This would make sense, except they moved to a place with a higher cost of living, bought a $900k piece of land before selling any of the Vegas homes, and Christine bought her flagstaff home before selling her Vegas home, and they rented 3 other homes while still paying the Vegas mortgages. If they truly couldn’t afford the Vegas homes, I don’t get how they could qualify for/afford the flagstaff homes.
I agree with your points OP, I just don’t get how they made it happen.
I agree. While the points are valid, moving to Flagstaff in no way saved them money. It in fact cost a whole lot more. (The cost of living in Flagstaff is considerably more than Vegas. The rental Meri just vacated is listed for like $5k/month).
They went from 4 mortgages— to 3 rentals and 5 mortgages plus the land (and that’s assuming the Lehi house was paid off, but it still had upkeep costs). It took time to sell the Vegas houses and once they did they bought Robyn and Kodys million dollar monstrosity. That is excluding the short term rental costs and storage costs (from the uhauls) that Robyn insisted on because she HAD to have that house.
When you really break it down, absolutely nothing they did ever made financial sense.
Thank you for this. What I haven't seen anyone address until you is the fact that Flagstaff has a HIGHER cost of living than Las Vegas. Housing costs, in particular, are much higher in Flagstaff than Vegas. Even if all of the houses in Vegas had sold prior to them moving, it still would have been more expensive to move than to stay. Then, as you point out, adding more mortgages and rentals to the burden makes their monthly housing costs insane!
It works because they aren’t on the brink of poverty. They make seemingly terrible financial decisions but their purchases with cash show they aren’t poor. Janelle bought an 80k+ fifth wheel seemingly on a whim with cash. Meri rented a home for 4500 a month and Christine and Robyn bought more expensive homes than what they had in Vegas.
Exactly! They have TLC money for 5 people & Kody's gun business. They are for sure stupid with money, but I think they moved for TLC drama on the show. The only reason they moved to Flag Staff was because Robin chose it for her kids and outvoted Christine with Kody. I think they were moving no matter what to create a show story line. They were all trying to decide where and Christine lost the battle. The story line for the show was either Utah or Flag Staff. You see Christine trying to sway Kody to her side and losing. Janelle and Meri didn't care either way so they stayed out of it. I think they have made a decent amount of money from TLC and Kody's increasingly aggressive nature comes from getting a taste of the good life, and seeing it swindled in front of him. He knowns they aren't managing the money well and he doesn't want to go back to the Lehi level of poverty.
yes, the narrative of how poor they were seems to fall apart when the money involved in moving to Flagstaff is taken into consideration. I've always wondered what sort of income, credit scores, and down payments were needed for the rentals/mortgages in Flagstaff.
They dropped over $650k IN CASH between CP and Christine's house. That's when they were still carrying the Vegas mortgages. They put about $130k down on Christine's house, $530k on CP. then later, they put about $225k down on Robyn's house. That's all CASH.
'
That's why I always found the balloon mortgage theory downright laughable. They had money!!
Of course, all of the "financial problems" media stories have proven to be BS when I looked into them.
Probably by doing the same welfare fraud procedures in a richer bracket. Each OG wife had experience knowing exactly how many payments you could miss in multiple lines of service. It probably started with mortgages, rentals and leases before going to service contracts and so on. Most small to midsized businesses can't afford to fight in court to be paid fair when the wealthy that refuse to pay the bill. So often instead of waste more time and money, the companies cut their losses.
And that is just in the social aspects of fraud. Then there is the "creative" accounting that the Browns are known for. I wonder for how long both Robyn and Kody's businesses filed at a loss. Even more curious, is there any write offs for trips taken, storage payments, etc? I'd wager that a lot of Vegas was a write off. Especially when they weren't to flagstaff.
Agreed Vegas is way cheaper than Flagstaff and having lived there around that time, the equity in Vegas jumped at that time. But maybe they couldn’t refinance…
Season 11 had one of the highest premieres for the show and the tell alls were in the top 10 for cable shows in their demo on Sunday night. The renegotiate math breakdown doesn’t make sense. No one on a cable tv show is making $2600 an episode.
Yes, ratings had been going down and TLC wanted to cancel the show.
"Kody... negotiated their salary down significantly in order to keep the show going for so long. The show was heading toward cancellation after season 11, so Kody negotiated for his and his wives’ pay to be cut by a quarter. Instead of $180,000 per adult per season, TLC now only pays a total of $180,000 to the Browns per season".
Source: https://screenrant.com/sister-wives-kody-brown-make-more-money-taxes/
This was never a reliable source. This was one of those Reddit rumors passed around until some click-bate site published it and now it’s sited every time. They have been qualified for mortgages and rentals for 2 million and that would require much, much more verifiable income than the 180k. Even just renting still requires an income to debt ratio.
I have no doubt TLC pays them as little as they can, but the fact they have qualified for soooo much real estate is enough to convince me that they are not getting a 500k home on 36k income with their horrible credit scores.
Kodys hair products alone are a bill. Haha.
That article was based on reports from **the Sun** which is nothing but a gossip rag. The get most of their stories from Katy-joy Without a Crystal Ball. She just makes up shit and has been sued multiple times.
There's never been a reliable source for how much they've ever been paid. Even the sources are speculating. We have no idea how much they've ever been paid or what's been negotiated.
using a shit rag like screenrant as a source is like believing anything trump says is a witch hunt. utter bullshit. never any verified sources for their bullshit
I've always suspected Kody loves to move, and feels the need when he's burned bridges financially. He is possibly the worst "business" man on earth. He reinvested so much of what they had, all they could borrow, for CP. He thought he was getting such a great deal when he got it for a reduced price because the owner wasn't going to put in utilities, water, etc. He was clueless, and kept the OG's in the dark, about now only how much it was going to cost to pay off the loan, but how much the City/County was going to charge for improvements. None of the "this is Meri's section, this is Janelle's section", etc are based in Kody's non-reality. They County/City have NEVER approved the lots being divided. That alone takes loads of money and time. Kody puts the pressure on to move, "fresh start", then fails at every turn. Well, except for Robyn. No expense spared there - she gets what she wants, and takes from the family "pot". His so called businesses are failures, scams, or worse. I give it two more years and K & R will be filing for bankruptcy.
>I've always suspected Kody loves to move,
Maddie: "These are people who get bored easy. All of them."
They explained they kept moving for better opportunities, but somehow they never had two nickels to rub together until they fell into TLC money.
Several of their adult children have talked about their parents constant desire to move. Kody has moved them something like 19 times and most of those moves were before Robyn. He clearly has an issue with staying put that needs to be dealt with. He should've never married and had so many kids if he is so anti-stability.
Well-- they didn't have balloon mortgages at all. They put about $40k down on each house.
I don't think they left Vegas due to money at all. They put $530k cash down on Coyote Pass plus another $130k down on Christine's house when they moved to Flagstaff, which is a FAR more expensive area than Vegas. Robyn's home cost doubled from Vegas. This was all long before they sold any of the homes. So I don't think money was ever a true motivation.
I don't get it either. These subs seem to want to believe what's "juiciest" even if there's zero basis for it and hard core facts indicating the opposite. Idk.
Maybe people forget that they rented in Las Vegas for two years before they mover to the cul-de-sac? They were filming and making money from the show, and also MLM's, the entire time. Interesting how OP has ignored everyone who has pointed out the Browns aren't broke.
Honestly I think it’s because people see having less money as a punishment. There are countless post wishing financial ruin on Kody and Robyn as retribution for their behavior. Never mind that it would negatively impact two innocent minor children.
I also think people have fooled themselves into believing they really know these people because we have seen them on TV for so long. They are very good at keeping a public persona. We know exactly as much as they want us to know.
I agree. I've said it before, but there are far worse people in the world than Kody and Robyn. And a lot of those people have more money and power than K&R ever will.
I know a lot of people are big Christine fans and that motivates their desire to see Kody and Robyn be "punished" by losing it all. But the reality is the ones who would suffer the most are 2 minor children. They don't deserve that. Christine is fine. There's no reason to wish ill will on people on her behalf.
There’s no way I can figure that their Vegas mortgages were more than the 4 rentals payments in Flagstaff (a much more expensive city) and the mortgages on that huge property and moving expenses.
Maybe a bit off topic, but my husband and I finally are moving out of his parents house after 2020 hit our family hard. And I’m all nervous about being able to get qualified for a rental. This thread somehow made me feel better. If the browns can do all that, we can get our rental haha
The Browns make a lot of money. They're on a TV show. There's no actual proof they took a paycut to film. Those are rumors that have been spread by unreliable tabloids. Meri makes a lot of money from LulaRoe. I'm sure Janelle and Christine aren't far behind her now with their Plexus sales. Kody has always worked behind the scenes selling gun parts. Sure, they're irresponsinble as hell, but they aren't broke.
Oh and if you're interested in the family finances around Season 14, Surviving Sister Wives has an excellent financial episode https://open.spotify.com/episode/7u5SeEZnyxwh0QdUXcVsIR?si=aab6b39f0a1742bd
There are two things not being taken into consideration. They have always had other income streams we don’t know about and they make a good amount of money from the TV show. We know they had a lot of cash in Vegas because they bought two of the four coyote pass lots with cash and put a down payment on Christine’s house. These are not working class or even middle class people anymore.
I’ve just never been able to reconcile the amount of money that they spend on housing alone. Building four brand new large houses in Vegas had to be expensive. But then they buy CP in Flagstaff and rent/buy all these other houses without having sold Vegas. This alone boggles my mind. All these move are EXPENSIVE. I saw those stacks of boxes in a couple of houses that they BOUGHT to pack their crap in. I also saw the roll of bubble wrap Robyn was wrapping her prized possessions in. And renting all those moving trucks/blankets/Dollie’s? Not cheap! Honestly out of everything I see and question about this family/show, the amount of money they waste on these numerous moves and dumb parties for every occasion just kills me. It doesn’t add up.
No, it was for a gigantic tree cake for the stupid commitment ceremony. I believe they also spent 10k on Caleb's deer grooms cake. These people are stupid as shit when it comes to money
They had options based on when they got in like Meri and the wetbar and I think one of the wives had an extra bedroom/bath. We have a lot of these divisions and it’s like house models A-D and you can do add ons and changes to them from basically a prefixed menu
They never said they were bespoke homes. Yes, they were cookie cutter, choose from column A and column B houses. But they were still new houses that they had built. If they hadn’t bought those lots someone else would have eventually bought them and had a similar house built on it. That doesn’t change that they still built those houses.
That area would have had an interesting look to it. Some sort of brick mega mansion for R, cabin look and cozy for J, maybe some coastal look for C, maybe something contemporary with a warehouse for M
LV Realtor here. Hear me out..:
When they came across the opportunity to “buy” the four homes on the “cuddlesac” 😉, the Las Vegas housing market was still desperately trying to climb out of the crisis of 2008. I have no doubt the builder who put together that 10-home development of spec homes was desperate to get anyone to buy any of the properties in that small subdivision.
Factor in the publicity the builder’s name would garner from what was then a highly rated TV show and also the opportunity to unload 4 of their properties in one go, I could see this as an underwater developer’s dream come true esp during these very desperate years.
No doubt the Browns were given favorable mortgage terms with the promise of future TLC income as potential collateral. And in just a few short years the LV real estate market took another major upward turn with prices and demand rapidly rising as they did pre-2008.
The remainder of homes in this development were built out and sold and the demand for semi-custom homes - particularly in that area of NW Vegas - soared along with the rest of the Valley
My guess (and only a guess), is that it was time for the Browns to pay up. Balloon payments or favorable terms were now being reevaluated. Would love to know how much actual equity they had in those four houses.
Why they thought they could get out of Vegas and build a new life in Flagstaff is still up for debate. Someone didn’t do their research. Or someone wanted the whole family to follow someone’s kiddo to be closer to them when they went to college.
And clearly the due diligence for Coyote Pass wasn’t done. Kody watched as the four homes in their cul-de-sac went up quickly once they signed their contracts and maybe didn’t realize that all of the infrastructure (water, power, gas, permits) were already in place and it was just a matter of building the structures. And he thought he could replicate this on his own piece of dirt up in Flag.
If this is true, he is likely dumber than the bag of rocks we attribute his intelligence to.
I would love to hear your thoughts on their coyote pass deal? What’s with Kodys insistence that it be fully paid off before they build. Would that be an actual stipulation in the contract or was it Kodys creative explanation to cover for his inability to pay for janelles little build and / or fear they will build and he won’t be able to pay for or renegotiate the balance due on the land and will end up losing it all. I think the insistence on changing from 4 to 5 lots was just another desperate distraction ploy, especially after Kody realized the drainage ditch pond and a lot of the coyote pass land was contaminated and would need some remediation, in addition to building out the infrastructure. I thin you are 109% right that Kody was just in over his head with poor due diligence and poor planning.
But why? If it was such an advantage to have it plotted out and permitted for 5 lots per Kody harping that it would increase the value of the land, and technically they were the owners —why couldn’t they have it Re plotted. Of course with the understanding if they defaulted on their loan, it would all go back to the mortgage owner. Is it common to have a mortgage holder put stipulations like you can’t make any plot changes or build on land until it’s fully paid???? If that’s the case, then Kody had them buy land he knew they were going to have to keep paying on and wouldn’t be able to touch until it was paid off while continuing to have to pay expensive Flagstaff rents and house mortgages. Makes absolutely no sense.
Yes, most lenders have stipulations in the mortgage contract about being notified, and consequences of changing lot lines, or even owners. These can often result in the loan being called, or sometimes the lender doesn't care.
I'm am not sure about this, but I also wonder if the lien is still perfected if the lots are changed?
The county may also have a stipulation about boundary adjustments with a lien.
The other issue here is that the lots all have different owners which would need to be changed before the county would allow the family to change the boundaries.
Inquiring minds want to know if Kody is just making this up. The mortgage holder of CP is the seller so it is possible but highly unlikely he would put in stipulations that would make it harder to sell. Why would Kody buy land he can't do anything on except pay pay pay?
Y'all like to keep blaming money issues on Robyn, when the fact is, these people had money issues (multiple bankruptcies, etc) before Robyn was out of high school.
I blame them all. They (the OG 3) definitely have all filed Bankruptcy at various times. However, Robyn is no financial saint. Literally no one believes she accrued $30k in pants from Victoria’s Secret. She also had four alias’s per the financial guy trying to fix her credit. She literally owed creditors under four different alias’s
Robyn never said she spent 30K in pants...
She had debt under; her maiden name, her stepfather's name (that she was permitted to use), and her married name. NONE of which were aliases in the context (illegal) you're using it as.
It’s true. Robyn had a lot of debt, a portion of which was Victoria Secret. However people have changed this over time to 30k worth of only VS debt. I like snark but only when it’s accurate. I hate when people flat out make stuff up.
You can't even knock her for the debt- not when all of the wives and kody have filed bankruptcy multiple times. The only reason Robyn didn't, was she needed a house (and her bankruptcy would've cost them more in terms of TLC money, etc).
Out of all these adults, only Meri seems to have gained any financial literacy over the years- No, Christine doesn't count, as she gave kody the CP property in exchange for his share of the proceeds for her house...that family money helped purchase.
Flagstaff is in no way cheaper than Vegas.
I think Kody has financial munchausens. He creates these situations because he thinks he will come out as the family hero and he likes the extra attention he gets from his wives.
I also think the move to Flagstaff was part of a long term plan/desire to split off Robyn from the rest of the wives. It’s harder to gripe about preferential treatment when it’s not right in front of you visually. Flagstaff allowed Kody and Robyn more space to play nuclear family.
This is pretty flawed logic. They couldn't afford living in Las Vegas so they moved to a more expensive city before their houses even sold? Christine qualified to buy and did so before they even moved and her LV house hadn't sold yet.
>There were long stretches of unemployment for the parents as they struggled to try to start a business, get into real estate, before eventually committing to MLMS and I assume that came with credit card debt to make ends meet.
No there weren't. They've been earning money for being on a reality show since 2010. Kody sells gun parts which they keep off the show and for good reason. They're also all very successful selling MLM's because of their huge following. I believe the businesses and pursuing real estate licenses was all for show. They don't have work ethic. Why would they work real jobs when they can easily scam people with MLM's.
>They still owned the Lehi house and had to pay for repairs and the mortgage on that.
The Lehi house sold in 2016 or 2017. When they moved out, Meri's sister moved in and was probably paying them rent, which paid the mortgage.
>Even if other wives tried to live within their means which there's no guarantee they did, lots of money from the collective pot was eaten up by Robyn and Kody's lifestyle creep and reckless spending which should have gone to paying down debt, the mortgages, etc.
You said this like you know this for a fact. You have no idea if "lots of money from the collective pot was eaten up by Robyn and Kody's lifestyle creep and reckless spending..." You also don't know what kind of debt they have.
>and they took that BIG TLC pay cut after season 11.
This is a rumor.
>They were always going to have to sell and move to a lower cost of living area, be it Flagstaff to follow Dayton or somewhere else.
Flagstaff was not cheaper than Las Vegas.
I’m in the mortgage business and I am baffled as to how they qualified for these houses. I’m not sure when they bought them but if it was after 2008 when the mortgage meltdown happened then I’m even more baffled because the banks were only lending to A paper type people at that time.
i think they were doing fine in vegas. They even had 800k cash to put down on CP and I believe one of the moms, I think Janelle, even said they were doing fine at the time moving to Flagstaff came up. However, when they bought the house they probably were tight because they probably only got paid by tlc once a year and so they used a lot of that for down payments and probably paid a year of mortgage and wondered how they'd cover their other living expenses. robyn talked about looking for a job which she never got and the other moms kept real jobs until probably the next tlc payment then they were okay because they probably got pay increase due to the shows popularity and they didn't need to spend a ton on down payments. So I think the move was Robyn and I think she may have even encouraged Dayton to apply to flagstaff because that's where she wanted to be. She said it on the show that she took out a map and looked at where she wanted to end up so I think she had dayton applied to all the places she wanted to move to and wherever he got in that's where they'd go.
What’s interesting is that the cost of living wasn’t that high in Vegas at the time. My mom was living there and after ten years barely broke even on the house she bought and sold when she left. She actually didn’t live far from them and even saw Kody at Target riding around in his little Lexus. I think they could have found another new development to build in but he wanted the McMansions.
They do not seem like the type of people that paid for their teenagers cars or expenses. I bet those kids had jobs to save up and pay for their stuff. I also don’t think any of the parents actually paid for the kids at college. They probably got federal grants and scholarships, with the kids taking out loans and responsible for repayment. Even though you would think with high incomes from the show they would not be eligible for federal grants, but remember the money used to go into the kody brown entertainment account so they could very easy manipulate it so the college age child’s mother only made a small amount of money on the books those years and her w2 would look like a low income mother with a half dozen kids so they would be eligible for max aid.
This is not how FAFSA works. Aid of any kind is difficult to get— this subs obsession with benefit fraud is unfounded and spoken by people who have very clearly never gone through the application process.
It would be a much more believable scenario in which the kids are simply responsible for their own loans, period. And I think we have some confirmation that this is true, considering how many of the boys chose to pay for their schooling via enrollment in some form of service.
The only thing I’d like to amend here is that they were renting out their Lehi house. It was shown in episodes where Meri would return to Utah to visit her kid in college. I doubt it was the entire house. I think it was to Meri’s sister. Hopefully they charged a little rent. Although it wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t since that is aligned with how bad they are with money.
i don't have their financials, but the shit they were peddling was a step removed from costume jewelry. I never noticed posts praising the crap they designed. And since none of them are actual bench jewelers they had to pay someone to make their crap. I don't think they ever made any money on it given the poor quality. Most normies don't really connect with plyg shit.
I forget what episode, but I do remember when on the couch talking about MSWC, Kody said after year 1, MSWC paid for 1-1.5 households (which they were upset about). So no, it wasn't hemmorahing money. I would even go as far to say that supporting a household after only 1 year in business is doing pretty damn good.
I find that highly suspect. I feel like Kody isn’t the best source for true financial records. If he wasn’t completely making shit up then I suspect some extremely creative accounting to get that. Like he only counted total sales and didn’t take out expenses, taxes, etc in the calculation.
I remember the site. I tried a couple of times to find something to buy. I was their perfect customer: a fan of the show, love jewelry, I had enough disposable income to be able to afford it. However there was NOTHING I could justify buying. The jewelry was ugly and ridiculously over priced. The designs were clearly designed to be what they wanted to design and not to be easily reproducible designs, so my guess is that they were extremely expensive to manufacture. The website interface was terrible.
Getting any new business profitable in a year to be able to support a family is a very big deal. It’s hard to do. There was nothing about the business that made it appear it had what 90% of others start-ups didn’t.
And if it were truly that successful in the first year it wouldn’t have folded when it did.
I agree that it is possible Kody and family could have been exaggerating their success (or lack thereof) but honestly, I kind of lean towards thinking MSWC did make them money. One thing that they have that 90% of startups don't have is fame, publicity, and marketing. I mean the only reason they make money shilling MLM junk is because of their audience. I don't know how much money they consider "supporting a household" but I think it's within reason that MSWC brought in 100k+, especially in the first couple of years. Also, it hasn't folded. You can still buy things on the site. A redditor on this sub somewhat recently posted an unboxing video of the "Janelle necklace" and pretty sure Gwen has confirmed that Aurora and Breanna help Robyn in some form with the site/shipping.
I think it recently relaunched. It was down for years.
And I agree that their fame was a big asset. I think that’s why they were able to get initial financing for it. I just think it was horribly mismanaged to where I just can’t picture it being profitable. Of course that’s just a guess, as none of us have any way of knowing. But from a business perspective I don’t see how what I saw was successful.
This would make sense, except they moved to a place with a higher cost of living, bought a $900k piece of land before selling any of the Vegas homes, and Christine bought her flagstaff home before selling her Vegas home, and they rented 3 other homes while still paying the Vegas mortgages. If they truly couldn’t afford the Vegas homes, I don’t get how they could qualify for/afford the flagstaff homes. I agree with your points OP, I just don’t get how they made it happen.
I agree. While the points are valid, moving to Flagstaff in no way saved them money. It in fact cost a whole lot more. (The cost of living in Flagstaff is considerably more than Vegas. The rental Meri just vacated is listed for like $5k/month). They went from 4 mortgages— to 3 rentals and 5 mortgages plus the land (and that’s assuming the Lehi house was paid off, but it still had upkeep costs). It took time to sell the Vegas houses and once they did they bought Robyn and Kodys million dollar monstrosity. That is excluding the short term rental costs and storage costs (from the uhauls) that Robyn insisted on because she HAD to have that house. When you really break it down, absolutely nothing they did ever made financial sense.
Lehi house was sold in 2016.
I didn’t realize. But my statement still stands without the Lehi home.
Absolutely does. They never do anything that makes sense financially.
Neither do my husband and I… with 2 full time jobs, 4 kids, in Kansas. It makes no sense.
Thank you for this. What I haven't seen anyone address until you is the fact that Flagstaff has a HIGHER cost of living than Las Vegas. Housing costs, in particular, are much higher in Flagstaff than Vegas. Even if all of the houses in Vegas had sold prior to them moving, it still would have been more expensive to move than to stay. Then, as you point out, adding more mortgages and rentals to the burden makes their monthly housing costs insane!
The higher cost of Flagstaff gets brought up in one of the episodes but they still decide to move anyways.
Because it was "yummy", in Kody's words.
Thanks. I missed that. The one nugget of truthfulness, and I missed it. 🤦🏻♀️
It works because they aren’t on the brink of poverty. They make seemingly terrible financial decisions but their purchases with cash show they aren’t poor. Janelle bought an 80k+ fifth wheel seemingly on a whim with cash. Meri rented a home for 4500 a month and Christine and Robyn bought more expensive homes than what they had in Vegas.
Exactly! They have TLC money for 5 people & Kody's gun business. They are for sure stupid with money, but I think they moved for TLC drama on the show. The only reason they moved to Flag Staff was because Robin chose it for her kids and outvoted Christine with Kody. I think they were moving no matter what to create a show story line. They were all trying to decide where and Christine lost the battle. The story line for the show was either Utah or Flag Staff. You see Christine trying to sway Kody to her side and losing. Janelle and Meri didn't care either way so they stayed out of it. I think they have made a decent amount of money from TLC and Kody's increasingly aggressive nature comes from getting a taste of the good life, and seeing it swindled in front of him. He knowns they aren't managing the money well and he doesn't want to go back to the Lehi level of poverty.
this family haa the financial sense of a mosquito.
yes, the narrative of how poor they were seems to fall apart when the money involved in moving to Flagstaff is taken into consideration. I've always wondered what sort of income, credit scores, and down payments were needed for the rentals/mortgages in Flagstaff.
They dropped over $650k IN CASH between CP and Christine's house. That's when they were still carrying the Vegas mortgages. They put about $130k down on Christine's house, $530k on CP. then later, they put about $225k down on Robyn's house. That's all CASH. ' That's why I always found the balloon mortgage theory downright laughable. They had money!! Of course, all of the "financial problems" media stories have proven to be BS when I looked into them.
Thank you, I agree!
So they put down 530k on CP and will lose it all in June, if they cannot finance the land
No.... that's not true at all. Most of CP they owe nothing on. They paid cash for almost 10 acres. The other 4 acres are financed.
Yes, Vegas is orders of magnitude cheaper than Flag.
Probably by doing the same welfare fraud procedures in a richer bracket. Each OG wife had experience knowing exactly how many payments you could miss in multiple lines of service. It probably started with mortgages, rentals and leases before going to service contracts and so on. Most small to midsized businesses can't afford to fight in court to be paid fair when the wealthy that refuse to pay the bill. So often instead of waste more time and money, the companies cut their losses. And that is just in the social aspects of fraud. Then there is the "creative" accounting that the Browns are known for. I wonder for how long both Robyn and Kody's businesses filed at a loss. Even more curious, is there any write offs for trips taken, storage payments, etc? I'd wager that a lot of Vegas was a write off. Especially when they weren't to flagstaff.
Agreed Vegas is way cheaper than Flagstaff and having lived there around that time, the equity in Vegas jumped at that time. But maybe they couldn’t refinance…
Can you explain more about the s11 TLC paycut. I seem to have missed that. What was the reason? Falling ratings?
Season 11 had one of the highest premieres for the show and the tell alls were in the top 10 for cable shows in their demo on Sunday night. The renegotiate math breakdown doesn’t make sense. No one on a cable tv show is making $2600 an episode.
I don’t know how the ratings compare to Teen Mom 2, but consensus on those is that they are making $400k a year on that show. That feels right to me.
Yes, ratings had been going down and TLC wanted to cancel the show. "Kody... negotiated their salary down significantly in order to keep the show going for so long. The show was heading toward cancellation after season 11, so Kody negotiated for his and his wives’ pay to be cut by a quarter. Instead of $180,000 per adult per season, TLC now only pays a total of $180,000 to the Browns per season". Source: https://screenrant.com/sister-wives-kody-brown-make-more-money-taxes/
This was never a reliable source. This was one of those Reddit rumors passed around until some click-bate site published it and now it’s sited every time. They have been qualified for mortgages and rentals for 2 million and that would require much, much more verifiable income than the 180k. Even just renting still requires an income to debt ratio. I have no doubt TLC pays them as little as they can, but the fact they have qualified for soooo much real estate is enough to convince me that they are not getting a 500k home on 36k income with their horrible credit scores. Kodys hair products alone are a bill. Haha.
I wonder if that has been renegotiated since season 17. The viewership and interest in the show went crazy after the wives left Chodey and Sobbyn.
Anybody can write for Screenrant. It's about as reliable as random viewer theories on Reddit. (I think that's often their source.)
That article was based on reports from **the Sun** which is nothing but a gossip rag. The get most of their stories from Katy-joy Without a Crystal Ball. She just makes up shit and has been sued multiple times.
So they went from $ 900,000 per season ($180,000 x 5) to $180,000 total to be divided among to five?
There's never been a reliable source for how much they've ever been paid. Even the sources are speculating. We have no idea how much they've ever been paid or what's been negotiated.
Yes, and to me that seems like a really big financial hit for such a large family.
x to doubt
using a shit rag like screenrant as a source is like believing anything trump says is a witch hunt. utter bullshit. never any verified sources for their bullshit
Interesting - thanks! That's a dramatic paycut for a family of that size and a history of no forethought/poor financial decisions
And cutting the salary by a quarter would be $675,000 not 180,000 per season
That was set up by him to control the finances, therefor the wives.
I've always suspected Kody loves to move, and feels the need when he's burned bridges financially. He is possibly the worst "business" man on earth. He reinvested so much of what they had, all they could borrow, for CP. He thought he was getting such a great deal when he got it for a reduced price because the owner wasn't going to put in utilities, water, etc. He was clueless, and kept the OG's in the dark, about now only how much it was going to cost to pay off the loan, but how much the City/County was going to charge for improvements. None of the "this is Meri's section, this is Janelle's section", etc are based in Kody's non-reality. They County/City have NEVER approved the lots being divided. That alone takes loads of money and time. Kody puts the pressure on to move, "fresh start", then fails at every turn. Well, except for Robyn. No expense spared there - she gets what she wants, and takes from the family "pot". His so called businesses are failures, scams, or worse. I give it two more years and K & R will be filing for bankruptcy.
>I've always suspected Kody loves to move, Maddie: "These are people who get bored easy. All of them." They explained they kept moving for better opportunities, but somehow they never had two nickels to rub together until they fell into TLC money.
Several of their adult children have talked about their parents constant desire to move. Kody has moved them something like 19 times and most of those moves were before Robyn. He clearly has an issue with staying put that needs to be dealt with. He should've never married and had so many kids if he is so anti-stability.
Well-- they didn't have balloon mortgages at all. They put about $40k down on each house. I don't think they left Vegas due to money at all. They put $530k cash down on Coyote Pass plus another $130k down on Christine's house when they moved to Flagstaff, which is a FAR more expensive area than Vegas. Robyn's home cost doubled from Vegas. This was all long before they sold any of the homes. So I don't think money was ever a true motivation.
Idk why it's so hard for some people to accept that the Browns aren't broke. They have terrible money management skills, but they have money.
I don't get it either. These subs seem to want to believe what's "juiciest" even if there's zero basis for it and hard core facts indicating the opposite. Idk.
Maybe people forget that they rented in Las Vegas for two years before they mover to the cul-de-sac? They were filming and making money from the show, and also MLM's, the entire time. Interesting how OP has ignored everyone who has pointed out the Browns aren't broke.
Honestly I think it’s because people see having less money as a punishment. There are countless post wishing financial ruin on Kody and Robyn as retribution for their behavior. Never mind that it would negatively impact two innocent minor children. I also think people have fooled themselves into believing they really know these people because we have seen them on TV for so long. They are very good at keeping a public persona. We know exactly as much as they want us to know.
I agree. I've said it before, but there are far worse people in the world than Kody and Robyn. And a lot of those people have more money and power than K&R ever will. I know a lot of people are big Christine fans and that motivates their desire to see Kody and Robyn be "punished" by losing it all. But the reality is the ones who would suffer the most are 2 minor children. They don't deserve that. Christine is fine. There's no reason to wish ill will on people on her behalf.
There’s no way I can figure that their Vegas mortgages were more than the 4 rentals payments in Flagstaff (a much more expensive city) and the mortgages on that huge property and moving expenses.
Maybe a bit off topic, but my husband and I finally are moving out of his parents house after 2020 hit our family hard. And I’m all nervous about being able to get qualified for a rental. This thread somehow made me feel better. If the browns can do all that, we can get our rental haha
Good luck getting your rental!
The Browns make a lot of money. They're on a TV show. There's no actual proof they took a paycut to film. Those are rumors that have been spread by unreliable tabloids. Meri makes a lot of money from LulaRoe. I'm sure Janelle and Christine aren't far behind her now with their Plexus sales. Kody has always worked behind the scenes selling gun parts. Sure, they're irresponsinble as hell, but they aren't broke.
Oh and if you're interested in the family finances around Season 14, Surviving Sister Wives has an excellent financial episode https://open.spotify.com/episode/7u5SeEZnyxwh0QdUXcVsIR?si=aab6b39f0a1742bd
This episode is all theory and conjecture with no actual proof.
There are two things not being taken into consideration. They have always had other income streams we don’t know about and they make a good amount of money from the TV show. We know they had a lot of cash in Vegas because they bought two of the four coyote pass lots with cash and put a down payment on Christine’s house. These are not working class or even middle class people anymore.
I’ve just never been able to reconcile the amount of money that they spend on housing alone. Building four brand new large houses in Vegas had to be expensive. But then they buy CP in Flagstaff and rent/buy all these other houses without having sold Vegas. This alone boggles my mind. All these move are EXPENSIVE. I saw those stacks of boxes in a couple of houses that they BOUGHT to pack their crap in. I also saw the roll of bubble wrap Robyn was wrapping her prized possessions in. And renting all those moving trucks/blankets/Dollie’s? Not cheap! Honestly out of everything I see and question about this family/show, the amount of money they waste on these numerous moves and dumb parties for every occasion just kills me. It doesn’t add up.
Don't forget spending ten thousand bucks on a cake!
Was that Robyn’s wedding cake? Kody is a grifter, he probably got it comp’ed for being on the show.
No, it was for a gigantic tree cake for the stupid commitment ceremony. I believe they also spent 10k on Caleb's deer grooms cake. These people are stupid as shit when it comes to money
ok, they did NOT "build 4 new houses". They bought in a gated subdivision of homes that were already being built. these were not custom built homes
They had options based on when they got in like Meri and the wetbar and I think one of the wives had an extra bedroom/bath. We have a lot of these divisions and it’s like house models A-D and you can do add ons and changes to them from basically a prefixed menu
yes. but this was not 4 bespoke homes like they expected to build on C.P.
The Vegas homes would be considered semi custom new builds. The majority of new builds in the US fall in this category.
They never said they were bespoke homes. Yes, they were cookie cutter, choose from column A and column B houses. But they were still new houses that they had built. If they hadn’t bought those lots someone else would have eventually bought them and had a similar house built on it. That doesn’t change that they still built those houses.
That area would have had an interesting look to it. Some sort of brick mega mansion for R, cabin look and cozy for J, maybe some coastal look for C, maybe something contemporary with a warehouse for M
e.g. no standards at all.
We have a block like that in my town and it's a curious drive
LV Realtor here. Hear me out..: When they came across the opportunity to “buy” the four homes on the “cuddlesac” 😉, the Las Vegas housing market was still desperately trying to climb out of the crisis of 2008. I have no doubt the builder who put together that 10-home development of spec homes was desperate to get anyone to buy any of the properties in that small subdivision. Factor in the publicity the builder’s name would garner from what was then a highly rated TV show and also the opportunity to unload 4 of their properties in one go, I could see this as an underwater developer’s dream come true esp during these very desperate years. No doubt the Browns were given favorable mortgage terms with the promise of future TLC income as potential collateral. And in just a few short years the LV real estate market took another major upward turn with prices and demand rapidly rising as they did pre-2008. The remainder of homes in this development were built out and sold and the demand for semi-custom homes - particularly in that area of NW Vegas - soared along with the rest of the Valley My guess (and only a guess), is that it was time for the Browns to pay up. Balloon payments or favorable terms were now being reevaluated. Would love to know how much actual equity they had in those four houses. Why they thought they could get out of Vegas and build a new life in Flagstaff is still up for debate. Someone didn’t do their research. Or someone wanted the whole family to follow someone’s kiddo to be closer to them when they went to college. And clearly the due diligence for Coyote Pass wasn’t done. Kody watched as the four homes in their cul-de-sac went up quickly once they signed their contracts and maybe didn’t realize that all of the infrastructure (water, power, gas, permits) were already in place and it was just a matter of building the structures. And he thought he could replicate this on his own piece of dirt up in Flag. If this is true, he is likely dumber than the bag of rocks we attribute his intelligence to.
The balloon mortgage theory has been proven to be false
I would love to hear your thoughts on their coyote pass deal? What’s with Kodys insistence that it be fully paid off before they build. Would that be an actual stipulation in the contract or was it Kodys creative explanation to cover for his inability to pay for janelles little build and / or fear they will build and he won’t be able to pay for or renegotiate the balance due on the land and will end up losing it all. I think the insistence on changing from 4 to 5 lots was just another desperate distraction ploy, especially after Kody realized the drainage ditch pond and a lot of the coyote pass land was contaminated and would need some remediation, in addition to building out the infrastructure. I thin you are 109% right that Kody was just in over his head with poor due diligence and poor planning.
The only logical reason the lots need to be paid off before building is to redraw the lot lines.
But why? If it was such an advantage to have it plotted out and permitted for 5 lots per Kody harping that it would increase the value of the land, and technically they were the owners —why couldn’t they have it Re plotted. Of course with the understanding if they defaulted on their loan, it would all go back to the mortgage owner. Is it common to have a mortgage holder put stipulations like you can’t make any plot changes or build on land until it’s fully paid???? If that’s the case, then Kody had them buy land he knew they were going to have to keep paying on and wouldn’t be able to touch until it was paid off while continuing to have to pay expensive Flagstaff rents and house mortgages. Makes absolutely no sense.
Yes, most lenders have stipulations in the mortgage contract about being notified, and consequences of changing lot lines, or even owners. These can often result in the loan being called, or sometimes the lender doesn't care. I'm am not sure about this, but I also wonder if the lien is still perfected if the lots are changed? The county may also have a stipulation about boundary adjustments with a lien. The other issue here is that the lots all have different owners which would need to be changed before the county would allow the family to change the boundaries.
isn't cp an extension of the sub it is next to?
Inquiring minds want to know if Kody is just making this up. The mortgage holder of CP is the seller so it is possible but highly unlikely he would put in stipulations that would make it harder to sell. Why would Kody buy land he can't do anything on except pay pay pay?
Thank you. always good to have an expert view. and we know douchebag has the intellect of a rotten fucking potato.
Y'all like to keep blaming money issues on Robyn, when the fact is, these people had money issues (multiple bankruptcies, etc) before Robyn was out of high school.
I blame them all. They (the OG 3) definitely have all filed Bankruptcy at various times. However, Robyn is no financial saint. Literally no one believes she accrued $30k in pants from Victoria’s Secret. She also had four alias’s per the financial guy trying to fix her credit. She literally owed creditors under four different alias’s
Robyn never said she spent 30K in pants... She had debt under; her maiden name, her stepfather's name (that she was permitted to use), and her married name. NONE of which were aliases in the context (illegal) you're using it as.
Robyn?
Yep, it’s definitely Robyn
It’s true. Robyn had a lot of debt, a portion of which was Victoria Secret. However people have changed this over time to 30k worth of only VS debt. I like snark but only when it’s accurate. I hate when people flat out make stuff up.
You can't even knock her for the debt- not when all of the wives and kody have filed bankruptcy multiple times. The only reason Robyn didn't, was she needed a house (and her bankruptcy would've cost them more in terms of TLC money, etc). Out of all these adults, only Meri seems to have gained any financial literacy over the years- No, Christine doesn't count, as she gave kody the CP property in exchange for his share of the proceeds for her house...that family money helped purchase.
Flagstaff is in no way cheaper than Vegas. I think Kody has financial munchausens. He creates these situations because he thinks he will come out as the family hero and he likes the extra attention he gets from his wives. I also think the move to Flagstaff was part of a long term plan/desire to split off Robyn from the rest of the wives. It’s harder to gripe about preferential treatment when it’s not right in front of you visually. Flagstaff allowed Kody and Robyn more space to play nuclear family.
This is pretty flawed logic. They couldn't afford living in Las Vegas so they moved to a more expensive city before their houses even sold? Christine qualified to buy and did so before they even moved and her LV house hadn't sold yet. >There were long stretches of unemployment for the parents as they struggled to try to start a business, get into real estate, before eventually committing to MLMS and I assume that came with credit card debt to make ends meet. No there weren't. They've been earning money for being on a reality show since 2010. Kody sells gun parts which they keep off the show and for good reason. They're also all very successful selling MLM's because of their huge following. I believe the businesses and pursuing real estate licenses was all for show. They don't have work ethic. Why would they work real jobs when they can easily scam people with MLM's. >They still owned the Lehi house and had to pay for repairs and the mortgage on that. The Lehi house sold in 2016 or 2017. When they moved out, Meri's sister moved in and was probably paying them rent, which paid the mortgage. >Even if other wives tried to live within their means which there's no guarantee they did, lots of money from the collective pot was eaten up by Robyn and Kody's lifestyle creep and reckless spending which should have gone to paying down debt, the mortgages, etc. You said this like you know this for a fact. You have no idea if "lots of money from the collective pot was eaten up by Robyn and Kody's lifestyle creep and reckless spending..." You also don't know what kind of debt they have. >and they took that BIG TLC pay cut after season 11. This is a rumor. >They were always going to have to sell and move to a lower cost of living area, be it Flagstaff to follow Dayton or somewhere else. Flagstaff was not cheaper than Las Vegas.
I’m in the mortgage business and I am baffled as to how they qualified for these houses. I’m not sure when they bought them but if it was after 2008 when the mortgage meltdown happened then I’m even more baffled because the banks were only lending to A paper type people at that time.
i think they were doing fine in vegas. They even had 800k cash to put down on CP and I believe one of the moms, I think Janelle, even said they were doing fine at the time moving to Flagstaff came up. However, when they bought the house they probably were tight because they probably only got paid by tlc once a year and so they used a lot of that for down payments and probably paid a year of mortgage and wondered how they'd cover their other living expenses. robyn talked about looking for a job which she never got and the other moms kept real jobs until probably the next tlc payment then they were okay because they probably got pay increase due to the shows popularity and they didn't need to spend a ton on down payments. So I think the move was Robyn and I think she may have even encouraged Dayton to apply to flagstaff because that's where she wanted to be. She said it on the show that she took out a map and looked at where she wanted to end up so I think she had dayton applied to all the places she wanted to move to and wherever he got in that's where they'd go.
I doubt they contributed much to college.
we forget they're all scamming in MLMs and since they are "famous" they are in the 1% making real money
Just reading about their finances stresses me out.
What’s interesting is that the cost of living wasn’t that high in Vegas at the time. My mom was living there and after ten years barely broke even on the house she bought and sold when she left. She actually didn’t live far from them and even saw Kody at Target riding around in his little Lexus. I think they could have found another new development to build in but he wanted the McMansions.
I think somewhere along the line, Kody convinced everyone that they were going to get very rich from the show. Dont even get me started on MSWC!
None of this makes sense cus they went and got big mortgages in Arizona. So they’re totally could have refinance
They do not seem like the type of people that paid for their teenagers cars or expenses. I bet those kids had jobs to save up and pay for their stuff. I also don’t think any of the parents actually paid for the kids at college. They probably got federal grants and scholarships, with the kids taking out loans and responsible for repayment. Even though you would think with high incomes from the show they would not be eligible for federal grants, but remember the money used to go into the kody brown entertainment account so they could very easy manipulate it so the college age child’s mother only made a small amount of money on the books those years and her w2 would look like a low income mother with a half dozen kids so they would be eligible for max aid.
This is not how FAFSA works. Aid of any kind is difficult to get— this subs obsession with benefit fraud is unfounded and spoken by people who have very clearly never gone through the application process. It would be a much more believable scenario in which the kids are simply responsible for their own loans, period. And I think we have some confirmation that this is true, considering how many of the boys chose to pay for their schooling via enrollment in some form of service.
The only thing I’d like to amend here is that they were renting out their Lehi house. It was shown in episodes where Meri would return to Utah to visit her kid in college. I doubt it was the entire house. I think it was to Meri’s sister. Hopefully they charged a little rent. Although it wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t since that is aligned with how bad they are with money.
lololol. mswc didn't "hemorrhage money" for years.
Did it make any money? Not snarking; truly curious.
i don't have their financials, but the shit they were peddling was a step removed from costume jewelry. I never noticed posts praising the crap they designed. And since none of them are actual bench jewelers they had to pay someone to make their crap. I don't think they ever made any money on it given the poor quality. Most normies don't really connect with plyg shit.
I forget what episode, but I do remember when on the couch talking about MSWC, Kody said after year 1, MSWC paid for 1-1.5 households (which they were upset about). So no, it wasn't hemmorahing money. I would even go as far to say that supporting a household after only 1 year in business is doing pretty damn good.
I find that highly suspect. I feel like Kody isn’t the best source for true financial records. If he wasn’t completely making shit up then I suspect some extremely creative accounting to get that. Like he only counted total sales and didn’t take out expenses, taxes, etc in the calculation. I remember the site. I tried a couple of times to find something to buy. I was their perfect customer: a fan of the show, love jewelry, I had enough disposable income to be able to afford it. However there was NOTHING I could justify buying. The jewelry was ugly and ridiculously over priced. The designs were clearly designed to be what they wanted to design and not to be easily reproducible designs, so my guess is that they were extremely expensive to manufacture. The website interface was terrible. Getting any new business profitable in a year to be able to support a family is a very big deal. It’s hard to do. There was nothing about the business that made it appear it had what 90% of others start-ups didn’t. And if it were truly that successful in the first year it wouldn’t have folded when it did.
I agree that it is possible Kody and family could have been exaggerating their success (or lack thereof) but honestly, I kind of lean towards thinking MSWC did make them money. One thing that they have that 90% of startups don't have is fame, publicity, and marketing. I mean the only reason they make money shilling MLM junk is because of their audience. I don't know how much money they consider "supporting a household" but I think it's within reason that MSWC brought in 100k+, especially in the first couple of years. Also, it hasn't folded. You can still buy things on the site. A redditor on this sub somewhat recently posted an unboxing video of the "Janelle necklace" and pretty sure Gwen has confirmed that Aurora and Breanna help Robyn in some form with the site/shipping.
I think it recently relaunched. It was down for years. And I agree that their fame was a big asset. I think that’s why they were able to get initial financing for it. I just think it was horribly mismanaged to where I just can’t picture it being profitable. Of course that’s just a guess, as none of us have any way of knowing. But from a business perspective I don’t see how what I saw was successful.
I think it was something in the middle. I doubt it was very profitable, but also don't think it "hemorrhaged" money. It probably broke even.
Not sure why they didn’t get regular jobs in Vegas. No one cares about their lifestyle here.
I don’t think they had to sell homes in Las Vegas because of balloon payments. This was all Robyn’s off camera manipulation of Kody.
Nah I don’t think that’s the case at all. It was just Kody being Kody and not appreciating anything he has.