Boston Woman Pays Half a Million Dollars for Tandem Parking Spots
Finding a good parking spot in one of the country's most congested cities is commonly known to be ridiculous. But this ridiculous?
Apparently: A Boston woman won a contentious bidding war against her affluent Back Bay neighbors to purchase two "primo" parking spots in what the Boston Globe calls "one of the most parking unfriendly sections of the city."
The tandem spots were seized by the IRS from a man who owed $600,000 in back taxes, and sold at an auction yesterday to Commonwealth Ave. resident Lisa Blumenthal.
Though the asking price for the spots was a "measly" $42,000, the Globe's Katie Johnston says bidding entered six-figure territory in seconds and ended up at over half a million dollars some 15 minutes later.
For the sake of perspective, the median price for a single-family home in the Boston Metro area is around $320,000.
"It was a little more heated than I thought it would have been," said Blumenthal, who owned a single-family home valued at over $5.8 million.
She told the Globe she already has a place to park but plans to use the extra parking spaces "for guests and workers."
For the record, the most ever paid for a single parking spot remains $300,000 for another slice of Commonwealth Ave. asphalt back in 2009.
