His Ubiquitous Home Buying Billboards Around Cleveland Have Drawn Backlash. But John Williams Says He's Not a Predatory Investor

John Williams, the founder of a real estate company that aims to acquire 1,000 properties across Northeast Ohio by the end of 2026, has gotten backlash for billboards some find tasteless and tone deaf. Williams said it’s merely brutal honesty. “Let’s just call a spade a spade,” he said. Credit: Mark Oprea

The billboards may give Tim Misny a run for his money.

And they’re just as egocentric.

On an indeterminate number of them across Cleveland, there’s a middle-aged, balding man in rose-tinted aviators and a Cheshire grin. “Most Trusted Home Buyer in America,” one says. “Your House is Trash? I’ll Pay Cash” reads another.

John Williams has come to town and wants everyone to know he’s looking to buy up some cheap properties. A thousand of them, to be precise, in the next two years, he told Scene.

While observers say he’s nothing more than a predatory real estate vulture whose billboards might be more official and better designed than the fliers stapled to utlity poles by similar outfits like Cash 4 Homes, Williams contends he’s here to whip lackluster housing stock into shape, not just flip them for profit.

“Today, I’m leading a mission to improve the entire housing market,” Williams wrote in a press release in 2020 of the business he relocated from Florida to Cleveland, “and helping thousands of tenants in the process.”

His messaging hasn’t quite hit, however.

Last week, after several complaints were made to Lamar Advertising, the company that Williams uses to lease billboard space, a “I Buy Crack Houses! sign near East 79th and Carnegie Ave. in Ward 6 was taken down.

(That’s just four blocks north of a sign, which still up as of Monday, that reads, “Your House Is Trash? I’ll Pay Cash.”)

Council President Blaine Griffin, who filmed a social media video in front of the now empty billboard space while lodging his complaints, wasn’t having it.

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“He just seems like a guy who’s moved here from out of town, and is now trying to do what a lot of people have done in the past—predatory real estate,” Griffin told Scene in a phone call. “I think we have to continue to boycott people like this. Let’s put out-of-state investors out of business by not supporting them.”

Sally Martin O’Toole, the director of Building & Housing, has acted as Mayor Bibb’s leader on a city-wide crackdown on negligent landlords for the past four years. Credit: Mark Oprea

That messaging has been consistent from Mayor Justin Bibb’s City Hall and Council Chambers as the city has taken a hard stance against investors, especially those with out-of-state zip codes.

Last year, Cleveland passed a suite of “Residents First” laws meant to protect renters from negligent landlords. Laws that included requirements for owners to have local agents-in-charge that can be held accountable in court when violations are found and gave the city more power to fine landlords for ignoring long-overdue repairs.

A mission that, on the basis of housing quality and code alone, lines up with what Williams told Scene he’s trying to carry out. Even if his other business priorities have taken precedence in previous messaging.

“We are on a path to become the number one home buyer in all of Cleveland,” Williams said in an Instagram post in January, a billboard reading “I BUY HOME$ CASH” behind him. His goal, he elaborated in another post, is “to capitalize on what I believe will be the biggest real estate cash flow opportunity of the decade.”

Wiliams is new, unknown commodity around town, despite the billboards. And opinions reflect that at this point.

“I mean, who knows? If he’s got good management, it could be a good thing,” David Sharkey, a realtor with Progressive Urban Real Estate, said. “If he’s bad, it could mean bad neighbors.”

“We just don’t know what kind of player he is,” Sharkey added. “He may be investing in something that may have just gotten torn down.”

Online, others aren’t as willing to give Williams the benefit of the doubt.

“Just another piece of shit that buys homes for cheap and makes them rentals,” one wrote on Reddit.

“A slum lord in the making,” another commented.

In an interview with Scene, Williams framed his decision to set up shop in Northeast Ohio as one that revolves around acquiring dirt-cheap houses, mostly those that are vacant or dilapidated, putting five figures into fixing them up, selling them to investors, then renting those homes out to tenants on Section 8 housing vouchers.

Williams denied he was involved in any type of predatory practice, but refused to say how many homes he’s acquired or sold since January.

He painted himself, and his smile-laden billboards advertising his service (the number of which he’s currently leasing, he declined to say), as more of do-good mission in the realm of “affordable housing.”

“Not flipping,” he said. “We don’t flip.”

And he claims he’s not taking over stock that would otherwise go to regular home buyers.

“I mean, what type of first-time buyer is saying, ‘I want to buy a boarded-up house so I can then spend $60,000 to $70,000” to fix it up, Williams told Scene. “Nobody.”

“What they would then do is just simply say, I’d rather just move into a safer neighborhood and buy a house that’s already done.”

But he’s not just after boarded-up housing, of course. His billboards declare he’s after any house, and fast. “Divorced? I Pay Cash,” reads one in Detroit-Shoreway, for example.

Which is exactly the brand of tactics cash-buying real estate investment companies have drawn backlash for — the ones that offer below-market value, the ones that strip the most economically distressed of money from their biggest investment, the ones who prioritize speed and cold-hard cash over the traditional selling process.

As for the off-color language and bluntness that has garnered widespread criticism — crack houses, trash houses — Williams is not concerned.

“I know it kind of hurts feelings to say, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t call it that because it’s a sensitive topic,’” Williams said. “Let’s call a spade a spade: if a house is burnt down, I would call it a burnt down house, right? If a house is dilapidated, I call it a dilapidated house.”

“There are plenty of homes that are for drug use that have been neglected,” he added, “that need to be restored.”