David Weekley Achieves Largest Private Builder Status

Stop the presses: David Weekley Homes eclipsed Shea Homes as the biggest private for-profit builder in the country last year, according to Builder magazine’s Builder 100 survey. Companies in Builder magazine’s annual Builder 100 list, to be released online in early May, are ranked by closings.

Weekley swept past Shea Homes last year on the strength of its power in Texas markets, where it does half of its business. The Houston-based company had drawn within 300 closings of the top spot the year before. Shea Homes suffered from weakness in California and Arizona markets.

Weekley jumped two spots to No. 16 on the list, closing 4,587 homes last year, compared to 4,325 for Shea. Closings at Weekley were off only 14 percent, compared to 25 percent for Shea.

Shea remained the largest private builder in terms of revenue, with $2.15 billion in revenue, followed by Weekley at $1.34 billion, and the Related Group, a Miami-based condominium builder, at $1.257 billion.

D.R. Horton Tops the Builder 100 for the sixth time

Another Texas-based builder, D.R. Horton, topped the Builder 100 list for the sixth consecutive year. Horton closed 37,717 homes last year, a 29 percent drop from last year. New-home sales in general fell 24 percent last year.

Centex jumped over Pulte to take the third spot on the Builder 100. And NVR leapt from ninth to seventh, pushing Beazer Homes and The Ryland Group down a notch. Here’s the order of the top 10 finish.

As previously reported, the market share of the top 10 builders dropped last year, compared to the overall housing market.

Dwight Schar Takes One for the Team

His company was only one of two public builders in the top 12 to report a profitable 2007, but NVR Chairman Dwight Schar chose not to accept either a salary or bonus in 2007, according to SEC documents filed by the company Friday. He plans to do the same in 2008.

“The homebuilding industry is cyclical and in 2007, NVR, like other U.S. homebuilders, experienced a continuation of a downturn in the U.S. housing market. As a result, the compensation paid to our named executive officers during 2007 generally reflected our current business environment,” the company explained in its filings.

Schar did receive more than $4 million in stock option awards in 2007. In 2006, however, he earned his minimum base salary of $1.5 million, nearly $10,000 in bonuses, and received $6.8 million in stock option awards.

These figures do not include Schar’s deferred compensation.—Alison Rice.

Condo Builders Have an OK Year

Most Builder 100 companies recorded a double-digit decline in sales last year. Condo builders bucked the trend. The top 10 condo builders on the Builder 100 did about the same business in 2007 as they did in 2006.

For the second consecutive year, Miami-based Lennar Corp. topped the For-Sale Condo list, closing 3,136 units. Lennar was followed by The Related Group (2,082), MCZ Development (1,735), Epcon Communities (1734), and Centrum Properties (1,657), all condo specialists.

Virtually all of the The Related Group’s closings were in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale. Centrum Enterprises, which closed 691 for-sale condos in Miami last year, plans to enter two more states next year. Epcon projects that it will do even more condo business in 2008.

Jack McCabe of McCabe Research and Consulting (www.mccaberesearch.com), recently told Builderonline.com that there is a five-year glut of condo and townhouse units on the market in Dade County. That translates into more than 24,000 units of inventory, and raises the question whether the business will be profitable this year and next.

"Private developers are faced with a nightmare, truthfully," McCabe says. "They will have cancellations, buyers who litigate to get refunds on their deposits, and people who will want to close, but can't get a mortgage."