A few Michigan residents thought they might be able to score a deal when the state auctioned off a few hundred houses that had gone into foreclosure. All they had to do is pay the back taxes owed on the homes. UNTIL! Dundundun... Mr. Millionaire Bill McMachen snapped up 650 homes for a mere $4.5 million. SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY HOUSES. Like he was picking up beer from Costco.
So that would probably tick off the other buyers, don't you think? Here they were, with their mere thousands, ready to pick up a deal and make a home-owning dream come true (or at least a flipper's dream come true). And then in come Mr. Moneybags and spoils the whole thing! Who is this guy, anyway?
See, I was thinking it would be really cool if after the jump I could tell you that he's running a charity and he's donating all the homes. Or at least that he's really hot. But nope, he's just this guy who owns a yacht business and also owns his own harbor.
And he may donate the houses to charity -- but only if he can't sell them, first. He's hoping to make a couple million off the deal. Cha-ching!
It's like a game of Monopoly gone wrong. The kind where you're playing with your friends, and then along comes this rich kid from the big house on the hill, and he's got all this extra Monopoly money. And he just goes and buys everything on the board and spoils the game for everyone. Durr, that guy! He makes me want to throw some little plastic green and red houses.
And as far as the state of Michigan is concerned, they couldn't care less if it's fair or not. County Treasurer Ted Wahby knows people like McMachen are just buying the homes to make money on them, but who cares. "I have a job to do. I have to collect the taxes, and that's what we did." McMachen just made Ted's job a whole lot easier.
Would you buy 650 homes for $4.5 million if you could?
Image via myfoxdetroit.com
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Comments 27
Seriously, in what universe is this NOT fair? He had the money. Houses were for sale. Win-win. He will eventually resell them. There are tons of people out there who flip houses for a living, but on a much smaller scale. No one complains about that being unfair. I am sure he will do renovations of those houses. How do you think he will go about doing that? Oh right, he will buy materials and supplies from local businesses. He will hire local contractors. I like the analogy of the earlier commenter . . . if you see something on sale at Wal-Mart, do you only buy one or two because you want everyone to have some? If you have the money, you buy whatever you can afford.
Also, if I did the math right, he scooped up each home for roughly 7k. If he then invested 13k into each property and sold them for 100k each the guy will still be making 50+ million. There's nothing to say that this guys plan isn't to do just that. Make money and resell the houses at a fair price. Before anyone jumps on me for saying a 100k house is cheap I should mention I live in Mass so getting a 400k
Uh, pretty sure the economy there would rather the guy buy them then having them unsold.
I would. You have to make money! This is his way.
I'm actually failing to see what's 'unfair' about this.
Was he charged less than the other people would have? No? It was an offer that was open to everyone.Than it seems like it was pretty fair to me. That's the benenfit to having more money than less. When you have more money, you can buy more things.
These homes are for sale. There's no guarantee that they're going to 'good people' who are going to 'better' themselves. Generally, people buy them, flip them, and then sell them off for thousands more. And that's cool too. But lets not like act like this dude is the Scrooge of the foreclosure auction and that 'all the good!' that could have been done is gone, and that all the charities that were absolutely going to benefit are not losing out.
Hilariously enough, this guy has said that some will get donated and even that isn't good enough. How epic is that?
Is it a little excessive, yeah maybe. But he had the money, opportunity and right to buy 650 houses if he wanted to.