"How could a retired State Dept wonk and a mid-level 70k a year analyst afford to buy a $750,000 house in 1999?"
Let's see...he saved every penny while he was a civil servant? No doubt he had lots of friends with money who helped him out. How could a broken down lot like the Clinton's buy all those expensive houses in NY and Georgetown? {;o)
Clinton had a book deal.
Apparently Wilson's brother is in real estate--from the Vanity Fair article on the Wilsons (which I believe we're not allowed to link, so I quote without the link):
The Wilsons live in the Palisades, an affluent neighborhood of Washington, D.C., on the fringe of Georgetown. In winter, when the trees have no leaves, the back of their house has a stunning view of the Washington Monument. They'd first seen the house in 1998, when it was still being built, and they had instantly fallen in love with it. Even so, Plame took some persuading before they made an offer. "She's very frugal," explains Wilson. "My brother who's in real estate had to fly in from the West Coast and explain that a mortgage could cost less than our rented apartment in the Watergate."
[Question: does the last sentence quoted above imply that the Wilsons were paying even more for rent before they moved into their $750,000 home?]
Some more miscellaneous notes on the Wilsons' home, summarizing some notes I collected last year: The Wilsons purchased their home from Barry Zuckerman Property (NOTE: There is also a Zuckerman real estate dynasty in California; cf. Wilson's mention above of his brother flying in from the West Coast, where the Wilson family is descended from a former Mayor of San Francisco and Governor of California, James "Sunny Jim" Rolph), which built some other real estate in the same neighborhood (though not Wilson's place). Zuckerman was found guilty of various infractions and fined $1,800:
District of Columbia Department of Health vs. Barry Zuckerman Property and Barry Zuckerman (NOTE: This is a pdf file, and it cannot be linked directly, but it is the first item that comes up if you go to http://doh.dc.gov/doh/site/default.asp and search on "Zuckerman")
The property next door to Wilson's (4618 Charleston Terrace) was purchased for $900,000 by Christopher Wolf, a lawyer with Proskauer Rose, LLP, who has legally advised Wilson and Plame since the Novak leak (Wolf states that before this he had only a neighborly relationship with them; on what may be a coincidental but interesting note, in 1995 Wolf defended The Washington Post and Richard Leiby in a suit filed by a Church of Scientology front). See below on another home in the same neighborhood (note the price on the 1993 market).
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RTC Auction of Local Properties Brings in $2.08
Million:[FINAL Edition]
Jeanne Cooper. The Washington Post (pre-1997
Fulltext). Washington, D.C.: Oct 16, 1993. pg. E.02
Author(s): Jeanne Cooper
Section: REAL ESTATE
Publication title: The Washington Post (pre-1997 Fulltext). Washington, D.C.: Oct 16, 1993. pg. E.02
Source Type: Newspaper
ISSN/ISBN: 01908286
ProQuest document ID: 72194276
Text Word Count 604
A spacious, opulently modern house in the District's Foxhall neighborhood and 11 other properties have joined the growing list of assets auctioned off by the federal Resolution Trust Corp.
Last Saturday's RTC auction in Bethesda drew about 350 registered bidders and brought in $2.08 million, a figure an RTC official said met the agency's expectations.
Of the 14 commercial and residential properties on the auctioneer's block, the Foxhall home on Charleston Terrace NW brought in the highest bid, selling for $730,000. The five-bedroom, 4 1/2- bath house, built in 1987 with a wine cellar, central vacuum and security systems, was last assessed for $868,140, according to tax roll records provided by TRW REDI Inc.
Potential buyers of the house were required to show certified funds of $20,000 and about 15 began bidding at the opening price of $100,000, according to auctioneer David Kaufman of Chicago. He said the final price came close to his prediction.
"Before the auction I walked through that house in Foxhall and told the broker that was showing it for us, `Seven {hundred thousand},' and it went for $730,000. That's the market value," Kaufman said.
The RTC, which acquired the auction properties from failed savings and loan organizations. . .
SNIP
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