When he’s not consuming 12,000 calories a day or winning an incredible amount of Olympic gold, USA swimmer Michael Phelps is probably like the rest of us. You know, working (or in his case, working out), wondering how to spend the millions upon millions of dollars that are no doubt coming his way …

One thing’s for sure, his residential purchase isn’t exactly going to put him in an out-of-the-way area where only floral and fauna thrive.

According to the DC Examiner, Phelps is buying a luxury condo at The Crescent in the Fells Point area of Baltimore for around $1.7 million. If you don’t know Baltimore, Fells Point is an urban neighborhood not unlike that of, say, Lincoln Park in Chicago or Charleston, SC’s downtown area.

So he’s not moving there because of the privacy. What does $1.7 mil get’cha in Baltimore? We’ll let the Examiner (quoting TMZ) take over on that one:

a 4,080-square-foot … (condo with a) rooftop terrace, a private screening room, a state-of-the-art gym and private clubhouse with pool tables.

Oh, and did I forget to mention it has … a pool? Not so sure about parking, though.

A tip of the hat to Zillow Blog for the story, and for an item in the same piece that says Phelps and his swim coach, Bob Bowman, are considering buying the swim club where Bowman discovered Phelps at age 11 (and I’m thinking that Phelps was the kid who definitely was not wearing water wings).

According to Zillow Blog:

Actually, Phelps and Bowman … are talking about buying it together to turn it into an Olympic training ground.

NBAC, or “Meadowbrook,” as it is known, is adjacent to the Northwest Skating Rink and also nearby is a dinky little post office. (The blog’s author lived) lived in Baltimore and was a member at NBAC at the time Phelps was training for the Athens Olympics. Since this “complex” sits in a flood plain, the Baltimore Messenger doubts they will make that kind of commitment.

(The author’s) personal message to Michael: If you do buy it, please fix the locker rooms (the women’s room was disgusting), replace the chunks of concrete that are missing around the pool, expand the snack bar, and have someone skim the pool for floating band-aids.

Sounds like a fixer-upper to me. Hope it’ll cash flow for them. Of course, Phelps probably isn’t worried about things like cap rates, NPV and cash flow right about now (but he should be).

(Normally, we’d have a picture of him up top, but he’s gotten so much coverage lately I think his image is seared into the retinas of every American that has seen a TV or computer screen in the past week or two.)

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 @ 10:55 am on the category CRE News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.