Obamas Reportedly Lease Washington, D.C. Mansion

LOCATION: Washington, D.C.
PRICE: unknown
SIZE: (approx.) 8,200 square feet, 9 bedrooms, 8.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: For years there’s been an avalanche of speculation not to mention raging vitriol spewed on the internet about where President Barak Obama and his family would move when their eight year residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue comes to an end in January of 2017. Would they return to their Chicago home? Decamp to the president’s native state of Hawaii? Take a real estate bite out of the Big Apple? Or might they buy a huge and expensive compound in one of the wealthy gated communities near the hot as Hades California desert community of Palm Springs? It seems, however, everyone was barking up the wrong tree because in March the president announced the family would remain in the nation’s capital for at least another couple of years while Sacha, the younger of the two Obama daughters, finishes high school at the elite Sidwell Friends School. And, though we imagine they can afford to buy their own multi-million dollar home, word on the political real estate street is they’ve opted to spend an unknown but most assuredly considerable amount to lease a graciously spacious and sumptuously appointed mansion on a leafy street in a quiet corner of the capital’s historic Kalorama neighborhood. The stately residence in question was last sold according to property records in May 2014 for $5,295,000 and is not so surprisingly owned by a couple of Democratic Party movers and shakers: Bill Lockhart, former press spokesman for Bill Clinton, and Giovanna Gray Lockhart, a former aide to New York State Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and currently Glamour magazine’s Washington editor. The Lockharts moved to Manhattan earlier this year after Mr. Lockhart was hired to be the NFL’s executive vice president for communications.

The elegantly turned out Tudor manse was built in the late 1920s and measures in at about 8,200 square feet spread over four floors with a total of nine bedrooms and 8.5 bathrooms according to property records and other online resources. A foyer and gallery with soignée black and white marble checkerboard floor leads to a baronial 28-foot-long living room with fireplace and adjoining sitting room that opens to the backyard through French doors. The dining room, which also opens through a bank of French doors to the rear garden, is lined with wood-paneled walls that hide generous linen and china storage cabinets and the expensively outfitted kitchen opens to a breakfast area and roomy family room with fireplace. Two en suite guest/family bedrooms with walk-in closets plus a third bedroom accessible only by passing through one of the other bedrooms are joined on the second floor by a master suite with fireplace, two marble bathrooms, and an enviably ample dressing room lined with built-in wardrobes. Four more smallish bedrooms and two bathrooms on the uppermost level are well suited to offices and/or the Secret Service security detail that will guard the president and his family during his post-presidential years and, in addition to a two-car garage that opens out to a gated motor court with parking for half of a dozen or more cars, the fully finished basement level provides a 34-foot-long windowless media lounge with wet bar, a second full kitchen with exterior entrance and laundry machines — there’s a second laundry room conveniently located on the second floor — plus an in-law suite perfect for the First Lady’s mother who has lived with the Obamas at the White House since 2009. The backyard isn’t particularly large or even very private — bits of it can be seen from the street and it’s overlooked by a couple of neighboring houses — and is composed of a sun-dappled stone terrace that wraps around a three sides of small rectangular patch of lawn.

No word on the fate of the Obama’s 6,200-plus-square-foot home in Chicago that was purchased in 2005 for $1.65 million. However, this property gossip would not be the least bit bowled over with surprise if at some point it’s surreptitiously sold to a generous Democratic benefactor.

NOTE: Listing photographs dug up on the internet show the home when it was last listed and sold to the Lockharts in 2014 and may or may not reflect the current condition and features of the property.

Listing photos: Washington Fine Properties

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