For months, Southwest Florida's real estate community has been asking how Neil Mohamad Husani and his former partner, Michael Tringali, were able to buy properties for one price, get them appraised for more than twice as much a day or so later, and then use the high values to get whopping loans from area banks.

Now that some of those loans are going bad, the new question on their minds is how one of the lenders, Fort Lauderdale-based BankAtlantic Bancorp, was able to get a property it bought from him appraised at a similarly high value and avoid taking losses that could besmirch its balance sheet.

Tringali defaulted on a $27.9 million loan to BankAtlantic several months ago. But rather than foreclosing, one of BankAltantic's subsidiaries bought Tringali's 1,143-acre property near Myakka City for $27.2 million, Manatee County court records show.

Alan Levan, BankAtlantic's chief executive, has said that the property was recently appraised again at about $28 million.

That valuation is significant because it allows BankAtlantic to say that it broke even on its loan to Tringali. That means the bank might not have to book losses or set aside loan loss reserves.

Local real estate experts say that the recent $28 million appraisal is not realistic.

They point instead to the price that Husani first paid for the property in summer 2005, before its cashless transfer to Tringali.

"How can that be a legitimate number?" asked Barbara Anson, a Wagner Realty agent who has been selling land in the Myakka City area for 30 years. "The legal and market value must be around $17 or $18 million. That's what it's worth."

Levan has not returned a series of calls from the Herald-Tribune for comment about the loan and property sale.

Requests to talk to anyone else at the bank -- the second largest Florida-based bank -- also were declined.

The debate about the BankAtlantic appraisal is just the latest turn in a story that has seen Husani and his partners dramatically increase the value of properties they bought in order to get bank loans that more than covered the original cost of the land and provided them millions of dollars in additional cash.

But now it is the banks that made the loans that are at risk, and they are responding in different ways.

Both Clearwater-based Mercantile Bank and Bradenton-based Coast Bank began foreclosing on loans made to Tringali that total more than $12 million.

At the same time, Tringali has been trying to renegotiate a $14.5 million loan to Naples-based Orion Bank, and is hoping to sell property in downtown Sarasota to repay a $16.25 million loan to Fifth Third Bank.

Those banks all face losses if they are forced to write off the loans. But analysts said that BankAtlantic might be able to postpone the write-offs, at least for a while.

"At some point bank regulators will not allow the bank to keep property on its books at $27.9 million if it does not appraise out," said Richard X. Bove, an analyst with New York-based Punk, Ziegel & Company. "When it is forced to mark the property to market, it will take a hit."

No comment

Though BankAtlantic, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange, has notified investors that its $27.9 million loan to Tringali is non-performing, it has yet to say whether it intends to take a hit against earnings.

The bank originally made the loan to the 44-year-old developer and home builder in August 2005, just days after Husani bought the underlying land for $17.1 million and sold it to Tringali for $34.2 million.

It is not clear whether BankAtlantic knew about the Husani deal. The only lender's name that appears on BankAtlantic's loan documents is Warren Toole, and he is no longer with the South Florida bank.

Analysts and market watchers suggested that BankAtlantic might have bought Tringali's property through a subsidiary called Heartwood 7 LLC to avoid damage to its balance sheet.

"They don't want to look like idiots," said George Huhn, who runs a Venice-based company that buys troubled loans from area banks. "They're searching for a way out of this mess that doesn't involve taking a loss against earnings."

But the biggest problem with the deal is the appraisal that BankAtlantic received on Tringali's former property, said veteran Sarasota appraiser Richard Bass.

"When something is sold three times in a year and the value more than doubles, you have to go 'whoa'. What was done to enhance the value of the property to make the value go up?"

After Husani's purchase of the property, nothing was done to enhance the value of the property, so that $17 million figure is the best indication of its underlying value, Bass said.

"We use the initial number in our analysis, and not the latter."

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061215/BUSINESS/612150472