user: News article: With Some Help, Clintons Purchase a White House

President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday settled the question of where the First Family will live once their lease on the White House expires, signing a contract to buy a $1.7 million, 11-room Dutch Colonial home in the wooded suburbs of Westchester County. The choice of a home in New York removes one of the chief obstacles in Mrs. Clinton's path as she prepares for a run for the United States Senate.

The Clintons, indebted by over $5 million in legal bills from the investigations that have marked the Clinton Presidency, were able to buy the white-shingled, five-bedroom home in Chappaqua after Mr. Clinton's chief fund-raiser, Terry McAuliffe, personally secured the loan.

The White House said that Mr. McAuliffe had put up $1.35 million of his own money with Bankers Trust. Under the terms of the mortgage, Mr. McAuliffe will get the money back, with interest from the bank, once the Clintons pay back the mortgage, or, as is more likely, refinance it in five years.

The deal was announced in a three-paragraph statement issued by the temporary press office of the White House -- a room in the Holiday Inn in Auburn, about seven miles from where the Clintons are vacationing in upstate New York. It apparently concludes one of the more unusual house-hunting expeditions embarked on by any American family, complicated by the Clintons' station in life, the fact that they have not owned a home in 16 years and Mrs. Clinton's political ambitions in New York.

''We're very pleased about the house,'' the President said last evening as he and the First Lady left a fund-raiser for her presumed Senate campaign in Cazenovia and headed to another one in Syracuse. ''It's beautiful. We like it a lot.''

Later, emerging from the Syracuse fund-raiser, Mrs. Clinton declared to cheers: ''As of today, Bill Clinton and I are the newest homeowners in the state of New York.''

''I love it,'' she added, ''we're so happy.''

The choice of a house came after the Clintons, trailed by a Presidential-size entourage of assistants, Secret Service agents and reporters, toured homes in New Rochelle, Greenburgh, Purchase, Mamaroneck and Pound Ridge, all in Westchester County, in two trips this summer. They spent two hours in the Chappaqua house last Saturday; Mrs. Clinton had seen the home before, an aide said.

''Everything about this was normal -- except that they are the First Family,'' said Kathy Sloane, a broker with Brown Harris Stevens in Manhattan, who guided the Clintons through the process.

The house was shown to the public for only three days. After that, Dr. Jeffrey Weisberg and his wife, Cheryl, who have owned the house for just over 18 years, invited closed bids. The bids were opened at 3 P.M. on Sunday and the Clintons were informed shortly thereafter that the Weisbergs were prepared to sell to them, said people with knowledge of the deal.

Eight bids were submitted on the house, those people said. It was unclear last night whether the Clintons, who offered just over the $1.675 million asking price, had made the highest bid.

There was a clear sense of relief yesterday among Mrs. Clinton's political advisers, who are concerned that charges of carpetbagging could hurt the First Lady, since she has never lived in New York. Her likely Republican opponent, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, has repeatedly attacked Mrs. Clinton on the issue of her residency.

Mrs. Clinton has begun to visit New York regularly, but her campaign advisers fear that her trips have been marred by images emphasizing that she does not live in New York: she is either leaving to return to Washington or spending the night as a guest of friends or supporters. Accordingly, the First Lady's advisers have been pressing her to find a house as soon as possible.

The closing date is Nov. 1. Mrs. Clinton's aides said the First Lady would begin spending a good amount of time there as soon as possible after that. (That said, one complication of the Clintons' nomadic ways is that they do not have enough of their own furniture to fill a house, particularly one this size, a family friend observed the other day.)

Joe Lockhart, the White House spokesman, said that for the remainder of Mr. Clinton's term, the President and Mrs. Clinton intended to treat their Chappaqua home much the way other First Families have treated their own private residences. ''The Clintons will continue to live in the White House,'' Mr. Lockhart said in a telephone interview from Washington. ''As with other Presidents, this house will be their private home and they will spend as much time there as they can.''

New York elections tend to be decided in the suburbs. And while Mrs. Clinton may now be considered a suburbanite, her aides said that political considerations were not predominant in the Clintons' deliberations. Nonetheless, the Clintons clearly avoided communities like Scarsdale and Bedford, which are well known across New York as among the state's wealthiest suburbs.

Still, Chappaqua, if not quite as well-known as Scarsdale, is known as one of the more exclusive, and upper-middle-class, bedroom communities of Westchester County.
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assistant: President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday settled the question of where the First Family will live once their lease on the White House expires, signing a contract to buy a $1.7 million, 11-room Dutch Colonial home in the wooded suburbs of Westchester County. The choice of a home in New York removes one of the chief obstacles in Mrs. Clinton's path as she prepares for a run for the United States Senate.    The Clintons, indebted by over $5 million in legal bills from the investigations that have marked the Clinton Presidency, were able to buy the white-shingled, five-bedroom home in Chappaqua after Mr. Clinton's chief fund-raiser, Terry McAuliffe, personally secured the loan.