Builders Offer Various Strategies in Current Florida Home Loan Market
As the popularity of Florida home loans waivers and the housing market faces a downswing, builders and developers react different. Some pull their real estate projects. Others, however, snatch up every piece of dirt they can find.
The latter is true for Coral Springs-based Centerline Homes, which recently opened six communities in seven weeks, including four of the company’s first Central Florida projects.
“We felt it was important not to spread out the communities and open them at the same time,” says Craig Perry, founder and president of Centerline Homes. “We want to show a position of strength and have plenty of product.”
The company’s Central Florida real estate strength comes in the form of:
- The Condominiums at Baldwin Park, 149 units consisting of two- and three-bedroom condominiums priced from the $300,000s that went on sale in February
- The Landings at North Shore, a single-family home community in Kissimmee priced from the $300,000s that went on the market late last year
- Bronson’s Landing, a single-family community of 126 homes in Winter Garden with prices from the $500,000s that started selling in January
- Oakbrook, a 287-unit single-family home community in Port Orange targeted at first-time Florida home loan buyers with prices starting in the $200,000 range that began its sales efforts last month
“We always had most of our communities in South Florida,” Perry told Orlando Business Journal. “But we have big plans now for Central Florida. It’s an area we want to be a part of.”
An uncertain Florida home loan market
Brad Hunter, director of the South Florida Region for Metrostudy, a provider of Floria housing market information, says there are two types of builders right now.
“Some builders are looking at the slowing housing market as an opportunity to build market share like Centerline Homes is doing,” Hunter says. “And others want to decrease their exposure and wait out this wave of uncertainty in the market right now.”
For those builders that want to gain critical mass, Hunter says this is a way for companies to gain monopoly from those looking to lighten their availability.
Centerline does not plan to stop with just those communities. Perry told OBJ that the company owns “a lot of property in Osceola County” among other places.
“Central Florida is our future because that’s where the real growth is,” he says, noting that Centerline has acquired 600 acres in Osceola County for a large master-planned community of 2,000 single-family homes.
Growing its Florida home loan presence
Centerline also has 14 communities under construction in South Florida, where sellers are offering unusual incentives to those seeking a Florida home loan.
“It appears Centerline’s goal is to gain a larger presence that would not have been possible a year ago when home builders were swiping up land left and right,” Hunter says.
All that growth means Perry isn’t worried about a slowing market that is saturated with existing homes and full of more hesitant buyers.
“Sales have been strong,” Perry explains. “We are getting more lookers than buyers, but we are selling value-oriented products, and that’s a plus for buyers looking for a deal.”
Beth McGee, executive director of the Home Builders Association of Metro Orlando, says everything was sold before it was built last year and that’s not the case anymore.
“Now builders are having to sell their product,” McGee says.
Hunter, though, expects potential buyers to start buying at a faster clip again soon.
“They (home buyers) are hiding in foxholes and hoping deals will get better and better,” Hunter says. “But at a certain point, people will make a decision to buy now because interest rates are moving up fast.”
