Tiger Woods' ex-wife Elin Nordegren demolishes $11.7 million home, will rebuild it

New.Com.Au ^ | Jan. 6, 2012

[Wolfie]

Oh, to have a spare $12 million to play Grand Designs with. Spare a thought for Tiger Woods' ex-wife Elin Nordegren who is tearing down her Florida mansion to build a new one.

Nordegren has just demolished the $11.7 million pad - so she can build a better home on the same plot, TMZ reports.

[Above My Pay Grade]

Tiger never lived in this house, so he would have no emotional attachment to it. She bought it last March after the divorce.

As others have stated, the “demolishes $11.7 million home” headline is misleading as the land is worth far more than the structure, and she didn’t demolish the land.

[enraged]

My thoughts too!

[equaviator]

“She obviously needs me to guide her.”

Take a number, pal!

[TexasCajun]

Nice pics of the house.

But in a post with Elin in the headline, there are rules. :)

[MrB]

Probably right... especially after she saw the picture you posted of yourself on FR...

[panaxanax]

The two pictures don’t match up, trees etc. where the house used to sit..? It appears that they planted trees immediately after demolishing the house. Somethings weird about the after photo.

[X-spurt]

“just a tad more sense”, was the key phrase!

Sounds like we all jumped to a conclusion on Tiger being a total cad.

Like, “if you marry for money, you earn every dime” can be “marry a trophy raving blonde and you pay all too dearly with more than all your money”.

[Leep]

Probably not allowed to put a trailer on stilts?

[fhayek]

Here's my thinking. You start with a perfectly usable (albeit old) house. The house itself is worth, say a million dollars. You tear it down. This comes out of the stash from Woods. Sure you pay the contractors to build a new one, but you could have built the house on vacant property. You end up with one house instead of two. To me, that is a consumption of wealth.

Think of it this way. You buy you kid a car. He wrecks it. Insurance pays for a new car. Sure you are keeping the auto workers at the plant busy, but you're not better off, the insurance company is not better off. The world is down one car from where they would have been had your reckless kid just slowed down a little.

[Da Coyote]

After building the new house, she should run for the senate. After all, it worked for other women with no abilities...like Pelosi, Boxer, etc, etc.

[albie]

There’s a palm tree that blocked the ocean view. Nothing else you can do but tear it down.

[Roklok]

Must be nice to have that kind of money to waste. Sell the house, give the money to charity and build yourself a new place, somewhere else. With this kind of attitude, I am not surprised Tiger was fooling around.

[ken5050]

Which is also another way the insurance companies rip you off..I used to get soooo mad every year when I got my homeowners bill...our house was built in the 50’s..nice home..but nothing special or spectacular. had been updated twice by previous owners..but sat on FOUR acres of land..the land was easily 80% of the value, and land can’t burn down......

[sodpoodle]

Would have done some renovations on the existing structure and created 3-4 condos for rental or purchase. Perhaps zoning laws wouldn’t have allowed it - but that home appeared to be in pretty good shape and could have been a good source of future income.

Elin is not getting good financial advice.

[LeonardFMason]

She must have checked the place with a “Blue Light” and saw evidence of Tiger in every room. He WAS banging everything that moved.

Being divorced I can only imagine he is like Johnny “Human”seed sowing “fields” everywhere he goes.

[HIDEK6]

Article is false.I’d say conservatively that the HOUSE itself was worth no more than $1.5 mill..most of the value is probably in the land..doesn’t say how old the house is, or what condition it was in..it was nice, but not architecturally distinctive..many times, indtead of a major renovation, it’s cheaper, easier, and faster.. actually to tear it down and start from scratch

This.

[EQAndyBuzz]

This thread is worthless without pictures.

Just sayin.

[Roos_Girl]

Pretty standard for Palm Beach, Jupiter Island, North Palm Beach beach front property. It's all built on, so you buy the lot you like, it has a house on it that you don't want, you knock it down and build what you like. Palm Beachers have been doing it for years; grandpa was the super for a construction company and that was pretty much their clientele exclusively. And since grandpa was pretty charismatic and the Palm Beachers didn't summer in Palm Beach, I spent the summers at some pretty cool houses that they ended up asking him to care-take for them!

[woodbutcher1963]

1. Old houses are money pits. It is considerably cheaper & faster to tear down and rebuild, than rehab an existing structure.

2. She owned this house with a guy who was a lying/cheater.
It probably was a cleansing experience. If you ever go through a nasty divorce you want to get rid of anything that reminds you of your previous spouse. We have all seen ads of wives seliing their exes sports car, etc.
If I was her I would pay extra to drive the bulldozer/wrecking crane myself.

3. Money is no concern. Think JP Morgan: “If you have to ask , you can’t afford it.”

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

That’s true to a point. But wealth is not described in such simple terms. A 74 Pinto is a car, and a new Mercedes is a car, but they do not represent the same amount of wealth. So if your garage could only have one car, which car would be worth more wealth?

The property can only hold one house. The house that was removed was less inherently valuable than the house that would be built: both could not have existed at the same time. If she had just detroyed the old house, then yes, that would simply be a destruction of wealth. But by rebuilding, she has increased the wealth held by herself and transmitted some of her wealth to those who provided the service to her.