Whimsical Americana Lesson of the Week: What Is the White House Worth?

The White House.  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Executive Residence, home of the First Family, seat and symbol of American power.  No matter what you call it, this 210-year-old edifice is unmistakably, undeniably grand.  Made up of six stories (including a two-story basement) spanning 55,000 square feet, it includes 132 rooms and thirty-five bathrooms, twenty-eight fireplaces, eight staircases, 412 doors and 147 windows, three elevators, a tennis court, a movie theater and a bowling alley, a jogging track, a swimming pool, and a putting green.  The grounds cover a total of eighteen acres of rose gardens and rolling greens.  One can safely assume that Malia and Sasha are not bored little girls. 

Somehow, despite my professional immersion in property appraisal, I’ve never really put the White House in my mental ”real estate” file, to be categorized alongside swanky beach houses or corporate office buildings. Instead, the structure has always resided in my mind alongside other indelible geographical features of Americana – the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, New York’s side of Niagara Falls.  The thing is on the back of the twenty dollar bill, after all.  I was therefore amused to no end by a recent  hypothetical and playful “solicitation for White House fee quotes” sent out in January by appraisernews.com. How much, readers were asked, would it cost to appraise the White House? How would you go about accomplishing the daunting task?  And how long would it take?

The exercise elicited amusing responses from appraisers, but also brought up some interesting thoughts on the appraising profession as a whole.  Over all, guestimates for how much such an appraisal of the White House would cost ranged from $100,000 to a quarter million dollars. Appraisers estimated that they would require at least a year to complete a full valuation the property.  But, they wondered, how would one get access to fully execute a proper valuation?   And if one were to use the comparative approach, how far afield would an appraiser have to go to find an acceptable spread of homes with 132 bedrooms and 28 fireplaces? Wrote one commentator, “Comps may be located in competing countries, but how many national leaders actually sell their residences?” Would a cost approach be acceptable? What, though, of the historic value of the property?

In reality, monetary value can be, and has been, assigned to the White House. Appraising historic buildings is, of course, a much more complex process than a straightforward appraisal of grandma’s Florida condo. Multiple architectural experts and real estate historians are often involved in the process. Records must be studied to determine what parts of the structure are original and what has been remodeled or replaced. Because of this, appraisers who specialize in historic buildings are often avid students of history themselves.

As for the White House, which was originally completed in 1800, the building was constructed for a total cost of $232,000, or approximately $3 million in 2011 dollars.  (An ugly sidenote:  This bargain construction price was achieved in large part due the toil of slaves.)  Today, Zillow.com “lists” the White House (“Fireplace: Yes; Parking: Attached Garage”) at a whopping $252 million – a sweet price for sure, but one that has, like most properties in the market, seen a steep drop in value during the past few years. In fact, the theoretical price of the White House has dipped nearly $5.5 million since the beginning of 2011, and, since the pinnacle of the housing boom in 2007, has plunged a grand total of $80 million.

Perhaps the next time you’re feeling a little disheartened by the current estimated value of your home, you might try taking comfort in the likely fact that it hasn’t dropped $80 million in past three years. Hey – even the digs of the leader of the free world are experiencing the crunch. Not that there’s much of a chance that the White House is going on the market any time soon.

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Jessica A. Edgerton, Esq.
After graduating cum laude from Indiana University Maurer School of Law in 2004, Jessica practiced as a litigation attorney in Boston and Chicago. She is now the Business Development Manager for US Appraisal Group’s Attorney Services Division, and lives in downtown Chicago.
Email: jedgerton@usappraisalgroup.com
Mobile: 312-342-0880

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