With the $326 million he’s taking home after taxes, Manuel Franco has his pick of Wisconsin cities where he could purchase every for-sale home.
What would you do with $326 million worth of lottery winnings?
If you’re Manuel Franco of West Allis, Wisconsin, who came forward this week as the winner of the Powerball drawing that took place last month, you could easily purchase all the homes for sale in your hometown in cash—and, if you’re a football fan, every active listing in Green Bay.
Franco won the third-largest Powerball jackpot in history, worth a total of $768 million. He’s opting to take home the lump sum of $477 million, which will equal $326 million after he pays state and federal taxes.
With his newfound wealth, the 24-year-old can purchase all 36 homes for sale in his hometown of West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee, for $5.4 million. And $326 million goes a long way in other Wisconsin cities, too. If Franco is looking to move to another part of his state, he could hypothetically buy:
- All 425 homes for sale in Madison for $191 million.
- All 548 homes for sale in Milwaukee for $123.3 million.
- All 602 homes for sale in Green Bay for $160.8 million.
And if Franco wants to make the trek 95 miles south to Chicago, he could purchase more than one-quarter of the least expensive homes for sale—2,126 homes—for $325.9 million. Or he could buy the top 1 percent of homes for sale by list price—35 homes—in Chicago for $323.3 million.
“In all seriousness, if Mr. Franco is thinking about using his winnings to buy real estate, there are a few things he should consider,” said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. “Since mortgage rates are still near record lows, he may want to finance his real estate purchases so he could buy even more properties to create rental income. He should also watch out for recurring fees for things like insurance and homeowners association dues. HOA fees in luxury communities can be hefty and increase over time, and they can make it harder to resell. We recommend he talk to a financial planner before making a big purchase.”
Methodology
For this report, we used reports of Manuel Franco’s Powerball winnings, which total $326 million after taxes, to determine how many homes he would hypothetically be able to buy once the contract is paid out. We looked at all the active listings for condos, townhouses and single-family homes in the cities of West Allis, Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay and Chicago. Then, we took the value of Franco’s winnings and created a running total of list prices in each of those cities until the $326 million was exhausted.
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