EXCLUSIVE: Joe Biden sold a house for $1.2 million in 1996 and nearly three decades later it’s still worth just $1.65 million. Was he paid by a donor?
Joe Biden sold a house to a supporter for $1.2 million in 1996 – but 27 years later it is estimated to be worth just $1.65 million, DailyMail.com can reveal.
The current appraisal raised questions about whether Biden received a high price for the property from a donor nearly three decades ago.
It was bought by a credit card company executive who also hired Biden’s son Hunter the same year and then paid him for years.
Biden bought the 10,000-square-foot mansion in Greenville, Delaware in 1974 for $185,000.
At the time, he had recently become a senator with a salary of $42,500.
He then sold the house in 1996 for $1.2 million, more than six times what he paid for it.
Joe Biden sold a house to a supporter for $1.2 million in 1996 – but 27 years later it is estimated to be worth just $1.65 million, DailyMail.com can reveal
However, according to real estate website Redfin, it is currently only worth $1.6 million in 2023. Zillow currently has it valued at $2 million.
Both Redin and Zillow have an average error rate in valuations of only about 7 percent.
Delaware’s housing market has nearly tripled since 1996, according to data from the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency.
That would indicate that if the house was worth $1.2 million in 1996, it should be worth well over $3 million now.
The current valuation raised questions about whether Biden received a high price for the property from a donor nearly three decades ago
Even at the higher current estimate of $2 million, if the house’s value were in line with the rest of the Delaware housing market, it is expected to have been worth about $700,000 in 1996.
Built in 1930, the home features five bedrooms, three fireplaces, a colonial-style exterior, a swimming pool and a pool house, set on two acres.
Biden called it “The Station” and it was the headquarters for his first presidential campaign in 1988, when he dropped out after being caught plagiarizing British politician Neil Kinnock in a speech.
The story of how Biden sold the mansion was a minor controversy in Delaware politics in the 1990s, when he was a senator.
He sold it for his asking price of $1.2 million to the vice chairman of credit card company MBNA, then the largest employer in Delaware.
The same year, MBNA employees contributed $62,850 to Biden for his Senate re-election campaign, and the homebuyer donated the maximum $2,000.
Also that year, Biden’s son Hunter was hired by MBNA and became senior vice president.
Later, between 2001 and 2005, Hunter was rehired by the company as a consultant with a monthly fee.
Biden called the property “The Station” and it was the headquarters for his first presidential campaign in 1988, when he dropped out after being caught plagiarizing British politician Neil Kinnock in a speech.
Hunter Biden worked for a credit card company in Delaware
During those years, Joe Biden supported new bankruptcy legislation in Congress that would benefit credit card companies, even though it was opposed by a majority of Democrats in the Senate, including Barack Obama.
At the time of the controversial 1996 house sale, a pollster for Biden’s Republican opponent in his Senate re-election race suggested that the price paid for the house had been too high.
This was vociferously denied by both Biden and MBNA.
A Biden spokesperson said at the time that Biden purchased the property when it was in a distressed state.
The spokesperson said: “In the 21 years the Biden family lived in the home, they made significant renovations.
“There was absolutely no connection between the sales and Senator Biden’s campaign contributions or votes, and no one should dare suggest otherwise.”
MBNA also provided Spectator magazine with a January 1996 appraisal that estimated the property’s value at $1.2 million.
However, the News Journal, a newspaper in Wilmington, further reported that the appraisal listed two homes valued at just over $1 million as comparable properties.
Both properties fell short of their asking prices by more than $200,000, while Biden got the full list price.
The sale of the house boosted Biden’s buying and selling of homes.
A month later, he bought a 10-acre parcel of land near a local developer for $350,000.
The News Journal reported that this was exactly the same amount for which the developer had purchased it five years earlier.
The developer told the newspaper that the real estate market was “soft” when he sold the land to Biden.
Biden built a house on the land, next to a lake, that is now valued at about $1.5 million.
In June 2017, he purchased a beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware for $2.75 million in cash.