New home builder update

Home construction in the Dallas-Fort Worth area has dropped more than 70 percent in the last four years.

But some nimble builders have not only hung on in this dire market but also have increased their market share.

A look at the top 20 North Texas builders shows that First Texas Homes was one of the big winners in 2010.

The Dallas-based company grew its starts more than 55 percent last year, thanks to a combination of smart lot buys and access to construction capital.

“We added probably six neighborhoods in 2010,” said First Texas CEO Randall Van Wolfswinkel.

“Right now, it’s very hard to get great lots in good locations.”
First Texas and its sister company, Gallery Custom Homes, started almost 900 houses in 2010 and hope to do about 20 percent more this year.
“We use our own money, so that gives us the ability to build as many speculative homes as we want,” Van Wolfswinkel said. “That makes it easier to put houses on the ground.”

The independent firm now ranks third locally behind nationwide industry leaders D.R. Horton , based in Fort Worth, and PulteGroup, which acquired Dallas-based Centex Homes in 2009.

First Texas wasn’t the only company to see growth last year.
Addison-based Grand Homes increased its starts about 30 percent to just over 400 homes.
“We should do about 500 starts this year,” said Grand CEO Steve Brooks, whose company is building less than half of the houses it did at the market’s peak in 2006.
Brooks said the national recession and housing industry woes put the brakes on his business.

“At the end of 2008, we had two sales in four months — the world stopped,” he said. “We just rolled up our sleeves and went to work.”
Grand Homes cut its staff by almost a third and went through its construction process looking for cost savings.

“In the good times, we had gotten sloppy and wasteful,” Brooks said. “We were able to cut about $8,000 a house in hard costs.”
The company also moved quickly in 2009 to buy lots at distressed prices so it would have locations when the market rebounds.
Customers ‘hesitant’
This year should see a modest increase in home starts in North Texas, said Ted Wilson of Residential Strategies.

“We think the market has bottomed,” Wilson said. “We are forecasting a start increase this year of 2,000 or 3,000 units.”
That would still be nowhere close to the almost 50,000 annual home starts in the D-FW area at the peak of the market.
Since then, more than 30 builders in the area have gone broke or moved away.
And the companies that remain are working hard for every sale.

“The No. 1 issue is still the lack of traffic out there,” Wilson said. “There are an awful lot of potential customers who are hesitant.”
The large number of pre-owned homes on the market — including bargain-priced foreclosures — is also taking business from the new-home market.
Builders continue to have problems obtaining financing for home construction, and tough appraisals are killing a large number of their deals, industry reports say.

“We’ve seen a lot of weeding out of the players,” Wilson said.
Some push ahead

The 20 largest builders in Dallas-Fort Worth now account for about 70 percent of the annual starts, Residential Strategies research shows.
D.R. Horton — for many years the largest production builder in North Texas — grew its market share to almost 15 percent in 2010. That’s nearly three times the market share of No. 2 builder PulteGroup.

Horton’s starts here are still down about 50 percent from the peak of the market in 2006.

Horton officials did not respond to a request to talk about their company’s growth in the area.

Pulte, which acquired Dallas-based Centex Homes in 2009, is building almost 80 percent fewer houses than it did four years ago, according to Residential Strategies data.

Some builders are actually doing more than before the downturn.
Southlake-based Bloomfield Homes started business in 2004 and has moved up in the rankings.

The company last year built about 85 percent more houses than before the market downturn.
CEO Don Dykstra, who formerly headed Pulte’s operations here, hopes to start 350 to 400 houses in 2011.

“Developers and other builders who knew us from our Pulte days have generously invited us into some very nice D-FW communities,” Dykstra said.
The company now builds in almost 20 North Texas locations.
“Many of our employees are former middle managers who are back selling and building and rediscovering the joy of homebuilding,” Dykstra said. “For some of them, it had been more than a decade since they were in the field.
“We get the benefit of all the experience and have high-performance and low-maintenance people to work with.”
The right lots
Access to affordable, well-located lots is the biggest problem the industry faces, Wilson said.

“There is a lot of scrambling right now by builders who are hunting locations,” he said.

John Landon, who started Landon Homes at the end of 2008, was able to grow his business to a top 20 firm last year by purchasing lots from lenders who had foreclosed on the property.
But that’s pretty much over, Landon said.

“Most of the good, well-located lots that went back to the banks have been sold,” he said. “They still own some land that can be developed, and that’s what builders are looking at.”

Landon hopes to build between 275 and 325 homes this year.
“We have been focused on the north Dallas suburbs,” he said.

Top Dallas-Fort Worth homebuilders
D.R. Horton last year had almost a 15 percent market share in North Texas. (Numbers based on 2010 home starts.)
1. D.R. Horton 2,225
2. Pulte-Centex 898
3. First Texas-Gallery 894
4. Highland-Horizon-Huntington 855
5. Meritage-Monterey Homes 637
6. Lennar Homes 473
7. K Hovnanian 404
8. Grand Homes 401
9. History Maker Homes 349
10. David Weekley 344
11. Bloomfield Homes 313
12. Drees Homes 301
13. MHI-Pioneer-Plantation 289
14. Gehan Homes 282
15. Cheldan Homes 268
16. Ashton Woods Homes 258
17. American Legend-Belclaire 241
18. KB Home 233
19. Beazer Homes 217
20. Landon Homes 216

Link to Article:
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/headlines/20110217-some-winners-emerge-in-dallas-fort-worth-area-homebuilding-business.ece?action=reregister