Читать книгу All in a Life-time онлайн

106 страница из 133

As I stated at the beginning of this chapter, the object of the formation of the Central Realty Bond & Trust Company was to provide an accumulation of capital for the purpose of dealing in real estate on a large scale. I shall describe a few of the company’s transactions to illustrate how the corporate form of operation gave wider scope than was possible to an individual operator. One of our first transactions illustrates this very point.

While looking for temporary quarters to house the company, Mr. Frederick M. Hilton, the present head of William A. White & Sons, offered me the space in Boreel Building that had just been vacated by the German American Fire Insurance Company. Mr. Hilton told me that the Boreel heirs were receiving a return of less than 3 per cent. on the tax value of their property, and were facing a substantial diminution of even this small income now that these insurance offices had been thrown upon their hands. I said to him: “Why not inquire whether these heirs will sell the property for $2,000,000?” He was amazed when he found that out of an expected rental of $15,000 a year there might evolve a sale of the entire property. I immediately communicated this fact to Grant who authorized me to purchase the property without consulting the Executive Committee, and said that both Olcott and he would each take one third and I could take one third, if the Executive Committee failed to ratify it. We secured the property for $2,050,000. Mr. Prescott Hall Butler represented the heirs in this transaction and when I handed him the check for $50,000, which was paid on account of the contract, he told me that he intended to deposit it with a trust company until the deal was completed. I said why not with us, which he agreed to do, so that we thus owned the property without having parted with the possession of a single dollar. The fact that we were both a real estate operating company and a trust company enabled us to repeat this kind of operation frequently.