Tag: Homebuilders

Homebuilders
06/05/09 3:41pm

Getting Houston Right: The Toll Brothers Come to Town

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Homes for Sale, Master-Planned Communities, New Construction: Residential, The Woodlands
21 Comments

Houston, the Toll Brothers have been looking for just the right home for you:

“We have been studying the Houston market for a long time and have been looking for the right opportunity to enter it,” Robert Toll, chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “In 2008, Houston was the second-largest home building market in the nation.”

Actually, the “nation’s leading builder of luxury homes” is headed to The Woodlands. The Pennsylvania-based company, which already operates in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio, promises its first houses in the Village of Creekside Park will be complete early next year. Sales will begin this August.

Toll Brothers at Creekside Park will offer homes on 80′ wide home sites and will showcase five floorplans with multiple exterior designs.

A Swamplot reader comments on the photo accompanying the announcement that appeared in the Houston Business Journal:

The story includes a photo of one of the exterior choices: A French provincial pastiche. What in the name of pete does anything like this have to do with the climate and traditional architectural style of the Gulf Coast? Do the Toll Brothers even pay attention?

Well, that may not have been the company’s intent. On its own website, Toll Brothers illustrates its press release with this separately tuned sample:

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Buying and Selling
05/26/09 12:09pm

Survival of the Fittest

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Homebuilders, Houston Data, Quicklink
2 Comments

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST “The days are long gone when sales were so brisk that everyone from accountants to lawyers snapped up empty lots to build homes in Houston, where loose laws meant at the height of the property boom anyone could be a builder. . . . Mike Salomon, president of Sandcastle Homes, however, says those unprepared for an inherently risky business have been chased out of the industry. ‘We’ve gone from a market that was very forgiving, and you could make mistakes and still be profitable,’ he says. ‘We’re close to what it should be like, where people who don’t know what they are doing are going out of business.’ His profits were down by 30 to 40 per cent in 2008, but volume was up 37 per cent. ‘We have to do more stuff to make the sales, but we have a profitable business that we’re still running.’” [Financial Times, via Swamplot inbox]

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Bankruptcies
05/21/09 10:40am

No-Charity Case: Royce Builders Education in Bankruptcy

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Hazards, Homebuilders
20 Comments

Regular Swamplot readers will remember all the fun surrounding the collapse and shutdown of Royce Builders last year. What’s happened since? Chapter 7 bankruptcy! Plus now, says the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff:

Wisenbaker Builder Services, Suncoast Post Tension, Builders Mechanical and Luxury Baths by Arrow are collectively seeking to recover more than $1.1 million from the builder, according to the petition filed last month in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Thousands of home- owners could also have claims against the company.

Attorney David Jones, who is representing Royce in the bankruptcy, is compiling names of potential creditors that lists more than 12,000 people.

“Homeowners are the biggest portion,” said Jones, a partner with Porter & Hedges.

Oh, but there’s more! In a separate legal action, an educational charity that Royce owner John Speer used to promote his businesses and solicit contributions from customers is claiming that Royce failed to deliver funds raised on its behalf. A struggling charity that renamed itself the Royce Homes Foundation for Youth in 2003 — after Speer apparently promised to deliver several hundred thousand dollars a year in support — says Royce still owes it about $400K:

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Inverness Forest
04/10/09 4:32pm

Comment of the Day: The Nottingham Forests of the Future

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Nottingham Forest, Price Trends, Quicklink, Real Estate Investing
3 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE NOTTINGHAM FORESTS OF THE FUTURE “. . . it is amazing how that works in Houston. Same house, probably same builder, same sort of subdivision when it was new. If that same oil and gas junior executive had bought the same new house back in ‘70 in Nottingham Forest, he’d be looking at a $450K + pay day. It will be interesting to see which areas developed in the most recent boom will be the Nottingham Forests and which ones will be more like this subject. Any speculations out there??” [subprimelandguy, commenting on Neighborhood Guessing Game Over: The Houston Highlands]

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Homebuilders
04/09/09 11:14am

Putting Stock in the Spread

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Quicklink, Sprawl
2 Comments

PUTTING STOCK IN THE SPREAD Pulte Homes announced yesterday it will swallow up Dallas-based Centex for $1.3 billion in devalued stock. The new Pulte Homes, based in Michigan, will be the country’s largest homebuilder — with twice the revenue of its nearest competitor. Together, the two combined sprawling companies are building in 31 separate Houston-area developments, but only 3 of them are inside Beltway 8. All but 4 of the rest lie beyond Highway 6. [Houston Business Journal]

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Bankruptcies
03/31/09 9:09am

New Mark for Layoffs

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Homebuilders, Quicklink
No Comments

NEW MARK FOR LAYOFFS Newmark Homes, a local brand of failed Florida homebuilder TOUSA, will be laying off 156 Houston employees beginning in May, according to a filing with the Texas Workforce Commission. Another 63 employees in Austin will lose their jobs. The company, which filed for bankruptcy back in January 2008, had been trying to sell Newmark and its other local brand, Trophy Homes. “The company said in a recent statement that it would stop building new homes and focus on selling its remaining inventory of speculative homes and its land holdings.” [Houston Business Journal]

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Bunker Hill Village
03/30/09 9:04pm

Outlines of a Bunker Hill Village Theme Retreat

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Buying and Selling, Homebuilders, Land Sales
11 Comments

Here — minus mysteriously absent lots 5, 7, 9, 11, 17, 19, 21, and 23 — are the outlines of the 19 homesites carved from the 10-acre wooded property that Holy Name Retreat Center sold off last year in Bunker Hill Village. Black Diamond Companies, the purveyors of two elsewhere-themed, other-worldly developments — the Cáceres Andelusion in Rice Military and vaguely Francophile Bammel Lane Park Homes on . . . uh, Bammel Lane — so far appears to be soft-pedaling the existence of any foreign entanglement in this latest development.

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Demolitions
03/23/09 5:02pm

Comment of the Day: Inventing the Heights Teardown

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Homebuilders, Houston Heights, Houston History, Quicklink, Redevelopment
21 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: INVENTING THE HEIGHTS TEARDOWN “Correction– The tearing down of old homes to build new was pioneered by Sterling Victorian Homes in the mid-late 1980s. It began on the 400 block of 22nd Street. These homes look very modest by today’s standards. It is likely true that Allegro pioneered the building of Disney-fied Hummer homes with cheese closets…” [Sheila, commenting on Scaling Back the Upscale: Allegro Builders, Downtempo]

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Homebuilders
03/20/09 12:45pm

Scaling Back the Upscale: Allegro Builders, Downtempo

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Houston Heights, Mixed Use
33 Comments

Allegro Builders president and CEO Lambert Arceneaux has no more employees to let go from his company, and has had problems paying his subcontractors, a source tells Swamplot. Starting way back in the olden days of a dozen years ago, Arceneaux pioneered the concept of tearing down tired old Sears catalog homes and single-bathroom working-class bungalows in the Heights and replacing them with high-dollar luxury homes in Victorian dressing. After proving to other builders that land banking and upscaling the Heights could be a lucrative business, Allegro eventually stretched its repertoire to million-dollar-plus whirlpool- and wine-cellar-enshrined fantasies that mimicked a variety of regional historical styles.

Our source says Allegro’s project manager was let go a couple of weeks ago — and that “there’s no money coming in.”

Allegro also developed two small but high-profile mixed-use buildings on Studewood. One is now known as the home of Bedford Restaurant. An earlier effort across 10th St., which houses Lance Fegen’s Glass Wall restaurant and Allegro Builders’ offices upstairs, is shown here in a rare early photo — minus its usual tight single-wythe street wall of valet-parked SUVs:

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Homebuilders
03/09/09 10:48am

Powers Deactivates: Another Builder, Another Sunset

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Openings and Closings
1 Comment

Nancy Sarnoff chronicles the decline of Houston homebuilder David Powers Homes:

David Powers Homes has moved out of its offices on Westheimer and the Beltway and is now operating out of a model home in Lakes of Bella Terra, a subdivision in Richmond.

The company’s staff — 120 people at its peak — has dwindled to just four or five.

The high-end builder is now trying to finish the 36 homes it has in various stages of construction. . . .

Given the company’s higher home prices, about 50 percent of its customers financed their purchases with two loans to keep from paying higher interest rates on jumbo loans.

Those are loans that exceed $417,000.

Many of those second mortgages, Powers said, were subprime.

Image: David Powers Homes

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Comments
03/06/09 3:33pm

Comment of the Day: Welcome to Westwood Gardens

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Northwest Houston, Quicklink, Westwood Gardens
1 Comment

COMMENT OF THE DAY: WELCOME TO WESTWOOD GARDENS “The neighbors are starting to join together to remove the graffiti. Not many kids are on the blocks but they do range in age from babies to happy teens. You can see them outside at times with their parents, riding scooters, riding bikes or just playing around. The neighbors even have indoor small pups, not those that you see on the news that maul on people or those that are seen used to fight. They are small well cared for happy dogs. Never without being on a leash when they are outside. A few neighbors have been seen flying small model airplanes. Everyone is friendly. Try it, if you see any one of the neighbors outside just wave and you will get a smile and a wave back. Hopefully one day we see you, if so Welcome to Westwood Gardens where you are Not just a Neighbor, Your Family!” [We Are Family!, commenting on Westwood Gardens Still Life: A Photo Tour of Half-Built Houston Homes]

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Homebuilders
01/22/09 9:25am

No More Jim Walter Homes

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Openings and Closings, Quicklink
2 Comments

NO MORE JIM WALTER HOMES It’s too late to buy a home in Houston from Jim Walter Homes — though the company website reports orders are still being taken for new homes in Houma, Louisiana. Parent company Walter Industries, based in Florida, is getting out of the homebuilding business. Jim Walter Homes had not been profitable “for several years”: “. . . the business, once known for its flash construction, caught a reputation for moving at a snail’s pace. Walter Industries decided to close the dwindling homes leg and work toward becoming a focused natural resources and energy business — a greater value to shareholders, [communications director Michael] Monahan said.” [St. Petersburg Times; website]

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Cancellations and Delays
01/16/09 10:48am

Westwood Gardens Still Life: A Photo Tour of Half-Built Houston Homes

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Financing, Homebuilders, Northwest Houston, Westwood Gardens
99 Comments

So where are all the half-built homes? That question, asked by a Swamplot reader last week, prompted a slew of comments from other readers eager to identify pockets and neighborhoods in and around Houston where construction has come to a halt because of problems connected to the nationwide housing-market collapse. (As well as a few where construction stopped for reasons of a more local nature.)

Swamplot reader subprimelandguy suggested looking at Northwest Houston:

You need to go to the suburban areas, particularly the non master planned communities between the Beltway and Highway 6 / 1960. The most aggressive one is actually inside the Beltway near West Road and Gessner – a former Royce Homes (go figure) development called Westwood Gardens. It is a bombed out poster child for the subprime fiasco.

Then late yesterday, subprimelandguy sent in photos!

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Homebuilders
12/04/08 10:25am

Another Homebuilder Calling It Quits

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Openings and Closings, Quicklink
1 Comment

ANOTHER HOMEBUILDER CALLING IT QUITS Kimball Homes, based in suburban Chicago, is shutting down. The company has built homes in markets all over the country, including in 4 Texas cities: “A spokeswoman said more than half of the company’s workers were laid off Tuesday, including an undisclosed number in the Houston area, where the company was active in 11 communities in the western and northwestern suburbs, Spring, the Humble area and Friendswood. Kimball Hill had 704 closings in the Houston area in 2007, down from 903 closings in 2006, according to Metrostudy.” The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April. (The Chicago Tribune reports Kimball Hill had 1,100 employees as recently as last year.) [Houston Chronicle, via Swamplot inbox]

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Apartments
12/03/08 2:42pm

The FedEx Irvington Site Goes to Avenue CDC

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Homebuilders, Proposed Developments, Quicklink, Ryon
No Comments

THE FEDEX IRVINGTON SITE GOES TO AVENUE CDC Avenue Community Development Corp. will be working with the Houston Housing Finance Corp. to build 80 to 100 homes and 180 to 250 apartments on the site of a former FedEx facility it bought near Moody Park. “The redevelopment of the 20-acre tract at 4004 Irvington Blvd., just south of Calvacade Street, is the nonprofit organization’s biggest to date, according to Avenue CDC. . . . Construction will begin in 2009.” [Houston Business Journal]

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