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Why do people own 7 houses?

Atrios has a question about the rich:

Why do people own 7 houses? Or keep working long after they have more money than they can ever spend?...I guess, to me, money can buy a degree of freedom from hassle, yet so many people who have it choose to not use it that way.

Atrios has asked this so many times, in so many different ways, that I feel like someone should finally answer him. And the answer is simple: these people are not like you and me.

If you're the kind of person who's so obsessed with football that you practice four or five hours a day for your entire life from age 6 forward, and then you finally make it into the NFL, you're not going to quit after five years just because you've already made lots of money.

If you're the kind of person who's so obsessed with politics and power that you're willing to endure the indignities and torture of campaign season every two or four or six years, you're not going to quit just because you're old and it's time to retire.

If you're the kind of person who's so obsessed with money and society that you've spent 30 years of 18-hour days building up your company and becoming a billionaire, you're not going to stop just because a billion dollars is enough for anyone.

People like you and me aren't obsessed enough about anything to keep doing it forever. The kind of people who rule the world are.

43 thoughts on “Why do people own 7 houses?

    1. roddymccoll

      So should we care?
      Every day I buy things that meet my needs
      and sometimes don’t but I have a desire to own e.g. a better phone. Simple right?
      Should we want to deny the wealthy (I am not)
      that second option?
      More important to Kevin’s post is
      Are we letting the obsessed (with any subject they have the power to affect) rule us?
      I think we do as long as we enjoy being spectators which implies no real life impact.

  1. jte21

    Well, let's see. There's your primary residence in a city near where your main business is or something. Then you need a winter vacation home in Tahoe or Aspen so you can go skiing. Maybe then another in Florida if you want some sun and some golf after a week on the slopes. Pied-a-terre's in NY, LA and London for seasonal shopping trips. Finally of course you need a nice condo in the Cayman Islands to stay while you're down there with your lawyers working on sketchy tax shelters. Or a yacht. Yachts work good down there too.

    1. kimsmuga

      Or rather, when you’re surrounded by people who say you have to have all these houses, it makes sense to join in.

      I agree that some people are passionate/obsessed with their careers and will never willingly retire.

      But there’s another group who just want to be rich. They make friends with people richer than themselves, and, after seeing those much more extravagant the life styles can get, buy into it. Probably assuming that hollow unhappiness inside them will be solved if they just have another house/private jet/yacht.

      (Not to say only rich people get that hollow feeling, I think it’s human nature. Only rich people can throw that kind of money at their problem)

    2. wvmcl2

      I've always though that owning multiple houses would be more trouble than it's worth - after all, you have to manage and maintain all of those properties. If you are very wealthy, can't you just stay at a top tier hotel or exclusive resort any time you want to visit those places? That's what I'd do.

  2. DarkBrandon

    Horn teacher I had was prone to bursts of enthusiasm, would grab your horn during lessons and start playing - it was like some sympathetic neurons made him want to participate.

    He always had his mouthpiece nearby for this purpose.

    His career spanned 1935-2008, including ~50,000 recording sessions, 46 times playing the Academy Awards. The most recorded brass player ever.

    Yet he still got excited during routine lessons.

    In the early 1960s, some players slept at his house after drinking. At 6 a.m., he was up: "Hey, let's play quartets."

    Some people are just different.

      1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

        I always thought J.K. Simmons's music instructor in Whiplash was more like my 9th & 12th grade Spanish prof. Even if it's hard to imagine El Gran Yahooski saying, "More tempo".

        Anyway, Siri, play, "Cuando Calienta El Sol"....

  3. Joseph Harbin

    Not only the rich.

    At my old company, there was a guy who was 87 and worked his whole life as a technician. He had 60+ years on the job and was the longest-tenured worker among 200,000+ employees. He had no plans to retire. The company was giving him a service award and he was interviewed at the time. One question was why he wanted to keep working. His answer: "What am I going to do, sit home with my wife every day?"

    1. realrobmac

      I've been at the same job for 20 years so I'm at the point where I get, what seems to me to be a lot of PTO. I'm at the end of just taking a random week off to burn some of that PTO and I'm just hanging out around the house and doing chores and whatever and I am basically bored out of my mind so I get where this guy is coming from. My older brother retired at 50 and I just can't imagine. I try and try to ask him what he does all day and the answer is, basically nothing, but he is content. I would not be.

  4. name99

    "I guess, to me, money can buy a degree of freedom from hassle, yet so many people who have it choose to not use it that way."

    Most people (OK, most people living in America with a better than Bachelor's degree, and plenty more) can achieve retirement by around 40. Sure, it takes 20 years of self-control and certain choices (like not having kids) but it's doable.
    And yet extremely few do this.
    Among the credentialed class, retirement at around 60 should be feasible unless you have been crazy dumb with your money, and yet many (perhaps even most) hang on trying to avoid retirement as long as possible.

    Looking at this you have to conclude that
    - most people in this sort of situation enjoy their jobs, at least compared to the alternatives AND
    - *do not* prioritize the freedom to live everyday doing what they want very highly (certainly not higher than having kids, or taking vacations, or having a "nice" car).

    And if you're willing to accept the above, what's different with the rich? The only difference is that they have more money!
    You have already demonstrated by a lifetime of choices that, like them, you prioritize living a traditional life as part of the system over unorthodox alternatives. they're just better at it than you are.
    (And this is not a criticism! Fetishizing the idea of living "outside the system" even as that's something very few actually want to do, is just one of the idiocies of our time.)

  5. skeptonomist

    All organisms are obsessed with reproduction - it is ultimately the individual's purpose in life. The species which exist are those which have been most successful at reproduction. In many mammal species individuals, especially males, can increase their reproductive success by dominance over their group. The gigantic elephant seal beachmaster hopes to be the only mate for all the females in his territory (although apparently other males sneak in when his back is turned). In some species such as naked mole rats females have reproductive dominance and in other species females can usually increase the success of their progeny by having a dominant position.
    Among humans dominance is usually achieved by military or economic success. There is no reason why there should ever be enough dominance - again your biological purpose in life is to propagate your genes, not to get just enough to live in comfort and amuse yourself by blogging.

    In human society the basic instinctive motivations are channeled and perverted in various ways. Reproductive success is probably less dependent on dominance than it was in early days of the species. Who knows why some individuals seem more obsessed than others? Maybe if Atrios's father had been a crooked real estate dealer and left him a lot of money he would be like Trump. Not all such people get to be President.

  6. sfbay1949

    Most people, "- *do not* prioritize the freedom to live everyday doing what they want very highly (certainly not higher than having kids, or taking vacations, or having a "nice" car)."

    Sp, these people without kids who never took a vacation or had a nice car can retire at 40 or 60. But what would they do. They have no kids, grandkids to share their lives with, never took a vacation so why start now, never had a nice car or other nice things - so will they suddenly want them? What are all these people going to be so anxious to do with all that free time?

    1. Perry

      They can play duplicate bridge, if they are smart and want something to be obsessed about that is complicated, has a very steep learning curve, and uses up lots of time. And is fun, as competitive as any occupation, and lets you know who has won or lost.

    2. name99

      What's it to you? You live your life and let them live theirs. Your whole tone demonstrates that you have a particular set of values (fine) and are contemptuous of anyone else's values. After that, you can't honestly expect anyone to spend time explaining their world view to you.

      Ah the US. No matter how woke the slogans, no matter how much the discourse of diversity, in the end it's ALWAYS small-minded dismissal of anything unfamiliar. What's classed as unfamiliar changes from decade to decade, but not the unwillingness to actually attempt to understand others.

  7. painedumonde

    I commented on the following post with the same theme I'm going to comment here (I read posts in retrograde, do not judge): it's what Capital drives people to do. Without care Capital evaporates and migrates away, it requires growth. Some might say that characteristic may still hinge on human behavior and you might be right, but I say even the poorest among us are ensnared alongside the richest by Capital and its pursuits and the pursuit of it. Even if you are a football player, a soldier, a mother, a cat (domesticated varieties especially), a politician, or any variety of being, money is a big deal.

    To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no least single object anywhere that is not money, money, money everywhere and still not enough, and then no money or a little money or less money or more money, but money, always money, and if you have money or you don't have money it is the money that counts and money makes money, but what makes money make money?

    ~Henry Miller

  8. mudwall jackson

    "If you're the kind of person who's so obsessed with football that you practice four or five hours a day for your entire life from age 6 forward, and then you finally make it into the NFL, you're not going to quit after five years just because you've already made lots of money."

    actually, there have been a surprising number of players who done just that. on the other hand, there are those who push to stay in the game well past their expiration date. different strokes ...

  9. middleoftheroaddem

    My response may not be popular, but here goes.

    Assuming the person made the money legitimately (no drug dealer), paid their taxes (no tax cheat) then I have no issue with the accumulation of wealth: I have no problem with capitalism.

    As for multiple houses, it seems like a strange investment strategy or lifestyle. Then again, its not my place to judge. Further, I would rather someone use excess funds on appreciating assets, such as a house, then on depreciating assets, cars, boats et all or transitory items such as luxury cruises.

    1. name99

      Choosing property, like other talents, is not evenly distributed; and a person good at money management may also have talents at choosing property.

      In which case buying properties (for which you can see the future value trajectory over the next twenty years more clearly than most) is not a bad investment strategy.
      I've known people who are very good at choosing property, and who have done very well by this sort of strategy.
      Like everything it's part common sense (once it's explained to you...), part hard work (lots of background research, lots of visiting different properties under different conditions – day, night, summer, winter, weekdays, weekends, ...), and part indefinable gut feeling that some have and most do not.

  10. quickquestion

    Is this 7 different houses to live in or for investment purposes? For myself, I own more than 7 investment properties because:

    1. My family had money as a child.
    2. We didn't have money in my teens - it sucked.
    3. I studied finance.
    4. I bought a couple to get started.
    5. Compound interest turned a couple into a couple dozen.

    I have no guilt about it at all. We buy dodgy properties in decent neighborhoods, dump around 5-15k into them to make them a clean, decent place to live, and take care of our tenants.

    Many have gone onto home ownership. You hate to lose them, but you're beyond happy for their accomplishments and it feels good to be an extremely small part of it.

    Seven houses to live in sounds crazy though...

    1. Steve Stein

      Owning rental properties is a business. Owning lots of houses to live in is an investment. One of the best places to put your money is in real estate (even if you don't make any money from the property).

      1. name99

        There are also complicated issues of "family" and "ownership".
        Nominally one person may own all the houses, but in fact parents (or two sets of parents) live in one or two, three kids live in three of them, and so on...

        Depending on the tax details (or family dynamics, or ...) the plan may be to keep them all in one person's name till death, or disburse them to the kids in some tax efficient way over the next twenty years or ...

  11. KinersKorner

    My really really wealthy friends ( I have two , a boyhood friend and an old college roommate) only own 3 houses. Primary, ski and summer homes. All I got for you and Atrios. I like when I can use them. Btw, one is obsessive the other not at all. Both are retired.

  12. Altoid

    I've been reading Atrios for about as long as I've been reading our formerly-Calpundit host-- part of the daily ritual-- and I've seen this and many other quizzical-style Eschaton posts like it over that time. Experience has led me to conclude that these comments aren't about things Atrios wants an answer to. He posts them because he's seen something that strikes some kind of chord in him, and he's saying them just to comment. Sometimes, as here, it can be obvious what prompted the post. Other times it's something he's seen and embarked on a process of reacting to and the comment he eventually posts is about 7 or 8 distillations away from what prompted it and no amount of pondering can get you to back to know where he began.

    On Kevin's point I'll echo many posters here. There are a lot of people around who are obsessed in one way or another, about a lot of different kinds of things. The ones who are obsessed with wealth and power and prominence and actually succeed to significant degrees with their obsessions aren't going to reach a target level and kick back. Plenty of obsessed and non-obsessed people will do that, but the ones we see the most of tend to feel they have to keep moving, like sharks.

  13. kenalovell

    In many cases, the activities that are involved in generating the wealth are at the core of the person's sense of identity. For example, Rupert Murdoch is a legendary figure in America. If he retired, he would become a nonentity. So he keeps working. Ditto Trump and Hannity and countless other business owners and celebrities.

    Some people who do retire young and try to enjoy life - typically young athletes who can't compete past their late 20s or 30s - end up clinically depressed, e.g. Bjorn Borg and Australian swimmers Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett. They may attempt a comeback, or the lucky ones eventually find some alternative role where they build a new sense of identity.

  14. akapneogy

    Once you have made more money than a threshold amount (I would say ~ 10M, but I am no expert) it is hard not to keep making more.

  15. quickquestion

    Honestly, if I learned one thing from sitting on my arse during Corona, it's that I'm not cut out to retire. I sit around doing nothing, accomplishing nothing. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I need some structure in my life as I'm apparently incapable of providing my own. It's something that I plan to remember when I hit retirement age... have a reason to get out of bed beyond watching "The Jeffersons" reruns.

  16. Heysus

    A house for every day of the week…Hey, this is simply greed. When the income and perks are good you want more and can’t stand the thought of being without them, even if you own 7 houses. It’s insanity.

    1. dzman14

      This is the primary flaw in the premise of "Atlas Shrugged". Few captains of industry would ever voluntarily walk away from their positions.

  17. ScentOfViolets

    Heh. I would guess that what these people want is not wealth, but power. Power to force other people to do what they tell them to.

    Me? I'm low maintenance: I just plain like to learn new stuff, which is extremely cheap to do these days.

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