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Rates on 30-year fixed rate mortgages rose an average of 16 basis points to 4.93% last week, according to the Zillow Mortgage Rate Monitor published by Zillow.com. On Monday, 30-year rates on fixed purchase loans shot up further, coming in at an average of 5.06%, Zillow said Tuesday.
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The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices for October, released Tuesday, continued their nine-month run of year-over-year improvement. However, in an indicator some see as ominous, both the 10-City and 20-City Composite Indices were flat with September, halting a five-month string of sequential...
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The end of 2009 sent some builders and developers pushing through land deals before the end of the aught to collect tax refunds that, in some cases, will be larger than the cash collected from the sale itself. Two companies in Florida completed several such deals.
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Proving that there are exceptions to the current credo that raw land just isn't selling, more than 4,000 acres of unimproved land in Virginia's Loudoun County was sold Dec. 10.
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Atlanta-based builder asserts insurance company should pay legal expenses incurred in defending Beazer company officers and executives.
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Beazer Homes USA is suing an insurance company for failing to pay the costs of defending and settling lawsuits against its executives. On Dec. 18, Beazer filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Georgia against Arch Insurance Co., accusing the company of breach of...
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CEO tells analysts that 2010 will be "a year of transition."
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KB Home, Los Angeles (NYSE:KBH) disclosed late Thursday in an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that its executive vice president and chief financial officer, Raymond P. Silcock, had left the company on Monday.
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Sales contracts are up, debt is restructured, and there's $555 million in cash on hand, but don't expect Hovnanian Enterprises to turn a profit in 2010, CEO Ara Hovnanian told analysts during its quarterly earnings call Thursday. "2010 will be a year of transition," he said. "As we sit here and...
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After selling off parcels in 2005, Florida builder now has the cash for great deals in 2009.
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Hovnanian Enterprises, Red Bank, N.J. (NYSE:HOV) after market close Wednesday reported a net loss of $250.8 million (-$3.21 per share) for the fiscal fourth quarter ended Oct. 31, compared with a net loss of $450.5 million (-$5.79 per share) in the fourth quarter of 2008.
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Housing starts recovered from their October swoon in November with an 8.9% gain to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 574,000, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday morning. Though up, the pace still lagged the same month last year by -12.4%.
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Continuing its post-bankruptcy mission to sell non-core assets, WCI Communities has sold Oceanside, a Pompano Beach, Fla., condominium project, for $38.5 million.
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The shaky economy, seasonality and tight credit took their toll on builder confidence this month as the National Association of Home Builders Wells Fargo Housing Market Index dropped one point from November to 16. The HMI, released early Tuesday afternoon, pressured the home builder stocks, nearly...
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Big Builder Online survey results for week of 12/07/09.
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Builders looking for capital can meet with those who have it to loan at a special spot planned for the International Builders Show in Las Vegas.
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After selling the majority of its land assets in 2005 and 2006, Medallion Homes is now in the enviable and unusual position of being a private builder with cash to take advantage of rock-bottom land prices. The private builder has spent $7 million in the past eight months to buy some 300 finished...
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Big Builder Online survey results for week of 12/07/09.
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Pennsylvania builder must find more cash to survive beyond a year.
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Orleans Homebuilders announced it has struck an agreement with its revolving credit line lender that should keep the company in operating cash for the time being. Its credit-line lenders have agreed to let the company keep borrowing from its $375 million credit line until about Jan. 29, when it...
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Pennsylvania-based public builder is dealing with serious financial troubles.
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A new woe has landed atop Orleans Homebuilders' mountain of troubles. NYSE Amex LLC has notified the Bensalem, Pa.- based company that it will be delisted from the exchange for not meeting filing requirements unless it takes "prompt corrective action."
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Starwood Land Ventures has made the opening bid on virtually all of bankrupt TOUSA's Forida assets. The Bradenton, Fla.-based real estate development and investment company has bid just more than $61 million for 5,499 home lots and 36 model homes TOUSA owns mostly through its Engle Homes brand...
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Real estate investment fund launched a starting bid for 5,499 of the bankrupt company's unfinished lots.
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Tom Spence, former vp of land development for Taylor Woodrow Communities, has joined The St. Joe Company as vp and general manager of Northeast Florida. Operating from the newly constructed on-site RiverTown Welcome Center, Spence will manage the development of the RiverTown community as well as...
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Luxury home builder's war chest remains fat enough to last for the long-haul.
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The national unemployment dropped from 10.2% in October to and even 10% in November as nonfarm payroll employment lost only 11,000 jobs, a significant improvement from the average 135,000 jobs shed by the economy in the prior three months, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Still...
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Toll Brothers may have chalked up another loss for the last quarter of its 2009 fiscal year, $111.4 million thanks mostly to land valuation write-downs, and executives expect the company will deliver even fewer homes in 2010, but its conference call Thursday had barely a note of negativism.
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Toll Brothers, Horsham, Pa. (NYSE:TOL) Thursday before market open reported a net loss of $111.4 million (-$0.68 per diluted share) for its fiscal fourth quarter ended Oct. 31 on $85.5 million of impairments, a charge of $11.6 million related to early retirement of debt and a $14.6 million non-cash...
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A subsidiary of Pulte Homes filed a lawsuit Dec. 1 against Laborers International Union of North America (LiUNA), accusing the group of committing assault, battery, theft, destruction of property, and intimidation against its employees after LiUNA members crashed a company meeting in Missouri.
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Construction spending in October came in roughly flat with September at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $910.8 billion, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday, beating estimates for a decline of 0.5% among economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters.
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San Antonio builder increases sales by offering options that production builders don't.
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An index gauging home-sales contract in October rose 3.7%, the ninth consecutive month of gains and a new record, the National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday.
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Sivage Homes, a small competitor to D.R. Horton in San Antonio, is carving out its own market of buyers there by offering what Horton can't, a level of home customization in its entry-level product.
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Big Builder Online survey results for week of 11/30/09.
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Sales of new single-family houses rose 6.2% in October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 430,000, according to estimates released Wednesday from the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The gains suggested concerns over the expiration of the federal tax-credit...
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Fresh evidence of nascent recovery in the housing market was delivered Tuesday by the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, which showed sequential gains for the fifth consecutive month. The Case-Shiller index for its top 20 metro markets rose 0.3% from August to September
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The Consumer Product Safety Commission on Monday reported the results of an indoor air study that confirmed what many homeowners and builders suspected: defective Chinese drywall stinks and causes corrosion of metals.
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The soon-to-expire $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers sent sales of existing homes soaring in October, the National Association of Realtors reported Monday. Sales surged 10.1% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.10 million units. Prices, however, continued declining.
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D.R. Horton logged the first year-over-year quarterly sales increase since March 2006 in its fourth quarter, and that, along with a few other signs, stirred CEO Donald Tomnitz to predict that the worst is over. In 2010, Horton will be profitable again and close more homes than it did in its 2009...
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Horton logs another quarterly loss, but predicts a profitable 2010 and market share gains.
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D.R. Horton, Ft. Worth, Tex. (NYSE:DHI) on Friday reported a loss of $231.9 million for its fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 30 on impairments and write downs of $192.6 million and a 44.4% drop in home building revenue. Horton shares were hammered on the news.
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Even a classic beauty of a development like Brambleton, Va., could use a bit of an update once in a while. After all, a lot has changed in the world since 1988 when the neo-traditional Washington, D.C., suburb charted its beginning. To hear how our team came up with this plan, which details how it...
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In its next step toward making over the company's financial structure, Beazer Homes USA has announced plans to register $750 million worth of securities.
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KB Home (NYSE:KBH), which in September announced it was resuming home building operations in the Mid-Atlantic region, on Thursday named new presidents--both veterans of Pulte Homes--to run the Washington D.C. Metro and Carolinas divisions.
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Nobody would say that the award-winning neo-traditional community of Vickery a half-hour plus north of Atlanta is anything less than a stellar development. The problem is it's not a profitable one any more, and now it's in a bank's hands. So how do you keep all the attributes that made Vickery...
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Builders sharply curtailed production and permitting in October in anticipation of the Nov. 30 expiration of the first-time homebuyer tax credit, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. The Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported a 10.6% month-to-month drop in...
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What do you do when growth stalls just short of the community you were planning to make the next northern exurb of Dallas, leaving you holding a land plan that doesn't work in the new market?
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The NAHB's Housing Market Index, based on a survey in which most builders responded before Congress enacted the expanded home-buyer tax credit, remained at 17 for the month, unchanged from a downwardly revised reading of 17 for October.
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For Day 2 of the 2009 Big Builder Virtual Conference, we've tasked a dream team of developers, marketing experts, land planners, and financial experts with coming up with a way to make a 1,086-acre site in the Sonoran Desert northwest of Phoenix in Peoria now approved for 3,032 homes successful in...
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The staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) plans to recommend that the federal agency sue Ian McCarthy, CEO of Beazer Homes USA, to collect past bonuses, incentive compensation and profit from stock sales he received when the company's accounting was in noncompliance. Beazer...
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A Southern California dream team of land planners, architects, builders, and number crunchers assembled by
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For two years Starwood Land Ventures methodically built a national network of local land experts poised to snatch up residential land at bargain basement prices. The plan was to resell the lots to home builders as the market climbs out of recession. Now that distressed land is finally hitting the...
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The NAR is now predicting existing-home sales of 5.01 million for 2009, a gain of 2% over last year, which was miserable. However, in 2010, the Realtors are forecasting an increase of 13.6% to 5.69 million. Similarly, the NAR thinks new-home sales will come in at 397,000 this year but jump 38.3% in...
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California-based developer paid $20 million for 1,072 lots in 11 communities.
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Big Builder Week is set to kick off Monday, Nov. 16. All in the home building community are invited to participate in this five-day event, which offers a rich educational program that will help event participants from up and down the management ranks at home building organizations nationwide...
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Even as lack of demand and financing have slowed community development to a near standstill across the country, Nocatee, a huge master-planned community near Jacksonville, Fla., has kept developing, and the builders have continued to come. Pulte's Del Webb division recently bought 579 acres. Ryland...
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SunCal Cos. and D.E. Shaw have bought 1,072 home lots in 11 Las Vegas communities for $20 million from the bankruptcy liquidation of Kimball Hill Homes.
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Robert Toll says the downturn ended last March, but don't expect the recovery to be smooth.
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In a Wednesday afternoon conference call with analysts, Toll CEO Robert I. Toll said, ""The housing depression ended in March of '09." He made the comment after reporting a 42% rise in net new orders earlier in the day.
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Restructuring the company's debt helps boost its bottom line.
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The first solid evidence that the improvement in new home sales has moved into the luxury segment emerged Wednesday as Toll Brothers (NYSE:TOL) reported a 42% rise in new orders and a 62% increase in dollar volume for its fiscal fourth quarter ended Oct. 31.
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Beazer Homes USA made little noise during its conference call Tuesday about the fact that it managed to book a small profit its fourth quarter, which ended Sept. 30. Perhaps because the modest $35.3 million ($0.87 per share) gain had more to do with its considerable debt restructuring work than...
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Avatar Holdings Inc., Coral Gables, Fla., (NASDAQ: AVTR) late Monday reported a net loss of $8.8 million (-$1.01 per diluted share) for the third quarter ended September 30, 2009. The net loss in the prior-year quarter was $22.1 million (-$2.59 per share).
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Beazer Homes USA, Atlanta, (NYSE:BZH) reported a $33.8 million profit ($0.84 per diluted share) for its fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 30 due primarily to a one-time gain from early retirement of debt. Analysts were expecting a loss of $1.24 per share not including extraordinary charges and...
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Unless it reaches agreement with its lenders, the Bensalem, Pa.-based builder faces cash deficit by December.
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Beazer will market, sell, and build out 462 lots owned by the land investment company.
Sometimes, learning what you know is as critical as learning something new.
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BB Online survey for week of 11.2.09.
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Orleans Homebuilders is struggling to stop a potential cascade of events that could erode its financial structure by early December, leaving it with no operating cash.
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Land investor Hearthstone has chosen Beazer Homes USA to manage, market, sell, and finish building out 462 lots in six communities in the Atlanta market that had been under the control of McCar Homes.
Lutron unveils new interactive systems, as business returns to environment control segment.
The way capital works and the way consumers buy sharpens the public-private divide.
Pulte CEO Richard Dugas outlines a bold, disruptive plan to tap the power of three brands.
Time is of the essence as Pulte and Centex become one.
Toll Brothers, the nation's leading builder of luxury homes, is lowering prices and introducing new, slightly smaller designs in one of its West Palm Beach communities.
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Company hopes partnerships with builders will help slow bidding wars for dirt.
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Company executives say the company is ready to start growing again.
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William Lyon Homes has managed to shrink itself down to bare bones, narrowing its losses to $11.6 million versus $41.1 million a year ago, even as it has whittled down the number of communities it is selling in by 38% in the past year. But a new source of nourishment is flowing into the company...
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The nation's unemployment rate surged to 10.2% in October, up from 9.8% the month before, as nonfarm payroll employment dropped by 190,000 jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday. The biggest drops came in construction, manufacturing and retail.
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Land is starting to pop out of bank portfolios and bankruptcies, only to be pounced on by so many potential buyers that the prices are bid up beyond what they all had hoped for. Kolter Land Partners, a real estate development company that specializes in providing builders with finished lots, is...
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William Lyon Homes, Newport Beach, Calif., on Thursday reported a net loss of $11.6 million for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, compared to net loss of $41,096,000 for the comparable period a year ago. The loss in the 2008 quarter included $21.9 million in impairment charges, with no comparable...
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Pulte Homes' merger with Centex in August makes it difficult to compare how the company performed in its third quarter this year versus last. There were tons of merger costs, and adding the two companies' results together muddle the numbers. But, rest assured, CEO Richard Dugas told investors...
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Pulte, now the biggest builder in the country, increases its yearly savings estimates from $350 million to $440 million.
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Pulte Homes Inc. on Wednesday reported a net loss of $361.4 million (-$1.15 per share) for the third quarter ended Sept. 30. The loss compares with a $28.4 million loss in the third quarter of 2008. Analysts were expecting a loss of $0.69 per share.
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The National Association of Realtors' Pending Home Sales Index registered its eighth consecutive month of growth in September, posting its biggest year-over-year increase on record as buyers rushed to get in under the deadline for expiration of the federal first-time homebuyer tax credit.
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The parent company of Richmond American Homes, is buying land again. But, as one of the most conservative land buyers in the home-building business, its re-entry into the market could be seen as a sign that the land market has truly hit bottom.
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The move by the famously land conservative parent company of Richmond American Homes may signal a market bottom.
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On Oct. 30, 2008, the company reported a $368.8 million loss during its third quarter conference call. It had serious debt coming due in 2009 and each year for several after that. And its debt to equity had climbed to 67%, bordering on triggering debt covenant violations. One year later to the day...
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In just one year the company has overhauled its debt and is out shopping for land.
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Brookfield Homes Corporation, Fairfax, Va. (NYSE:BHS) on Thursday reported a loss of $1 million (-$0.22 per share) for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, compared to a net loss of $26 million (-$0.95 per share) for the same period in 2008. The loss included $11 million in impairments and other...
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Despite
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M/I has had some success in the Midwest, particularly in Chicago and the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky markets where builders have walked away from land holdings en masse. Still, the good deals are somewhat scarce
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M.D.C. Holdings, Inc., Denver (NYSE:MDC), on Friday reported a net loss for the third quarter ended Sept. 30 of $32.0 million (-$0.69 per diluted share), compared to a loss of $118 million (-$2.55 per diluted share) for the same period last year.
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Targeting first-time and bargain-oriented buyers is helping the Ohio-based builder gain ground in the Midwest.
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Standard Pacific Corp., Irvine, Calif. (NYSE:SPF) after market close Thursday reported a net loss of $23.8 million (-$0.10 per diluted share) for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, compared to a loss of $369.9 million (-$2.54 per diluted share) for the year earlier period. The loss included...