Mon 20 Oct 2008
Ex-WAMU President lists home for sale
Posted by Marlow Harris under Real Estate
Photo by Dan Savage
A beautiful old house just came on the market in my neighborhood on Capitol Hill. It’s owned by Stephen Rotella, who was president and chief operating officer of Washington Mutual when it failed last month after failing from bad mortgage losses. He’s selling his home with an offering price of $6.25 million.
Rotella, who was president and chief operating officer, is entitled under his current employment agreement to a cash severance of $12.7 million if he is terminated or quits with “good reason.”
He and his wife Esther bought the house for $3.78 million a few months after Rotella arrived in Seattle, from KING-TV newscaster Jean Enerson, in June 2005. It’s a 7,430-square-foot house and has five bedrooms, four-and-a-half baths, a wine cellar and a fountain in the yard. It’s located on almost an acre of land on the top of Capitol Hill, right behind Lake View Cemetery, where Bruce Lee is buried. Quiet neighbors.
More info and photos at The Stranger and in The Seattle Times.
October 26th, 2008 at 7:37 am
He will move on to something great after all of the dusts move by. Where he went wrong was the ability to refi with limited watch dogs. Not a ton of deals went thru their hands as 1st mortgages as far as I know. When a market goes sharply out of control what do the smart people do? They run for the trees and watch. You simply watch. Who cares about the short-term wins and losses. They could have simply kept banking while the market was going crazy up and down. Now they should be lending like crazy. We are in a stable market finally.