Tampa's Smith Family Homes files for bankruptcy

Deeply in hock to banks in the housing downturn, Tampa's Smith Family Homes has gone out of business, ending a 10-year run for a family partnership that raised rooftops in some of the region's premier communities.

The company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Friday and will liquidate assets over the next few months. Creditors include SunTrust and Wachovia banks, as well as dozens of suppliers and contractors.

Smith Family was stuck holding lots and finished homes worth less on the market than was owed to the bank, said Scott Stichter, the company's bankruptcy lawyer. A last-minute deal with an investor to infuse more cash into the business fizzled. Bankruptcy papers listed debts of between $10-million and $50-million.

"We worked very hard to keep it open. Once these negotiations fell apart, we didn't have enough working capital to keep it going," Stichter said.

Smith Family Homes isn't the first luxury Tampa home builder to announce a business breakup this year, following such companies as Nohl Crest Homes and SimDag LLC, developer of Trump Tower Tampa.

Marvin Rose, a consultant to the local building industry, said Smith Family's quality was reflected in the upscale communities in which it built, names like Seven Oaks, Connerton, Wilderness Lakes Preserve and Panther Trace. Some of its homes cost more than $500,000.

President Ron Smith began as an executive with national builder of M/I Homes and went independent in 1998. He brought his sons into the business, and Rose recalls visiting the corporate office and seeing a grandchild playing on the floor near his grandfather's knee.

"It really was a family business, just like the name," Rose said.

The company's dissolution leaves a messy trail. Some recent home buyers are receiving certified letters from contractors unpaid by Smith.

They include Dominic DeQuarto, who closed on a Smith home on April 29 in Pasco County's Grey Hawk neighborhood. Work interruptions plagued the project, DeQuarto said, and now he's getting lien notices from various carpet installers, concrete guys and stucco contractors.

"This was the most stressful process for building a home ever," DeQuarto said.