Latest Walk-Away: Toll Brother Family Member

February 11, 2008 2:24pm by

One of the Toll family members decided to walkaway from a condo purchase:

"Luxury builder Toll Brothers Inc (TOL), hurt as many buyers to try to get out of contracts for new homes amid falling prices, says a member of its founding family is trying to walk away from an agreement to buy a new condominium.

The daughter of Vice Chairman and co-founder Bruce Toll informed the company last month that she and her husband "did not intend to make settlement" on a $2.47 million home they had previously agreed to purchase, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Toll Brothers went on to say that it intends to pursue its rights under the agreement of sale with Toll’s daughter, Wendy Topkis . . . The contract with Topkis was reached prior to fiscal 2007, it said. The location of the condo was not disclosed."

Fascinating!>



Source:
Toll relative walks away from new condo – filing
Reuters, Mon Feb 11, 2008 9:54am EST 
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUKN1150816620080211?rpc=44

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What's been said:

Discussions found on the web:
  1. michael schumacher commented on Feb 11

    Now how stupid is daddy Toll???

    A few bucks to the daughter and this quietly goes away……or at the least it doesn’t get splashed all over the entire internet.

    And these people couldn’t see it coming??
    I’m starting to believe it..

    Ciao
    MS

  3. Mr. Obvious commented on Feb 11

    BR…you left out the best sentence: that this cancellation is part of Toll’s 61% cancellation rate. 61%! Good grief!

  4. ThatGuy commented on Feb 11

    Wonder if she used youwalkaway.com?

  5. Robert Cote commented on Feb 11

    Daddy got out of a lot of his Toll exposure. Like father like daughter. But come on people give the parents a break. after all a new baby makes it perfectly clear that the $2.47m was going to be too small just like they claimed.

  6. lutton commented on Feb 11

    Philly.com had this a few days ago. The unit was in Florida, and an additional factor was a pregnancy which made the unit small for their needs.

    http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20080209_A_Toll_Bros__problem_strikes_close_to_home.html

    …they would not go through with the purchase of a $2.47 million condominium in Florida, Toll Bros. said yesterday in the proxy statement filed for its annual meeting on March 12.

    “They were thinking about moving to Florida, but they changed their mind,” Toll, the company’s cofounder and vice chairman, told Bloomberg News. “She canceled it because she had another child” and the condominium would have been too small, he said.
    .
    .
    Toll Bros.’ policy on transactions between the company and people or companies related to management requires public disclosure of deals worth more than $120,000.

    More interesting might be these compensation numbers:

    In another sign of home builders’ recent struggles, Toll Bros. said in the proxy that it paid Robert I. Toll, the company’s chief executive officer and Bruce Toll’s brother, $8.4 million in the latest fiscal year – less than half the sum he had received a year earlier.

    The filing listed Toll’s salary for fiscal 2007 at $1.3 million. He also received $7 million in stock options and $94,000 in other payments, including about $26,000 for auto and gasoline expenses and almost $35,000 for tax and financial-statement preparation.

    Toll’s 2006 compensation was about $19.2 million, including a $17.5 million bonus.

    There was no such bonus in the latest package, for a year in which the subprime-mortgage crisis and other economic woes hammered the company’s business, along with that of other home builders.

    The company’s fiscal 2007 profit dropped 95 percent, to $35.7 million. Its fiscal year ended in October.

    Revenue for the fiscal 2008 first quarter, which ended Jan. 31, likely will be down 22 percent from a year ago, Toll Bros. said earlier this week.

    Robert Toll’s bonus had been falling in recent years. It was $30.4 million in 2004 and $27.3 million in 2005. He holds 29.1 million of the company’s shares, or 17.4 percent of the total. At the company’s annual meeting last year, chief financial officer Joel Rassman said he expected Robert Toll to earn a fiscal 2007 bonus of $700,000 to $3 million.

  7. Cal commented on Feb 11

    2.5 million condo in florida.. too small?

  8. Stuart commented on Feb 11

    I guess what’s good for the goose….

  9. Christopher Laudani commented on Feb 11

    I wonder if she actually lost her deposit.

    Maybe some smart lawyer could launch a class action lawsuit against the company for giving her deposit back and keeping other people’s deposits? That would be interesting…

  10. Street Creds commented on Feb 11

    When the going gets tough, the rich screw their parents. I wonder if Bruce Toll is reviewing his will.

  11. Marcus Aurelius commented on Feb 11

    Tip: Having sex you can result in pregnancy. Keep this in mind when you purchase your next home.

  13. TDL commented on Feb 12

    I’m guessing this became news because TOL decided to pursue their rights under the contract in order to avoid the liabilities someone alluded to above. I’m guessing that dad and uncle Bob are going to be cutting a check to her pretty quick to make the issue go away.

    Regards,
    TDL

  14. Loren Steffy commented on Feb 14

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