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The House That Rove Built

Washington Post’s “reliable source” blog reports that Karl Rove wants to sell a house:

Five bedrooms, four-and-a-half baths, brick-and-stone exterior, built 1968. Real estate photos show sunny kitchen, big entertaining spaces, pleasant yard, lots of bookshelves, one wall-mounted deer head.

I suppose it’s an interesting sign of the times in the United States that Rove believes a house he paid $799,000 for in 2001 ought to fetch $1.585 million in 2009. Here’s the Case-Shiller index for the Washington, DC metro area:

The price increase Rove is looking for is larger than the average one across the metro area. Of course some people’s houses should experience a higher-than-average price increase if, for example, the neighborhood in which it’s located has become objectively more desirable. When I first moved to town I rented a basement apartment in a nice townhouse on Harvard Street between 13th and 14th. That’s a much better place to live in 2009 than it was in 2003, and even in 2003 it was a much better place to live than it was back in 1998 when the owner originally bought it. But I don’t really think you could make that kind of claim for Kent where the Rove house is. That’s a nice upscale neighborhood, but it’s always been a nice upscale neighborhood.

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