Orange County homebuilders are on the rebound, in terms of sales if not stock price.
The region’s contingent of publicly traded homebuilders and developers cited increased demand and improving market conditions during their first-quarter earnings announcements earlier in the month.
The beginning of the year brought “a rebound in demand,” said New Home Co. (NYSE: NWHM) Chief Executive Larry Webb during the company’s earnings call.
“We feel much better about our business today than we did at the end of the fourth quarter,” said Webb, whose company’s stock has fallen in half since last summer, to a value of about $85 million as of last week.
The Aliso Viejo-based firm reported a 25% increase in home sales to $99.2 million during the first quarter, boosted by an 18% increase in new home deliveries and a 6% increase in average price.
New Home projects second-quarter home sales revenue to be between $110 million and $130 million, in line with the $117.5 million it reported last year.
William Lyon Homes’ (NYSE: WLH) first-quarter revenues of $453.8 million was up 22% from the year prior and beat expectations by about $45 million.
Executive Chairman Bill H. Lyon said during a conference call that the market “has demonstrated signs of recovery from the market pause that occurred in the back half of 2018,” bolstered by lower interest rates and stronger economic conditions.
The Newport Beach builder, like New Home, has seen its stock tumble over the course of the last year. In last week’s edition I reported on the possibility of the Lyon family taking his company private again as a remedy to that issue.
William Lyon and New Home plan to increase supply of lower-priced inventory. In Southern California, “trends were better at our more affordably priced communities which is consistent across all of our markets,” said New Home Chief Operating Officer and President Leonard Miller.
Irvine master developer FivePoint Holdings LLC (NYSE: FPH) also reported better-than-expected first-quarter revenues and “a healthy home buying environment,” specifically at its Great Park Neighborhoods development.
The Irvine-based company recently received approval to build an additional 1,056 homes at the project, bringing the total allotment to 10,500 homes and 7.7 million square feet of commercial, “out of which approximately 4,600 home sites and 3.7 million square feet of commercial space remain available for future sale.”
Its shares rose to its highest level since last October after its earnings announcement; it has a value of about $1.3 billion.
For more on FivePoint and its executive team, see our story on page 8.
