Toll Daughter Cancels $2.5 Million Condo With Builder

[Celebration]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601206&sid=ajovvWnx9O9o&refer=realestate

Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Toll Brothers Inc., beset by customers walking away from agreements to buy new homes, said that one cancellation last month came from the daughter of co-founder and vice chairman Bruce E. Toll.

Wendy Topkis and her husband Douglas told the company in January that ``they did not intend to make settlement'' on a $2.5 million Florida condominium, according to a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Toll Brothers said the company ``intends to pursue its rights'' under the purchase agreement.

``They were thinking about moving to Florida but they changed their mind,'' Bruce Toll said in an interview today on his daughter's and son-in-law's decision. ``She canceled it because she had another child'' and the condominium would have been too small.

Toll Brothers, the Horsham, Pennsylvania, company that is the nation's largest builder of luxury homes, said this week 28 percent of customers canceled agreements in the fiscal quarter ended Jan. 31, down from a record 39 percent in the previous three months. Home builders have been hit with record cancellations as real estate prices decline across the country.

[Brigid]

1. A $2.5 million condo is "too small?"

:wtf: Around here $2.5 million would get you a palace.

[Warpy]

5. It will in Florida, too

especially now. However, the space is poorly utilized, with plenty of play rooms and bathrooms but damned few bedrooms.

Back in the Robber Baron age, the mansions had to double as hotels. Many of the plutocracy still build this way, Gates would be one example. Corporate clients, visiting government officials and the like are not expected to stay in hotels; they are put up in the visitor's wing of the mansion with all the amenities a platoon of servants can provide.

A tour of the old Newport mansions will show you this in practice.

It's the nouveau riche who seem to want the play houses, price driven up by gold plating fixtures and lining everything with rare marble and other stone and building storage areas out of endangered woods.

My guess is that it was a three bedroom condo with one bedroom more suitable to a designated office space than to a nursery.

[Systematic Chaos]

2. It costs $2.5 MILLION, but it's too small?

I can't quite wrap my mind around that one.

[BeyondGeography]

3. Corporate tone deafness on display

[momster]

4. Doesn't Say Where

but if it were directly on the beach in, say, Naples Florida 2.5 million doesn't actually buy all that much square footage. Every sq. ft. would be finished to a fare-thee-well but it mightn't have an extra bedroom for an extra baby. Plus, who knows how many kids she already has? Could be her fifth for all we know.

[nightrider767]

6. What if it only had one room for they baby!?!

Surly, you couldn't expect them to slum that way.

No diaper changing room?

No craft room?

No baby's library/media center?

No learning center?

Oh and how about servant's quarters,,, you know the people who will actually be raising the child!!!

What would Thurston Howe Say?

"Positively uncivilized!!!"

I think they should counter-sue Toll Brothers for even suggesting they move into such a sub-standard dwelling!

:sarcasm:





:sarcasm: :sarcasm: