Edited by JOHN DALY
Kenny Rogers was not only a beloved musician, he was a great businessman and a smart real estate investor.
Rogers, who died on March 20th, sold more than 100 million records, most notably “The Gambler,” but he was also known to roll the dice in business and real estate. He was a restaurateur and founder of Kenny Rogers Roasters and was an enthusiastic benefactor via his Kenny Rogers Children’s Center in Missouri.
He even made a name on the basketball court when he pulled a funny move, faking out and then scoring on Michael Jordan during a 1988 charity basketball game.
Rogers was a Houston teen who got his start when he sang his song “That Crazy Feeling” on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. He joined the New Christy Minstrels and then the First Edition prior to establishing a solid solo career with songs like “The Gambler,” “Islands in the Stream” with Dolly Parton, and “Lady.”
But most don’t know how prolific a wheeler-dealer he was when it came to real estate. Rogers renovated and sold big homes that needed work but which were located in upscale neighborhoods, mainly during the early 1980s. He flipped his first house in 1984 in Beverly Hills for $20 million, which set a record at the time.
Most of his home-buying and selling has been in Atlanta where he started an exclusive interior design business.
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Rogers bought a 27,000-square-foot Atlanta-area home in 2002 that had been on the market at $12 million for a mere $2.75 million and sold it in 2006 for $8.5 million.
Outside of Athens, Rogers built the roughly 1,000-acre Beaver Dam Farm. It went on to sell in 2011 for $10.5 million.
Rogers paid $2.8 million for a home in Atlanta’s Tuxedo Park in 2009. It was listed at almost $8 million, but he sold it in a down market in 2011 for $3.725 million.
Rogers spent $3 million to buff out a 7,000-square-foot Atlanta area family home when his twin sons were four years old. The family needed plenty of space to play. Kenny was married five times but was with the twins’ mother Wanda since 1997. The home is situated on a little more than an acre.
