ALBANY - Thanks to lucrative real estate deals and the helping hands of well-heeled friends, Republican George Pataki has done remarkably well financially during his tenure as governor.

The latest boost came in October when the governor and his wife Libby sold a one-story, three-bedroom house near Palm Beach, Fla., for $675,000. They had purchased it 17 months earlier for $360,000.

“I was obviously very happy about that,” Pataki said Wednesday. “We didn't buy it with the idea of it being an investment, but we knew it was a great investment because while it wasn't the nicest house in the world, it was in a great area and we knew the area was one that was just going to get better and better.”

Pataki spokesman David Catalfamo was quoted in 2005 as saying the Patakis bought the Singer Island property as an investment.

In 1994, the year he ousted Democrat Mario Cuomo from the governorship, Pataki had $105,652 in total income for tax purposes.

Last year, the Patakis' income was $775,169.

Cuomo also did well financially as governor.

Cuomo's income as governor peaked in 1988 at $519,902, when he made $128,600 from paid speeches and sold the family home in Queens for $320,000. In 1993, the year before he lost the governorship, Cuomo made $370,436.

In 1982, the year he won the job, Cuomo's income was $79,748.

The details about gubernatorial incomes are available thanks to a tradition - it is not legally required - that they and candidates for the office make public their tax returns. In 1978, Republican challenger Perry Duryea balked at doing that and lost badly to Democratic incumbent Hugh Carey.

While the details can be sparse, the returns show Pataki, who is not seeking a fourth term this year but is a potential 2008 GOP presidential candidate, has been very active in real estate from the time he became governor.

In 1995, he and his older brother sold off 21 housing lots carved out of the Pataki family farm in Peekskill.

The governor quickly plowed the $240,000 he made on that deal back into a 152-acre farm he bought for $270,000 in Washington County.

The Patakis reported $26,000 in losses on rental properties they owned in Saratoga Springs and Peekskill, where Pataki grew up and was once mayor.

In 1997, Pataki sold a little over an acre of land in Peekskill for $90,000.

In 1998, the governor sold his Saratoga Springs condominium for about $160,000. He had bought it in 1987 for more than 200,000.

In 2002, the Patakis sold a house and 23 acres from the Washington County farm for $199,000, keeping 129 acres there.

And, in late 2002, it came out that Libby Pataki was part of a real estate partnership that in early 2000 was involved in the $5 million purchase of a 1,410-acre orange grove in Florida.

Mrs. Pataki had been given a 4 percent interest in the Old Blue LLC group in return for a $40,000 investment.

Old Blue was created by a Yale University roommate of the governor, businessman Richard Hayden.

In late 2002, Old Blue and another group sold the land for about $15 million.

There were reports, unconfirmed by the Patakis, that they made about $400,000 on the transaction.

The Old Blue profits were quickly rolled into an office complex near Atlanta.

Through the connection to Hayden, Libby Pataki also has an interest in an Albuquerque, N.M., office complex.

In 2005, those office building investments brought in $35,702 for the Patakis.

Early in 2003, the Patakis finalized the $1.2 million purchase of a 377-acre farm on the shore of Lake Champlain just south of Plattsburgh.

In 2004, they sold another 94 acres from the Washington County farm for $94,000.

And, in May 2004, the Patakis created a limited liability corporation, Tacoma Lane LLC, and bought the house in Palm Beach Shores, Fla.

It was purchased in October by a financial services executive from Virginia who said he had no connection to Pataki before buying the property.

“My first thought was, why would the governor of New York own a piece of junk like this?” new owner Peter Clarke told The Associated Press.

Clarke said the governor had obviously made “a great investment.”

Clarke also said that while the house wasn't much, the location near the Atlantic Ocean was wonderful and that he and his family planned to use it as a retirement home.

Marilyn Farber Jacobs, a Palm Beach-area real estate agent who was not involved with the sale or purchase of the Pataki property, told the AP the Patakis' “profit is in line with similar profits during that time period on other properties” in the area.