Joe Biden sold a house to a supporter for $1.2 million in 1996 – but it is only worth an estimated $1.65 million 27 years later, .com can reveal.
The current valuation raised questions over whether Biden received an inflated price for the property from a donor nearly three decades ago.
It was purchased by an executive for a credit card company that, in the same year, also hired Biden’s son Hunter and then paid him for years.
Biden bought the 10,000 square-foot mansion in Greenville, Delaware for $185,000 in 1974.
At the time he had recently become a senator on a salary of $42,500.
He went on to sell the house for $1.2 million – more than six times what he paid for it – in 1996.
Joe Biden sold a house to a supporter for $1.2 million in 1996 – but it is only worth an estimated $1.65 million 27 years later, .com can reveal
However, according to property website Redfin, it is currently only worth $1.6 million in 2023. Zillow has it currently valued at $2 million.
Both Redin and Zillow have an average error rate in valuations of only around 7 per cent.
Since 1996 the Delaware housing market has nearly tripled, according to data from the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency.
That would indicate, if the house was worth $1.2 million in 1996, it should be well over $3 million now.
The current valuation raised questions over whether Biden received an inflated price for the property from a donor nearly three decades ago
Even at the higher current estimate of $2 million the home, if its value tracked with the rest of the Delaware housing market, would be expected to have been worth around $700,000 in 1996.
Built in 1930, the house features five bedrooms, three fireplaces, a Colonial-style exterior, a swimming pool, and 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 the 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, at the time the largest employer in Delaware.
In the same year, MBNA employees contributed $62,850 to Biden for his Senate re-election campaign, and the house buyer donated the maximum $2,000.
Also that year, Biden’s son Hunter was hired by MBNA and went on to become a senior vice president.
Later, between 2001 and 2005, Hunter was re-hired as a consultant by the company on a monthly retainer.
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 the British politician Neil Kinnock in a speech
Hunter Biden worked for a credit card company in Delaware
During those years Joe Biden backed new bankruptcy legislation in Congress that would benefit credit card companies, even though it was opposed by a majority of Senate Democrats including Barack Obama.
At the time of the controversial house sale in 1996 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.
That was vociferously denied by both Biden and MBNA.
A Biden spokesman said at the time that Biden had purchased the property when it was in a distressed state.
The spokesman said: ‘Over the 21 years that the Biden family lived in the home, they made considerable renovations.
‘There was absolutely no connection between the sale and campaign contributions or votes by Sen. Biden, and no one should dare suggest otherwise.’
MBNA also provided to the American Spectator magazine an appraisal from January 1996 that put the value of the property at $1.2 million.
However, the News Journal, a newspaper in Wilmington, went on to report that the appraisal listed as comparable properties two houses valued at just over $1 million.
Both of those properties failed to meet their asking price by more than $200,000, while Biden got the full list price.
The sale of the house provided a boost for Biden’s buying and selling of homes.
One month later he bought a 4-acre parcel of land nearby from a local property developer for $350,000.
The News Journal reported that was exactly the same amount the developer had bought it for five years earlier.
The developer told the newspaper the property market was ‘soft’ when he sold the land to Biden.
Biden built a house on the land, next to a lake, which is now valued at around $1.5 million.
In June 2017 he bought a beach house in Rehoboth beach, Delaware for $2.75million in cash.