- Gavin Newsom’s $3.7 million, 12,000 square foot mansion, on 8+ acres along the American River in Sacramento, was the area’s most expensive home sale in 2018
- The gated estate consists of a 6 bedroom/10 bath home, a guest house, a pool, a tennis court, and a wine cave
- An LLC registered to Newsom’s cousin, long-time business partner, and Co-President of PlumpJack, Jeremy Scherer, paid cash for the estate in December 2018
- Newsom’s spox, though, claimed in Jan 2019 that it was Newsom who’d paid cash for the home – puzzling, since Newsom still carried a $3.2 million mortgage on his prior home
- In Oct 2019 the LLC gifted the home to the Newsoms free and clear, claiming Newsom was a member of the LLC to avoid a $4,000 Transfer Tax
- In January 2020 the Newsoms received $2.7 million tax-free when they obtained a cash-out refinance
- Newsom’s financial disclosure forms don’t mention the LLC or the gifts, which far exceed the $500 limit
- In 2003, Newsom was cited for failing to disclose $11 million in real estate and business loans
One thing that’s become extraordinarily clear to Californians in 2020 is that there’s one set of rules for Gov. Gavin Newsom, and there’s another set of rules for the rest of us. He preaches that we’re all in this together and that we have to sacrifice to “meet this moment,” yet he’s not missing a paycheck.
As California businesses struggle, he sends a $1 billion contract for masks to a Chinese company. When he shut down wineries throughout 80 percent of California, he kept his open.
While the dream of owning a home is increasingly out of reach for California’s families, it appears that Newsom received a $3.7 million estate from an LLC owned by his cousin then, a few months later took out a $2.695 million (tax-free) cash-out mortgage on it — and didn’t report the gift on any of his financial disclosure forms.
Yes, it’s clear that Gavin Newsom doesn’t live by the same rules the rest of us do. It’s good to be king.
During the eight years that Gavin Newsom served as California’s Lieutenant Governor, he and his family still lived a few hours from Sacramento, in their $4.5 million Bay Area compound. Throughout the 2018 gubernatorial campaign, he wouldn’t commit to moving his family to the capital. Days before his January 7, 2019 swearing-in ceremony, Newsom announced that the family would be moving into the Governor’s Mansion — which wasn’t true at all. Unbeknownst to the public, an LLC owned by Newsom’s cousin had already purchased an estate in Fair Oaks on December 21, 2018, for the Governor’s family to live in, for $3.7 million cash.
A few weeks later, the Sacramento Bee was apparently tipped off to the LLC’s purchase. According to a January 17, 2019 story, when the reporter contacted the Governor’s office for comment, his spokesperson confirmed that the Newsoms would be moving to the Fair Oaks property “as soon as renovations were completed” and that the estate was much more kid-friendly than the Governor’s mansion.
Newsom’s spokesperson, choosing his words carefully, confirmed that the property was purchased through an LLC “registered in the name of…Newsom’s cousin Jeremy Scherer” (emphasis added), but claimed that the Newsoms paid cash for the home. At that time, the only publicly-available corporate document was the Articles of Organization, which listed Jeremy Scherer as the registered agent, so the spokesperson was correct but left out crucial information — that Newsom was not a member of the LLC.
The First Family moved to the Fair Oaks home somewhere around the beginning of May 2019, according to a blog post from a neighbor and local Realtor, and in October 2019, the LLC transferred the deed to Gavin and Jennifer Newsom. The Deed states that the Documentary Transfer Tax ($4,070) was waived because the transaction was a “transfer out of LLC for benefit of grantor/grantee — no change in interest.”
In late January 2020, Gavin and Jennifer Newsom obtained a cash-out refinance mortgage for $2,695,000 on the Fair Oaks property. Mortgage proceeds are not taxable income.
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