A county auditors assessment is not a Competitive Market Analysis of fair market value. One actually has little to do with the other. A property is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, which establishes an appraised value. A county auditor's assessment is tied to what amount of tax the owner pays on it.

I am not saying that I know the appraised value in a realtor's current CMA on 31 Coventry, and until a realtor does a CMA, no one will. $1.2-1.6 MM were both stated as a placeholder figures until a CMA was completed AND then the two parties went through the negotiation process. I would be extremely upset if the Foundation were to overpay for the property. But there is no evidence that a purchase and sale agreement was completed, for any number. So, I'm not going to get pissed off over something that doesn't even exist.

All that said, a CMA on 31 Coventry doesn't have much to do with what the University is paying in rent on the property.

A CMA was completed on 29 Park, and that was appraised at $985,000. SOOOO, I am simply stating that the University is bound to provide a place to live that would have met or exceeded the equivalent value of 29 Park Place.

So, what I AM saying is that $4,300/mo rent paid on 31 Coventry is highly comparable to the value of 29 Park Place as a contractual obligation:

29 Park having an equivalent 30 year mortgage payment of $3,649/month
A quick Google shows that they annual property taxes on 29 Park are $28,805.54, which equates to $2,400/month
Let's call the insurance $3,000 per year, considering the replacement value, age and contents of the home all being antiques, so that is $250/month.

So excluding the maintenance on a century old house being greater than what the university would pay on 31 Coventry if it owned it, the tally is:

29 Park is a $6,300+ monthly benefit to a President of Ohio University.

It is being replaced with a $4,300 benefit.

Our current President is actually getting hosed in his new place of residence to the sum of $2,000/month, plus he now has to drive to work.

Ohio University does not "tax" employees. I doubt very much that other schools don't follow the appropriate IRS regulations.

I can't speak for O.U.,but I have a small business in N.J.
It seems like every year the IRS changes the rules on what is considered a taxable benefit.

The University is not selling 29 Park. That comment was about the other house. Sorry for any confusion. 29 Park regardless of its future use is not going anywhere.

Any value placed on 31 Coventry is irrelevant to me at this point. As I stated, I have no interest in the University purchasing anything for more than fair market value, and they didn't purchase 31 Coventry, so I'm not going to be pissed about something that didn't happen.

So let me ask this question: How in the hell is OHIO supposed to hire its next President, especially one that is highly regarded and sought after, when prospective candidates learn that the previous two Presidents were required to live in a house with a chronic bat problem that seemingly cannot be solved, and there is no long term solution to remedy that issue? Why can't we strive to meet and exceed the market and compete on a higher level than the one on which we presently reside? Why do we have to think so small? As long as situations like this continue to persist on this campus, we will continue to fail at being greater than we presently are.

That is an embarrassment to me. When the prevailing trend is housing university Presidents in off campus housing, and we have the unwavering opinion of faculty and students that forcing the University's chief executive to live in a pest ridden relic is the only tenable solution, who in their right minds would want to run this cluster eff of an institution?

Tie in the complete disregard by anyone in the media, faculty or students for Deborah having broken her foot evading a bat. What if she had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck, or worse, and the University were facing a negligence law suit due to over a dozen bat incursions over the last decade, with serial failure to remedy the situation? And yet no one is even "batting" an eye to this side of the story.

This whole thing is a complete dumpster fire, but on far more levels than the one's being beaten to death by the media.

Has it been execute in a "ram-rod" manner? Or has it been discussed at length in a public forum for over a year and just now been picked up by the media? The Board of Trustees has been considering this for awhile. It seems reasonable to me that protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the McDavises is a good reason to speed up the process.

Makes Builder magazine's five worst and weirdest animal infestations, certainly something to be proud of that our President was forced by contract to live in that dump: http://www.builderonline.com/building/safety-healthfulnes...

$830,000 to rectify the construction defect that facilitates the bat issue and make the home residentially habitable, $1.8MM to $2.1MM to upgrade the home for commercial use, not including the cost to remove the bats if they don't voluntarily leave once the construction starts. For those who are keeping score.

http://www.thepostathens.com/news/future-of-park-place-ou...

I don't believe I implied anything, I'm simply stating facts. The University has to provide its President a place to live, via the contract for employment. If venue A is not available, then the Trustees have to put the President in a venue B. I made no reference to the present state of temporary/permanent housing, simply that the 29 Park needs renovations that nearly exceed its market value.

Again, all I am doing is stating the facts from the article. I'm not making commentary on the $4,300 a month that the Trustees are paying for temporary housing. If you want to argue that $4,300 a month is grossly overpaying for 31 Coventry then good on 'ya, but that has nothing to do with anything I stated above.

But since you guys keep insisting that I am trying to make a point, let me make one: if you consider the debt service on the $830k required to make the residence once again fit for habitation, and equating it to a jumbo mortgage on a $830k home, which is a far lower rate than what the University will be paying to service the debt on that work, then the monthly payment would be $3,218 on $664,000, assuming the University could put down 20%.

The work is going to cost more than that considering lending rates applicable to remodeling an existing commercial building, but the math above is easy shorthand using a mortgage calculator. That shows the kind of problem that 40 years worth of deferred maintenance can lead to, and which is the position in which the University finds itself for most of its buildings, not just 29 Park Place. Those issues predate the current Trustees and President.

If you actually do want me to comment on if $4,300 is too much rent to pay for 31 Coventry, I can't do that because I don't know what fair market rent would be for that home in 45701.

I do know that a landlord should be entitled to charge more to renters in monthly rent than what their monthly payment, depreciation, taxes and insurance would be if they were in the business of renting homes to make a profit, because they would lose money if you didn't cover those costs. But ultimately, a property is worth what someone is willing to pay, either in a purchase or a rental, so ultimately the expenses of the owner are only relative to fair market value.

I have no idea if John Wharton has a mortgage on that property or what he paid for the house and the contiguous lots. For shits an giggles, let's just say that the current fair market value to buy 31 Coventry with the contiguous vacant lots is $750k. (web searches for 31 Coventry do not include the value with the contiguous lots, which are part of renting the property) With 20% down your mortgage balance is $600k, which would make your monthly payment $2,951.64.

I know that the annual property taxes are $18,545, based on a quick search on Trulia, which per month equates to $1,545.

I have no idea what Wharton paid for the home, so to determine the 27.5 year IRS depreciation schedule on 85% of just the house, let's use the Trulia current market valuation on only the home of $581k, which results in a monthly depreciation amount of $1,496.51.

I have no idea what the insurance cost on 31 Coventry is, but I know that with having a pool, it would be considerably higher than a home that doesn't have one, so let's conservatively call that $2,400 a year, or monthly it's $200.

So on a relatively quick, but non-scientific and largely based on logical assumptions from what is mostly public knowledge, the monthly costs to own that property as a rental are around $6,193.15

I have no idea what John Wharton's actual costs are for any of those items save for the property taxes, which are public record, so I have no way to comment on whether or not $4,300 is a sweetheart deal, a break even deal or a losing proposition for him or the University. I know that I own rental property, and if I consider all of the variables above in only the vaguest of estimates as I did above, on the surface I can't come to a conclusion that $4,300 a month is being grossly overpaid monthly rent for that property against what the monthly carrying costs are.

I could say that based on that data, I would not want to invest in 31 Coventry and take over that lease agreement with the University from John unless I were going to pay cash for the property and carry no debt, and even at that, I'd be pocketing less than $1,000 a month. Relative to what else I could do with $750,000, I could find several dozen/hundred other things I would rather do with my money to get a considerably better ROI.

Do any of you know John's costs for these things? If you do, I'd like to know what those are so I could make an informed decision on if I should be enraged or not that the University is overpaying him.

Now could the University have chosen a temporary residence that costs less than $4,300 per month? Likely. Do any of you know the actual equivalent value to the President of his being provided 29 Park Place in which to live, and which would be the Trustee's contractual obligation to provide while a final decision was being made on 29 Park Place? I don't. If you do, I'd like to know what that is so I could make an informed decision on if I should be enraged or not.

I haven't seen any of these items detailed in The Post either, but I have seen a lot of outrage from them, so I would like to have a comprehensive understanding of those facts in an attempt to convey why I should be as outraged as they are. I also have not seen any of those facts delivered by faculty or staff, so I would like to have a comprehensive understanding of their perception of the facts in an attempt for them to convey why I should be as outraged as they are.

I live about a block down from the Wharton place on Coventry Lane. If Wharton pays $18,545 annually in real estate taxes, then extrapolating from what I pay and value of my house on the market today I can calculate that the Wharton house and adjacent property would be worth roughly $1.1 million. There has been a lot of misinformation here and elsewhere about the market value of the Wharton place. It is far and away the most expensive house and lot on our street.