Life Beyond the Vendome
On leap day, we closed the sale of my apartment in the historic Hotel Vendome condo in Boston’s Copley Square.
Neither my original purchase nor the recent sale of the property were my favorite life experiences. Both entailed an awful lot of seemingly-unnecessary complexity, risk, and bother. Although I suppose the size of the transaction warrants such precautions.
When I bought the unit back in 2001, I was looking for a safe place to stash the proceeds from participating in Sapient’s IPO and meteoric rise to prominence and inclusion in the S&P 500. I paid a lot of capital gains tax and bought when real estate prices were high, but at least I liquidated my company stock options before the Internet Bubble burst in the early 2000s. Many of my coworkers held onto their shares-or worse still, used them as margin leverage-and lost all their unrealized fortunes when the market turned on them.
In the end, I’d like to say that owning a condo turned out to be a really good investment. After all, it proved to be a lot safer than Sapient stock, and the property appreciated by about 33 percent during the fifteen years I was there.
On the other hand, I paid a whole shitload of mortgage interest. While that (and property taxes) provided a nice income tax deduction, the government gives you the deduction because you are paying so much in interest (and property tax). So net-net, I’m not sure I got a better return than if I had invested the money somewhere else.
The good news is that I’m debt-free for the first time in 15 years, which is always an awesome feeling. Even though I’m over 50, being financially self-sufficient and independent remains one of the most central values that I inherited from my parents.
However, liquidating that big asset comes with the intimidating (but probably desirable) challenge of figuring out how to best invest the proceeds, which represent about 90 percent of my net worth. I’m thinking something fairly defensive, but we’ll just have to see how it turns out.
And after listening to me talk about the move for so long, you’ll probably be happy to know that this severs my final significant tie to Boston. You’ll still hear lots about my exploration of my new home in Pittsburgh, but the long-talked-about departure from Boston is finally complete.
I’ll certainly miss the Vendome. It was my first experience in home buying, ownership, and selling, It was an amazing location and a wonderful place to be for those 15 years, and I loved it dearly. More than any other house in a long, long time, it felt like home to me, and I’ll miss that a lot.
But it belongs to a chapter of my life that’s now finished. Now it’s time to look forward to whatever new story unfolds.