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Investors from Singapore to Toronto are wondering why North America’s vaunted urban sprawl ebbed before the billions they pumped into a giant “land banking” firm could pay off.

Walton Group of Companies, a Calgary-based real estate firm that had delivered 12 per cent annual returns in the past, sold them on the idea of investing roughly $10,000 or more apiece in rural properties outside of fast-growing cities such as Phoenix, Toronto and Atlanta.

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But $3.8 billion in land assets, 92,000 investors and 40,000 hectares later, the expected sprawl and the hoped-for fat returns have mostly not yet happened.

Some backers say their shares were worth only 20 per cent of what they put in based on the most recent 2017 appraisal. And about 90 Canadian investors have hired a private investigations firm, U.S. Justice Coalition, to track the proceeds of Walton’s land syndication.

The company says it has a new strategy for selling its investors’ land and has found potential buyers for almost half of its holdings. One recent project fetched almost double what investors originally put into it, a Walton attorney said.