New Construction

NAHB Stops All Congressional Campaign Contributions

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!The National Association of Home Builders has announced that they are discontinuing their contributions to Congressional campaigns. They are doing this to protest the failure of Congress to address their concerns.
So let me get this straight. The money grubbing [...]

13Feb2008 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

Toll Brothers Holding Firm, Toll’s Daughter Walks Away

The Toll Brothers Inc. is in a public relations predicament. They have sold a home to the daughter of founder Bruce Toll. Now she has told the company that she is not planning on purchasing the 2 and a half million dollar home.
Yikes! It is bad enough that the company can not close many [...]

12Feb2008 | Tom Royce | 0 comments | Continued

Maryland Developer Colvin Donates 3 Million For Green Real Estate Program

A grant of 3 million dollars by Baltimore developer John Colvin and his wife will be used for a new green real estate program at the University of Maryland.
I am not a big fan of environmentalism for the sake of environmentalism. What I am a fan of though is taking the best of technology [...]

6Feb2008 | Tom Royce | 2 comments | Continued

Mexican Housing Boom’s While USA Housing Swoons

In an interesting twist, as the United States housing market is hitting the dip after a huge run up, the Mexican real estate market is taking off. The combination of new lending rules, a history of self financed homes, and a shortage of 6 million dwellings in the country is providing the spark for the [...]

23Jan2008 | Tom Royce | 5 comments | Continued

Toll Brothers Takes A Beating, But Keeps On Ticking

Toll Brothers, one of America’s largest builders, is still moving on even after posting an eighty million dollar loss. The company did better than analysts expected but still had a very rough quarter as contracts fell nearly 50 percent from the same period last year.
This is a good sign as it is forcing the [...]

6Dec2007 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

Housing Starts Slow - Hooray For Common Sense!

One of the biggest drivers in a slow housing market is too much inventory. Tighter inventory forces buyers to make decisions and keeps pressure on pricing. Too much inventory and buyers are afraid of making the wrong decision and pricing becomes much harder to hold. Economic common sense, right.
Except in the housing industry which it [...]

19Sep2007 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

Toll Brothers Expected to Take a 21% Hit For 3rd Quarter

Toll Brothers gave guidance this morning and announced that it expects a 21 percent drop in revenue for the 3rd quarter. The company reinforced that the slump in housing sales is being caused by tighter credit and difficulty selling previous homes. On a brighter note, they forsee some pent up demand building due to the [...]

8Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 0 comments | Continued

Construction and Mortgage Employment Down In California For June, 2007

The loss of 5,700 finance jobs across California and layoffs in the building industry created the lowest job gain report in recent history. While this is not a surprise it signifies that the real estate slowdown is starting to affect the rest of the economy.

Hiring in California was hit by a bad case of [...]

21Jul2007 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

KB Homes Sale Of Division To French Company Approved By EU

After KB Homes posted a loss due to slow domestic sales this past quarter, the company took steps today to shore up it’s cash on hand by selling a 50.01% share of it’s French division to PAI Partners for $783 million dollars.
To me this is a smart move on 2 fronts. With great optimism in [...]

6Jul2007 | Tom Royce | 0 comments | Continued

Trump To Buy Nicklaus Course Development In Fresno, California

I love commerce. What happens when a small developer bites off more than they can chew and goes belly up in a bad market. Why of course, the big fish come on in and buy their developments at a deep discount. That is what Donald Trump is doing with the Running Horse development near Fresno [...]

27Jun2007 | Tom Royce | 2 comments | Continued