Newport Beach’s Landsea Homes Corp. (Nasdaq: LSEA) has kicked off 2022 with a major corporate acquisition, buying Hanover Family Builders, an Orlando, Fla.-based homebuilder, in a deal worth almost $250 million.
Landsea said it is paying $179.3 million in cash, plus the assumption of $69.3 million in debt for Hanover, which primarily builds in Central Florida.
Started in 2017, Hanover was founded by owners who previously created and sold two other builders in Florida, Royal Oak Homes and Cambridge Homes.
In 2021, Hanover topped $200 million in sales, closing 632 homes at an average selling price of $328,323.
Landsea topped $1 billion in sales last year, the first time the builder’s done so in its eight years of operations.
Nearly 13K Lots
Hanover ended the year with more than 4,100 lots under control, 469 homes in backlog worth more than $200 million and 18 active communities, according to Landsea.
“With the closing of this transaction, we have increased our lots under control to more than 12,800 and further accelerated our asset-light strategy by increasing our controlled lots to approximately 50% of our total lot inventory,” according to John Ho, Landsea’s CEO.
“We have also grown our active community count by more than 50% from our Dec. 31, 2021 year end,” Ho said at the time of the deal’s announcement.
Orlando Magic
The transaction “vaults Landsea Homes into one of the leading positions in the Orlando area, a very attractive homebuilding market, and reaffirms our strategy of quickly becoming one of the top homebuilders in the markets we serve,” Ho said.
Landsea went public at the start of 2021, and now sports a market valuation of nearly $370 million. It’s currently the most valuable publicly traded homebuilder based in Orange County.
The builder entered the Florida housing market last year, with the $55 million acquisition of Vintage Estate Homes.
Along with Florida, its primary markets are now Arizona, Northern and Southern California, and Texas.
