Slow Florida Real Estate Market Leads to Lay-Offs in Bonita Springs
The Bonita Bay Group’s decision to cut 30 positions is the latest in a series of terminations and layoffs by developers and builders sparked by the sluggish Florida real estate market.
The Bonita Springs-based developer of seven major residential and golf course communities in Lee and Collier counties cut two percent of its work force effective Thursday.
“They (the cuts) were split among our community operations and our corporate office, about evenly,” spokeswoman Mary Briggs said. “The downturn in the real estate market is putting pressure on the company.”
The community workers included administrative, golf and clubhouse employees. Briggs said that the company is providing severance packages and outplacement programs for those who were let go.
“The job cuts will have no effect on the future communities that we have planned,” she said.
Four projects are under way in Hendry County, and one is planned for Alva in the east Lee County housing market.
KB Home’s Fort Myers office has consolidated “a handful” of jobs with the Tampa office, Cara Kane, the company’s Florida spokeswoman, said Friday.
“We have consolidated some of our back-office operations with our Tampa office,” Kane said. “It doesn’t affect any of the front-line employees that a homebuyer would have any contact with.”
According to Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, KB Home was the 16th-largest single-family-home builder in Lee County in 2006 by permitted units. It had 175 houses with a value of $33.6 million.
“It’s a natural and normal business decision that you have to adjust the labor force to meet up with demand of the construction of homes,” said Michael Reitmann, executive vice president of the Lee Building Industry Association. “It’s just a prudent way of doing business.”
In March, Centex Homes announced it had eliminated 141 jobs from Naples to Sarasota. A company spokesman said those cuts were across the board and included construction crews and office staff, all based on a lack of demand for Florida mortgages.
Last year, Bonita Springs-based luxury home builder WCI Communities Inc. eliminated about 600 positions, and First Home Builders, Lee County’s largest builder of single-family homes, laid off about 75 construction workers.
Hovnanian Enterprises Inc., First Home’s parent company, on Friday reported a wider second-quarter loss than earlier forecast. The company, in part, blamed “exceptionally high cancellations” in the Fort Myers-Cape Coral area for the loss.
The loss excluding land charges for the three months ended April 30 was about 30 cents a share, the Red Bank, N.J.-based company said.
“Things have finally leveled off,” Reitmann said. “As the baby boomers are retiring, the existing oversupply of homes are absorbed and the construction will start up again.”
Briggs said the Bonita Bay Group does not plan to cut any more jobs.
“We have every confidence that things are going to turn around,” she said. “It’s just taking longer to do so than we had hoped.”
SOURCE: The News-Press
