DENVER (AP) — Shaquille O'Neal
(bro: diesel) has worked out a nearly $100 million deal to buy housing intended for thousands of lower-income Colorado residents.
The Los Angeles Lakers center is a general partner with American Housing Preservation Corp. of Portland, Maine, to buy 21 communities from an investor and developer of affordable housing.
The communities are in Denver, Pueblo, Buena Vista, Fort Lupton and Canon City.
"My dream is to own $1 billion a year in affordable housing," O'Neal said Monday.
"It's a 'Shaq-sized deal,'" said Michael Liberty, chairman and founder of American Housing. "Shaq is now the biggest landlord in the country," he said.
O'Neal and his uncle and business manager Mike Parris began investing in real estate about four years ago in New Jersey, where O'Neal once lived in the projects before his father joined the Army.
"We started buying homes out of foreclosure and paying $10,000 or $12,000 for them, fixing them up, and maybe selling them for $25,000 or $35,000," O'Neal said.
"It would be easy for me to develop a housing community around a golf course or buy strip malls, but that's not how I want my book to go."
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I just hope that the Big Landlord keeps his properties livable. It would be bad form to be Slumlord Shaq.
