Professional Business Publications
The Leading Contact Source for the Home Building Industry

The first half of 2012 continued to be active with personnel and staff changes across the board at the nation’s largest homebuilding companies, but for the first time in many years these changes seem to be moving in a positive direction. Many builders have added to their staff and filled positions that have been left open for years or that were being temporarily handled by others department heads. This has been particularly noticeable in key departments, including Land (Acquisitions & Development) and Marketing. At this point in the home construction recovery, overall builder confidence is up and building permits and home starts have increased in a number of markets.

Now in its 9th year of publication, the National Builders Directory continues to be the leading source for contact information on the nation's leading homebuilders. The Directory continues to provide subscribers up-to-date information on the corporate offices as well as the division and regional offices of these builders. “In the last six months, we saw fewer builders closing their doors or file for bankruptcy protection,” said National Builders Directory publisher, Colleen Pestana. “We continue to cover those companies that are restructuring or attempting to restructure with the goal of returning to the market.”

To learn more about the 2012 Mid-Year edition of the National Builders Directory please visit our website at www.probizpublications.com

About Professional Business Publications, Inc.
Professional Business Publications, Inc., is a leading provider of high-level contact information for real estate industry professionals and companies doing business in all aspects of the real estate industry. Founded and run by a team of seasoned reporters and editors, PBP is focused on providing subscribers with specific and up-to-date contact information for the key decision makers in the real estate industry in a format that is easy to use. 

PBP's industry leading publication, The National Builders Directory, is a one-of-a-kind directory of the leading decision makers in today's home building industry. It is a must-have directory for anyone doing business in this highly competitive industry. Covering the top 250 production home builders in the U.S., and updated twice each year, the directory provides readers with current contact information for all the key people in all corporate, division and regional offices.

The U.S. housing market got further evidence of a market recovery, with Standard & Poor’s Case Shiller report showing that home prices rose 2.2 percent and 2.3 percent in its 10-city and 20-city composite indices in June. The two composites also saw year-over-year gains, with the 10-city index up 0.1 percent and the 20-city index 0.5 percent higher compared to June 2011.

For the second consecutive month, all 20 cities and both composites recorded positive monthly gains, and 18 of the 20 MSAs and both composites posted better annual returns in June as compared to May 2012 (only Charlotte and Dallas saw a deceleration in their annual rates). Detroit, Minneapolis, Chicago and Atlanta recorded the biggest one-month gains.

"We seem to be witnessing exactly what we needed for a sustained recovery; monthly increases coupled with improving annual rates of change," said David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices.  "The market may have finally turned around."

The S&P Case Shiller report follows last week’s report from the U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development that July home sales increased 3.6% above June home sales and 25.3% from sales in July 2011.

Reported by Combined Reports (08/28/2012)

D.R. Horton Inc. has purchased privately held Breland Homes, a move that gives Horton entry into two new markets along the Gulf of Mexico.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Breland has operations in Alabama and Mississippi, including Mobile and Huntsville, Ala., and Mississippi Gulf Coast markets. On average, a Breland home is about 2,200 square feet and sells for $200,000.

Breland completed sales of 684 homes, amounting to $130 million in revenue, last year. That made it the 38th largest homebuilder in the nation last year, based on closings, according to Builder magazine.

Horton, which has operations in 26 states and was ranked the nation's No. 1 builder last year, will gain 320 homes and 1,020 lots, or future home sites, as part of the deal. It also acquires control of an additional 3,700 lots through option contracts, the company said.

The deal gives Horton entry into the Huntsville and Mississippi Gulf Coast markets, and boosts its presence in Mobile and Baldwin County, Ala.

Horton's latest move into Gulf-area markets comes as sales of previously occupied homes in the South are running ahead of last year.

As of June, sales in the region were at an annual pace of 1.73 million, or 5.5 percent higher than in June 2011. The median sale price in the South was $165,000 in June, up 6.6 percent from a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The nation's housing market has started to show signs of recovery this year, with mortgage rates at record lows and stabilizing home prices. New home sales also have been rising compared with last year, when sales sank to the lowest level in a half century.

New home sales jumped to a two-year high in May, though sales numbers fell off in June.

Last month Horton reported that customer orders for new homes climbed 25 percent in the April-to-June quarter.

A hefty tax benefit helped boost the builder's net income by more than 27 times to $787.8 million, or $2.22 per share. Revenue grew 14 percent to $1.12 billion.

Reported by CBS MoneyWatch (08/15/2012)

Groundbreaking on new U.S. homes unexpectedly fell in July and gains from the prior month were revised lower, a reminder of the housing market's weakness despite some recent signs of recovery.

The Commerce Department said on Thursday that housing starts dropped 1.1 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 746,000 units.

The reading, which is prone to significant revisions, was below the median forecast in a Reuters poll of a 757,000-unit rate.

The U.S. housing market, which fell into a deep rut six years ago, has been a relative bright spot in the economy this year.

Home prices have shown signs of stabilizing and many economists think housing construction will give a small boost to the economy this year.

There were also some positive signals in Thursday's report. New permits for building homes rose 6.8 percent in July to a 812,000 unit pace, the highest rate since August 2008.

But in the readings on groundbreaking of new homes, the government revised lower its estimates for recent months. Starts during June was revised down to a 754,000-unit pace from a previously reported 760,000-unit rate. May's reading was also revised lower to a 706,000-unit pace.

Outside of housing, the broader economy has looked wobbly this year, which could hold back gains in home building.

The labor market recovery has been lackluster this year and in July the unemployment rate ticked higher to 8.3 percent despite an increase in the pace of hiring.

Still, retail sales during the month posted solid gains, hinting at a rebound in consumer spending, which is the engine of the U.S. economy.

The Commerce Department's report showed the fall in starts was concentrated in the single-family home sector, which dropped 6.5 percent. This segment accounts for most of the market. Starts for multi-family homes - one of the report's more volatile readings - rose 12.4 percent.

Reported by Reuters 08/16/2012

Paulson & Co., the hedge fund run by billionaire John Paulson, purchased more than 875 acres of land in a resort community in the Las Vegas area, a bet on a housing recovery in the region as the supply of homes shrinks.

The $17 million purchase at Lake Las Vegas in Henderson, Nevada, was made through the Paulson Real Estate Recovery Fund, which seeks to build houses on raw land and resell the properties to homebuilders, said a person with knowledge of the deal. The fund bought the majority of what remains undeveloped at the 3,600-acre (1,456-hectare) site, said the person, who asked not to be named because the details were private.

The deal was among the largest land purchases in the area in at least three years, according to Greg Gross, director of the Nevada region for Metrostudy, a Houston-based firm that tracks new construction. The Las Vegas area has fewer than 13,000 vacant lots for homebuilding, a small portion of which are for sale, he said. Inventories of available properties also have declined in the past year as foreclosures in Nevada slid.

“Paulson & Co. was prompted to invest heavily in the Las Vegas market because the supply of new housing is rapidly receding and few new projects are being planned in the Henderson area,” Gross said.

Armel Leslie, a spokesman for New York-based Paulson & Co., declined to comment.

Home Inventory

At the end of July, there were 16,944 single-family homes listed for sale in the Las Vegas area, a 25 percent decline from a year earlier, the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors said today. The median price of a single-family property was $133,000, up 9 percent from July 2011.

Foreclosures in Nevada plunged in the past year after the state passed a law making it a crime to wrongfully seize a property from a delinquent borrower. In the Las Vegas area, the number of homes with foreclosure filings fell 61 percent in the first half of 2012 from a year earlier, according to Irvine, California-based data provider RealtyTrac Inc.

The master developer of Lake Las Vegas filed for bankruptcy in 2008, saying it had debt of as much as $1 billion and $500 million in assets. It won approval of an exit plan in 2010 that raised money for creditors, in part with plans to sue the company’s former investors, including billionaire brothers Sid and Lee Bass.

Hotels, Casino

The master-planned community, about 17 miles (27 kilometers) from the Las Vegas Strip, is centered around a 320- acre man-made lake. It has two hotels, a casino, a golf course, stores and restaurants, and 1,800 townhomes and condominiums, said Robyn Yates, broker and owner of Windermere Prestige Properties at Lake Las Vegas. Paulson purchased land on the north shore of the lake that was known as Rainbow Canyon, she said.

“What it means is that somebody with a lot of money believes in the community,” Yates said.

John Paulson, who became a billionaire in 2007 by betting against the U.S. subprime mortgage market, has in the past few years been buying real estate directly or through his funds. His holdings include properties in Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, California, Florida and Hawaii.

Reported by Bloomberg 08/08/2012

Lennar Corp. is close to signing a term sheet with China Development Bank for a $1.7 billion loan package that would revive two stalled real estate projects in San Francisco, Mayor Edwin Lee said.

“We’re a couple months away” from agreeing on financial terms, Lee said in an Aug. 1 interview at San Francisco City Hall, his first public comments on the loan. “This is very important to our city, and we’re not letting it go.”

The funds may be used for a variety of real estate uses at San Francisco’s Hunters Point and Treasure Island development sites, including such infrastructure as roads and shoreline stabilization, said a person familiar with the projects who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. The deal may lead to more U.S. property investment by Chinese banks, according to Lee.

Redeveloping the former U.S. Navy bases would create two new neighborhoods in a city strapped for housing. Plans approved by San Francisco’s board of supervisors call for 10,500 homes at Hunters Point and 8,000 residences on Treasure Island, along with commercial buildings, job-training centers, parks, trails and open space, Lee said.

Lennar, the Miami-based majority investor in the groups that control each development, has been bogged down in a search for infrastructure financing.

Kofi Bonner, president of Lennar Urban, who is overseeing the projects, declined to comment on a possible loan deal. Feng Qihua, spokeswoman for Beijing-based China Development Bank, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

ChinaSF Help

Lennar, the third-largest U.S. homebuilder by revenue, has benefited from work done on its behalf by ChinaSF, an arm of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, according to Lee. The group has met with China Development Bank officials in Beijing to promote the city’s economic growth, including surging property investment and office occupancy.

“Lennar utilized some of our contacts, and I strongly backed them up,” he said. “It’s very fortunate because, at the same time, China has been looking at making long-term infrastructure investments.”

Chinese investors “aren’t interested in Treasury bonds anymore,” and see U.S. infrastructure investment as providing higher long-term returns, said Darlene Chiu Bryant, ChinaSF’s executive director, who travels regularly to China for the city.

A San Francisco commercial real estate boom that began in 2010 with increased leasing by technology firms may lead to more than $5.3 billion in office-building sales by the end of the year, the most since the market peaked in 2007 at $8.6 billion, according to a CBRE Group Inc. estimate. The downtown office vacancy rate fell to 9.6 percent in the second quarter from 13 percent a year earlier, said broker Cassidy Turley.

Land Improvements

Financing sources for U.S. roads and other land improvements have been scarce following the 2008 financial crisis that left pensions and private-equity firms with steep losses, said John Burns, a housing consultant. The elimination of California’s redevelopment agencies removed another funding source, he said.

“The fact that Lennar had to go to China shows how difficult it has been,” said Burns, chairman of John Burns Real Estate Consulting LLC, based in Irvine, California. “The redevelopment agencies would have been the typical way to finance in California, but buyers of those bonds got stuck and aren’t interested in buying more.”

China is preparing to invest $1.2 trillion of equity in developed markets for “real economy assets,” including commercial property, in the next 10 years, said Thilo Hanemann of Rhodium Group LLC, a New York-based firm that tracks global equity flows.

China Railway

The San Francisco loan would be linked to a contract of as much as $1.7 billion for China Railway Construction Corp., known as CRCC, according to Chiu Bryant. The debt deal, in principle, would provide funds to kick-start infrastructure development at Hunters Point and Treasure Island, and give CRCC a managing role in both projects, she said. The actual construction work would be done by local building trades, whose members would get paid from loan proceeds, Chiu Bryant said.

Final terms are up to Lennar and China Development Bank, she said.

China’s global ambitions include exposing its builders to Western markets where they can gain engineering know-how and practical experience in a “sophisticated regulatory environment,” Hanemann said. That’s different from the one-party rule and directed economy at home, he said.

A Chinese firm has already made its mark close to the Lennar sites.  Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co. (900947) fabricated a new 526-foot (160-meter) tower and 2,047-foot eastern span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, between Yerba Buena Island, adjacent to Treasure Island, and the city of Oakland. That project is scheduled for completion next year.

Infrastructure Funding

California cities need funding for roads and public transit, and may find a ready source in China Development Bank, said Tong Li, a senior economist at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, California.

“The bank would expand into a mature U.S. market that’s resilient in the long run, and these types of housing projects would add jobs to the local economy,” Li said in a telephone interview. “San Francisco and Silicon Valley are outperforming the rest of California, and infrastructure has become one of CDB’s main business lines.”

Regional job growth is a lure for Chinese investors seeking perceived safe havens in the U.S., Li said. The metropolitan areas of San Francisco and San Jose, which includes Silicon Valley, added about 60,000 new positions in the last year, said Stephen Levy, director at the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto.

Lennar Partners

Lennar’s co-investors in Hunters Point include Hillwood Development Co. and Scala Real Estate Partners LP, both based in Dallas. That consortium, along with Stockbridge Capital Group, Kenwood Investments and Wilson Meany, all based in San Francisco, are investors in Treasure Island. FivePoint Communities Inc., based in Aliso Viejo, California, is the managing developer for both projects.

The potential China Development Bank loan is an example of Lennar’s “well-chosen, well-timed ventures,” Vicki Bryan, senior bond analyst at New York-based Gimme Credit LLC, wrote in a July 5 research note. Lennar was the only builder rated “improving” by Gimme Credit, with Bryan praising Lennar for its “prudent strategy” and ability to manage costs.

“This is the exact right time to start projects like Hunters Point and Treasure Island,” Burns, the housing consultant, said in a telephone interview. “There is widespread recognition that they’re ready for development.”

Rising Values

Home Prices in San Francisco jumped 3.9 percent in May from the previous month, the third straight gain in the S&P/Case- Shiller home-price index for the area. The median price for houses and condominiums in the city surpassed $700,000 for the first time since August 2008, according to San Diego-based research firm DataQuick. The housing upswing may last for seven to eight years, Burns said.

The Hunters Point and Treasure Island funding “fits so nicely with what Chinese banks are trying to do,” said Lee, San Francisco’s first Asian-American mayor, who was elected in November after serving as acting mayor for most of 2011. “The Chinese would have not entered into final term sheet negotiations if it weren’t a very good deal.”

Reported by Bloomberg (08/02/2012)

The home-vacancy rate is falling in U.S. cities such as Las Vegas and Phoenix that were hit hardest by the housing crisis, a sign the market is recovering, according to Trulia Inc.

San Jose, California, led declines among metropolitan areas, with a 24.1 percent drop in the number of empty homes and apartments this year through mid-July, according to Trulia, a real estate information company in San Francisco. It was followed by Las Vegas, Denver, the California areas of Bakersfield and Orange County, Seattle and Phoenix.

Falling vacancies, based on an analysis of homes where the U.S. Postal Service delivered no mail for at least 90 days, indicate a gain in the number of new occupants, caused by population growth and more household formation, Trulia Chief Economist Jed Kolko said. The shrinking inventory of available properties is pushing up rents and purchase prices, he said.

“Vacancy changes are strongly correlated with price changes,” Kolko said in a telephone interview. “The biggest vacancy declines are in markets where prices are rising.”

Home prices rose for a third consecutive month in May in the 20 U.S. cities tracked by the S&P/Case-Shiller index, according to a July 31 report. Prices rose 2.7 percent in Phoenix and 1.9 percent in Las Vegas from the previous month.

U.S. apartment rents rose the most in five years in the second quarter as shrinking vacancies allowed landlords to charge more, research firm Reis Inc. (REIS) said on July 5.

New Households

The U.S. vacancy rate fell to 3.4 percent as of mid-July from 3.6 percent a year earlier, as the total number of homes receiving mail increased by 970,000, according to Trulia. The additional households include about 760,000 new homes and 210,000 formerly vacant homes.

The Census Bureau reported last week that the U.S. home- vacancy rate fell to the lowest level since 2006 in the second quarter, while new households formed at an annualized rate of about 800,000.

Household formation fell to a 100,000 pace in the fourth quarter of 2008, after the U.S. financial crisis triggered by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. A normal rate is 1.2 million new households a year, which would spur demand for 1.6 million new residences, Stephen East, a homebuilding analyst with International Strategy & Investment Group LLC in Saint Charles, Missouri, said in a July 27 note.

Shadow Inventory

The shrinking vacancy rate indicates that the so-called shadow inventory, which includes homes facing foreclosure or repossessed by banks that aren’t listed for sale, is smaller than the biggest estimates and less of a threat to a real estate recovery, Kolko said. The shadow inventory was 5.95 million homes last month, down from a high of 8.79 million in early 2010, Morgan Stanley said in a July 26 report.

“Inventories are actually dropping partly because homes are filling up –- not just because people or banks are unable or unwilling to put homes on the market,” Kolko said. “In fact, vacancies are better than inventories as a measure of whether there’s a housing shortage or housing glut.”

The vacancy rate fell to 1 percent in the San Jose area, which includes Silicon Valley, where technology companies have been hiring and homebuilders face limited land supply and regulatory challenges that slow development, Kolko said. Job growth also helped reduce vacancies in Denver; Seattle; Raleigh, N.C.; and Nashville, Tenn., he said.

Las Vegas

In Las Vegas, where the vacancy rate was 5.8 percent, low rents and reduced purchase prices have enabled more people who doubled up with relatives to move into their own homes, Kolko said. Foreclosures in Nevada plunged in the past year after the state passed a law making it a crime to wrongfully seize a property from a delinquent borrower, allowing more homeowners to continue occupying their residences.

A diminished inventory of homes listed for sale helped boost Las Vegas housing starts by 62 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to Greg Gross, director of the Nevada region for Metrostudy, a Houston-based firm that tracks new construction.

“It used to be that you’d see pictures of Las Vegas where there would be dozens of for-sale signs along neighborhood streets,” Gross said in a telephone interview. “Now, you don’t see that anywhere. Now my Realtor friends are saying that before they get a listing, the house is sold.”

Rust Belt

Detroit, which had the highest vacancy rate in the Trulia report, at 12.1 percent, has suffered from decades of declining employment and population, Kolko said. Other “rust belt cities” among the 10 areas with the highest vacancy rates include Gary, Ind., and the Ohio cities of Dayton, Toledo and Cleveland.

In Florida, the past decade’s building boom is still responsible for the high vacancy rate in such cities as West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Melbourne, Kolko said.

While California has one of the highest foreclosure rates, vacancies have been limited, especially in coastal areas, because the state’s expensive land and development costs made it harder for builders to increase inventory.

“In San Jose and Orange County, vacancies are low, and getting lower,” Kolko said. “It’s very hard to find a home and that’s holding back sales and adding to the lack of affordability. The difficulty of building houses in Coastal California is big reason why they’re so expensive.”

Reported by Bloomberg (08/01/2012)

July proved to be another active month for personnel moves in the homebuilding industry, highlighted by new hires and internal promotions at DR Horton, David Weekley Homes, Beazer, Lennar, Pulte and others.  DR Horton added to its land and construction staff.  Frank Reynolds joins the builder as Land Development project manager in Fort Myers.  He was SVP of Land Development with Lennar.  Glen Lent joins Horton’s Land Acquisition and Development team in Salt Lake, moving from Meadow Valley Contractors.  John Compaglia is a new Project Consultant in the San Francisco area, coming from M.E. Diefenbach Construction.  Cathy Francis is the new Customer Care Coordinator in Raleigh-Durham.  She comes to Horton from Orleans.

David Weekley Homes added building and construction staff in Texas and Florida.  Brian Ablowich and Robert Aldrich joined the company as Builders in the Dallas/Fort Worth and San Antonio respectively.  Ablowich was with Grand Homes while Aldrich is new to the industry.  Also in Texas, Trevor Murray is now a Construction Superintendent in Bryan/College Station.  In the Florida market, Wes Ennis is now a Builder for David Weekley in Jacksonville, moving from Lennar.

Beazer Homes made number of significant personnel changes with Joe Hession joining the company as Corporate Litigation Counsel in the Corporate office in Atlanta.  Suzanne Miles and Nancy Ermenidis join Beazer as New Home Counselors in the Baltimore region.  Liana Kloss is a new Purchasing Coordinator and Sean Ware a Staff Accountant, both in Atlanta.

Lennar added to its sales staff with James Manuel joining the company as New Home Consultant in Washington D.C.  He was formerly with The Evergreene Companies.  David Snyder is New Home Consultant in the Tampa market.  Also in Tampa, Maria Spano is a new Purchasing Expeditor.  Jardina Campbell is now HR Generalist in the Miami Division and Kenneth Mann joins Lennar as Construction Manager in Hollywood, Fla.

Pulte made internal moves with Chris Winter transitioning from Division Controller to VP Finance in Northern California.  Heather Goldin is now Purchase Pro Analyst in the Greater Detroit Area.  She was previously a Business Process Analyst.  Chris Jensen, of Jensen Quality Homes, joins the company as Field Manager in Nashville.

Anthony Ascolese has been named Director of Sales & Marketing in Washington D.C. for KB Home.  He was previously a Sales Counselor with the company.  Michelle Kanama has been promoted to Marketing Coordinator in Los Angeles.  She was Marketing Assistant.  And Joey Ta is now Senior Financial Analyst in Los Angeles.  He was previously Senior Internal Auditor.

NVR has promoted Curt McKay to VP Internal Audit and Corporate Governance.  He was Financial Director.  Brittany Beatty joins NVR as Sales & Marketing Associate in Philadelphia, coming from The Philly Apartment Company.

Phillip McMillan is now Manager of Standards, Content, Learning & Development at Gables Residential in the Washington, D.C., market, where he was formerly a District Manager.  Randy Miner has been promoted to Support Center Supervisor in Atlanta.  Eli Pluzynski joins Gables as Community Manager in D.C.

Gene Swider has joined Toll Brothers as Land Development Manager in the Philadelphia area and Scott Maliska is now Construction Manager for Toll Brothers in Dallas/Fort Worth.

M/I Homes made two hires with Ken Shelton joining the company as Construction Superintendent in Chicago and Nancy Hunnicutt Shaw a New Home Sales Associate in Huntersville, N.C.

In purchasing, James Alexander is the new Purchasing Manager in Phoenix for Gehan Homes.  He was formerly Regional Director of Purchasing for Beazer.  Kevin Homer is now Contracts Manager for GL Homes in Fort Lauderdale.  Robert Tarduno is now Purchasing Agent for Standard Pacific in Charlotte.  He was an Estimator with the Builder.

A number of builders are beefing up sales and marketing.  Alaina Robertson has been promoted to Sales and Marketing Manager at Polygon Northwest in Vancouver, Wash.  Kelly Watson moves to Ryland Homes as Marketing Manager in Charlotte, moving from Timberstone Homes.  Reed Williams is the new Director of Sales for Meritage Homes in Tampa.  Margaret Gruber moves from Pulte to Ashton Woods Homes in Atlanta as Community Sales Manager.  John Dungan joins Carefree Homes as Sales Consultant in El Paso, moving from Desert View Homes.  Robin Witty Blake moves to Epcon Communities as a New Home Consultant in Columbus, Ohio.  She was with M/I Homes.

Kathy Thomas joins Highland Homes’ sales team in San Antonio, moving from Standard Pacific.  Ronald Chandler joins K Hovnanian as a New Home Consultant in Minneapolis and Deborah Mitchell joins History Maker Homes as Community Sales Manager in Dallas.  Angela Haas joins Grand Homes as Sales Assistant.

Robin Woelfel joins Richmond American as Design Consultant in Denver.  Ryan Lopez is now General Manager for Sares-Regis in San Francisco.  David Hunter joins Shea Homes as Assistant Superintendent in Charlotte.  Sarah Thomas-Vick joins Allen Edwin Homes as Closing Coordinator in Kalamazoo, Mich.