Hakeem Olajuwon cashed in $8 million off his World Trade Center property a year before 9/11 and has made at least $100 million in real estate since
Emily Wong Like most other superstars of the previous generation, Hakeem Olajuwon didn’t make as much as he deserved from basketball but he found his golden touch off the court.
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Hakeem Olajuwon, the first pick of the 1984 draft spent nearly all of his 18-year career with the Houston Rockets. “The Dream” made 12 All-Star teams, and 12 All-NBA teams, won an MVP award, and was a two-time Defensive Player of the Year.
Hakeem dominated the game on both the ends of the court like very few in the game before or since him could, that too, at the time when the league had the most number of its legends and future Hall of Famers. He led the Rockets to back-to-back titles in 1994 and 1995 and earned Finals MVPs on both occasions.
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He retired from basketball in 2002 after 18 years of dominance and establishing himself as one of the best players and arguably the best big man of all time.
The most money he made, like other superstars in the league at the time, was towards the tail end of his career which ended with a 2-year stint in Toronto with the Raptors. Olajuwon started investing his money in the housing market as soon as he retired from the league and found success in a very short time.
Hakeem Olajuwon made as much money in real estate in less than 4 years as his 18-year NBA career
In fact, according to NBA.com, he began even before retiring and invested huge sums in costly properties, which surprised everyone close to him.
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One of his biggest investments was leasing out a property in the World Trade Center in 1998, which was the world’s tallest building at the time.
Hakeem sold it in 2000 for a whopping $8 million to a restaurateur. Just a year later, the tower fell down in a tragic event.
Looks like The Dream understood real estate quite well. It was just the beginning of Hakeem’s magic touch in real estate.
The Rockets legend reportedly made $100 million from 25 properties just in and around Houston within four years into his retirement from the league.
He is now worth more than a quarter of a billion Dollars!
To put that in perspective, he made just around $110 million from his almost two-decade-long NBA career. Excluding taxes.
Hakeem credits his golden touch in the real estate business to his faith in Islam. As it is not fair to charge or pay interest according to Quran, the investors dealing with Olajuwon and he himself has been able to stay away from the hassle of loans and credits.
That in disguise helped him to have the freedom of buying or selling multi-million properties whenever he wanted to. Even now he has a lot of huge properties in Houston which he still calls his home.
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