About four years ago, Rabuffo bought a house in these mountains, which are renowned for the awesome views. He has been buying property since — often overpaying, according to prices stated when the deeds were recorded.
Leland McKeown, a Brooksville resident, owned a 2.17-acre tract here with a small 100-year-old home on it. He didn’t have it for sale when Rabuffo started making offers. In 2006, it was on the tax roll for $98,500. Rabuffo bought it for $600,000.
A house built on 14 acres in 1972 was on the tax roll at $162,800. Rabuffo bought it for $1.6-million.
He controls about 150 acres, most of it listed in the names of corporations he controls or in the name of his ex-wife, Mae Rabuffo.
“We’re good buddies, business partners,” Rabuffo says of the wife who divorced him in 1987.
Some who have worked with and sued Rabuffo say he has boasted that he keeps most of his holdings in his former wife’s name to keep himself judgment proof. Rabuffo has denied it.
Initially Rabuffo talked about building a five-star hotel here and obtained county approval for a 170-unit hotel.
Now he says he doesn’t think market conditions are right for a hotel and instead plans to build Blue Ridge Mountain Estates, a high-end development. He says that he has invested about $42-million and that it will take about five years to develop the villas, clubhouse, spa and houses.
The homes range from about 4,000 to more than 12,000 square feet, packed onto 1-acre parcels. A 20-acre tract that Rabuffo purchased for about $900,000 was subdivided into 23 lots and transferred into the ownership of Mae Rabuffo Estates. Most of the lots were sold for $650,000 each — reaping a total of $13.6-million, according to the taxes paid on the transactions.
Selling the land
Lawrence Ashe, an Atlanta lawyer, recently sold a house to Rabuffo for $500,000, almost twice what Ashe thought it was worth.
“I think it’s nuts,” Ashe says. “Where’s the money coming from? He’s putting mansions within a few feet of each other. I don’t know why anyone would buy what he is selling.”
But buying they are. With no advertising.
There are no signs to identify the project, no ads in the local papers, no fancy real estate brochures, no local Realtors involved. The only signs say “No Trespassing.”
Rabuffo says he plans to put up signs and a real estate office soon. Meanwhile, he says he has used brokers in Atlanta, Miami and Philadelphia.
With no advertising, the cool real estate market and mortgages increasingly unattainable, Rabuffo has sold more than 100 lots.
Deeds recorded in Jackson County indicate the undeveloped lots have been sold for $650,000 an acre, an astronomical sum for land on Big Ridge, where an acre usually goes for no more than $50,000.
“Something is very wrong with that; $650,000 an acre is incredulous,” says Dennis Ford, project superintendent for Sims Valley, another development off Big Ridge Road. “Nobody is selling that kind of lot up here. It’s just bizarre to build houses that size on the side of the mountain. They are going to wash down the hill.”
Many of the people recorded as owners of the land declined to be interviewed about their purchase. Several of those who talked said they had never seen the property and were buying it as an investment.
Joe Hamilton, register of deeds in Jackson County, said there is no way to know if the sales price reported by the buyer and seller is correct. “All we are allowed to do is ask them if money was exchanged and how much it was, they don’t have to present proof of price.”
If, for example, the price were inflated, more money could be borrowed than the property is worth.
Buyers are taking out mortgages that average $487,500 for the property alone. They live in St. Petersburg, Tampa, Brandon, Dunedin, Tarpon Springs, Miami and a handful of other places.
Donald D. Busby Jr., a mechanical engineer at Baxter Healthcare Corp. in Largo, said he did not visit the development before buying four half-acre lots for $1.2-million. He has mortgages totaling $2.7-million and is building a 4,160-square-foot house. Busby said he made the investment after hearing Rabuffo make a dinner presentation in the Tampa Bay area, he couldn’t recall where.
Other buyers include a convicted sex offender from Miami whose picture appears on state law enforcement Web sites, the owner of a Tampa window blind company, Odessa residents who own an Internet site that offers views of naked women, and dozens of other Florida residents.
The buyer with the most holdings is Yolanda Serrano, a 44-year-old native of Colombia. She lives in Rockledge, near Cocoa Beach, but now she’s a resident of the Brevard County Jail.
