Taking A Haircut On Artificially Inflated Real Estate

A report from Real Estate Weekly. “It looks like insurance tycoon Allan Rosenzweig is about to take another big hit as the uber-luxury housing market continues its slide. The South African corporate finance executive has shaved $1 million off the price of the Greenwich Village penthouse he bought for $26.1 million just two years ago.”

“Back then, the 7,693 s/f pad was billed as being part of the ‘wellness real estate’ movement with germ-killing antimicrobial coating on stuff like the marble counters, a circadian lighting system and EMF shielding to protect residents from electromagnetic fields. The shower water was filtered with vitamin C and mood enhancing scents blew through the air.”

“Rosenzweig took a haircut on his waterfront Venetian Islands home in Florida in March when he sold it for $7.85 million — over $2 million less than he paid for it just a year before.”

The Miami Herald in Florida. “For eight years, Jose Orlando Sanchez Cristancho nimbly worked two names, hopped between homes in Miami and Colombia, and had at least three occupations — cocaine trafficker, money launderer, mortgage fraudster.”

“For the next eight years, Cristancho, also known as Orlando Sanchez, will be stationary in location and task —- federal prison and inmate — after his sentencing on mortgage fraud and money laundering charges. He has also been ordered to pay $722,000 in restitution.”

“Sanchez ‘knew that his financial assets would be safer and more valuable in this country,’ his admission of facts says. ‘He, therefore, made arrangements to bring drug-derived assets to the United States to purchase real property in South Florida. In this manner, Sanchez laundered and transferred $1.3 million in drug money into the United States. It also provided some of the real estate necessary for the little mortgage fraud club formed, according to Sanchez’s admission.”

“‘The schemes used included recruiting straw buyers to purchase property Sanchez owned, at inflated prices,’ the court documents say. ‘The straw buyer would subsequently default on the loan he hand obtained at Sanchez’s direction, but Sanchez was able to keep the money the straw buyer had paid him from the loan proceeds.'”

“They worked this scam using unit No. 403 at the Hamptons South Condominium, 20201 E. Country Club Dr. in Aventura. Sanchez bought it for $546,000, court documents say. Just 19 months after that purchase, which Miami-Dade property records say happened in 2004, Sanchez and Maria Pimienta sold the condo to Jacqueline Daccach for $1.28 million. Court documents say the loan application said Daccach’s annual income exceeded $500,000 and she made a $330,000 down payment and she’d live in the apartment.”

“In reality, Daccach made less than $50,000, put no money down and Perdomo was going to live in the condo. At closing, Sanchez made more than $400,000. Daccach defaulted on the mortgage. It sold in a short sale for $665,000 in 2009. The bank lost $404,000.”

From Governing.com. “In any hot real estate market, there are complaints about prices being artificially inflated by foreign buyers. That sometimes sounds a little far-fetched. In cities with tens or hundreds of thousands of homes, how many can really be bought up by absentee owners from abroad? Actually, the answer turns out to be a substantial share.”

“But in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department, convinced there was something fishy going on in the Miami and Manhattan real estate markets, issued geographic targeting orders, or GTOs. This bureaucratic-sounding change meant that for high-end real estate purchases, cash buyers had to reveal their true identities. The effect was immediate, with cash purchases dwindling to a small fraction of overall sales.”

“‘I and a couple of other analysts have publicly said that the condo market in Miami was being dominated by foreign investors,’ says Jack McCabe, a Florida real estate consultant. ‘In many cases, we suspected it was corrupt or criminal funds that were being laundered by these investments, which was easy to do.'”

“The Treasury Department soon expanded GTOs into more markets, covering many of the nation’s largest cities. A new study from Sean Hundtofte and Ville Rantala, respectively business professors at Yale and the University of Miami, finds that the disclosure requirements have had profound effects.”

“All-cash purchases by limited liability corporations and other corporate entities shrank from 10 percent of the total dollar volume in the targeted real estate markets to just 2.5 percent. House prices at the high end of the market have dropped by at least 4 percent. The changes have been most dramatic in Miami, where the corporate share of residential transactions has plummeted from 29 percent to 2 percent.”

“‘It’s had a chilling effect on condominium sales,’ McCabe says. ‘You can make a pretty strong case that the additional scrutiny of buyers and their funds has played a major part in the slowdown of sales.'”

“The numbers from Hundtofte and Rantala’s research show that there has been a softening in luxury sales throughout cities under GTOs, suggesting that foreign buyers had been contributing significantly to price increases. ‘In the long run, this might affect property tax revenue through lower valuations or fewer transactions,’ they write. ‘On the other hand, housing appears to have become more affordable to local residents.'”