20. The number of months ago the downturn started. 19. The percentage drop in Toll Bros. revenue.
14. The percentage drop in contects written.
19. Latest cancellation rate (percent).
6. Cancellation rate 2006 (percent).
90 million to 130 million. Dollar writedowns this quarter.
$320,000,000 Robert I. Toll equity extraction 2004-2005
Article at CNN Money. [With apologies to Harpers.]
20 comments:
First?
I'd like to thank the members of the Academy, my publicist, my ...
Murst ? First ? whatever one has to say.
Anyway, why don't they build in prosperous areas?
Drat missed. Must take longer for my posts to get over there.
Anyway "This, in turn, can impact the entire 'housing food chain,' including some of our potential customers' ability to sell their existing homes," Toll said.
That is not pretty.
Hey people, I've been reading Aspeth's website, and she has really done a great job about the inner workings of Casey's greedy little con artist mind by the websites he visited. As an example, he had been looking into Rv's waaaay back in 2005. He has looked up books on panhandling, reading people for profit, how to monetize your blog, how to get paid for posting on your blog etc etc...
Aspeth
this is really a treasure trove of information about the way this money grubbing scamster's mind works. I mean, this is really absolute proof about what he really thinks, and pretty much refutes all the bullshit about wanting to repay, his feelings about living in an RV (from way back then) and even about how he REALLY feels about people when he meets them (can I make money off this sucker or not?).
Great work.
I think more people at EN should be reading this stuff so I am going to be posting there as well.
Totally off beam but doesn't the guy in the picture look like a cross between Robin Williams and Peter Sellers?
Arthur,
Yes, he does yet I also see a bit of Kevin Spacey in him as well.
arthur,
It took a bit of self control to save the "food chain" quote for people to find when they read the article. I was warning about this oh... 20 months ago. You know when the downturn started. 'Scourse this is Bob Toll admitting he's was lying for at least the first year of the downturn.
For the record I called the downturn Oct 6th, 2005 shortly after breakfast. There's a lot of reasons for that date but like all crystalizing moments it was when my once every two weeks houskeeper proudly annouced she had bought a house. Here in Ventura County. Joesph Kennedy had his shoeshine boy moment. I had my housekeeper moment.
So what happened to the housekeeper, Rob? Does she still have the house or has she lost it?
Sorry about the double post there.
He was in a relatively boring, cyclical industry for many years, until it got swept up in a speculative fervor. He cashed out at the top, can you blame him?
I'm guessing that the housing industry has a number of its own Mark Cubans, people who could see clearly through the hype, and got out while it was still hot. To their credit, the homebuilders were more candid about problems in the industry and the prospects for a slowdown than a LOT of other people, including the Federal Reserve. Yes, they were late by a year, but better late than never. When the Fed, and Kudlow & Co., and the NAR, and the mortgage lenders were insisting that the slowdown was only temporary or even nonexistant, they were saying that they didn't see any improvement for the forseeable future. For heads of corporations, that's about as candid as anything you're going to hear.
Sprez,
She quit in '06, got a job as a grocery checker. I'm not sure about the current status but there's no way she can hold on. Most likely it was a 1/1 100% I/O ARM or equally toxic product. That means the Oct '06 reset 1.5x payments. If it was 2/1 we won't know until Oct '07.
PV,
Yes, I've mildly defended Bob Toll in the past. As a personal investment strategy it was unwise for him to have so much of his wealth tied up in either one company or industry. At this point however I don't understand the street opinion. Projecting sales and burn trends forward for even 6 quarters TOL looks to be trading at 200% traditional ratios. Cut the stock price in half and maybe get in early say a year from now and it might be a good deal from there.
@Legion 10:32am
I just checked out Aspeth's site, and man is it interesting. That little douchebag is much more calculating than I thought.
Looked up some of Bob Toll's comments from 2005 to make sure I wasn't dreaming it :D. This is from December 2005:
"As we have previously discussed, it appears that the housing market is not as robust today as it was throughout 2004 and through the summer of 2005, although there is wide variation in local markets. Many believe the deceleration in price growth was inevitable, as the increases of 2004 and most of 2005 were not sustainable and were fueled, in part, by speculation. Our sales results indicate that housing demand is returning to the more normalized levels of the decade from 1994 to mid-2003, before home prices really took off in quite a few markets."
As to your comment:
As a personal investment strategy it was unwise for him to have so much of his wealth tied up in either one company or industry.
Generally correct, but it's a little different if your investment is large enough that it gives you a controlling stake. For anybody but a person or family with a controlling stake, having all your financial interests (job, investments, and retirement plan) in one company is a serious mistake. If you've got control, however, you should be able to work to preserve your equity in all but the most extreme circumstances, so diversification of your financial position isn't quite as critical.
And home builders would have to get REALLY beat up before I'd start looking at them. They have a big advantage in that they still have enough of a margin that they can cut prices to move inventory quicker (crushing the for-sale-by-owner crowd in the process), but there's so much supply out there it's going to be very, very rough for the next few years.
@kndmanz
Yep, I'm glad Aspeth has it for posterity just in case Casey makes any of those claims in court about wanting to pay back "every dirty penny"
DA "Oh really? Then why were you researching bankruptcy so early? Why were you looking up lawyers regarding mortgage fraud? Why were you looking up instructions on how to tie a TIE instead of information about how to rehab houses?"
PV,
No argument from me. Good points.
People look at the 25% margains and conclude that if prices drop 20% and sales drop 20% they'll be unprofitable. Not true. In those kinds of declines they'll disgorge any high priced land options and build on lng held low aquisition cost property. At the same time they'll extract concessions from subs and cut their overhead drastically. They can remain very profitable even at much lower price points.
@Aspeth
I think what was really telling about checking out all the websites that KC visited was this one
Then there is some crazed thing about “naming your baby’s destiny.”
Maybe there WERE talks as speculated about having a little Gasey born to the dynamic duo.
I've got a few choice baby names for them
BIJ (Born in jail)
BID (Born in debt)
FIJ (Father in jail)
SBFTGSMFC (Sold by father to get seed money for comeback)
NK (Nigel's kid)
FAB (F@cked at birth)
@Legion and kndmanz....thx for reading. With approx. a thousand links, I had to break it into 6 or 7 posts to make it readable. He's definitely an effing lunatic.
Legion...not so sure about galina conceiving---the "baby names" thing was actually in with his goddamned "Business ideas" tags, along with "panhandling" and "book deal."
@wankspittle and akubi....spot on with the pic!
@Aspeth
Sheesh, naming babies for a job? This guy really goes for the high barrier to entry stuff don't he?
I'm surprised he hasn't looked up disability income.
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