Walmart's Founding Family Could Literally Buy Every Home In Seattle

Walmart’s founding family could afford to buy every home in Seattle. Literally.
The Walton family's combined wealth of $154.8 billion is enough to purchase all 241,450 homes in the Emerald City, which are worth a total of $111.5 billion, according to an analysis published Thursday by real estate brokerage firm Redfin.
The Waltons' wealth is also more than enough to buy every single-family house, condo and townhouse in Dallas at $109.4 billion, Washington, D.C. at $109.2 billion or Miami at $92.8 billion.
“Given that the average American struggles to afford a home, we wanted to illustrate just how many homes the wealthiest among us could buy,” Tommy Unger, a data analyst at Redfin, wrote in a blog post. “For the sake of this illustration, we assumed that wealthy families, such as the Waltons of Walmart or the Koch brothers, would pool their money if they were going to purchase an entire city.”
Redfin used Forbes' wealth research and their own data on home prices in its analysis.
A representative for the Walton family did not immediately respond for comment.
Some cities could go to a standalone billionaire buyer.
Bill Gates -- with his $78.4 billion, according to Forbes’ most recent calculation -– would have money left over if he bought all 114,212 homes in Boston for $76.6 billion.
Investment titan Warren Buffett, valued at $65.8 billion, could buy up all 280,214 homes in Charlotte, North Carolina, the financial hub of the South, for $56.1 billion.
Google co-founder Larry Page, worth $30.8 billion, could afford all 99,964 homes in Boca Raton -- Florida’s flashy vacation spot for the wealthy –- for $29.5 billion.
“In this fictional real estate investment, the 30 billionaires on our list, with a combined fortune of $582 billion, could afford to own a staggering 6 percent of the total U.S. home equity,” Nela Richardson, Redfin’s chief economist, said in a statement.
A representative for the Walton family did not immediately respond for comment.

Tracy Morgan in intensive care after 6-car crash on New Jersey Turnpike

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) -- Actor and comedian Tracy Morgan was in intensive care Saturday after the limousine bus he was riding in was involved in a multi-vehicle accident on the New Jersey Turnpike, state police said.
The vehicle carrying the former "Saturday Night Live" and "30 Rock" cast member and six others was involved in a six-vehicle accident on the turnpike near Cranbury Township at about 1 a.m. Saturday, Sgt. First Class Greg Williams told The Associated Press.
Williams said one person died in the crash that occurred in the northbound lanes of the turnpike near mile marker 71.5.
A spokesman at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey, says a patient named Tracy Morgan is in critical condition there.
There was no immediate word on other injuries from the accident.
Williams says two tractor-trailers, a sports utility vehicle and two cars, along with Morgan's limo bus, were involved in the accident. There is no immediate word on the cause of the pileup.
The 45-year-old New York City native joined "Saturday Night Live" in 1996 and was on the sketch-comedy program for seven years before leaving to star in "The Tracy Morgan Show" in 2003. That show lasted just one season. In 2006, Morgan found a long-running role in NBC's hit show "30 Rock," which was created by SNL co-star Tina Fey.
Morgan grew up fatherless, one of five siblings, in a blighted section of Brooklyn, where he helped raise and support the family.
He once called his gift for being funny "a defense mechanism" for his miserable circumstances.
As a teen he started doing comedy on the streets to supplement the family's welfare income.
The New Jersey Turnpike was closed for more than five hours after the crash and was reopened at about 6:30 a.m.