Toll, Centex, Lennar Join `Moron’ Speculators in Land Grab Bust

Toll, Centex, Lennar Join `Moron’ Speculators in Land Grab Bust

Brian Tuttle owns so much land that he paid $3.6 million to get rid of 125 acres ready for development in the middle of Florida’s Palm Beach County.

“In 2005, I was a brain surgeon, and in 2006, I was a moron,” said Tuttle, who walked away from his deposit on the land rather than lose even more money buying it and building homes on it. “The only good news is that I’m not alone.”

The worst housing slump in 16 years made a lot of smart money vanish. D.R. Horton Inc., Pulte Homes Inc., Lennar Corp., Centex Corp. and Toll Brothers Inc., the five biggest U.S. homebuilders, said plummeting land prices cost them a combined $1.47 billion in the fourth quarter.

Builders paid more for land during the boom because home prices were rising, too. They didn’t realize speculators were pumping up demand by buying houses to sell quickly. When prices reached a point where speculators quit buying, homebuilders were forced to abandon so much property they helped create a glut that drove down land prices more than 9 percent last year, according to data compiled by New York-based research firm Real Capital Analytics Inc.

Build real estate wealth tax-free

Build real estate wealth tax-free

New book simplifies rules of property exchanges

Whether you want to trade your rental house for another one, or you want to pyramid your real estate wealth without paying taxes along the way, “The 1031 Tax Advantage for Real Estate Investors” by Timothy S. Harris and Linda Monroe is the right book for you. It simplifies a potentially complicated topic and makes exchanging properties without paying taxes easy and profitable.

This up-to-date new book is unique because it explains tax benefits for real estate investors in easily understandable layperson’s terms with lots of examples illustrating the explanations. Emphasis is primarily on tax-deferred real estate exchanges, but the authors also explain related topics such as vacation-home tax benefits, the $250,000 and $500,000 principal-residence-sale exemptions, and how to creatively, legally use the latest tax avoidance methods, such as tenant-in-common (TIC) tax-deferred exchanges.

Investors’ deals with developer lead to court [North Florida]

Investors’ deals with developer lead to court [North Florida]

A Gainesville doctor took a second mortgage on his house to make a $100,000 business loan to Sarasota developer Rod Connelly.

It seemed like a good deal: 18 months at 20 percent interest.

Two years later, Robert Erickson and his wife had not seen a dime. After they learned that the project in which they had invested was dead, and that Connelly never mentioned that fact, they asked for their money back.

Reaping the Tax Benefits From Rental Property

Reaping the Tax Benefits From Rental Property

One benefit of owning rental real estate is the myriad tax breaks. More deductions and tax-related strategies are available for this property than for just about any other type of investment. Not all owners, however, take full advantage of these allowances, either because they don’t know about them or choose to ignore them, perhaps out of fear of an audit.
Skip to next paragraph
Illustration by Nancy Doniger

“A lot of deductions people may overlook,” said Stephen Fishman, a tax lawyer from San Francisco and the author of “Every Landlord’s Tax Deduction Guide” (Nolo, 2006), “and that can really add up.”

There are, of course, the obvious ones like mortgage interest and operating expenses like insurance. But some people may not know that they can also deduct expenses when conducting real estate business at home, or that there are different ways to depreciate the cost of their property even as its value increases.

Who’s to blame? Coast or CCI?

Business: Who’s to blame? Coast or CCI?

Or both? Any way, it’s the investors who are left in housing debacle’s lurch.

The Florida housing boom was creating instant millionaires when St. Petersburg builder Jesse Battle III hit on a promising formula to feed the public’s hunger for no-pain, all-gain real estate deals.

Within 18 months, Battle’s company, Construction Compliance Inc., had lined up customers for more than 500 investment homes he would build, mostly for no money down in southwest Florida.

By early 2006, the former home renovator with one bankruptcy under his belt was a player, selling more homes in certain Florida markets than major national builders.

St. Petersburg-based firm sees opportunity in S. Florida shopping centers

St. Petersburg-based firm sees opportunity in S. Florida shopping centers

There’s not much room to build shopping centers in South Florida.

But one newcomer is squeezing its way into the crowded retail market with four new projects that aim to give local consumers convenient places to shop and do their dry cleaning and banking.

The Sembler Co., a St. Petersburg.-based retail and management firm, recently opened Legacy Place, a 469,000-square-foot shopping and entertainment center at PGA Boulevard and A1A in Palm Beach Gardens. And the company is developing three other venues in Palm Beach and Broward counties: Boynton Town Center, North Springs Plaza in Coral Springs, and Commercial Boulevard Shoppes in Lauderhill.