Barack and Michelle Obama Spend $8.1M on their Washington Rental Home

Published: June 2, 2017 | By: American Luxury Staff

President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, apparently became accustomed to their Kalorama rental; the former First Couple have decided to keep the house, holding the keys on a more permanent basis for $8.1 million.

It’s tough to blame them for wanting to stick around, though, as the house is lovely. From the street, in fact, the house is spectacular beautiful, even by Kalorama standards, a weathered brick tudor-influenced design with a hipped, slate-tiled roof, a turret ornament, and some dramatic gabling.

The home dates to 1921, but has seen a fairly recent renovation and modernization. The interior living space measures about 8,200 square feet, and there are eight bedrooms and 9.5 baths in all.

Unfortunately, the inside of the home isn’t nearly as interesting as the outside. The modernizations make a strong first impression, and the historical warmth fades considerably. Kitchens and baths are dressed in the familiar natural stone and tile, with the familiar light fixtures overhead. Tones are on the cooler side of neutral, giving the interiors an innocuous look. Leaded glass windows and original floors notch up the charm somewhat, though, with brick-hearth fireplaces chiming in.

The house previously sold in 2014, for $5.3 million, but Kalorama has been getting a lot of press in the past few months, with new residents also including Jeff Bezos, who picked up a two-mansion museum in January, and Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who bought a colonial with a cooly contemporary interior composition a couple of weeks earlier.

The Obamas still own their home in Chicago’s Hyde Park.

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