>which he proceeded to squander on unrelated properties.

He bought 74 parcels of land in the town, including a house which he moved into, for around $140k.

Buying a house for himself makes sense, but it's still not related to the business, and the other 73 are just dead weight.

I don't see why everyone's trying to prove that they're smarter than this guy. If the town turns around it'll have been a great real estate gamble. May we all live long enough to see the outcome.

Plus, the 74 houses were all part of the same auction! That's what I gathered at least.

And there are benefits to those houses. He could, for example, pick nicer ones and hire people for security and give them free rent in a house as part of their job. With what he paid, he could even give them a "rent to own" mortgage!

He could include the house, and even just minimum wage. Minimum wage is a livable wage in a very, very economically depressed area (look at what housing costs here!), but at the same time, minimum wage + free housing or rent to own housing is a great wage.

He could start a hacker hostel. Those houses give loads of opportunity.

He just needs to stabilize things a bit. But security would do that. Especially if security = 20 people. He just needs a real business plan, or at least to move towards something.

Another way to look at it is, imagine if he used the house to hire security, maintenance people, groundskeepers, cleaning personelle/janitors, and on and on.

Now, he's a major employer in the area.

Now, those left that are honest? Are actively fighting to protect their jobs!

He bought 74 houses at an average price of $2000 each. I'd suspect many of not most of them were in uninhabitable condition, at least without additional investment and maintenance.

It depends.

Where I live, the city is legally bound to seize and then auction off houses for unpaid property tax.

There are even interesting things, such a legally mandated grace periods, and the original owner can buy back up to one year after auction.

And this sure sounds like a place where property taxes might default.

I wonder what property tax is like - this would amount to more than the purchase price if it’s anything like as high as where I am.

Property tax is often indexed to property value.

Those are all great ideas! That’s the kind of focused “make your investments help you towards your goals” implementations that I see lacking in the overall approach of the person in the article, though. Those _would_ be good ideas, but instead they’re fighting with the people that could help his plans move forward (council) and sleeping in a tent in danger.

- No one is trying to prove they are smarter.

- Towns don't "turn around" spontaneously.

- people don't usually gamble every dollar they have

That's why this gentleman is a great object of curiosity. He's the perfect story of sheltered, with money, hitting reality and being flummoxed.

How many people can say they own 74 houses. That might be the end game.