There are several errors of fact in the section concerning the Obama house in South Kenwood. I lived in the area for 10 years and work in the real estate industry. I know exactly where the house is and have gone by several times.
1. The side lot is not inaccessible or worthless to anyone other than the owner of the Obama home. It is a corner lot, and under current zoning has the size and frontage to allow construction of a single family house.
2. The price of $1.65M, at 85% of list, was almost exactly at the average ratio of list to sale price for that area over the trailing 24 months, per MLS data. It was not a discount or bargain.
3. The appraised value of $40,000 for 1/6 of the side lot was ridiculously low given land values in that neighborhood. It’s clear that the appraiser valued it as if its highest and best use was as a narrow strip of land, when in fact it was part of a fully developable lot. By analogy, in eminent domain, when the gov’t takes a strip of land, they must pay based on its prorata value of the whole from which it was taken; that’s what Obama paid.
(By the way, the appraiser who valued the land at $40,000 once testified that a proposed Home Depot would deflate home values in the area, even though he’d never analyzed a similar situation; his opinion was based on studies of cell towers. That’s the kind of expertise that produced the $40,000 value for 1/6 of a lot now listed at $995,000.)
It’s usually a good idea to consult a competent real estate professional when reporting on real estate transactions.
