A look at some scandalous mortgage payments
By CHRISTY ROBINSON
1/22/2003

My, how the mighty have fallen. And if you were to buy a home owned by one of 2002's scandalous corporate executives, your monthly mortgage payment also would be mighty.

Executives such as the ones accused last year of espousing tainted fiscal virtue don't deal in puny conventional mortgages -- which wouldn't loan enough to cover the cost of the front door. No, only a jumbo loan could finance the lairs of corporate royalty, many of which have gone on the market.

With the help of home values reported by the Wall Street Journal Online, the monthly mortgage payments of these headline-dominators can be calculated -- while reiterating the difference between us and them.

Kenneth Lay of Enron fame has two Aspen homes up for sale. The first has a river view and a $6.15 million asking price. Using a 20% down payment, a 15-year term, Bankrate.com's 5.23% jumbo rate, and Washington Mutual's online home equity calculator, the monthly mortgage payment would be $39,499.07. The second home, made of log and stones, is on the market for $5.5 million -- making for a lower payment of $35,324.37 per month.

Martha Stewart, founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and an otherwise domestic know-it-all, is selling her downtown New York condo -- leaving her with only five other places to live. The condo has an $8 million asking price, which would leave the buyer with a $51,380.90 a month mortgage payment.

John Rigas, former chief executive of Pennsylvania-based Aldelphia Communications, plead guilty to stealing funds from the company he helped found in 1952. A bankruptcy court is temporarily barring him from selling his ranch house and farm. When the house is ready for market, agents say it would grab only about $600,000 -- a steal for only about $3,853.57 a month.

However, if your mortgage-industry paycheck is strangely larger than the rest of your colleagues', you could move into one of Dennis Kozlowski's digs. Tyco International, formerly the parent of CIT Group Inc., is selling his Manhattan co-op on Fifth Avenue -- bought by Kozlowski with pilfered Tyco funds -- for $16.8 million. Your mortgage payment would be a mere $107,899.89 a month.

According to Salary.com, the yearly salary of, say, a mortgage loan area manager is $99,240.33, which is the average among Los Angeles, New York City, and Dallas. That wouldn't buy much mansion -- but it also wouldn't buy much scandal, either.

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