A report from Fox 13 in Florida. “A St. Petersburg business owner is under investigation after reportedly orchestrating ‘a classic Ponzi scheme,’ according to federal investigators. Russell Todd Burkhalter is the founder and CEO of Drive Planning, a Georgia-based financial consulting firm that lists an office in St. Petersburg. According to investigators with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Burkhalter encouraged people to invest in his real estate opportunity, promising a 10% return every three months. From 2020 to May of this year, Burkhalter raised more than $330 million from over 2,000 investors, according to court documents. $66.9 million of that amount came from retirement accounts. ‘Overall, it’s one of the larger Ponzi schemes, I’d say,’ Miami attorney Jeffrey Sonn, who’s representing investors across four states in this case, told FOX 13. ‘They’re angry,’ Sonn said of the investors he’s representing. ‘That’s their money that was used.’”
From WPBF. “Following the evacuation of three condo buildings in St. Lucie County, WPBF is taking a deep dive into recently released videos and records detailing the damage. Gustavo Alvarez, an engineer with AB Plus Engineering and Restoration, can be heard in the videos explaining his findings. ‘The steel is completely disintegrated,’ he said. ‘You can take these pieces by hand.’ He blames shoddy work in the original building and poor work since. Gregory Buck, president of National Risk Experts, an insurance company based in South Florida, advises new buyers to be extra thorough with their research and reviewing past inspections. ‘Have those things been done? Because you don’t want to not have any idea what is in store for you if you don’t do those things and you could lose your investment entirely,’ Buck added.”
KVUE in Texas. “New data from the Austin Board of Realtors has revealed that home prices in Austin are at their lowest rate in almost three years, while housing inventory is at its highest rate in 13 years. The median sale price for a home in Travis County currently sits around $450,000, according to the report. The last time the median home price hovered at that rate was September 2021, about eight months prior to home prices hitting their peak median price average of $550,000 in April 2022.”
From KCTV 5. “Thousands of residents in Jackson County are frustrated as county leaders say there will be no refunds after homeowners filed appeals in the 2023 property tax assessment. County leaders said the money has already been spent. Jackson County is in the westernmost part of Missouri, bordering Kansas. Laura Carey said she spent the last year fighting the county over the tax increase. Her property tax went up 69%, and because of that, her mortgage increased by roughly $500 a month, something she says she can’t afford. She’s worried that she might lose the home she raised her five kids in. ‘A decision that would have never been made before is now on the table,’ Carey said. ‘When you’re retired, on a fixed income, you can’t roll out some more money. You can’t go to work on overtime. You have to figure out what to do. Do I expect to see a refund? No. Would I like to see a credit? Sure.’”
“However, county officials said homeowners who were overtaxed should not expect the problem to be fixed because the money has already been spent. ‘So, I wanted to disabuse people that they’re going to get some lovely refund check because of because of this egregious error, but it’s not going to happen,’ County Administrator Troy Schulte said.”
From CBS Colorado. “When you think of East Colfax in Denver, chances are you think of drug dealers, transients, and prostitutes. But the neighborhood is increasingly home to young families and professionals, and they are working to shed the area’s reputation as the ‘rough’ part of town. ‘There’s a lot of first-time homebuyers here. The market has gotten very expensive,’ says Noeli Rodriguez, who is one of those first-time homebuyers. She moved here from out of state for a nursing job only to realize her neighbors were sex workers and drug dealers. She says the carport-turned-crack house behind her served more than 900 customers in 21 days. While most people may have moved, Rodriguez says she’s not going anywhere, ‘I’ve worked so hard to own a house. I don’t want to give up so easily.’”
“While they’re making progress, neighbors say, they want parity. They say the city should address the homeless problem on East Colfax like it has in downtown Denver. ‘They squat against the wall and poop on the floor. It’s trash, we clean up trash every morning,’ says Chanelle Simmons, a business owner in the neighborhood. ‘Busting our windows and us having to pay for those, breaking into our storage, it’s bad. They’re camping out everywhere.’ That includes a vacant house that’s caught fire twice in three weeks. The first fire spread to Deacon Rodda’s place, ‘The property has just been full of squatters. People use drugs every day. People started another fire in that same space.’”
Mission Local in California. “San Francisco does not have one program that puts homeless people onto buses and sends them elsewhere. It has three. Because of course it does. Once again, we’re reminded of S.R. Hadden’s first rule in government spending: ‘Why build one when you can have two at twice the price?’ Or three. Why not three? Except, when it comes to the price, these programs’ price tags are relatively infinitesimal. Not including staff costs, the price of putting a homeless person on a bus and sending them out of town is about $275 a pop. Those are the costs, at least, for the ‘Journey Home’ program — again, one of three the city has.”
“But this is the program that’s top of mind. That’s because on Aug. 1, Mayor London Breed issued the Journey Home executive order, mandating that homeless people being swept off the streets be offered a bus ticket out of town before being proffered shelter or other services — or arrested. City officials stress that Homeward Bound was not the crass ‘Greyhound therapy’ of the sort that has resulted in so many out-of-state homeless people being funneled to San Francisco. In 2015, for example, the state of Nevada agreed to pay San Francisco $400,000 after City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed suit over that state’s longstanding practice of busing mental patients here. Journey Home participants do not need to have friends or family in whatever town they are being sent to. Nobody needs to vouch for them and offer to provide housing or care. They simply need to prove ‘a connection’ to somewhere else. This could be fulfilled with a former address.”
“If Bakersfield or Humboldt or Tulsa or Rapid City or wherever else object to San Francisco busing people to them, it is not hard for them to begin reciprocating and busing people to us.”
The Tennessean. “The Ritz-Carlton hotel development in Nashville has been stalled since it was first announced in 2021. Between October 2023 and July 2024, at least seven lawsuits have been filed against Florida-based developer Tim Morris alleging unpaid loan balances, unpaid rent and misappropriation of funds related to the Ritz-Carlton development and other real estate projects. Plaintiffs say Morris owes a collective $16.7 million, at least. A bank has already secured a $6 million judgment against him in federal court. Meanwhile, the vacant SoBro land originally selected for the luxury hotel was sold to a new owner earlier this year in a foreclosure auction after the developer defaulted on the loan.”
“The Tennessean reviewed hundreds of pages of court records to reveal the status of the Ritz-Carlton development and the legal battles of the principal developer behind the project. Tennessean subscribers can read how those documents describe a developer with a Marriott family connection who painted himself as a wealthy man with luxury vehicles worth $500,000 and easy access to capital before later claiming he didn’t even own a lawn mower.”
Bisnow on Massachusetts. “A Malden-based landlord acquired a vacant five-story office building at a steep discount. United Properties acquired the vacant 125K SF building for $7.8M, down from the $40.5M seller The RMR Group paid in 2010, the Boston Business Journal reported.”
The Globe and Mail in Canada. “A realtor who raised more than $25-million in promissory notes from small investors for a series of stalled real estate projects has been ordered by Ontario’s Capital Markets Tribunal, a division of the Ontario Securities Commission, to stop all trading in securities for his companies. Daniel St-Jean, a sales representative with EXP Realty, is under investigation by the OSC for allegedly violating securities law by ‘trading securities without registration’ between 2020 and 2023. In addition to being unlicensed, the OSC’s application alleges Mr. St-Jean ‘used the proceeds of its distributions in a manner contrary to representations made to investors’ and that ‘during the course of the investigation, the Commission found evidence that: DSJ … may have engaged in conduct that perpetrates a fraud.’”
“Monica Van Berlo, who runs a property management business in Timmins, Ont., and began investing in real estate through Mr. St-Jean in 2021, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail. ‘We had lent him $40,000 for a six-month period, everything went well and we got our money back, so we lent $120,000. He started acting a little weird in late 2022.’ According to Ms. Van Berlo the second loan, structured as a promissory note, was not repaid after it’s maturation date and Mr. St-Jean stopped paying interest in 2023, but he did begin sending a lot of messages. ‘We have been getting bi-weekly or weekly e-mails from Daniel with some really random updates,’ she said. ‘One excuse after another and for over a year now … the last one was almost threatening.’”
“The Globe and Mail obtained a copy of a July 16 e-mail allegedly sent by Mr. St-Jean to investors, warning that any attempts to take him to court for unpaid debts would be a ‘bad move.’ ‘The four houses they could put a lien on as per the agreement are all underwater,’ he said in the e-mail, meaning they were heavily indebted. He concluded by saying: ‘The only winners in those court battles are the lawyers.’ Many of the investors who spoke with The Globe heard about Mr. St-Jean through The REITE Club, an organization he co-founded in the Hamilton area where so-called experts in real estate investment could network and share ideas. Members say former mortgage broker Claire Drage – who raised more than $130-million in private mortgages and promissory notes for the insolvent real estate business of former child actor Robby Clark – was also a frequent attendee at REITE events.”
“The evidence gathered by the OSC alleges that Mr. St-Jean admitted to using new investor money to make interest payments to early lenders. The underlying business of real estate developments appears never to have made any money, a fact Mr. St-Jean laments in some e-mails submitted by the OSC. ‘So in 14 months, I’ve sold the Hantsport deal to 125 people … and I’ve collected $10,719,700 with most of it going to you one way or another,’ Mr. St-Jean wrote in a March, 22, 2023 e-mail to a business partner named Peter Tsakanikas. ‘What can I show new investors that was achieved with 10 million bucks? Nothing much really.’”
From BBC News in the UK. “A woman who says she is unable to sell her flat due to its cladding has described the ‘huge emotional impact’ the situation is having on her. Leaseholder Lucy Tissington said it had been almost impossible for potential buyers to get a mortgage on Bristol’s Clayewater Court, since it was deemed the block did not have an adequate standard of fire safety. Ms Tissington moved into Clayewater Court in St George in April 2017, two months before a fire destroyed London’s Grenfell Tower, killing 72 people. The disaster led to changes in building regulations. Ms Tissington’s block of flats was subsequently inspected and deemed a fire risk. According to Clayewater Court’s form, its external fire safety is not adequate, and work needs to be done to improve it. That work could cost tens of thousands of pounds, which Ms Tissington and her fellow leaseholders do not feel they should have to pay for.”
“Ms Tissington said she had spent seven years trying to get her point across, which had taken a ‘huge’ emotional toll. ‘I want to maybe start a family with my partner. I want to get away from these costs and I can’t. I shouldn’t have to put up with this stress for this many years,’ she said. ‘For nobody to say that they are going to help, as well as living in a building that’s deemed a risk and could set on fire, it’s huge. I just want to move on.’ Ms Tissington purchased the property via the Help to Buy scheme and paid for the deposit with a government loan, which was interest-free for five years. She said she had hoped to pay the loan off by now, but was instead paying interest. ‘I’m essentially stuck in a loan that I can’t get out of,’ she added.”
Radio New Zealand. “Construction has stopped on New Zealand’s tallest new building, the soaring 56-level, 221-unit, $300 million Seascape, according to an Auckland Council chief. But a development boss says it is simply going at a slower pace. Jeff Fahrensohn, council field surveying manager, said work had ‘paused’ and he did not know when it would resume or why no one was working there. Others who have been working on the project, which is a 187m-tall building, said work had stopped weeks ago but would not say why. They also hope China Construction will return shortly.”
“The tower has become a dominant yet skeletal feature on the horizon after it reached the top level around June. The skyline is visible through many of its floors, yet to be enclosed in the tower which is not fully clad. A number of surprised office workers and residents contacted the Herald lately to say they had seen no one on the site for weeks. ‘Our office building overlooks Seascape and it appears construction has stopped,’ one person wrote last week. The Herald in January said Seascape was expected to open later this year. But that now appears impossible, given the amount of work to be completed.”
South China Morning Post. “Ever since China launched the Xiongan New Area seven years ago, a burning question has been hanging over the project: will it become the futuristic ‘modern socialist city’ touted by the top leadership, or just an expensive ghost town predicted by the sceptics? The city, about 100km (60 miles) south of Beijing, was designed to reduce population pressure on the capital and speed up development in the surrounding province of Hebei and neighbouring mega-port of Tianjin. It will not be completed until 2049, but has already attracted around 670 billion yuan (US$93 billion) in investment, and the leadership reaffirmed their commitment to the project during last month’s third plenum, a key economic policy meeting.”
“A recent visit to Xiongan, which is less than an hour ride from Beijing by high-speed train, confirmed that much of the urban hardware is already in place, with office buildings, residential blocks, public transport, schools and kindergartens, shops and restaurants all up and running. Unlike most major cities in China, there are no skyscrapers, underground passes or overhead walkways. But although it has an official population of 1.2 million permanent residents, another striking feature is the relative lack of people out on the streets.”
“Mike Yang, who moved to Xiongan in May, said he only came because he found a job in the city, but he still spent most weekends in Beijing. ‘The truth is, people haven’t come yet,’ said the 24-year-old, but added that the government may force more people to move there from the capital in the next few years.”