An Almost Too-American Story About the Pope’s Childhood Home

Step 1: On May 9th, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Debra Kamin reported for The New York Times that Pope Leo XIV’s childhood home was up for sale. The current owner purchased the house in Dolton, a South-Chicago suburb, just last year for $66,000 and renovated it. It went on the market for $199,000, but the market was tepid. That changed once news of its papal heritage got out. The offers, many above asking price, started rolling in. In response, the owner pulled the house from the market, the broker for the deal stated, hoping to do more research on the house to learn of the extent of the Pope’s connection to the property.

I’m not sure I quite get the attraction of owning such a home. I fear that the appeal might be commercial, like that you could turn the home into a museum and charge admission, but I would think zoning laws would have something to say about that. As the Times report cited above notes, celebrity homes do not always hold their value. Someone paid $2.14 million to purchase Donald Trump’s childhood home in Queens in 2017, but it fell into disrepair and was resold in March for $835,000. Somehow, I think if the owner had turned over the property to the Trump family, they would have gotten a lot more for it. it would be a meme coin by now.

Step 2: Ms. Kamin returned to the story a week later to report that the house was now to be sold via auction. Perhaps learning from Ms. Kamin’s reporting with Mr. Bogel-Burroughs from the week before, the realtor teamed up with the same auction house that sold Mr. Trump’s childhood home. As the realtor explained, “This is the best chance for selling it for top dollar and also getting the most amount of exposure.” A representative from that auction house was gleeful: “We can call this the pope premium. Within one week this is going to be the most famous home on the planet. What the highest and best bid will be, or who it will be from, is anyone’s guess.” Poor Leo. It’s not quite the message that I think his Papacy was shooting for.

Step 3: Not even a week later, Ms. Kamin and Matt Yan had new information to share. They reported that the Village of Dolton is now going to purchase the property, perhaps exercising the power of eminent domain. “The Village intends to work with the Chicago Archdiocese and other agencies to allow the home to be viewed and visited by the public as a historic site.”  It seems that the auction is still open, and the Village of Dolton is hoping to have the high bid so that it does not have to exercise its powers of eminent domain.

Predicted Step 4: We’ll see how this goes, but I foresee litigation. If the auction price becomes unreasonable, Dolton will resort to eminent domain. The seller, the realtor, and the auction house will then sue, claiming that that the auction establishes the market price for the property, and anything below that is a taking.