Tom's Life Bits

Quietly, he's busy buying and selling

By Michael Braga

Published: Monday, June 7, 2010 at 1:00 a.m.

WHEN YOU ARE MAKING great wads of cash buying and reselling real estate, the temptation is to keep your mouth shut.

Punta Gorda real estate agent Jeffrey J. Leonard is making great wads of money.

Since February 2008, three of his companies have spent nearly $10 million to buy 161 homes and building lots in Charlotte County and North Port, and already have resold 79 of those properties for $4.3 million more than they paid.

As far as explaining what he does and how he does it, however, Leonard politely declined when contacted by a Herald-Tribune reporter.

“I don't really discuss it with anyone, not even my friends,” Leonard said.

But court records leave enough of a trail to show that Leonard buys most of his properties through courthouse foreclosure auctions and tax deed sales.

He then fixes them up and resells them as fast as he can for an average of 44 percent more than he paid.

In December, for example, Leonard bought a 1,200-square-foot house at 3130 Circleville St. in North Port for $48,800 and sold it three months later for $94,400.

“He took it down and cleaned it up,” said Randall Addams, an Ohio retiree who bought the house. “God bless him. I knew he was a flipper, but I didn't want to spend six months fixing it up. When I got it, it was in move-in condition.”

“He fixed everything perfectly,” said Alice Burnell, an agent with Exit Platinum Realty in Port Charlotte who brokered the sale. “There was nothing my clients had to do.”

The sheer scale of Leonard's activity make him one of the largest real estate investors in Southwest Florida, and the amount of time he has been at it also makes him one of the most experienced.

Court records show that Leonard bought his first property in Charlotte County in 1981. He recorded his first profitable flip three years later, when he sold a vacant Punta Gorda Isles building lot on the same day he bought it for nearly $9,000 more than he paid.

During the next 20 years, Leonard bought and sold scores of properties in Charlotte County for his own account. At the same time, he built a sizable real estate brokerage.

A news release issued in April 2001 by Arvida Realty Services, which bought Leonard's company, states that Leonard founded Investors Realty International Associates in 1983. Eighteen years later, the company employed 40 commercial and residential sales associates, generated $60 million in annual sales and managed 300 rental units.

“We have spent 18 years specializing in real estate in Charlotte and De Soto counties and witnessed our own company's expansion right along with the tremendous growth the area has experienced,” Leonard said at that time. “However, we felt that it was time to affiliate with another reputable company that could help us broaden our opportunities to better serve our clients and enhance our associates' marketing abilities.”

Arvida was later bought by Coldwell Banker, and Leonard remained associated with the firm until he joined Re/Max Anchor Realty in 2007.

Since then, Leonard has accelerated his investment activities.

Court records show that he has concentrated most of his activity in Charlotte County, spending $8.2 million since February 2008 to buy 136 pieces of real estate through three companies – Sunkissed Properties, Kranard Properties and Xela Properties.

Those companies already have sold 65 of the properties for $2.9 million more than they paid.

In August of 2009, Leonard began pushing into neighboring North Port.

Two of his companies – Sunkissed and Kranard – have spent $1.6 million to buy 25 properties there and have sold 14 for $1.24 million more than they paid.

Most recently, Sunkissed sold a 1,930-square-foot house at 2082 Switzerland Road in North Port for $127,000 that it bought for $79,900 six months earlier.

This story appeared in print on page D8