Sean Hannity Owns $90 Million In Real Estate. So What?

American Thinker ^ | 04/26/2018 | Peter Barry Chowka

[SeekAndFind]

On Monday April 23, the Guardian in England published a lengthy article about Fox News host Sean Hannity’s major investments in real estate – to the tune of almost $90 million. The information reportedly grew out of the recent government raid on President Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen and the seizure of a pickup truck’s worth of documents, recordings, cell phone, and computer equipment from Cohen’s office, home, and hotel room. In a court proceeding on April 16, it was revealed that Hannity was Cohen’s “third client.” The Guardian article was titled “Michael Cohen case shines light on Sean Hannity's property empire.”

In an attempt to make something out of what initially seems to be very little (and, most important, nothing that was claimed to be illegal or unethical), the Guardian reported:

When Sean Hannity was named in court this week as a client of Donald Trump’s embattled legal fixer Michael Cohen, the Fox News host insisted their discussions had been limited to the subject of buying property.

“I’ve said many times on my radio show: I hate the stock market, I prefer real estate. Michael knows real estate,” Hannity said on television, a few hours after the dramatic hearing in Manhattan, where Cohen is under criminal investigation.

Hannity’s chosen investment strategy is confirmed by thousands of pages of public records reviewed by the Guardian, which detail a real estate portfolio of remarkable scale that has not previously been reported.

The records link Hannity to a group of shell companies that spent at least $90m on more than 870 homes in seven states over the past decade. The properties range from luxurious mansions to rentals for low-income families. Hannity is the hidden owner behind some of the shell companies

[Teacher317]

Okay, let’s open the books on Pelosi, Hillary, Reid, etc...

[SeekAndFind]

On April 23, the day the story broke, veteran New Yorker contributing writer Charles Bethea made a pilgrimage to a Georgia apartment complex that Hannity owns:

Hampton Place Apartments, a hundred-and-fifty-two-unit development in Perry, a small town in the middle of the state, which I visited on Monday afternoon.

A pool at Hampton Place Apartments, Perry, GA. Source: hamptonplaceperry.com

Instead of a slum, Bethea found a development with:

...nineteen apartment buildings [that] each contain eight units with one or two bedrooms. They were built in 1997, along with a clubhouse. A small pool and tennis court were added the following year.

Bethea described what he saw:

Planters with flowers hung outside off-white units. There was a communal barbecue smoker, lots of satellite dishes. The lawn appeared to have been freshly mown and the roofs looked recently shingled. The leasing Web site listed three apartments available for rent, which translates to a ninety-eight per cent occupancy rate. Inside the leasing office, I picked up a glossy look book that advertised a fitness center, on-site laundry, the recently resurfaced tennis court, and the proximity to a “grocery center” that includes a Publix supermarket and a Starbucks. Horses pastured nearby. “Where luxury and convenience come together to make your new home,” the brochure read.

A typical apartment at Hampton Place Apartments, Perry GA. source: hamptonplaceperry.com

The half dozen or so residents Bethea encountered and spoke with were mostly African-Americans and self-described Democrats who were not familiar with Hannity. One of them said of the apartment complex:

[rktman]

Good investing. Better than mine by a long shot.

[PMAS]

Good for Hannity, I like Real Estate too

[sanjuanbob]

What did they say?

[laplata]

Good for Sean. May he live long and prosper.

[fwdude]

I’m not a big Hannity fan, but I concur - so what!?

Is he not entitled to own private property?

[joesbucks]

Good for Sean, but why the fuss about the disclosure?

[pepsionice]

If you go and price up popular housing areas, and current pricing...you can figure $300k to $450k each. Average it out...it means 225 properties that he owns. That’s all. Anyone who thinks thats a huge amount of housing is fooling themselves.

In the early 80s, up in Tacoma....I worked with a guy who’d gotten into this real estate idea, and bought five houses that he was renting. He was 35 at the time. By sixty, he probably owned a minimum of 150 houses. It’s a wise way to invest.

[dowcaet]

You know it had to hurt Mr. Bethea to see a well kept and maintained apartment complex. He was hoping to see a run down and dilapidated apartment complex instead so he could gleefully report that Sean was a slumlord!

[Russ]

And may his detractors on the left have short and unproductive lives.

[SeekAndFind]

The lefty news reporter from The Guardian took issue with the fact that Hannity allegedly:

“..... also amassed part of his property collection with support from the US Department for Housing and Urban Development (Hud), a fact he did not disclose when praising Ben Carson, the Hud secretary, on his television show last year.”

[SeekAndFind]

EDIT TO ADD: This “sin” was in addition to Hannity’s “sin” – if there was one – in the eyes of the Guardian, and hundreds of other mainstream media outlets that immediately jumped on the story, is that he did not mention his investments or his relationship with Cohen when he reported on the government’s April 9, 2018 raid on Cohen.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: He was 35 at the time. By sixty, he probably owned a minimum of 150 houses. It’s a wise way to invest.

[vette6387]

“Good for Hannity, I like Real Estate too”

Same here. We got completely out of the Stock Market in 2007, and apart from 401k’s we are 100% in real estate. At least with RE you know you’re not playing roulette with your money like you do in the Stock Market.

[Bonemaker]

It shows that the government is a filthy leaking sieve.

[lurk]

Good for Hannity.

That news item is worth 15 seconds of attention.

[joesbucks]

The deeds and real estate transfers are public knowledge. A good sleuth could easily back into the information.

[BookmanTheJanitor]