Land Rush in Washington

Money can't be the object in the great house hunt

Watergate is back. As a place to live, that is. The Washington apartment complex immortalized by a certain third-rate burglary has become a prime nesting place for arriving members of the new Reagan Administration. Charles Wick and Alfred Bloomingdale, California friends of the new President, have moved there. The most elegant piece of real estate in town, of course, has been taken by the Ronald Reagans, but there are still a few choice homes for sale in the Georgetown section. Prices start at about $150,000--for one of the neighborhood's quaint 7-ft.-wide townhouses --and go up to sums that would buy a whole subdivision in other U.S. cities.

But, by and large, the incoming Republicans do not seem to mind. At least ten Reagan Cabinet members are millionaires, accustomed to six-figure price tags if not 16% mortgage rates.

Washington is a boom town whenever Administrations change, and this turnover is injecting new life into a real estate market that was beginning to sag after years of tight mortgage money and soaring prices. As soon as Reagan was elected, home prices began to rise. One three-bedroom condominium that had been on the market for nearly a year at $325,000 was hiked to $350,000 in November--and finally sold. Says Socialite-Realtor Vicki Bagley: "I guess the Reagan people are used to paying $2 million."

Four years ago, Jimmy Carter's arriving Georgians complained about not being able to find a nice house for $40,000.

Yet Reagan's Californians should be flush with cash if they sell their old homes in the red-hot property market of Southern California. They are not moaning so much about price as about the lack of lawns and swimming pools. Says one Republican with a home in Pacific Palisades, Calif.: "Maybe we pay more where we come from, but we get a lot more yard."

So far, Reagan Chief of Staff Jim Baker appears to have made the Administration's biggest residential investment.

He bought the onetime home of Adlai Stevenson on Foxhall Road, with six bedrooms, 4 1/2 baths, a circular drive, and 22-ft. gourmet kitchen. Asking price: $750,000. Secretary of State Alexander Haig for now is renting at the Colonnade, an elegant apartment building ten minutes from the State Department. Mrs. Haig thought she had found the right house, a five-bedroom Tudor--and even dragged the general away from some Inaugural festivities to look at it--but Haig decided that it was "not grand enough."

The new team in town is learning about inflation firsthand. Reagan Counselor Edwin Meese just bought a relatively modest new four-bedroom colonial in a development in McLean, Va. Price:

$265,000. Four years ago, Carter Energy Secretary Charles Duncan paid $300,000 for a Georgian-style home in the Palisades section of Washington. Peter McCoy, Nancy Reagan's chief of staff, has just bought it for $450,000. About three blocks away, Agriculture Secretary John Block bought former Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher's house, purchased four years ago at $195,000, for $320,000.

The shuffle is just beginning. Many Carterites are staying in lobbying and consulting jobs, so there are more Republican buyers than there are Democratic sellers. In addition, the Reagan Administration is taking its time naming a staff. Says Realtor Becki Donatelli: "Most of my clients say, 'I want to buy as soon as I find out what I'm going to be doing.' " One Ford Republican, however, was farsighted. When Carter was elected, he rented out his McLean house and moved back to California. But he put one clause in the lease: the tenant had 30 days to vacate if a Republican became President in 1981.

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