Sales soften; homebuilders retreat from land deals, new permits

Friday, Sept. 22, 2006 | 7:30 a.m.

In another sign the housing market is softening, Las Vegas Valley homebuilders are backing out of land deals as new-home sales remain sluggish.

Builders are cancel ing options to buy land, dropping out of escrow on current deals, selling undeveloped land and walking away from land deals because they think they can negotiate better ones.

Centex Homes, which has trimmed its staff through layoffs and voluntary resignations, announced Sept. 14 that it has relinquished various options on land holdings. The company said it would continue to be flexible and make adjustments as needed with the changing market conditions.

"It's no secret that the housing market is in transition," Centex said in a prepared statement. "As a result, we've adjusted sales volumes to meet current demand and have relinquished various options on certain land holdings, which are projected to no longer meet the demand previously anticipated."

Centex said that the economic indicators in Las Vegas remain strong and that the industry is growing but at a slower pace.

Still, there are plenty of signs of a temporarily softer market. Homebuilders have dramatically increased incentives over the past five months, and analysts say they expect prices to fall as much as 10 percent over the next year.

The pain in the new-home market is driven by oversupply, high prices and uncertainty of buyers, said Tim Sullivan, a San Diego-based real estate analyst.

As prices drop and buyers move in for good bargains, the new-home inventory is expected to shrink over the coming year, and the market will return to its bullish ways in 2008, he said.

New-home closings continued to decline over 2005, according to the August statistics provided by SaleTraq. Although up more than 400 from July, closings fell 13 percent to 3,200 in August compared with August 2005. New-home closings have fallen four of the last five months as builders turned to swimming pools, washers and dryers and other incentives valued at tens of thousands of dollars to boost sales.

Builders have continued to cut back on permits, taking out 40 percent less in August than in August 2005. The number of new-home permits fell 17 percent for the year.

John Ritter, who heads developer Focus Property Group, said he's aware of builders, whom he declined to name, who aren't going forward with existing options or escrows in some cases worth several hundred thousand dollars or more. One of those involved a builder at one of his developments, which he declined to name.

Ritter called it a short-term phenomenon triggered by an oversupply of homes - both new and resale - and maintains the Las Vegas market has strong job and population growth. It's driven more by Wall Street, he said.

"Now the market is primarily built by large national companies, and the majority of those are public companies. Those companies react more strongly to the short-term market fluctuations than a local company would," Ritter said. "I think what you are seeing now that the sales have slowed down a little bit, analysts want to trim land positions."

Steve Bottfeld, executive vice president of Marketing Solutions, a housing market analyst, said he believes the cutback in land holdings is significant. If Centex is cutting back, then virtually everybody is, Bottfeld said.

"We are in the beginning of a market correction, and the builders are leading that market correction," Bottfeld said. "The market can't sustain excessive growth, and we have been in excessive growth mode for the past 12 months. The builders are reducing their exposure as the market cools and are pulling back to more realistic levels of inventory for which they can sell."

In July, Bottfeld predicted builders would stop constructing single-family subdivisions in the Las Vegas Valley within seven to 10 years. He said cutting back on land holdings reflects that because the price of land is too high and more suitable to mid-rise buildings of nine stories or less, he said.

"What I think it says is that for the first time major builders are looking at Las Vegas and saying maybe single family doesn't work here anymore," Bottfeld said. "Las Vegas has the smartest builders in the world. They have been extremely intelligent about managing during a period when other markets are experiencing not just enormous inventory but declining prices. They have done an extraordinary job of keeping prices up."

That means builders realize they are better off buying in Mesquite, Pahrump and other satellite communities, Bottfeld said.

Most builders declined to say whether they have cut back on land holdings. Among them is KB Home, which cited competition for not getting into any specifics.

"We continue to evaluate land holdings to ensure we are operating efficiently and effectively in the current market," spokeswoman Dawn Christensen said.

In recent months, KB Home cut back its staff by 10 percent, she said.

But one private builder, Astoria Homes, has no layoffs and is in escrow on some properties, said Siam Howe, Astoria's vice president of marketing.

"The market is not going to keep us from pursuing lands," Howe said. "The public builders get outside pressure that is truly not reflective of what's happening here."

Monica Caruso, spokeswoman for the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association, said five to six builders, whom she declined to name, have had layoffs over the last several months. That's not unexpected given that sales are down and customer traffic isn't there, so builders need fewer employees, mostly in sales, she said.

This story also appears today in In Business Las Vegas, a sister publication.