Say Anything Blog

Identity of Edwards Home’s Buyers Veiled

Assisted-Living Magnates in SEC Probe Paid Candidate $5.2 Million

By John Solomon and Lois Romano

Washington Post Staff Writers

Friday, January 19, 2007; A01

When former North Carolina senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards finally succeeded last month in selling his imposing Georgetown mansion for $5.2 million after it had languished on the market, the names of the buyers were not publicly disclosed.

At the time, Edwards’s spokeswoman told reporters that the house had been sold to an unidentified corporation. In reality, the buyers were Paul and Terry Klaassen, according to several sources and confirmed by Edwards’s spokeswoman yesterday.

The wealthy founders of the nation’s largest assisted-living housing chain for seniors, the Klaassens are currently cooperating with a government inquiry in connection with accounting practices and stock options exercised by them and other company insiders. They are also the focus of legal complaints by some of the same labor unions whose support Edwards has been assiduously courting for his presidential bid.

The grand 18th-century house had lingered on Washington’s slowing real estate market for more than 18 months. The Edwardses paid $3.8 million in 2002 for the six-bedroom Federal-style house once owned by socialite Polly Fritchey, and they did substantial renovations. The final sale price was half a million dollars below the asking price but still $1.4 million more than the Edwardses paid four years earlier.

Edwards closed the deal in late December—the night before he announced his presidential candidacy.

“languished on the market”

Is that code for “I’ll buy your house in a lousy market, above market price for a little quid pro quo a little later on down the line?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011802077_pf.html