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Ten years ago, his junior partner, another ex-carpenter named LaVergne Jacobson, now 48, steered Webb into real estate investment. Jacobson had a convincing argument: such investment would provide a fairly steady income to help smooth the peaks and valleys of the Volatile construction market. Since then, Webb Corp. has been trading contractor fees for interests in the projects it builds. For example, instead of collecting a $100,000 construction fee for the Phoenix shopping center, Webb got an equity share that brought in $80,000 annually for seven years, later was sold for $1,000,000. Enterprising Del Webb figures that such plump profits will look like peanuts at the baseball game once his Texas-sized land development gets off the ground.
*No kin to Promoter William Zeckendorf's Webb & Knapp.