Buyers Worming Out of Contracts
We realize that developers aren’t at the top of everyone’s popularity list but we’d say that buyers are looking like the slimeballs in this situation…According to a New York Times article this morning, buyers who put down deposits at the height of the market are using a 1968 law designed to protect country bumpkins from…
We realize that developers aren’t at the top of everyone’s popularity list but we’d say that buyers are looking like the slimeballs in this situation…According to a New York Times article this morning, buyers who put down deposits at the height of the market are using a 1968 law designed to protect country bumpkins from outright fraud to wriggle out of their obligations. Lawyers are combing through condo filings and other paperwork to find some box or other that developers neglected to check and using that as an excuse to get back hundreds of thousands of dollars for their clients. The statute was never designed for purchasers of luxury condominiums in urban areas to get out of contracts because of changes in the economy, said Bruce H. Lederman, a lawyer defending developers in two of these cases in Long Island City. It was designed to protect unsophisticated out-of-state purchasers like Jackie Gleason in ‘The Honeymooners’ from Florida swampland schemes. Rough.
mopar – i actually laughed out loud. a first for me on brownstoner!
Ha ha ha see what happens when Google hires astrobiophysicists to work on their tax returns? Pretty cool.
Why is it that we hold individuals to higher moral standards than the businesses that are their counterparties? If a business has a contractual obligation, even after all the penalties, costs more money to honor, they’ll walk away from it — that’s what a factory closing is. But if a homeowner walks away from an underwater mortgage or a bad sale contract, they’re slimeballs?
hahaha! DH, right on!
I do find it interesting that megabucks buyers in ultra-high end buildings (usually) wind up getting shafted much harder on the terms and conditions than us plebs do. One would think they’d get simple financing conditions put into their contracts.
someone please find an example of a developer taking the moral high road, returning some guy’s downpayment because he lost his job due to the economy.
these are motherfuckin business transactions. no pity for anyone, especially developers who have probably benefitted immensely from people voluntarily walking away from dps due to stalled construction and being in contract at a price that already has them underwater
Welcome to the real world, kiddies…..
Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Is Lost to Tax Loopholes
Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) — Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.
Google’s income shifting — involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish†and the “Dutch Sandwich†— helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.
“It’s remarkable that Google’s effective rate is that low,†said Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist who formerly worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. “We know this company operates throughout the world mostly in high-tax countries where the average corporate rate is well over 20 percent.â€
The U.S. corporate income-tax rate is 35 percent. In the U.K., Google’s second-biggest market by revenue, it’s 28 percent.
I don’t see why any tears should be shed for the developers here. There’s a 40 year old law on the books and these are real developers who are building projects with over 100 units. Instead, the developers decided to prefer the lenders’ demands that no recordings on the property be filed until after closing (as opposed to upon deposit) over the buyer’s statutory rights.
I don’t think the EUROTRASH buyers should be able to take advantage of the loopholes.