Liberty and housing for all
When The Michaels Organization's founder and leader Michael Levitt got into the housing business, a hundred dollars was a lot of money.
The government housing specialist, whose company today operates 40,000 apartments across the country and has contracts with Uncle Sam to do complete residential makeovers at five military bases, was lured into real estate by a $300 commission.
"I thought that was all the money there was in the world," he said in an interview in May, recalling the summer job with his father's real estate company, after his junior year in pre-law at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Penn., in 1954. "I sold a house and that $300 commission changed my life. I wondered, why in the world did I want to be a lawyer I should be in real estate," said Levitt.
Fifty-five years later, Levitt's organization consists of a squadron of seven affiliated real estate service companies, the oldest of which are Michaels Development Company and Interstate Realty Management, created in 1973. The youngest are Michaels Military Housing LLC and Prestige Renovations LLC, born in 2004, when the U.S. Army chose Michaels to rejuvenate or rebuild more than 1,500 dwelling units at the base Col. Henry Leavenworth established as a frontier outpost in Kansas in 1827. In 2008, the company was selected by the Army to do similar work at Fort Huachuca and the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona.
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