Wednesday, 13 February 2013
LOCATION: West Miami, FL
PRICE: $675,000
SIZE: 2,699 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We don't know if any of the more tabloid oriented and/or reality t.v. watching children caught it but last night in the Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address, Senator Marco Rubio of Miami, FL—the Republican Party's great Latino hope for a presidential future—made a big stink about how, even though he's Senator with a $174,000 per year salary and future money making opportunities up the wazoo, he still lives with his family in their middle-class house in Miami.*
Well, at least for now. Thanks to the kind folks over at Estately, Your Mama has come to learn that Senator Rubio and his wife Jeanette Dousdebes have had their self-described middle class house in West Miami on the market since last November. It currently has a $675,000 price tag.
For the record, according to a recent report by the Bloomberg people, the median price of an existing home in America is—or was in December 2012—$183,900, more than 3.5 times less than the current price tag hanging on Senator and Missus Rubio's West Miami residence.
Property records reveal the hip-hop loving Senator and his former Miami Dolphins cheerleader missus paid $550,000 for their two-story house at the tail end of a quiet cul-de-sac that they scooped up in December 2005. Current listing information shows the red-tile roofed and faux-quoined mock-Med mash up was built in 2005—indicating it was brand spanking new when the Rubios bought it—spans 2,699 square feet of marble and carpeted interior space and includes four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.
Listing photos show the Senator's house has a formal living room with a decadent double-height ceiling and an adjoining formal dining area. The less formal family quarters include an open concept kitchen area with built-in breakfast banquette and a compact family room/den with built-in entertainment unit and direct access to the outdoor living areas. There also appears to be a separate family room area, also with built-in entertainment cabinet, beyond the kitchen. The kitchen itself—a more modern take on quintessentially uninspired traditional haute-suburban style—has walnut-colored cabinetry with streamlined hardware, speckled beige and black granite counter tops, tumbled stone back splashes and mid-grade (mostly) stainless steel appliances.
The backyard isn't very big—the lot is a quite tiny .17 of an acre—but it's jam packed with adult-and child-friendly outdoor living amenities like a shaded outdoor lounge area with a wall-mounted flat screen t.v., more uncovered patio space with a basketball hoop, a tiny lawn uncomfortably crowded with a jungle gym and a trampoline. There's also a somewhat petite swimming pool that, unfortunately, appears in listing photos to be overlooked by the upper floor of the next door neighbor's house.
Your Mama isn't sure if Senator and Missus Rubio are moving their children to another middle class home in Miami, if they plan to upgrade their residential circumstances or if—as some press reports suggest—they're packing up and moving to Washington. Whatever the case they won't be living in the middle class house that played such a role in proving his middle class bona fides in Senator Rubio's response to the State of the Union.
*Technically Senator and Missus Rubio's residence is located in West Miami, directly west of downtown Miami and not quite six miles due south of the airport.
listing photos: Centrust Realty via Estately
