Kenny Rogers crooned love songs, gambled on flipping mansions

Before the list of Hollywood home flippers included Ellen DeGeneres, Diane Keaton and Meg Ryan, there was country superstar Kenny Rogers, and they were all successful entertainers who performed for audiences and flipped houses on the side.

Rogers, who died on March 20 of natural causes at age 81, was “The Gambler,” but flipping houses was a safe bet for him – in fact, several of Rogers’ homes are featured at toptenrealestatedeals.com.

Rogers was a Renaissance man: He was a singer (and sold more than 100 million records in his career), songwriter, actor, restaurateur (Kenny Rogers Roasters), businessman, author, philanthropist (Kenny Rogers Children’s Center), photographer and athlete (he once faked out, then scored on Michael Jordan in a 1988 charity basketball game).

Rogers had early success in music as a teen star in Houston singing his song “That Crazy Feeling” on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand.” Later joining the New Christy Minstrels and First Edition before going solo with hits such as “The Gambler,” “Lady” and “Islands in the Stream” with Dolly Parton, Rogers’ career soared as a beloved and popular country-pop crooner.

In addition to music, acting and business, Rogers was especially good at real estate, according to toptenrealestatedeals.com. Rogers segued into purchasing, renovating and selling large homes with good bones in upscale neighborhoods at a profit in the 1980s. He sold his first flip in 1984 in Beverly Hills for $20 million, a record price for Los Angeles at the time.

Since then, the majority of his homes have been in the Atlanta area, where he also started an interior design business with Atlanta’s wealthiest home owners as his clientele. After the Beverly Hills flip, Rogers purchased a bank-owned, 27,000-square-foot Atlanta home for $2.75 million in 2002. It had been on the market at $12 million, and he sold it in 2006 for $8.5 million.

Outside Athens, Georgia, Rogers built the 1,000-acre Beaver Dam Farm, which he later sold in 2011 for $10.5 million. In 2009, Rogers paid $2.8 million for a home in Atlanta’s Tuxedo Park that was listed at nearly $8 million. He sold it furnished in a down market in 2011 for $3.725 million.

Rogers also purchased and then spent more than $3 million to redesign and decorate a 7,000-square-foot suburban Atlanta family home when his twin sons were only 4 years old and needed plenty of space to play. Rogers was married five times and was wed to his current wife, Wanda, since 1997.

Rogers died at the current family home surrounded by his wife and children.