Rodriguez bought the property for $7.4 million in 2010, and spent roughly the same amount on building the house, which was finished about a year later. Less than four years after starting construction, Rodriguez was able to sell the house for a profit of somewhere near $15 million.
Now, we don’t object to making a profit—in fact, if we someday sell our own home for an extra fifteen million dollars, then so be it. That bothers us even less than it bothers us for ESPN.com to describe a 20,000-square-foot house—one with nine bedrooms, eleven bathrooms, home theater, and an outdoor kitchen (as well as the more mundane indoor gourmet kitchen)—as “minimalist.”
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| See if you can guess which of these houses is the quaint, minimalist bungalow formerly owned by Alex Rodriguez. |
We do admit, however, to being a little puzzled. In one of the worst housing markets and worst overall economies most living Americans have seen—or at least can remember clearly—this house was sold after less than four years for twice its previous price. What kind of luck is that?
Honestly, who on Earth gets paid tens of millions of dollars in order to get something that’s just going to sit there, inert, doing nothing but getting older and more and more run-down, and may well have been built using illegal materials in the first place?
What?
Hey—
Oh wait—
Yeah, we remember who now. Alex Rodriguez.
Oh how I love to despise Mr. Rodriguez. However, with so many celebs (and real folks) selling their homes for less than what they paid, it does seem a cruel irony.
ReplyDeleteMy first acquaintance with Mr. Rodriquez was seventeen years ago during the Seattle Mariners' miraculous 1995 run. I remember the young, too-pretty-to-be-straight A-Rod (known mostly as 'Alex Rodriguez' then), consoled an openly weeping Joey Cora as the M's season finally came to a close.
Not too many years ago I told several friends how I hoped Alex Rodriguez would stay fit and healthy long enough to break Barry Bonds' career home run record, because I didn't like the idea of a drug-using cheater holding the record.
DeleteI'd like to be able to pull that younger, more naive, more gullible version of myself aside, and with a patient tone and a few softly spoken words of wisdom, fleece him for every penny he's got. Because clearly he's a sucker.