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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Archie Meeties who wrote (160414)	10/27/2008 12:27:17 AM
From: Jim McMannis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Master Overbuilderby Andrew Rice October 2008 Issue Bob Toll scored big during the real estate bubble. Now, as sales stall and losses mount at Toll Brothers, the luxury homebuilder he helped found, he talks candidly about overbuilding, unwise land deals, greed-and how we can get out of this mess. portfolio.com On a bright morning in late July, the corporate headquarters of Toll Brothers, the luxury homebuilder that profited mightily from the latest housing boom, are uncannily silent. Outside chief executive Bob Toll’s office, swaths of cubicles sit vacant and bare, depopulated by deep layoffs. Inside, a Bloomberg terminal scrolls dismal updates: A new report says home prices are plummeting by record margins; in markets like Las Vegas and Miami, they’re off almost 30 percent. Toll Brothers’ stock is trading at about $20, down two-thirds from its 2005 high. From Simple to SupersizeMichael Lewis' MansionBehind the Story: Land GrabberThe Mansion FamilyToll, compact and unassuming in a moss-colored suit, sits behind his desk in surroundings that seem incongruously modest for the man who stoked America’s demand for cathedral ceilings, Roman tubs, and four-car garages. We’re in a plain room overlooking a parking lot in an unremarkable suburban-Philadelphia office park. The only signs of excess are a helipad in the lot that the company laid down at the height of the boom to accommodate corporate choppers and the framed press clippings from those high-flying times that adorn the office’s walls. One headline reads BETTING AGAINST A HOUSING BUST. (View a pop-up graphic showing how Toll Brothers' models have grown more deluxe.) Toll, never one to mince words, is merciless as he dissects how his wagers went wrong. “These are bad times if there ever were,” he tells me. Perhaps no company better symbolizes the engorged consumption of the last real estate spree than Toll Brothers, which Bob founded with his brother, Bruce, in a one-room office four decades ago. During the height of the housing bubble, from 2004 to 2006, Toll Brothers reported nearly $16 billion in revenue, putting it in the top ranks of the industry. Its carefully cultivated brand—large, high-end suburban homes with all the latest must-have appliances—was among the most enviable in the business and catered to the yearning for bigger and better that the era’s easy credit allowed. Although Toll Brothers once had uncanny judgment, it has hit tough ground in the bust. Through the first nine months of 2008, Toll Brothers’ new sales contracts were down 49 percent from 2007, and 76 percent from 2005. The company reported a series of huge losses and has been forced to take massive write-downs—about $1.5 billion to date—on the value of its assets and landholdings. To mitigate the damage, Toll has laid off several thousand employees, nearly half his workforce, and walked away from numerous projects. Toll offers me no excuses and freely concedes that he made some foolish deals. “We boatloaded a bunch of real estate in ’04 and ’05 that is underwater today,” he says ruefully. Though Toll once prided himself on his ability to see a downturn coming, he admits to having been blindsided by this one’s startling swiftness and severity. Some have wondered whether the instincts that served him so well in the past were dulled during a long period of plenty. “His timing before this was always impeccable,” says Jeffrey Orleans, a Philadelphia-area homebuilder who has known Toll since childhood and admires him. “This recession, he’s getting a bit beat up like the rest of us.” Still, as many other real estate executives have headed for cover—or unemployment—Toll is reveling in the self-appointed role of cantankerous spokesman for his beleaguered industry. Earlier this summer he roiled financial markets when he told a conference of bankers that the housing market was in the throes of a “depression.” He lobbied Congress (unsuccessfully) for an emergency $15,000 tax break for home buyers. He’s been an outspoken supporter of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. He’s turned his company’s regular conference calls into candid fireside chats in which he gives his unvarnished assessment of regional housing markets by issuing grades—an exercise so replete with failing scores that his chagrined junior executives have taken to calling it “the F report.” In our conversation, he spreads the blame liberally, even pointing to customers, saying it wasn’t the builders’ fault that banks made foolish loans and people took them, knowing full well what their incomes were: “What cracked the market was not just our greed but the greed of our buyers.”

To: Archie Meeties who wrote (160414)	10/27/2008 1:02:23 AM
From: ahhaha	Respond to of 306849

You just demonstrated why you haven't a clue about health care and should seek the advice of a professional when it comes to your health, In the biz we call this deferring to expertism. You have demonstrated that you're a fool for assuming that some expert knows what you think they know. You have some quaint concept of medicine and of the doctors who administer it. You had better learn that you need to do your own thing. I call this, "getting good medicine out of doctors who fight giving good medicine due to the habit of their daily practice". as I've just given two cardinal symptoms of pneumonia, a potentially life threatening disease. You would be sorely mistaken to make such a diagnosis based on that indication alone. So unless you have a home xray machine, know what pneumonia sounds like, and are familiar with the work up and treatment, I suggest you check yourself in if you get sick with those symptoms. Just some fatherly advice. Well dad, you're confidence in what you believe may surprise you in its incompleteness. It's easily observed that children who aren't immunized die or develop morbidity. It is observed that 2 + 2 = 4, but that doesn't mean you will believe it unless some expert tells you it is true. Can't you do anything for yourself, or are you just another dependent? It's easily observable that folks who get an infection, if not treated, can die. It is observed that people die. Then it is observe by others that people who are covered don't die. Thus, if you get covered, you won't die. It's easily observable that inadequate access to health care results in worse health. Not only observable, but easily demonstrated. And then extrapolated to longevity of populations where it is no longer true. It's easily observable that countries that spend less money on health care are just as healthy, if not more healthy, less obese (oh wait, it's because they can't afford burger king!). Not quite. It's observable that countries that have more money are just as healthy, if not more healthy than countries with less money. What's not easily observable is how living longer or babies dying less (The French or Japanese situation) is somehow not credible evidence of health. It isn't statistically observable, or statistical evidence of such isn't sufficiently strong to make the assertion much less base a inflation generating government health care system on it that costs more and delivers less or not at all. You start with a prejudice and then try to rationalize it with these vague statistics which have been cooked to accomplish that very end. Why do you do that?What is your ulterior motive? But you got some stats to back you up, I suppose, somewhere. It's clear that you don't have knowledge of statistics to know when the stats show enough to be meaningful. You should be warned that in the medical profession much trash is generated based on extremely thin statistical analysis. Take care, enjoy your health. Glib, disingenuous lying. You had better review what I said above.You have no idea as shown in your remarks just how primitive the medicine is in this era. Better take it under advisement for your own health. That means you have to investigate and challenge the cheap opinion of your "primary care physician".