CA-11: San Francisco congressional candidate calls out-of-state house his primary home

[RandySF]

Saikat Chakrabarti, a progressive tech millionaire who is running to succeed Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress, has spent years claiming that a home in Maryland is his principal residence while actually living 2,800 miles away in San Francisco, The Standard has learned.

Records show that when Chakrabarti bought a $1.6 million house in Gaithersburg, Maryland, in 2018, he signed a deed promising to make it his principal residence. Over the next seven years, he continued to identify the 4,555-square-foot home — located in Crown, a retail- and transit-oriented development (opens in new tab) roughly 25 miles from Capitol Hill — as his principal residence in property tax filings.

In a phone interview with The Standard, Chakrabarti said he never intended to live in the Gaithersburg home and purchased it for his parents, who now reside in New Jersey. He said the deed, mortgage documents, and property tax filings he filed over the last seven years mistakenly identify it as his primary home.

“I visit my family, so, like, I’ve been there,” Chakrabarti said. “Probably the longest I was ever there was maybe a couple months at some point, but never lived there.”



https://sfstandard.com/2025/11/21/saikat-chakrabarti-home-mortgage-congress-nancy-pelosi/

[mike_c]

1. when we bought our house outside Phoenix in 2017...

...the mortgage broker INSISTED that the home be listed as our secondary residence, despite the fact that it was the only one we owned and our retirement home. They said "the paperwork is already completed and we'd have to cancel the sale and start over to change anything." We were moving from California, so of course we had the place we rented there for a mailing address, but once we bought the house in Arizona we moved there. By their logic every house is a "secondary residence" if you're moving there from somewhere else. Sheesh.

All this brouhaha about "mortgage fraud" is a bunch of hooey! The rules are apparently pretty plastic when they can be bent to benefit bankers and tax assessors.

[MichMan]

2. Claims he didn't even know what it was he was signing at the time

Deed, mortgage documents, and property tax affidavits all stated it was his primary residence.

Maryland law says it is a crime to knowingly make any “deliberate misstatement, misrepresentation, or omission” to influence the lending process, and penalties can include a fine up to $5,000 and/or imprisonment up to 10 years.

A property deed from January 2018 notes that the home would be used as Chakrabarti’s primary residence and required him to sign under penalty of perjury. Chakrabarti said he had trusted his attorneys and real-estate people and had simply signed the forms put in front of him.

Wonder if he will actually read the bills he would sign in congress, or will just sign whatever is put in front of him?

[RandySF]

3. DSA recruits are getting worse every cycle.

[dalton99a]

6. +1. Rich educated people usually don't read documents they sign

[NBachers]

4. I was willing to consider him; this certainly moves him down my list of candidates.

[Historic NY]

5. Where is he voting?