A decade-long home building boom in Palm Beach County has slowed greatly in recent months as builders adjust to the reality of the housing slump, the Palm Beach Post reports.
A sudden doubling of visitors to what had been a lackluster sales center at one of KB Home’s (KBH) Florida housing market developments recently caught CEO Jeff Mezger’s attention.
Engineered Homes isn’t worried about the recent slow-down in Florida housing market.
Officials with home builder K. Hovnanian Enterprises say a couple who claim their Florida mortgage loan application was altered without their knowledge are actually savvy, well-heeled investors who just want out of a bad investment.
Winter Park-based Engineered Homes of Orlando Inc. is clearly bullish on the Central Florida housing market, despite the current sales slowdown.
Boosted by warmer weather, construction of new homes increased 0.8% in March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.518 million, the highest level this year, the Commerce Department estimated Tuesday.
Problems in the Florida mortgage market continued to take their toll on home builders’ confidence about the housing market in April.
Due to a sluggish Florida housing market and a glut of vacant land in some areas, KB Home, one of the nation’s largest home builders, trying to unload land in three Tampa Bay area counties.
Builders in unincorporated Lee County, Bonita Springs and Fort Myers Beach pulled 318 permits for single-family houses in March, about 6 percent more than in February and 62 percent less than in March 2006, the county Department of Community Development reported Monday.
Ouch.
Lennar Corp. said it will slow housing starts, sell land and cut prices after steep declines during its first quarter have left the national homebuilder unable to meet its earnings goal for the year.
First quarter earnings were down 73 percent to $68.6 million, or 43 cents per diluted share. For the same period the year before, earnings were $258.1 million, or $1.58 per diluted share.
The Miami housing market-based home builder said total revenue was $2.8 billion for the first quarter ended Feb. 28, down 14 percent from $3.24 billion logged last year. Revenue from home building decreased to $2.6 billion from $3.1 billion in 2006, Lennar said.
Lennar said its national operations were impacted by overall weaknesses in the current Florida housing market. Earnings from homebuilding operations plunged 69 percent in the first quarter, as cancellation rates reached 29 percent.
“While some markets are performing better than others, the typically stronger spring selling season has not yet materialized,” said Stuart Miller, president and chief executive officer of Lennar Corp. “These soft market conditions have been exacerbated by the well-publicized problems in the subprime lending market.”
Miller said that as the weak Florida mortgage market persists, Lennar has been converting both land and home inventory to cash and is “significantly reducing land purchases and starts.”
He called it the company’s “balance sheet first” strategy.
“Concurrently, we have adjusted our land assets where appropriate, while we have written-off option deposits and pre-acquisition costs on land we no longer desire to close,” he said.
Loss on land sales totaled $26.5 million in the first quarter, net of $21 million of write-offs of deposits and pre-acquisition costs related to about 4,000 home sites under option that the Lennar does not intend to purchase. This does mean, however, that potential Florida mortgage loan borrowers can receive incentives on new purchases.
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