No, he bought it, using inheritance money he got from his dead dad. The house isn't worth very much, sits next to a polluted industrial site in a one-streetlight town, and the "renovation" is a janky home-depot-discount-aisle hackjob.
There's pictures of the reno somewhere back in this thread and the plumbing looks like it was done by a plumber who showed up drunk every day. Like, russian-tier bends around molding and jank shit like that. And of course if you can find it, there's a great picture where a toilet was installed diagonally, for some reason.