If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

This one fits in the “not what you know” but who you know category. Getting a sweetheart deal on real estate is not especially surprising, but when you are the governor of the state and you are getting the deal from people you have appointed to high state offices, sometimes the better part of valor is to walk away from the deal.

Governor Easley got an extra special deal on waterfront property from developer Randy Allen at the Cannonsgate at Bogue Sound community in Ocean, North Carolina. The deal was on the list price of the lot, but as broker Ronnie Watson said, “You wouldn’t have been able to buy the lot, I’ll tell you that,” he said. “In other words, he had first choice.”

Gov. Mike Easley got his pick of lots in a gated community on the Bogue Sound, paying a bargain price for the waterfront lot compared to sales of other property in the development, The Charlotte Observer reported.
A spokeswoman for Easley denied he received any special favors.
But his broker, the project’s developer and the man who helped finance the development are all friends and contributors whom the governor has appointed to high-profile state boards, the Observer reported in Sunday’s editions.
Easley paid $549,880 for the one-third-acre lot in Cannonsgate, a development of million-dollar homes in Ocean, about 16 miles west of Morehead City.
The price was 3 percent above the lot’s assessed tax value. But 49 adjacent waterfront lots in the same development sold for an average of 20 percent to 36 percent above tax value, the Observer reported. via the AP Wire

Related posts:

1. Michigan Man Shoots Real Estate Agent Over Property Deal
2. Governor Bill Richardson Ruins Political Future with Tin Ear on Eminent Domain Issue
3. New York Governor Candidate Comes Out Against Eminent Domain Abuses
4. Simon Property, Farallon to Stage Bidding War With For Mills Corp.
5. Boynton Beach Foiled in Eminent Domain Land Grab by Governor Bush