Project shows well-off borrowers also hurt by easy-loan climate
On a crisp fall afternoon in 2002, a crowd gathered under a big tent near the Penland School of Crafts, an artists’ colony tucked in the Blue Ridge Mountains. While a harpist played, real-estate developer Tony Porter described his vision for a 2,000-lot residential and retail development called the Village of Penland.
The developer and others at his company, Peerless Real Estate Services Inc., said they needed investors to launch the project in time to catch the real-estate wave. They promised to help people borrow as much as $2 million, according to people who heard Porter’s pitch and a Wall Street Journal review of promotional documents.
Over the next several years, investigators say, nearly 200 investors — mostly well-heeled professionals including real estate lawyers, doctors and Air Force officers — borrowed more than $100 million with Porter’s help from a handful of banks, including Charlotte-based First Charter Corp.