

[Nobo]

Per the District of Columbia Assessor, the property is assessed at $995 million -- $963m for the 18 acres of land and $31.1m for the building.

Re:Seems like a steal.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Yay to DC for pulling a completely fictional number out of their ass. A billion dollars for 18 acres?

Re:World Wide Wed of Scraping Data

[ShaunC]

Must have been to pricey to hire Indian resources to even screen the data coming in.

It was most likely not scraped, and almost certainly not screened.

I'm the DBA at a large (annual revenue in the billions) real estate firm, and we have feeds negotiated with all sorts of websites to syndicate our listing data around the web. Regional MLS boards operate under strict sets of rules surrounding what you can distribute and where. However, the onus is never on the publisher to screen listing data coming in; instead, a disclaimer such as "Information is deemed reliable, but not guaranteed" must be displayed along all property listings.

The sheer volume makes it impossible. We have approximately 20,000 listings within our own company and another 400,000 IDX listings. No company in the world could afford to screen anywhere near that much data. It's possible that whatever broker or firm originated the bogus listing could be fined, though the fines aren't generally noteworthy.

Re:So

[cayenne8]

This isn't news really, I mean we all know that the white house has been for sale to the highest bidders for that last few administrations.

Re:So

[DesScorp]

This isn't news really, I mean we all know that the white house has been for sale to the highest bidders for that last few administrations.

The White House... and every other government center of power... has been for sale on and off since they all came to exist. That's the rotten nature of politics. The more a politician claims to be cleaner than his opponents, the more skeletons he has in his closet.