Irvine-based California Pacific Homes Inc., long one of Orange County’s larger homebuilders, has been scaling back operations for much of the past year as the housing market’s gone south.
Last year, the company effectively stopped building on the Irvine Ranch,the historic swath of Irvine Company land where most of California Pacific’s homes have been built.
There’s no mention of homes for sale, let alone impending projects, on California Pacific’s Web site.
Now there’s speculation,unconfirmed by California Pacific,that it might opt to mothball operations, at least until the market improves.
Recent buzz is that California Pacific is in the process of reducing its staff to a handful of employees, and those remaining will be focusing on wrapping up business, rather than looking for new opportunities.
Right now the talk is little more than industry speculation. Officials for the company could not be reached for comment last week.
California Pacific is one of many homebuilders scaling back operations because of pressure from falling home prices, lagging sales and an imploded mortgage industry.
In the Business Journal’s February list of OC’s largest homebuilders for 2008, builders here as a group saw a 24% decline in sales from 2007 to 2008.
California Pacific ranked No. 15 with 47 homes sold here last year. That was down 56% from a year earlier.
Last year was the first time California Pacific was out of the top 10 in at least a decade, as well as the first time in at least 10 years that the company failed to sell more than 100 homes here in a year, according to Business Journal data.
Home sale prices in Irvine for the company averaged $525,000 in 2008, a $90,000, or 15%, decline in price from its 2007 sales, according to Hanley Wood LLC data.
At the peak of the market in 2005, California Pacific sold close to 400 homes in Irvine, when it ranked No. 4 on our list. It employed more than 100 people here
at the time.
It has built nearly 2,000 homes in the county since 2000, primarily on land purchased from Newport Beach’s Irvine Co. As recently as 2006, the company was reportedly paying more than $2.3 million an acre for land approved for single-family homes in developments such as Irvine Co.’s Woodbury.
Early last year, the company was selling homes on four Irvine developments in Woodbury and Portola Springs, according to Hanley Wood.
California Pacific no longer owns land on the Irvine Ranch, according to sources.
The company is led by President Cary Bren, son of Irvine Co. Chairman Donald Bren. He’s been in the homebuilding industry for more than 25 years, most of those with California Pacific.
The homebuilder, previously known as The Bren Co., was started decades ago by Donald Bren.
He turned the company over to his son in 2000 when the younger Bren,who had been the company’s president for two years,bought the homebuilder’s assets for an undisclosed sum.
