quote:

Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama continue to expand their real estate holdings outside Chicago, with the closing Wednesday of their $11.75 million purchase of a seven-bedroom, 6,892-square-foot mansion on 29.3 acres in Edgartown, Massachusetts, on Martha’s Vineyard.

Public records in Dukes County, Massachusetts, show that a land trust that bears the name of the estate’s street address paid $11.75 million for the estate and also took out a $7.05 million mortgage from J.P. Morgan for the property. The trustee of that trust is James F. Reynolds, a lawyer in Edgartown.

The Obamas bought the estate from Boston Celtics lead owner Wyc Grousbeck and his former wife, Corinne, who first had listed it for $22.5 million in 2015 and then cut their asking price to $16.25 million in August 2018. In July, they cut their asking price to $14.85 million.

The Grousbecks paid $3.15 million for the property in 1998 and built the mansion several years later, according to public records. The architectural firm that designed the mansion was Brandenburger Taylor Lombardo Architects of San Francisco, according to the Vineyard Gazette.

The Grousbecks’ listing agents, Gerret Conover and Thomas LeClair of LandVest Martha’s Vineyard, declined to comment on any aspects of the sale. They only were willing to say 2019 was a year full of record sales on Martha’s Vineyard, along with generally strong interest from buyers for properties on the island.

The Obamas had rented the estate this past summer and had been longtime summer guests on Martha’s Vineyard, renting homes there for all but one of the years that they occupied the White House. Features in their new mansion include eight baths, vaulted ceilings, a living room with a stone fireplace, a master suite with a fireplace and a private sundeck, an outdoor fireplace, a pool and two guest wings. The L-shaped property also has a private beach and a boathouse on Edgartown Great Pond, which is in the southeast corner of Martha’s Vineyard.

The other two properties that the Obamas own are their six-bedroom, 6,243-square-foot mansion in the South Side Kenwood neighborhood, which they purchased for $1.65 million in 2005, and their nine-bedroom, 6,441-square-foot mansion in Washington, D.C.’s, Kalorama neighborhood, which they purchased from onetime White House press secretary Joe Lockhart and his wife, Giovanna, in 2017 for $8.1 million.

Also, earlier this year, Michelle Obama rented a seven-bedroom, 12,800-square-foot contemporary-style mansion on Swallow Drive in Los Angeles’ Hollywood Hills, which has an open-air shark aquarium, a humidor room and a movie theater. That mansion remains on the market for $22.9 million.

The Obamas’ Martha’s Vineyard purchase first was reported by the Vineyard Gazette.

SpaceGoku posted:

weird for someone who supposedly believes in climate change to buy a house so close to the sea, that artificial shoreline won't do much against a real storm surge today, let alone in ten or twenty years

unless..... [thinking in silence for six hours straight] wow it would be hosed up if he didn't believe any of the poo poo he said he did, huh

Lawman 0 posted:

He's gonna scam someone into buying the home op

Lawman 0 posted:

He's gonna scam someone into buying the home op

Joey Steel posted:

OTOH, that "mansion" looks like a McMansion from the outside, just with more room. Can't even make a good looking house for $insane these days.

Joey Steel posted:

"America's first black president shat upon this ivory inlay toliet".

Yeah, some dipshit will pay premium for that.


OTOH, that "mansion" looks like a McMansion from the outside, just with more room. Can't even make a good looking house for $insane these days.

Feldegast42 posted:

Yeah say what you will about his plutocrat bosses but those guys actually have some style

Victory Position posted:

now's as good a time as any to link up Betsy Devos' mansion with 13 porches and a yacht dock built into it

Al! posted:

it's close to the ocean. good

Victory Position posted:

this is the perfect place to see Emma Watson beatbox for Lin-Manuel Miranda's rap on gender equality

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

it is absolutely the Obamaest kind of house you could get: it can't look too fancy or interesting because that would be gauche and placing an idiosyncratic personal vision over vaguely defined middle class aesthetics; it shows total contempt for the idea of building with the future in mind because the now is supposed to be forever; and yet it still costs $20 million, somehow.


all it really lacks is a CIA blacksite in the gardener's shed and I'm sure they'll get that fixed up quickly.

Sheng-Ji Yang posted:

Percelus posted:

more like trevor moa

get it, because he is like a extinct flightless bird

Uncle Wemus posted:

Still amazed at how much trevor sucks

Coolness Averted posted:

These books pair perfectly

Sheng-Ji Yang posted:

Victory Position posted:

now's as good a time as any to link up Betsy Devos' mansion with 13 porches and a yacht dock built into it

Flowers For Algeria posted:

why the 6 bedrooms?

they have only 2 children and the girls have already left the nest

i don’t understand

Sheng-Ji Yang posted:

Flowers For Algeria posted:

why the 6 bedrooms?

they have only 2 children and the girls have already left the nest

i don’t understand