Houston, Texas real estate development, home buying, landscape, and design

What caused last week’s big implosion over at Royce Builders? And what’s happening now? A Swamplot informant tries to clue us in with this rich, extended view of the company’s problems:

Fact #1: Lavish spending by all of the Speers. At any given time one of two Bentley’s, Ferrari, Escalade or sports cars belonging to the family would be parked at the office. Shawn Speer and his wife Shonna were known for bragging about their lavish spending. Certainly, if you’re making money spend it, but when times are tight they were the only ones still spending money like water.

Fact #2: Example: Shonna told another employee about $30,000 shopping spree to New York and only a purse and few other items were on that steep tab.

Fact #3: As employees were crying and leaving Shonna and her best friend and manager Nicki K. were talking about moving forward with their new clothing line. This conversation opened up speculation that monies had been moved to accounts in Nikki’s name for this purpose.

Oh yes . . . there’s more!

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Another report on that Royce Builders sales meeting earlier this week:

I was in attendance at the infamous “Forget the Rumors and sell, sell, sell! [meeting.] We all thought the meeting was called to thank a dedicated and hard working group of sales people. Never once did the Speers humble themselves to utter a thank you for any contributions. We were asked to continue to sell the inventory, but they could not tell us where we would close the home nor how we would get paid. They had Countrywide Sr. Loan Officer Shawna Oakley present because we were told that all the sales on the books at been transferred to her. This did not make a bit of sense because the homes still have liens. We were told the bank was in control out of one side of the mouth and then told that they were trying to find another Title Co. It is no secret that Stewart Title out on Bay Area Blvd. is up to their ears in legals.

We all felt that the Speers should have just told everyone goodbye. The building is basically empty, there are 2 construction workers, 1 accounting person, 1 hr per son and the poor girl answering all the dirty calls and giving callers the runaround. Hats off to Fox’s Mr. Carey for trying . . . to report the truth about Royce Homes.

• Royce Builders Sales Staff Update: Never Mind the Rumors, Sell Sell Sell! [Swamplot]
• The Rumors Circling Around Royce Builders [Swamplot]

Royce Builders now has “about 60″ employees — down from 220 earlier this year, reports the Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff, who managed to get company president John Speer on the phone:

Speer said Royce is working with its lenders to complete homes that already have been started. It is also negotiating with vendors who have liens against the company.

Royce has between 60 and 80 homes that are under construction and will be completed, Speer said. Another 70 or 80 that have been contracted but not yet started are unlikely to be built.

Meanwhile, a tipster tells us that Royce

fired ALL of the project managers and construciton managers yesterday. The corporate phones are not being answered. Hammersmith mortgage, their in-house lender, was closed for good yesterday. The Stewart Title office branch in their corporate office was also closed yesterday.

. . . and adds this colorful story:

One of the PM’s (project managers) was holding a meeting yesterday with his staff of sales people and construction. This was in one of the neighborhoods he manages. He was telling the staff NOT to listen to the rumors and keep slling as usual. He got a phone call on his company cell and left the meeting for several minutes. When he returned, he informed the staff he had been fired and they are on their own.

More Royce rubbernecking . . . after the jump!

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