- The Masters Golf Tournament doubles the population of Augusta, Georgia, for one week every April.
- Many locals rent their homes at sky-high prices and flee the area for somewhere more peaceful.
That wallpaper? Hand-painted in France. You won't find it anywhere else.
It's that level of pizzazz that helps the Mack family of Augusta, Georgia, attract some of the deepest-pocketed visitors who flock to the area every April for the Masters Golf Tournament.
With the 2024 tournament's tickets open for applications as of June 1, it isn't too early to start thinking about lodging in the town that Golf Digest said "doubles in size" for one week each year. There aren't enough hotels to hold the swelling population, Golf Digest said, so golfers, their entourages, brands, and visitors alike all turn to the area's homes to meet their lodging needs. For locals, renting their houses during the elite tournament pays off handsomely.
"There's not a lot of homes in this area that look like ours and rent for Masters," Hayley Mack told the outlet.
Mack said they outfitted their home in custom furnishings and added a 3,000-square-foot addition to the main home as well as a guest house and basketball court "because we saw it as an investment for our family. We obviously get a very big number for Masters week."
The family's 8,000-square-foot colonial style home, which they live in year-round but for the week of the Masters, has hosted names so big they were barred from sharing them with Golf Digest because of the non-disclosure agreements they had signed.
What Hayley Mack did concede, though, is that she recently hosted a billionaire philanthropist who is "not Justin Timberlake famous, but billionaire famous."
The payoff is sweet. Mack wouldn't say exactly how much she and her husband rake in for their top-notch home, which features a man cave that's more Ralph Lauren Polo Bar than Buffalo Wild Wings, but she did acknowledge it's a six-figure sum.
For the Macks, that rent is tax-free. It's called The Augusta Rule, and allows homeowners nationwide to forgo reporting rent collected for 14 days or fewer on a residence that isn't a primary business on their individual tax return.
The Macks say they've only had one bad experience renting their home, when they leased it to a "well-known beverage company" that "made it the party home for the week," according to Golf Digest. Mack said her housekeeper greeted her at the door and told her not to panic. Mack wept.
Kathie Williams purchased a five-bedroom house a half-mile from the Augusta National course in December 2021 and funneled $250,000 into a renovation of the property she rents out throughout the year. On a normal week, the home rents for about $2,500, but during the Masters, that sum swells to about $30,000.
Williams puts some of that money back into the house, and uses the rest to invest or go on vacation. She's visited Hilton Head, Italy, and Hawaii, and this year she's thinking of a cruise, so long as it isn't Augusta this one week in April. "The area is just pandemonium," Williams told Golf Digest.
Tipton Sholes told Insider he rents his four-bedroom, two-bathroom home a mile from Augusta National for $1,300 a night — or a bit over $10,000 for the eight nights surrounding the tournament. Sholes said the income practically pays his mortgage for the year.
But not all Augusta homeowners are eager to cash in on the Masters.
The Thatchers are legendary to golf fans as the holdout homeowners who live on the edge of the course.
Augusta National has spent $200 million buying up property around the course for two decades, the Wall Street Journal originally reported, but the Thatchers have resisted all offers to sell their 1,900-square-foot house. The offers they're shunning could amount to millions.
"We really don't want to go," Elizabeth Thacker told NJ.com in 2016.
"Money ain't everything," her husband, Herman, added.