Townsend says $1 million sale of his Urbandale estate ‘cost me a fortune’
KENT DARR Aug 12, 2015 | 9:15 pm
2 min read time
529 wordsBusiness Record Insider, Real Estate and DevelopmentTed Townsend thought an auction would speed up the process of selling his iconic Urbandale estate, but the eventual sale price came at a steep discount that came as a “shock.”
“It’s painful, I can’t deny it. It didn’t come out the way I expected,” the former patron of the Great Ape Trust and other philanthropies said.
According to a deed filed Monday, Aug. 10, an entity named WHC LLC paid $1.1 million for the 9,500-square-foot home and 4 acres with a lake that Townsend spent nearly $4 million to develop in the early 1980s at 13031 Oak Brook Drive in Urbandale’s Deer Creek subdivision.
In 2013, Townsend listed the property for sale at $4.9 million after deciding that he needed a smaller house in Greater Des Moines. He lives half of the year in a home that he found for his parents 45 years ago in Rancho Mirage, Calif. And at age 67, the big Iowa spread was getting to be a little too much.
Townsend later lowered the price to $3.9 million. This year he decided to speed up the process by turning to an auction house that specializes in luxury homes. That led him to Platinum Luxury Auctions in Florida.
After visiting the property and analyzing the Greater Des Moines market, Platinum maintained the property would fetch $2.35 million to $3.25 million, and maybe more, at auction, Townsend said.
The property was open for inspection for nearly three weeks before the June 27 auction. Several people toured the property.
Townsend formed doubts about the process when few bidders had registered just days before the auction.
In the 11th hour, a prominent Greater Des Moines businessman requested a private viewing and registered, Townsend said. He would not identify the businessman, whom he considers a “good friend.”
The other registered bidder was Urbandale pediatric dentist and orthodontist Thomas Wilson, Townsend said.
On the day of the auction, Wilson placed the only bid at the reserve price of $1 million, Townsend said. The extra $100,000 listed on the deed went to the auction house.
Wilson, who owns a property in the Glen Oaks development in West Des Moines, did not respond to a telephone message left at his Urbandale office.
The deed lists the buyer as WHC LLC, an entity that was recorded with the Iowa secretary of state on July 24. The attorney who filed the corporate paperwork would not identify the client or clients behind WHC LLC. Wilson owns his offices at 8514 Douglas Ave. through the entity Wilson Holding Co. LLC. A mortgage was not filed for the Oak Brook property.
“It’s not realistic to think the name would remain a secret,” Townsend said.
About the auction,”I’m not mad at anybody, but it cost me a fortune. I don’t know what happened,” he said.
It should be noted that since the start of the year, just one other single-family home has sold for more than $1 million in Polk County, and that was so-called “big house” at the former estate of businessman William Van Orsdel on Lincoln Place Drive in Des Moines’ South of Grand neighborhood. That property is listed for sale at $1.5 million today. Read more
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