Even Hulkster’s in housing chokehold

Listen to this article

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices for July were released this week, and the news wasn’t good.

Well, it wasn’t good if you are among those of us who own “real property,” as they say. If you’re looking to buy a house, it was probably great news.

In the Charlotte metro area, home prices fell 3.9 percent in July from July 2010. I guess that means that the attractiveness of renting suddenly rose by about 3.9 percent in the minds of a lot of people.

Of course, Charlotte’s not the only place where the value of homes has been falling like prices of Bank of America shares. In 20 metro areas across the U.S., home prices declined 4.1 percent in July from a year ago, Case-Shiller says.

So, from the lakes of Minnesota,to the hills of Tennessee, across the plains of Texas and from sea to shining sea, values are down everywhere. (Now here’s hoping that Lee Greenwood won’t sue me for plagiarism.)

Which brings me to Hulk Hogan.

Hulk, or Terrance Bollea to those who knew him before his wrestling days and music career (yes, he has a CD, “Hulk Rules,” and he plays the bass guitar), is reeling from his own smack down delivered by the housing market’s downturn. The Hulkster’s haven in Belleair, Fla. — a town overlooking the Gulf of Mexico — has been a hard sell, even though the price has been slashed on more than one occasion.

It’s the house that was the setting for the reality TV show “Hogan Knows Best,” which made us glad we weren’t like them — I mean, touched our hearts — when it began in 2005. Thanks to the miracle of television, we were finally given a close look at the day-to-day life of America’s favorite bandanna-wearing wrestler, his then-wife Linda and their two kids.

(In Finland, by the way, the show was called “Hurjat Hoganit,” which means “Furious Hogans.”)

Furious is right: If you think you’ve had to give your house away in this bad economy, imagine listing it for $25 million six years ago, lowering it to $13.9 million three years later and then dropping it again to its current price, $8.8 million.

Sounds like the market knows best.

To be sure, $8.8 million is still a sweet chunk of change. But you can’t expect Terrance to sell a 1.5-acre slice of Florida waterfront property with a mansion on it for peanuts.

Zillow says the house, at 130 Willadel Drive, has five bedrooms and 9.5 bathrooms. Perhaps the prospect of having to clean that many toilets has been the main turnoff for buyers.

Total living square footage comes in at 17,000. It’s listed as single-family, but somehow a 17,000-square-foot pad doesn’t sound single-family to a guy like me living in a 1,400-square-foot house with a wife, two kids, three cats, some spiders and, occasionally, fruit flies.

Hulk and Linda have since divorced — there were allegations that he had an affair — but they haven’t been able to rid themselves of the house.

Hogan bought the property in 1992. A Zillow blog says he spent the next four years building a European-style home.

The house has been on Zillow for 763 days, despite Hulk calling in Coldwell Banker real estate agent Martha Thorn, who, according to her online description, is a member of the Million Dollar Guild. But Hogan’s learned that even when you have a heavyweight agent in your corner, you’re still no match for this market meltdown.

Meanwhile, another European-style estate is the priciest property on the market in the Charlotte area, although Hogan’s not the owner.

But it is owned by another sports figure, NASCAR’s Casey Mears.

The waterfront house, at 5020 Carmel Park Drive, is yours for $5.99 million. And, like with Hulk’s house, the price of Mears’ property has been slashed. On Sept. 22, a whopping $201,000 was shaved off the asking price.

Its assessed value in the 2011 Mecklenburg County revaluation: $5.35 million.

Roberts can be reached at [email protected].