KB Home posts third quarter net loss

Homebuilder KB Home recorded a higher net loss in the third quarter, as market volatility led to a decline in home sales when compared to the previous year.

Los Angeles-based KB Home (NYSE:KBH), which has a significant homebuilding presence in Dallas-Fort Worth, recorded a third quarter net loss of $144.7 million, or $1.87 per diluted share, up from $35.6 million, or 46 cents per diluted share for the same period last year.
KB Home’s third quarter financial report included a pre-tax, non-cash charge of $82.2 million for inventory and joint venture impairments, the company said.

A charge of $58.1 million on a valuation allowance against net deferred tax assets also hit in the third quarter.

KB’s revenue for the third quarter was $681.6 million, down significantly from $1.54 billion for the third quarter of last year. The revenue drop is attributed mostly to a decline in housing sales.

Also, I was told Choice laid off 28 employees. Portrait Homes also shut is doors last week.

Residential new home builders are feeling the pain of the market and negative media on real estate.

Brad Holden
Holden New Homes

Homebuilders get creative to woo buyers, Realtors

Southern Land Co. believes its Tucker Hill residential development in McKinney is so unique that eventually it will sell itself. Burdened with the realities of today’s soft housing market, however, company officials are pulling out the stops to increase foot traffic — and sales — in the sagging market.

“The idea is to get people here,” said Jim Cheney, vice president of corporate communications with Tennessee-based Southern Land. The company has used everything from community concerts to plane rides to reel in buyers.

Tucker Hill’s $248 million planned community broke ground in early 2007 on 800 acres zoned for 2,100 homes and amenities such as pools, walking trails, a dog park and other green spaces. Houses will range from $350,000 to more than a $1 million.

So far, there are 30 houses finished in Tucker Hill, with contracts on 10. The homes are close together, with small front yards, large front porches and garages along alleys in the back. It is an example of neo-urbanism, a pedestrian-friendly design style with a diverse range of housing. The 16 planned phases will take more than a decade to finish. Joe Rider, vice president of community development sales and marketing, said 75 to 100 houses will be started in 2009.
To help increase foot traffic through the neighborhood and promote a small-town feel, Tucker Hill gave away trees during a spring market attended by several hundred. And over Labor Day, the community sponsored Arts on the Lawn, which included music acts and entertainment and was attended by 900 people.

“These events allow us to give folks the vision of what the community will be like,” Rider said.
Kathy Self, operations manager for Arlington-based First Texas Homes, which has homes in 51 communities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, said that regardless of marketing strategies and promotions, buyers and banks are simply too conservative for much success in the current market.

“You can throw a big party out there, it’s not going to get people in,” Self said.

Margaret Pesnell, marketing director of Hillwood Residential, said the focus has shifted away from wooing buyers and more toward impressing Realtors. Hillwood recently flew two groups of Realtors to Costa Rica to promote property there for second homes. The company also has a 15-year-old incentive program in place, “which right now is more important than ever,” Pesnell said. A Realtor who sells two new homes is rewarded with a free trip.

“As important as these Realtors are to us all the time, we need to be in front of them even more,” Pesnell said.

David Brown, director of the Dallas-Fort Worth office of the housing market research firm MetroStudy, said Tucker Hill’s “unique product and design” will set it apart from other subdivisions.

“It’s a new type of concept for the D-FW market,” he said, adding that there are just a few other communities being built in the area with similar concepts. “To capture the buyer, they’re having to raise the bar and give them a reason to come to the community, other than just another house.”

30-year mortgage rates fall sharply

Rates on 30-year mortgages dropped sharply again this week, falling to the lowest level in seven months.

On Thursday, Freddie Mac’s nationwide survey found that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages had declined to 5.78 percent from 5.93 percent the previous week.

It was the fifth consecutive weekly decline and dropped the 30-year mortgage rate to the lowest level since the week of Feb. 14, when it stood at 5.72 percent.

Freddie Mac says the big drop in mortgage rates is fueling a boom in refinancing, with mortgage applications up 58 percent since mid-August.

Rates have continued to fall following the U.S. government’s takeover of troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Sept. 7. The government has pledged as much as $100 billion per company to shore up their capital, a move that assured a continuing flow of funds into the nation’s housing market.

Fannie Mae — officially the Federal National Mortgage Association (NYSE:FNM) — and Freddie Mac — officially the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (NYSE:FRE) — are government-sponsored, publicly traded companies that together hold or back about half of the nation’s $12 trillion worth of home mortgages.

The two mortgage guarantors have taken huge losses on a wave of home foreclosures.

Intelligenger says at 10 weeks, It's a Boy!

Green Boy, Yellowish-Orange Girl.

You decide?

Big Papi in Texas

Life was good!

A Little Kid in Aruba

Possibly the best video that I have ever made . . . Enjoy!

Builders think they’ve found sweet spot

In a North Texas housing market where starts are off a third from last year’s pace, mortgage lenders are cutting staff, Realtors are competing aggressively for a contracting number of sales and the number of foreclosures is the only thing on the rise, the first sign of hope — be it however modest — has emerged.

Houses in the $250,000 to $300,000 price range actually saw sales increase by 0.7% in the second quarter from 2,412 to 2,450, according to research by the housing consultant Residential Strategies.

While that number is far off the North Texas housing market’s glory days from earlier this decade, every other price point has continued to see dramatic drops, according to Residential Strategies data. Houses priced from $111,000 to $200,000, for example, saw a drop in sales of 14% in the last quarter. And closings on high-end homes — those costing $501,000 or more — did no better than hold steady.

Area builders are responding, with starts on houses in the $251,000 to $300,000 price range up 6.4% in the last quarter. All other price points saw a decrease, as many builders are trying to unload their inventory of finished homes.

“There’s lots of activity in different parts of the region,” said Bob Morris, executive officer of the Home Builders Association of Greater Dallas. “It’s not new spec-built product. It’s been sitting on the market for six to eight months. There’s no rational reason to bring new product into the market.”

The numbers reflect “current market realities,” said Jim Gaines, research economist with the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. It’s difficult for builders to get reasonable financing for houses at lower and higher price points, he said.

“The segment of population that can afford homes are in the above-median price bracket,” he said. “And a lot of these buyers may be saying now is a good time to hire a builder who might be selling a $250,000 or $300,000 house that a year ago would have been a $300,000 to $350,000 house.”

‘Not business as usual’

Nationally, home sales are off by 62% since the peak of the housing market in January 2006, according to numbers from Residential Strategies. In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, closings are off 32% from their peak.

“It’s not business as usual, but it’s not a disaster,” said Jody Reese, principal with Residential Strategies. “You’ve got to readjust.”

And that’s what many builders have done, he said. Custom builders that had ventured into lower- and midpriced homes have moved back to houses priced between $350,000 and $600,000, Reese said.

“They just went back to their roots, figuring there was still a market there and more money to be made,” he said. “It’s gotten pretty competitive.”

Drees Custom Homes has houses for sale in more than 30 communities in the area, said Jamie Ovalle, director of marketing. Out of those, there are about five that have homes priced in the $150,000 range. Most of the new building is in the higher-end, Ovalle said, and the majority of the company’s sales are near Drees’ midpoint range of about $280,000.

Drees homes are selling well in areas like McKinney, Fate and Allen, Ovalle said, without disclosing sales figures. “It’s what’s hot at the moment,” she said.

The top market areas, according to Residential Strategies, include Southlake, Frisco, Allen, Castle Hills, Keller, Colleyville, Plano and Lucas. In many of those areas, homes priced at $300,000 and up are driving the housing market.

In Flower Mound, Lantana and Highland Village, houses priced in that range made up 68% of the annual starts, according to Residential Strategies research. In west Allen, the higher-end houses made up 86% of the starts. Of the 376 annual starts in Keller and North Richland Hills, 92% were at $300,000 and up.

“It all depends on where you build and what you build,” said Greg Alford of luxury home builder Alford Homes. The builder, with 28 years of local experience, has seen success lately in Dallas’ Preston Hollow neighborhood, which has attracted a number of builders during the past couple years.

The main impact of the sagging market is that finished houses are sitting empty longer.
“A lot of home builders just jumped into Preston Hollow thinking they could make money, coming in with bad designs and crazy prices,” Alford said. “That’s a lot of the inventory that you have sitting there. There are reasons that homes aren’t selling in some cases.”

Alford is sold out of homes in Preston Hollow. He just started building a spec home and has recently purchased a second lot there, he said.

During the past couple years, he has sold 30 to 40 houses in Prosper and now has an inventory of five. Alford sells an average of 18 homes a year, and will be close to that this year, he predicted. But profits won’t be what they were, because it’s a buyer’s market and builders are willing to cut prices on finished homes.

“We’re doing things differently than what we typically would do if it were a seller’s market,” Alford said. “Our goal for this year is to be in business and be profitable. 2009 is going to be a slow-going, getting back to normal.”

Government may soon back troubled mortgage giants

WASHINGTON

The government is expected to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as soon as this weekend in a monumental move designed to protect the mortgage market from the failure of the two companies, which together hold or guarantee half of the nation's mortgage debt, a person briefed on the matter said Friday night.

Some of the details of the intervention, which could cost taxpayers billions, were not yet available, but are expected to include the departure of Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd and Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron, according to the source, who asked not to be named because the plan was yet to be announced.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and James Lockhart, the companies' chief regulator, met Friday afternoon with the top executives from the mortgage companies and informed them of the government's plan to put the troubled companies into a conservatorship.
The news, first reported on The Wall Street Journal's Web site, came after stock markets closed. In after-hours trading Fannie Mae's shares plunged $1.54, or 22 percent, to $5.50. Freddie Mac's shares fell $1.06, or almost 21 percent, to $4.04. Common stock in the companies will be worth little to nothing after the government's actions.

The news also followed a report Friday by the Mortgage Bankers Association that more than 4 million American homeowners with a mortgage, a record 9 percent, were either behind on their payments or in foreclosure at the end of June.

That confirmed what investors saw in Fannie and Freddie's recent financial results: trouble in the mortgage market has shifted to homeowners who had solid credit but took out exotic loans with little or no proof of their income and assets.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lost a combined $3.1 billion between April and June. Half of their credit losses came from these types of risky loans with ballooning monthly payments.
While both companies said they had enough resources to withstand the losses, many investors believe their financial cushions could wither away as defaults and foreclosures mount.
Many in Washington and on Wall Street hadn't expected Paulson to intervene unless the companies had trouble issuing debt to fund their operations.

This summer, Congress passed a plan to provide unlimited government loans to Fannie and Freddie and to purchase stock in the two companies if needed.

Critics say the open-ended nature of the rescue package could expose taxpayers to billions of dollars of potential losses.

Supporters, however, argue the Bush administration had little choice but to support Fannie and Freddie, which together hold or guarantee $5 trillion in mortgages -- almost half the nation's total.

Representatives of Fannie and Freddie declined to comment on the government assistance plan.
Treasury spokeswoman Brookly McLaughlin said officials "have been in regular communications" with Fannie and Freddie, but refused to comment saying, "We are not going to comment on rumors."

Concern has been growing that a government rescue of Fannie and Freddie could not only wipe out common stockholders, but also be costly for scores of investment, banking and insurance companies that hold billions of dollars in their preferred shares.

Paulson has been in contact in recent weeks with foreign governments that hold billions of dollars of Fannie and Freddie debt to reassure them that the United States recognizes the importance of the two companies.

The two companies had nearly $36 billion in preferred shares outstanding as of June 30, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mudd, the son of TV anchor Roger Mudd, was elevated to Fannie Mae's top post in December 2004 when chief executive Franklin Raines and chief financial officer Timothy Howard were swept out of office in an accounting scandal. Syron was named Freddie Mac's CEO in 2003, replacing former chief Gregory Parseghian, who was ousted in after being implicated in accounting irregularities.

He formerly was executive chairman of Thermo Electron Corp., a Waltham, Mass.-based maker of scientific equipment, served head of the American Stock Exchange and was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in the early 1990s.

Fannie Mae was created by the government in 1938, and was turned into a shareholder-owned company 30 years later. Freddie Mac was established in 1970 to provide competition for Fannie.
A government takeover could cost taxpayers up to $25 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

But the epic decision highlights the size of the threats facing the housing market and the economy. On Friday, Nevada regulators shut down Silver State Bank, the 11th failure this year of a federally insured bank. And earlier this year, the government orchestrated the takeover of investment bank Bear Stearns by JP Morgan Chase.