William Weld, the former Massachusetts governor now seeking the Republican nomination to be governor of New York, has purchased property in Delaware County.

Mr. Weld and his wife, Leslie Marshall, purchased 10 parcels of undeveloped land for $960,000 in the town of Andes, 60 miles southwest of Albany, the Daily Star of Oneonta reported yesterday.

The Delaware county clerk, Gary Cady, told the newspaper the mortgage documents were filed Friday.

Mr. Weld signed the mortgage August 19, the same day he announced plans to seek the GOP nomination to replace outgoing three-term incumbent George Pataki.

“That’s dynamite,” Andes supervisor, Martin Donnelly, said upon hearing of Mr. Weld’s purchase. “We welcome Mr. Weld as we do every new resident to the town of Andes.”

A millionaire lawyer elected governor of Massachusetts in 1990 and easily re-elected in 1994, Mr. Weld grew up on Long Island and spent summers as a kid at the family compound in the Adirondacks where he still vacations.

A partner in the New York investment firm Leeds Weld & Company, he moved back to New York state in 2000, thus making himself eligible for the 2006 governor’s race. New York has a five-year residency requirement for gubernatorial candidates.

Mr. Weld ran for U.S. Senate in 1996 but was defeated by Democratic incumbent John Kerry. He resigned as Massachusetts’s governor in 1997 when President Clinton nominated him to become U.S. ambassador to Mexico, but the nomination was blocked in the Senate.

Mr. Weld is among a host of Republicans eyeing the Republican nod. The state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, is, thus far, the only Democrat seeking his party’s nomination for the job.