Real-Estate Research Pays Off for Springsteen Drummer

Meticulous research and time well spent in city hall may help Max Weinberg, the drummer for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, turn a tidy real-estate profit, writes Ben Casselman in today’s Journal.

The musician owns 40 acres and an 8,900-square-foot, seven-bedroom house in Middletown, N.J. He hopes to subdivide the property and put 22 acres on the market this spring as a three-lot subdivision — for a total $8 million. Mr. Weinberg paid less than $1 million for the entire 40-acre property in 1997.

There’s been an outcry against Mr. Weinberg’s plans local residents would prefer to see the land preserved, and township planning authorities have expressed similar reservations. However, because Mr. Weinberg did his research and submitted a plan that was “done by the book,” authorities felt they had to approve it.

While “it’s nothing for Max to go down to city hall and spend a day mired in their arcane regulations,” says a friend of Mr. Weinberg in the story, the drummer wasn’t always so exacting with real estate research, and paid dearly for it. In 1984, he and his wife paid $300,000 for a five-acre farm in Monmouth County from a developer who, from the car he drove and the suits he wore, looked well-funded. However, after the purchase, the developer told him, “You paid me too much for the house.”

This got us thinking, how much research do most homebuyers do before they take the plunge? Presumably, most folks don’t have the time to spend a day at city hall bogged down in documents. Readers, what kind of research do you perform before purchasing a property? Has it paid off for you? — Lauren Baier Kim