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NORTON META TAG
06 November 2014
Critics say Elizabeth Warren 'lives in a $5.4 million mansion' 29OKT14
A person knows they are a threat to the rich and powerful when they are attacked by anonymous sources. Here is one such attack on Sen Elizabeth Warren D MA, who is an unrelenting and powerful advocate for the protection and rights of all regular Americans (the 99%) and for the regulation of the bank-financial cabal and wall street as well as the prosecution of the corporate executives who brought down the American economy in the great recession of 2008 (the recession we are still recovering from). She forced the creation of the CFPB / Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and will continue as Chairperson of the US Senate Banking Committee until the 114th US Congress is sworn in in January 2015 when she will be the minority leader of the committee. This from +PolitiFact .....
Says Sen. Elizabeth Warren "lives in a $5.4 million mansion."
— Facebook posts on Wednesday, October 29th, 2014 in a meme on social media
By Louis Jacobson on Wednesday, October 29th, 2014 at 4:20 p.m.
Sen. Elizabeth
Warren, D-Mass., has been in demand as a speaker at Democratic campaign
events this year. Here she campaigns for the Democratic Senate candidate
in Iowa, Bruce Braley, on Oct. 19, 2014, in Des Moines.
We checked this social media meme critical of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
Nothing animates political discussions like the appearance of
hypocrisy. And for some critics these days, Sen. Elizabeth Warren,
D-Mass., offers a tempting target.
Warren, elected in 2012, has become a leader of the liberal wing of
the Democratic Party, decrying the excesses of Wall Street and income
inequality. These efforts -- and the possibility that she could run for
president in 2016 -- has made her a high-profile political figure.
Here’s a social media meme we recently received:
"Senator Liz Warren lives in a $5.4M mansion, claimed 'Native
American' status to score a Harvard gig paying $350,000 to teach one
class, and now lectures us that 'the system is rigged to benefit the
rich.' "
That’s a lot to chew on, so we’ll limit our analysis here to the claim that Warren "lives in a $5.4 million mansion."
It’s a claim that mirrors others cited elsewhere in the media -- for instance, in an op-ed in the Boston Herald and in an article in the Huffington Post, both of which say Warren’s house is worth $5 million.
But is it really worth that much? No.
After plowing through public real estate data, we found that the
house Warren shares with her husband, Bruce Mann, is worth less than
half that -- though it’s located in a desirable neighborhood in
Cambridge, Mass., so it’s still pretty expensive by most Americans’
standards. (Warren's staff did not respond to an inquiry for this
story.) House values
According to real estate records, Warren’s house -- a clapboard
Victorian built in 1890 -- was purchased in 1995 for $447,000. Back
then, the median sale price for a single-family home in Cambridge was
roughly $300,000, so the house was definitely above average for the city
at the time.
The amount paid for the house in 1995 works out to just shy of
$700,000 in today’s dollars. But it was a smart purchase. The house’s
assessed value for 2015 was a bit over $1.9 million, and as is often the
case, the expected resale value is higher.
The real estate website Zillow.com estimates that the house’s value
today is about $2.4 million. That’s well above the median price of homes
currently listed in Cambridge, which Zillow says is $639,000, though in
Warren’s immediate neighborhood, several houses have values exceeding
$2 million and more exceed $1 million, according to Zillow.
It’s worth noting that the use of the term "mansion" may be a bit of a
stretch. The house has two bedrooms and three-and-a-half baths, and
3,728 square feet of living space. According to the Census Bureau, the
median new home in the northeastern United States in 2010 had 2,392
square feet. So Warren’s house is bigger than average, but hardly
Versailles.
Indeed, almost half of the house’s $1.9 million in assessed value
comes from the land, not the structure itself. And a key factor in the
price growth likely stems from its location in a good school district,
the easy access to fancy neighborhood amenities, and its close proximity
to Harvard University, where Mann is a law professor, and where Warren
taught before winning her Senate race.
So where did the $5 million figure come from? A garbled financial disclosure report, most likely.
Warren’s 2011 financial disclosure report,
required of Senate candidates, listed the house as having a value of
between $1 million and $5 million. This disclosure form only requires
the candidate to gauge asset values within broad ranges, rather than a
specific amount. Somewhere along the line, some authors started
neglecting to mention that the $5 million figure was the upper range for
the house, not its specific value. (Other articles weremorecareful.)
A final note: Warren is wealthy by national standards, but so are a lot of other senators. In the most recent Roll Call survey of congressional net worth,
Warren ranks 24th among senators with an estimated net worth of $3.66
million, and 76th among the 535 members of the House and Senate
combined. So her net worth is well above average, but it’s nowhere near
the congressional or senatorial top 1 percent. Our ruling
The social media meme said Warren "lives in a $5.4 million mansion."
Warren does live in a desirable neighborhood in an expensive urban
center, which means that her house is much more expensive than that of
most Americans.
Still, the meme overshoots the facts of the case. The house’s
estimated value is less than half of the stated $5.4 million, and
calling it a mansion is a stretch. The statement contains some element
of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different
impression, so we rate it Mostly False.
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