Home Builders List

Last year there was talk that Taylor Morrison might be thinking about leaving its North American division in the hands of another company while they were also in the process of building new homes and communities in Texas. At the end of March the rumor finally came true.

Under its corporate name of Taylor Wimpey, the organization sold off all of its operations, which include Taylor Woodrow Holdings and Taylor Wimpey Holdings of Canada Corp., to TMM Holdings Ltd. Partnership, which is the investment side of JH Investments and a couple of other companies for $957 million. That includes Taylor Morrison, which has more than 280 communities throughout six states and is based in Scottsdale AZ.

Suffice it to say this is a big deal, and it highlights just how rough the housing industry had it over the past few years. When the original companies of Taylor Woodrow and Morrison Homes merged in 2008, they became one of the largest home building companies in the world at a time when the yearning for new homes was on the way down. Taylor Wimpey borrowed heavily to get into the deal, and will use proceeds from the sale to help pay down their debt. They will also concentrate more on their holdings in the United Kingdom, where housing has also suffered, but not to the degree it has in the U.S., and where even before the sale they were listed as only the #3 home builder in their country.

What this does for Taylor Morrison is gives them the reserves needed to ride out the worst of the housing debacle while still being able to provide more new homes in communities they believe are ready to sustain them in both the United States and Canada. It seems that both entities are extremely happy with the move, and in our opinion it was probably a life sustaining move beneficial to the American housing market long term.

The first quarter didn’t bring the kind of relief to the housing industry that some people had hoped for. As a matter of fact, things got worse for many, and some analysts came out and said that the industry might not recover until 2013; that’s scary.

Home builders didn’t do well either. Here’s a brief recap of some home builders that ran into problems in the first quarter.

Pasquinelli Homebuilding LLC, based in the Chicago area, filed for bankruptcy protection after a horrible 1st quarter. They started building homes in 1956 on the Chicago South Side and eventually expanded to building homes in 7 states. They filed stating they have liabilities of between $10 and $50 million.

KB Homes suffered a 1st quarter loss based on the fact that they’re building fewer homes and had a much lower net orders. The loss was $114 million, as compared to $55 million last year. They believe they’re ready to turn the corner in the 2nd quarter as they state there’s been more interest from consumers for new homes; we’ll see.

Lennar Corp also suffered a major loss from the first quarter of its share price after its profits dropped from the previous quarter. Overall they still made a profit of around $27 million, and compared to their loss of around $6 million from last year at the same time that’s not bad. However, their revenue dropped 3% from the previous quarter, which led their stock price to drop 5%.

D.R. Horton has been fined more than $70,000 for hazardous conditions at a work site in the Denver, CO area. Supposedly, workers were subjected to the possibility of falling hazards and inadequate training on how to use forklifts.

And after two reports, the first coming from the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index showing home prices dropped in 19 cities from December to January, along with a report from the Commerce Department that new-home sales plunged in February for the third month in a row, most major home builders saw a drop in their stock price. Some of those were:

D.R. Horton Inc. dropped 2%;

MDC Holdings Inc. dropped 2%;

KB Home dropped 2%;

Ryland Group Inc. dropped 2%.