This week's cover story, "The Hard Sell," looks into the curious case of Erik Osborn, the Denver developer who is demanding the city provide him with a free public defender despite the fact that he lives in a multi-million dollar "villa" in the uber-ritzy Polo Club neighborhood.
Osborn's wife, real estate broker Angela Osborn, currently has the 14,841-square-foot home on the market for $6.5 million. But after questions from Westword, the Colorado Division of Real Estate has opened an investigation to see if Angela conspired with the previous owner and others to purposely inflate the price of the home by hundreds of thousands of dollars when she and Erik purchased it in 2006. Now Angela is hoping that her neighbors in the upscale enclave will take her up on the super special deal of $5.7 million for the overly-mortgaged home in a "private sale."
Check out her e-mailed sales pitch after the jump.
From: Angela OsbornSent: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:58 pm
Subject: 7 Polo Club Lane Sale
Polly please forward this on to everyone! Thank you
Hello Neighbors --
As you are all aware the housing market in Denver is soft as a result of the more global economic profile. Most of you are also aware that Erik and I are parters in the One Lincoln Park high-rise downtown. This softening has had an impact on our sales at the high-rise and therefore our timeframe for selling out the project will be quite different than expected. Because of this, it is our desire to take a much more conservative approach and sell our house at 7 Polo.
We thought it appropriate to send this message to all of you for you clearly understand the value of this neighborhood! Because we are Real Estate investors ourselves, we know that in this market buyers are value driven and if we want to sell our home we need to propose a compelling offer so that savvy investors will find it hard to pass up. We have had our home listed since after the holidays and the asking price is $6.5M. At this point we would consider selling the home privately for $5.775M. This is not information we wish to share with the public at this point.
Last year we hired BOA to do an extensive remodel on the home and it now has a family room and new kitchen as well as many other important selling features that the house didn't possess before. We had it appraised about 1 year ago for around $7M. We strongly believe that for someone who has the cash to invest in real estate this would be a very smart investment and once the market turns around 4th quarter or spring of next year it could be sold for a very nice profit! As a courtesy, please keep this information confidential and if you or anyone you know has an interest contact us...
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Angela Osborn
