Let’s faux you have at all times dreamed of dwelling within the White Home. That’s not a loopy dream. Who would not wish to get up within the Lincoln Bed room, sip espresso on the Truman Balcony, then stroll over to the Oval Workplace and spend the day working from the Resolute Desk? And when the day is finished, you slip into black tie apparel and entertain associates and dignitaries in your personal 250-person banquet corridor.
If that is your dream, however you favor to not take care of the hassles of a presidential marketing campaign, debate prep, limitless fundraising, and Secret Service brokers making an attempt to maintain you alive, I’ve some excellent news. There’s a hack.
You simply have to just accept one small compromise. As an alternative of dwelling at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., you are gonna should make do dwelling at 3687 Briarcliff Rd NE, within the Atlanta suburbs. Oh, and you will want $35 million.
The Atlanta White Home
The story of Atlanta’s White Home started lengthy earlier than the primary column went up. It began in 1979, when Iranian-born developer Fred Milani arrived in the US. That 12 months, the shah of Iran was deposed, the Islamic Revolution swept the nation, and 1000’s of Iranians fled in the hunt for security and stability. Milani was one among them. He settled in Atlanta, rebuilt his life from scratch, and ultimately discovered success shopping for modest ranch properties and changing them with the outsized, high-columned properties that got here to outline the area’s McMansion increase.
By the late Nineties, Milani was a full-force developer with dozens of enormous properties beneath his belt. In October 1999, he bought a quiet lot in Oak Grove for $180,000. In accordance with Milani, the concept for the White Home took form virtually immediately. His spouse advised him she needed a grand home with columns. His architect, half joking, stated, “Nicely, if you’d like columns, why not simply construct the White Home?” Milani had undergone a conversion to Christianity a number of years earlier and interpreted the suggestion as an indication. “I consider it was Jesus’ plan,” he later advised CNN. Inside minutes, the choice was made.
Building completed in 2001, and the outcome was not a free homage. Milani constructed a honest, detailed re-creation. The property included a roughly 16,500-square-foot foremost residence and an identical 7,500-square-foot guesthouse. Inside, the Oval Workplace featured a Resolute-style desk, two open Bibles, and a presidential seal on the ceiling. The Lincoln Bed room included a hand-painted mural of Abraham Lincoln. The entrance yard displayed an illuminated cross surrounded by topiary spelling out “God ♥ You.” A domed ceiling close to the doorway depicted Jesus ministering to individuals from all over the world, together with a person in a sombrero and an American Indian in full headdress. At Jesus’s toes, the painter added Milani himself, kneeling.
It was half political funhouse, half non secular sanctuary, half private assertion. Neighbors could not agree on whether or not it was charming, cheesy, or just too massive for the neighborhood. However curiosity visitors shortly turned a each day incidence. Folks slowed right down to take images. Some complained about zoning fights and Milani’s rising McMansion footprint. Others admired the ambition.
By the mid-2000s, the Atlanta White Home wasn’t simply one other outsized property. It was a full-on native landmark, a surreal image of Atlanta’s increase years and the mixing of Milani’s immigrant story, new religion, and actual property ambitions. Here’s a video tour of the Atlanta White Home:
And this is a video tour from when the house was featured on an episode of an HGTV sequence again in 2012:
Monetary Troubles Brew
By the mid-2000s, the Atlanta White Home had change into a neighborhood curiosity, an area photo-op, and a form of private monument for Fred Milani. However behind the scenes, the timing couldn’t have been worse. Atlanta was one of many cities hit hardest by the actual property collapse, and Milani’s total enterprise mannequin relied on a gradual stream of consumers prepared to pay premium costs for outsized new building. When the market seized up, his empire seized up with it.
In accordance with a 2009 article in The New York Instances, Milani entered the downturn carrying a number of speculative properties, a number of delinquent loans, and a shrinking pool of consumers. His financial institution twice tried to foreclose on the White Home duplicate, and each occasions he narrowly averted dropping the property by restructuring debt, together with a $1.75 million past-due mortgage. On the similar time, he was racing to dump different properties merely to remain afloat.
Then got here November 2008, arguably the worst second within the American housing market within the final century. Credit score evaporated, demand plunged, and luxurious actual property turned practically inconceivable to maneuver. It was on this precise local weather that Milani listed the Atlanta White Home for an especially optimistic $9.8 million. The timing couldn’t have been extra brutal. No consumers got here ahead.
By 2013, after sitting on and off the marketplace for years, the truth of the state of affairs turned unavoidable. The Milani household lastly accepted a suggestion of $2.2 million in November 2013, a staggering drop from the unique asking value and a mirrored image of simply how far the market — and Milani’s funds — had fallen for the reason that increase years.
The Present House owners
The customer who stepped in after the Milani years was Thuy Ai Kathy Lam. As she recounted to the Wall Avenue Journal, Lam was born in Vietnam shortly earlier than the top of the battle. After her father, a normal within the South Vietnamese military, was imprisoned by the Communist regime, she spent her early teenagers portray nails door to door to assist help her household.
In 1995, the US sponsored her household’s transfer to Atlanta. Lam arrived with virtually no cash, discovered English, turned a nail technician, and made herself a promise that her household would by no means battle financially once more. 9 months later, she used a mortgage to open her first nail salon. That small enterprise grew right into a nationwide community of salons and wonder faculties, together with the Atlanta Magnificence & Barber Academy, which she based in 2005 and continues to run right now.
In the summertime of 2013, Thuy and her then-husband, Daniel Nguyen, have been looking for a bigger dwelling. One night time, they drove previous the Atlanta White Home. Nguyen joked they need to purchase it. Lam did not giggle. She knew the vendor’s son and instantly reached out to see if a deal was attainable. The timing labored. After years of economic pressure and a number of failed makes an attempt to promote the home, the Milani household accepted $2.2 million for the property in November 2013.
Lam embraced the property with a mixture of reverence and gratitude. She raised her youngsters there, saved the Oval Workplace intact, hosted neighborhood Christmas occasions, and even rented out the seven-bedroom guesthouse as an Airbnb she referred to as the “West Wing.”
Now that her youngsters are grown and off to school, Lam has determined it’s time to downsize. This week, Thuy listed the Atlanta White Home for $35 million. That value makes it the most costly residential itemizing within the Atlanta metro space, and if she sells for anyplace close to that quantity, it’ll obliterate the house sale document for the Atlanta suburbs.
Do I believe she’ll get $35 million? No.
I simply spent a while on Zillow scoping out the most costly properties offered within the Atlanta suburbs from the previous couple of years. I discovered an fascinating comp.
In March 2024, a 20,000-square-foot mansion set on a 3.4-acre lot in Tuxedo Park, roughly 20 minutes from the Atlanta White Home, was listed for $20 million. Described as a “customized Scandinavian Trendy Masterpiece,” this mansion is gorgeous. It has each single fashionable function an especially wealthy suburbanite would need. It is also situated instantly subsequent door to the Governor’s mansion, which is a pleasant security perk. This house is unimaginable. I’ve included a video tour beneath. This mansion offered in February of this 12 months for $15.7 million. Is somebody actually going to pay greater than 2X that quantity for a White Home duplicate set on a 3rd of the land that beforehand offered for $2.2 million, a bit over a decade in the past? Meehhhh.
