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Monday, May 25, 2026

Unsold Homes, Falling Land Values Drive Another Big Standard Loss

Irvine-based homebuilder Standard Pacific Corp. posted another big loss for the first quarter on nearly $200 million in write-offs in the value of unsold homes and undeveloped land.

The company said Monday it lost $216.4 million in the first quarter, compared to a loss of $40.8 million in the year-ago period.

Revenue fell 47% to $348 million.

Contracts to buy a Standard Pacific home fell 30% from a year earlier to 1,781.

Standard Pacific’s shares, already beaten down about 80% in the past year, were off about 21% on a market value of $216 million at the close of New York trading.

The company recorded after-tax impairment charges of $117.9 million in the quarter to account for falling land prices, as well as a tax asset valuation charge of $83.7 million

The company, whose debt and other issues have brought intense scrutiny from Wall Street in the past year, said it has reached a preliminary agreement with its banks to extend a waiver until Aug. 14 to violated terms of its credit lines.

“In the first quarter, the company’s management team pursued, with a heightened sense of urgency, initiatives to reduce inventories, carefully manage cash and reduce debt,” Chief Executive Jeffrey Peterson said in a statement.

Peterson took over in March from longtime Standard boss Stephen Scarborough.

The company paid down $22.5 million in debt and $127 million of joint venture debt in the quarter, Peterson said.

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Mark Mueller
Mark Mueller
Mark is the former Editor-in-Chief and current Community Editor of the Orange County Business Journal, one of the premier regional business newspapers in the country. He’s the fifth person to hold the editor’s position in the paper’s long history. He oversees a staff of about 15 people. The OCBJ is considered a must-read for area business executives. The print edition of the paper is the primary source of local news for most of the Business Journal’s subscribers, which includes most of OC’s major corporate and community players. Mark’s been with the paper since 2005, and long served as the real estate reporter for the paper, breaking hundreds of commercial and residential real estate stories. He took on the editor’s position in 2018.

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