While it remains to be seen how Mitt Romney might perform if he won the presidency, we know one thing for sure—when it comes to remembering how many houses he owns, Mitt Romney is a pro.
It’s a little more difficult for the rest of us to keep track of the Republican candidate’s landholdings. We know that everyone in La Jolla hates Mr. Romney’s plan to expand his beach house into a sprawling mansion complete with a car elevator, for example, but the other properties are a little foggy. Something in Massachusetts, something else in New Hampshire? Or was it the American dream of having a cabin on every Great Lake?
Fortunately, The Real Deal has put together a handy chart of Mr. Romney’s real estate. And while Mr. Romney has not taken our advice to install himself in a Manhattan apartment, there are plenty of properties to ogle. Well, only four, really, but there’s lots of other interesting information about the Romney clan’s real estate relationships and Bain’s real estate investments. And it’s way better than a chart of Obama’s real estate, which would be ungodly dull with only one house in Kenwood, Chicago. Yawn.
The Real Deal claims that Mr. Romney’s real estate is worth a mere $18 million. Some of the prices they use are old purchase prices, so that’s probably not totally accurate, but still, only $18 million? That’s what a four-bedroom Park Avenue co-op above the treeline runs these days.
Almost all of the Romneys’ landholdings involve vacation homes: besides a two-bedroom townhouse in Belmont, Mass. (the family sold the family manse after the kids moved out—just like normal people!), there’s also a New Hampshire lake house purchased for $3 million in 1997 and estimated to be worth $10 million now, the infamous La Jolla beach house and a cabin on Lake Huron in the gated beach community of Beach O’ Pines that was purchased for $31,900 in 1950 by the Romney patriarch.
The Romneys once owned a Park City, Utah ski chalet with 7-bedrooms, but that went the way of Mr. Romney’s support for health insurance mandates. Still, the family has enough getaways around the country that Romney and Paul Ryan would easily have enough places to stay if they wanted to take a road trip, maybe make another road map for America’s future?
kvelsey@observer.com
