Obama’s $1.5 Million Monthly Mortgage Payment

(Photo of Obama courtesy Viral Politics)

Last week, the real estate junkies at Zillow calculated a Zestimate value for the White House, were it actually a home that could be bought and sold. That number? A mind blowing $308,058,000.

It was hard for us to wrap our brains around a price tag like that, so we ran a few more computations to give the number some perspective.

First, using Zillow’s mortgage calculators, we found that if someone were to take out a standard 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage on the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (assuming 20% down and 6 percent rate), the monthly payment (including principal and interest) would be $1.48 million. One would have to make $53.3 million in gross income a  year to afford that kind of monthly mortgage payment, and have $62 million saved up for a down payment of 20%.

Knowing that the current president’s salary is $400K, we did the math and determined that if President-elect Obama were to spend 30% of his gross income as U.S president on housing, that would total roughly $11,111 per month,  and he’d fall short by more than $1 million on a monthly payment for this home.

We used Zillow’s “How Much Can I Afford” mortgage calculator to figure out that the White House is more than 220 times what the Obama’s could afford (just using Obama’s presidential salary and not taking into account Michelle Obama’s earnings) and that a $1.4 million dollar house would be a bit more realistic for them.  Incidentally, that happens to be Zestimate value for Obama’s Chicago home.