Rep. Ryun’s Documents Don’t Back His Claims

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Last week, Rep. Jim Ryun (R-KS) released a statement purporting to prove that the townhouse he purchased from Ed Buckham’s U.S. Family Network was sold at fair market price. But his statement (which we’ve posted here) and its accompanying documentation doesn’t prove any such thing. In fact, it only confirms how odd the sale actually was.

Let’s review.

As we reported for the first time last Monday, Ryun bought the Capitol Hill townhouse at far below market value in 2000 – as much as $100,000 below, according to experts we spoke to. The seller was the U.S. Family Network, a nonprofit controlled by Tom DeLay’s former chief of staff Ed Buckham. The USFN was little more than a front for Buckham, a slush fund pumped full of money ($2.3 million over four years) by Jack Abramoff’s clients. (Buckham was recently implicated in Tony Rudy’s guilty plea for helping Abramoff bribe Rudy.)

So what’s Ryun’s defense?

Ryun claims that he found structural deficiencies that effected the price of the townshouse. According to his statement, Ryun consulted a housing inspector who found that “the upstairs master bathroom was in danger of falling through the living room ceiling because of the size of the bathtub put in by the previous owner.” He then followed up by speaking with a contractor who estimated the repairs would cost “between $10,000 and $20,000.”

But Ryun does not produce documentation for these estimates, nor does he suggest that such documentation ever existed or that he provided it to the U.S. Family Network as part of the negotiations. What he did do, according to his account, was “ask” the USFN to take the contractor’s estimate “into consideration.” The USFN then apparently voluntarily depressed the sale price based on Ryun’s verbal assurances that repairs were needed. That’s seems far from a normal process of negotiation. And how many building inspectors produce no written record of their work?

Ryun does include documentation — only, little if any of it supports his claims.

Ryun’s statement includes a contractor’s contract for $54,500 worth of repairs on the house. The contract was signed after Ryun and USFN had agreed on a sale price. So it’s not clear that this number figured into the negotiations. But more to the point, only a small portion- little more than $3,000 of the cost – of the contracted work had any connection to the alleged structural problems with the house, which Ryun says were the basis of the under-market-value sale. The first floor needed a support beam replaced and the master bathtub had to be removed. All of the other work relates to aesthetic improvements such as:

– “Remodel first floor bathroom with appropriate upgrade”

– “Remove the existing kitchen. Open up a pass through into living room. Install customer purchased cabinets and counter tops…”

– “Remove all carpeting and refinish all floors throughout the house…”

– In the Master bedroom and bathroom: “Remodel the existing bath. Remove all the pink marble. Remove the fireplace….”

– “Develop basement into rentable space.”

– “Install crown molding in the living room and dining room.”

– “Paint the entire house”

What it looks like is that Ryun saved so much money buying the house at the artificially depressed price that he could afford to totally make the place over.

The only other supporting document Ryun provides is a record of a house sale in his area that purports to show that others in the area were going for the same price. The AP pointed out in their story last Wednesday that the record was for a home “on a land area about half the size of Ryun’s” – and it’s “now assessed at $236,000 less than Ryun’s.”

Ryun’s other justification for the low price was that he agreed to spare the USFN the cost of a realtor. But looked at another way, USFN’s decision not to use a realtor only confirms the USFN did not make an effort to pursue a market price for the building.

In other words, all Ryun’s evidence points to the same conclusion: Rep. Ryun bought the townhouse from under market value from a lobbyist with close ties to Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff.

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