Ah... something is amiss here:
"The Santorums' Penn Hills home was assessed for $106,000 last year, records show. The couple's home in Leesburg, Va., was assessed at $757,000 this year, according to records."
Looks to me like they REALLY live in Virginia!
Schools in Loudon County, where Santorum lives, are not that great. And he certainly does not make enough as a Senator to send six kids to private schools in Virginia; they are astronomically expensive. But he may just be trying to have his cake and eat it too. He can campaign and say he is sending his kids to Pennsylvania public schools, even though they don't live in Pennsylvania.
A $750k home is slightly above normal for northern VA. Were not talking mansion, just hyper-inflated real estate pricing. Consider that a basic townhouse is getting over $350k and won't stay on the market for more than a week here.
My reaction is that this is a politically motivated smear. The rest of the article does nothing to dispell that reaction.
Leesburg, VA median home price = $275,000
So what size are the two homes in western Pennsylvania and suburban Washington??? Number of bedrooms?
As for the $100,000, I thought I read that Santorum has a lot of kids, and they may have taken the average cost per student in his district and multiplied it by the number of kids he has. It MUST be cheaper to educate a kid in cyberspace than in a bricks n' mortar school!
Probably far less than meets the eye here!
Northern Virginia real estate prices are insane: a neighbor just sold his 25-year-old, 3 bedroom TOWNHOUSE for $285,000.
In many neighborhoods, 757K is slightly above median price. I have an old college buddy who sold his family home in McLean when his mother died last year: single family, 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, and an above-ground pool: 2.5 million dollars. . .
It certainly appears to be a rip-off (based on a dubious state law). It smells to high heaven!
Raises all kinds of questions. For example, is he or his wife independently wealthy ... is $1,000,000,000 worth of "homes" typical of a U.S. Senator? At this rate he'll retire from the Senate in better shape than LBJ.
Along time ago before the great push out of DC into the eastern panhandle of WV, making it suburban DC, you didn't get much of a house in Leesburg for $ 250,000. The P'burgh area has some of the cheapest real estate prices in the US so the house in Leesburg may not be any better than the one in PA (might even be worse.)
A $106,000 house in MOST areas of the country would sell for $700,000 in the DC area...geesh.
The cost of education is RIDICULOUS in the public schools! Give vouchers and LOWER the cost!!
Based on the value of their homes in the two different states you come to this conclusion? Sure would like an explanation of your reasoning on this one.