Mandating Green
The House of Representatives yesterday gave President Barack Obama triumph in a battle amid the broad front of his agenda. The House voted to legislate dramatic reduction in the U.S. emission of greenhouse gas. The New York Times reports:
The vote was the first time either house of Congress had approved a bill meant to curb the heat-trapping gases scientists have linked to climate change. The legislation, which passed despite deep divisions among Democrats, could lead to profound changes in many sectors of the economy, including electric power generation, agriculture, manufacturing and construction.
Victory in the war is another matter.
Ahead of the vote, Big Builder online editor William F. Gloede wrote an informed, impassioned, and somewhat biased opinion piece on how the bill would impact residential builders.
A snippet from Gloede’s essay:
The bill would, among many other controversial provisions, mandate increases in the energy efficiency of homes of 30% upon enactment and 50% above standards set under the 2006 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) by 2014, increasing by 5% in 2017 and increasing another 5% each three years thereafter until 2030. It would supercede state and local building codes regarding energy efficiency, withhold federal money from states deemed out of compliance and provide civil penalties for builders and/or homeowners. It would give significant new oversight and enforcement powers to the Department of Energy and the Cabinet-level post of Secretary of Energy, an unelected post that goes to a political ally of the President. And each day of occupancy of a structure deemed out of compliance would be treated as a separate violation. Ca-ching indeed. Not to mention dealing with officious federal bureaucrats on the jobsite.
The big problem with these targets–among a multitude of other problems with this bill–is that while they may be feasible, they are impossible as a matter of practicality. Unless builders build, and people buy, today’s equivalent of Buckminster Fuller geodesic-domes, attaining this level of energy efficiency would prove prohibitively expensive. Low-income housing?
The question is how much of the bill will survive the Senate intact. Ironically, construction trade groups have had mixed records in lobbying Senators for their interests.
It will be interesting to see which of the landmark rules as they apply to construction make it into law.
Willing to Settle for Yellow Weeds Over Scorched Earth? You Betcha!
The good news here is of the second-derivative nature. NYU econ icon Nouriel Roubini offers nine reasons for continued pessimism about the outlook for 2009, 2010, and well, just about every year after that.
Dr. Doom's Top 9
The crucial issue, however, is not when the global economy will bottom out, but whether the global recovery – whenever it comes – will be robust or weak over the medium term. One cannot rule out a couple of quarters of sharp GDP growth as the inventory cycle and the massive policy boost lead to a short-term revival. But those tentative green shoots that we hear so much about these days may well be overrun by yellow weeds even in the medium term, heralding a weak global recovery over the next two years.
For Roubini, the economy’s antonym for Houdini, continued doom has nine principal causes, which he happily enumerates here.
Still, that’s not as bad as it was a few months ago. Then, it would have been a Top 10 list.
Who’s Your Goliath?
My dad is and always was a fan of underdogs.
Before sports went berzerkly corporate, and all the New York team owners felt that it was their Manifest Destiny to use zillions of dollars to wrest championship rings from their wearers in other towns and bring them to the Big Apple, my father parked his loyalties solidly behind the longshots like the pre-Dave Debusschere Knicks against the Bill Russell-led Celtics, and the 1964 football Giants with a creaky Y.A. Tittle at the helm, and a new baseball team called the Mets.
So I got it from him.
Click for more info on Malcolm Gladwell
Which is why Malcolm Gladwell’s piece in the May 11, 2009 issue of The New Yorker was a must read. As is Gladwell’s typical article approach, blending historical research with a latter day examplar of a noteworthy phenomenon, it’s a scholarly deconstruction of a twist of fate, “How David Beats Goliath.”
For two reasons, the story should interest those of us whose fortunes or loss of them tie to the new residential construction market.
The first is that the central theme of the story relates to the plight of many organizations who make a living or not in the world of housing. They are David. Foremost, Goliath–the Philistine warrier whose defeat is almost inconceivable–is a real estate market and general economy withering in their effect on combatants large and small.
Gladwell’s yarn–backed by political science data on the number of wars won by undermanned, less powerful armies through history–tells how an underdog gets the upper hand. First thing they have to do is recognize they’re weaker and choose an unconventional strategy.
“When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win.”
Think Lawrence of Arabia; think Rick Pitino, or if you’re my dad, think Digger Phelps’ Fordham University [no name] Rams against a U Mass team led by Julius “Dr. J.” Erving. The unconventional approach often involves surprise and speed, causing confusion in the ranks of a more potent foe.
Surprise and speed, for home builders, translates into cash. Let everyone else remain paralyzed in a market debatably still deteriorating [or as the Caculated Risk blog asserts, "correcting"], and girding for further waves of foreclosure hell. Don’t play by the rules of the game that you have to price a new home to market. What’s the equivalent for home builders of a full-court press? Is it an Open Series or any number of the other companies’ new, more affordable floorplans that break previously ironclad rules about replacement costs? How do you change your company’s culture so that it can adapt and change its structure?
The other reason to read the article might just be to come to a new understanding of who Goliath really is. Certainly, at the moment, the barbaric, dreaded enemy in most of our minds is a marketplace of still halting consumer confidence, corporate fear of investment, and massive government overcompensation for the ills of free enterprise.
Interestingly, though, a subplot of the article focuses on another kind of David. In this case, it’s Vivek Ranadive, a Silicon Valley software developer who revolutionized data analysis by moving from “batch” collection to real time collection.
What has led and will likely lead many a real estate and residential construction company down the road to ruin is the absence of reliable data to say what is actually going on in the market. There are too many lagging indicators and undependable metrics that allow analysts to assert “the fundamentals are strong” and the “subprime damage can be contained.”
So, in a sense, Goliath is not only an outside force in the marketplace, but an enemy within. Data that is as local as the Census tract you’re competiting in and as instructive as a clock with the correct time is something most real estate players haven’t gotten around to developing or developing a belief in.
Some times, rules that need breaking are ones we’ve made up for ourselves.
Until a megalomaniac named George Steinbrenner came along, my father’s one exception to pulling for the underdog was his love of the New York Yankees. He knew lifetime and year-to-date averages and ERAs of most of the Yankees from about 1935 through The Mick and Whitey Ford.
But even when they were dominant, the Yanks had kind of an underdog’s salt of the earth sense about them. After all, one of the best of them said this. “The future ain’t what it used to be.” Bet you’ll never guess who.
Home builders rework how they offer value
Home building’s leading business executives have a message for the public. The message is this: We’ll meet you there, where you can feel confident in a new-home purchase right now.
Several dozen of those executives met this week in Chicago for the annual Builder 100 conference. If any of them had spent time in the fetal position during any part of the last two-plus years, you would never have been able to tell. A resilient bunch, although one whose ranks are sorely diminished and still shrinking.
Click image for access to Builder Executive of the Year article.
For those who were at the conference, a shining, if symbolic, moment of resilience was Pulte chief executive officer Richard Dugas braving a public appearance as Builder’s Executive of the Year despite an angry crowd of labor union protestors clamoring on the street outside the conference venue. Protesters brought their signature oversized inflatable pig and stood it among them as they picketed the hotel on East Superior Street. Dugas stood tall and talked of the determination of his company’s people to weather the balance of the economic storm and emerge an even stronger firm.
For those who were unable to attend the conference, it should be noted the mood was realistic; the consensus was that traffic and sales are up; there’s lots more work to do; and bigger opportunities are beginning to reveal themselves.
For two solid days, they talked about their message to the public: “We’ll meet you a good part of the way there.” They talked about what they want–mostly good headlines–and what they’re going to do about it next, give new meaning to the word “value.”
Value has been the missing link in the real economy and the housing economy. Loan-to-value. Cost value. Time value. Never missing a beat, however, has been the value of people. People, home building’s thought and practice leaders refrained over and over, are where you get value. It’s the one and only way to get home builders’ house offerings a good part of the way there for the public to feel confident about buying right now.
Builder 100 executives talked over and over about people, about ones they’ve lost, and ones they have fought to keep. People are where smarter processes and better margins and more persuasive selling occur. People are positive cash flow versus the incessant erosion of hard assets like land and invested capital. People are the only difference between sheer price reductions and value.
Every home builder there was talking about offering value. It’s practically a euphemism for offering lower cost products to home buyers who are stuck in a Catch-22 credit environment. The industry’s most dramatic gesture to date–the Pulte acquisition of Centex–is strategically a play for value. Pulte’s acknowledging, in part, that it needs a value brand in its portfolio, not just for now, but especially now as a ramp to recovery.
Pulte’s not alone. We’re seeing practically every company, from KB Home, to Meritage, to D.R. Horton, to Jagoe Homes, put greater emphasis on value. This means killing frills, figuring out smarter ways to buy materials and manufactured goods to put in the homes, and building faster yet with higher quality to cut down both on trades time and warranty issues.
The third key part of the new value proposition home building executives were focused on at Builder 100 is green. Clearly though, green as a business issue versus green as an altruistic motivation. More and more home builders, most of the bigger enterprises and an increasing number of regional and local companies including Artistic Homes in Albuquerque, and Hearthstone Homes of Omaha, are building energy efficiency beyond code into their homes.
There are a couple of reasons for this right now, and they’re related business objectives. One is the struggle to find any possible point of difference from competitors in their marketplace, and the other is to strike potential home buyers with a money-saving and emotional reason to buy, and get them to regard the “total cost of homeownership”–mortgage payments plus payments for utilities and other regular maintenance costs–as a new-home benefit. We learn at the Builder 100, of course, that the mortgage finance sector has apparently never heard of or been regardful of the “total cost of homeownership.” So when a buyer can get approved for a $200,000 home, but pays through the nose for utilities and other costs, the bank is unaware. But the same lender would scarcely approve that same buyer for a $250,000 loan for a new home that would save more than $50,000 in utility and maintenance costs during the term of the loan.
People, value, and green. These are the issues we’ll continue to focus on in the months ahead. Cracking the code of value–which home builders have begun to do with their new entry-level and other segment offerings–is how home builders can be confident in their simple message to the public: We’ll meet you there.
The Dash for Cash
We are still on our uncertainty kick, as it’s the only lasting phenomenon we both be certain of and need to plan around.
Consider a comment from investment guru Jeremy Grantham in an analysis The Big Picture blog’s Barry Ritholz is raving about for its keen guidance on “what we should expect over the next few years.”
“The uncertainties of the economy are so great that when the uncertainties of the stock market’s anticipation are laid on top of them, you simply must have big ranges of outcomes and hedge your bets.”
In home building, we see parallels to this principle.
The first quarter of 2009 has now made it clear that, by violently turning the screws on their gross margins, public home builders can at least stir the pot on home sale volumes, especially if it’s the right time of year and there are a couple of “x” factors like a California home buyer tax credit around to help.
Here’s how Citigroup’s home building sector equity analyst Josh Levin puts it.
While most investors entered [the just-concluded] earnings season focused on y-o-y (year-on-year) net orders, we think many were surprised by the q-o-q (quarter-on-quarter) gross margin deterioration reported by most home builders.
In the next three quarters of 2009–especially after there are no more $10,000 tax credits to hand out to Californians who step up to buy now–home building companies will be left even more to their own devices to get the job done moving inventory.
Seasonal forces, rock-bottom prices, record-low interest rates, and money back on income taxes for a home purchase have been working.
Take away seasonality, and add back the toll of continued economic weakness leading to a weak recovery, big layoff numbers, another wave–maybe two–of credit meltdown shocks in the form of widening credit card defaults and commercial real estate implosions, and one can get a sense of genuine challenges to the kind of consumer confidence it takes to make that largest of consumer purchases.
Home building companies that have made it to this point with a truck load of cash need a plan to try to expand their “range of outcomes,” even as they hedge their bets.
A truck load of cash, a delevered balance sheet, a skeleton-crew cost structure, a few tax-carryback induced inventory turns, and few if any false moves, serve as Part I of the plan–the part that has gotten the stronger companies to where they feel they still have cards left to play.
Part II is where a broader ”range of outcomes” comes clear, because even the stronger companies can’t sit around for the next three quarters waiting for the home buyer market to suddenly tilt their way. Both public and private companies with cash will in the next several months begin to try to slide in unobserved to pick of lots that pencil to new hurdle rates. Those lots, and the business plan around them, and the product on them, will all have one mission. Generate cash from sales.
Whatever goes on by virtue of “the visible hand” of government, home building operators need just one more critical part of the downturn’s plot line to kick into effect. Capitulation. “Ask” prices need to succumb finally to new, uncertain, sustainedly weak realities. And they will, but first only discreetly.
So, what we’ll be observing, even as clouds of uncertainty continue to sit over residential construction’s landscape, is the beginning of chapter that will see home buyers pop in and buy land, hoping finally that it’s cheap enough that they can put a home on it with one of their existing or new products that will get them inventory turns at a greater than one-or-two-a-month pace by the end of 2009.
We invite you now to jam our comment box with questions and challenges for leading home building executives, either about their companies, about the markets they operate in, or about the business environment ahead. who’ll gather in Chicago over the next several days for the 2009 Builder 100 Conference.
We hope to see you there, but if not there, then let us know here what you want to have these folks address in the days ahead.
Bottom Fishy
Are you the glass-is-half-full type, or a life-stinks-then-you-die kind?
A whiff of less-bad news here and there has bred with it a subtle change of expectations on the part of some economists, if not the eventualities themselves.
Clearly, though, economists are best at using two words to begin talking about even their strongest convicitons. Those two words? “It depends.”
Here’s a roll-up of economists’ opinions from the Orange Country Register’s “Lansner on Real Estate” that limbs out the Silver Liners from the Doom and Gloomers as to when that most-coveted of pieces of bottom might be in view.
Optimists
Fed Chair Bernanke:
- The worst of the recession has passed: “We continue to expect economic activity to bottom out, then to turn up later this year.”
Mark Zandi, chief economist, Moody’s Ecomomy.com:
- U.S. home prices will reach bottom by the end of 2009.
- “Notwithstanding the intensifying economic gloom, the bottom of the housing downturn is within sight.”
- U.S. home prices will fall another 11 percent on average before stabilizing.
- The Case- Shiller home price index will fall 36 percent from its 2006 peak to the bottom this year.
UCLA Anderson Forecast:
- Housing market to stabilize in late 2009, and “when it does, the contraction in residential construction will, finally, after more than three years, cease to be a drag on the California economy.”
- “As the housing market has completed most of its required adjustment prior to the downturn in general economic activity, it will not be as much of a drag on the recovery as experienced in previous recessions.”
- Orange County: Home prices stabilizing in 2009 and starting to rise in 2010. But appreciation rates remain in the single digits and prices will still be at 2004 levels in 2013.
- “This could well be the worst post-WWII downturn yet.”
- “If there is any good news in the picture it is that the correction in the housing market is almost complete.”
- “We are due for significant increases in unemployment through the 2nd quarter of 2010.”
- “Continued job loss in California is going to lead to more foreclosures and more uncertainty about the ultimate bottom in housing prices.”
California Association of Realtors:
- Recessionary conditions through the first half of 2009, “before we begin to see a turnaround in the second half of next year.”
- Prices down 28.4%. That’s revised from an earlier projection that prices would drop just 6% this year.
- Sales up 25%. CAR forecasts that 550,000 homes will sell in 2009, pretty good considering that the state was down to 347,000 sales a year in 2007. That’s revised from an earlier projection of 445,000 home sales.
Pessimists
Michael Carney, director, Real Estate Research Council of Southern California, Cal Poly Pomona:
- “I don’t see home prices leveling off in 2010. … The real reason we’re not going to see a recovery: The financing is not coming back for at least 5 years.”
Richard Green, director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate:
- “I’d say we’re at bottom if it weren’t for the fact that the jobs picture is so dim.” … (Thinks market will turn around in 2010.)
Stan Humphries, VP of data and analytics, Zillow:
- “I’m doubtful that we’ll see the bottom until 2010, and thereafter it’s increasingly clear that we’re likely to have a long bottom before we see meaningful recovery in home values.”
Construction Industry Research Board:
- 2009 is expected to be the worst year on record for new residential building permits.
- Just 63,400 units will be produced in 2009, down 3% from the 2008 record-low of 65,380 units.
- 2008 construction was 20% lower than the lowest point during either the 1980s or 1990s housing downturns.
- The low in the early ’90s recession was 84,656 units in ’93. The worst year during the early ’80s recession was 85,656 in 1982.
Hedge Clipped
Remember all the economists were saying in 2007 that subprime mortgage woes were contained and wouldn’t spill over into the broader economy?
Home Building’s Plot Thickens
Theory, circa 2006: Efficiently scaled home builders had enough elasticity in their systems to push their home prices down — and out ahead of — below the competing market. That would keep them in the business of sustainingtheir management, marketing, and home building infrastructures in well-oiled condition, turning inventory in a methodical manner, and generating cashflow on a virtuous time-released schedule.
Nice theory.
Circa Spring 2009, a third successive “Spring Selling Season” has turned into a third successive Hand Wringing Season. Even the best-scaled, balance sheet scrubbed public home builders are looking at every dollar in their cash till and gut-checking themselves as to whether that dollar has 2009’s name on it, or maybe 2010’s. Is that dollar “dry powder,” for opportunistic muscling for market dominance once the constipated land-transaction market finally gets moving again?
Or, just as likely, will that dollar need to try to attract other capital, get in the lengthening line of debt term renegotiation with nameless, faceless, and sometimes clueless lenders and bondholders who are beyond sweating over whether their risks have come to roost.
With KB Home’s bellwether earnings call a couple of weeks ago, the Los Angeles-based home builder’s CEO Jeff Mezger offered a ray of hope amid the brutal realism that prevails as to the difficult leg ahead. Eventually, one will finally stop saying, “It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” because despite the complex of negative feedback loops whirring us into more pain, it will finally be the worst it can get.
Second up in the bellwether home builder earnings call parade was Lennar CEO Stuart Miller. Recalling Stuart’s prognosis at this time of year since 2006, each time it was for continued deterioration in the market, with no signs of an end to the worsening. Now, at least, Mr. Miller, while not sanguine, is indicating that the bump-along-the-bottom period may be approaching.
The twist to the Circa 2006 theory above is that while the big home building companies are secularly a shadow of their former selves, they’re practically the only engine left in the barely pulsing new-home economy. They’ve morphed into quarter-sized versions of their 2006 heft, they’ve said to hell with methodical liquidation of inventory, and chewed off connections to immense land holdings like they’re coyote ugly one-night stands; they’ve scrapped and scrambled for sales; they’ve stormed Capitol Hill with bids to knock reason into the unreasoning, irrational political complex; they’ve excavated their balance sheets of huge wells of expense; and they’ve piled up cash reserves in hopes of being around for an Resolution Trust-like land reset goldrush.
Still, each percentage point of unemployment–coming as they do torturously on ladder-steps of months and quarters, and half-years–represents a new spread of distance between now and a recovery horizon.
We’re out on a limb, of course, but we believe we’re in the middle of the last non-starter spring selling season of the current cycle. Another tough eight month stretch and the rare rays of light that have sparked up the gloom will start adding up.
Meanwhile, we continue to be amazed at the fortitude, or maybe its just stubborn resolve of those who’ve stayed in the game with every trick in the Book of Housing Cycles. You must be in it more than for the money; it must be part of the DNA. Former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros, calls you “housers,” which is not a pretty word.
But what it means–he describes a young mother coming home to one of your homes with a newborn who’ll one day be going off to college–is why you continue to fight to be here.
That’s Fact, Circa 2009.
Reality Bites as Ratings Agencies Downgrade REIT Debt
From MULTIFAMILY EXECUTIVE, by Les Shaver: Single-family sneezes and the world economy, including apartment real estate investment trusts that are assumed to run contracyclical to single-family for-sale trends, get pneumonia. The reason this venue is called Housing Crisis is that the convulsion hits equally both the supply and the demand side of housing, whether you’re talking for-sale or for rent. And it’s hitting not only the balance sheet but also the daily and weekly access to normal working capital, assuming steady cash flow.
There’s an analysis on how tumbling fundamentals and squeezed access to credit have put a pall on REITs’ business and risk outlooks for the next stretch from Multifamily Executive senior editor Les Shaver.
S&P said the ratings were prompted by constrained access to debt and equity capital and concern that the struggling economy will put even greater pressure on cash flow. The agency said “heavy credit revolver usage (in excess of 50 percent), weak debt service coverage, and an over-reliance on earnings from fee-driven and/or asset sales activity are key areas of focus.” It also views the common dividend coverage as a “drawback,” given the need for REITs to preserve liquidity.
“Fundamentals in the multifamily sector are coming under pressure,” says George Skoufis, a director for Standard & Poor’s. “Their debt protection measures are kind of weak. In the previous cycle, they came in with a little bit more of a cushion. Their numbers are a little weaker, and their leverage is a little higher.”
Multifamily and commercial construction lagged the residential for-sale downturn, and many have another leg or two down as employment deteriorates and corporate earnings erode by virture of more conservative money habits among consumers and challenged consumer sentiment. Too, anecdotally anyway, demand for one- and three-bedroom apartments has decline while demand has stayed strong for two-bedroom apartments–an indicator of increased “doubling-up” among people who might choose to live with roommates to weather the downturn.
Consider the Source, but Also, Consider a Possibility
William Lyon Homes’ Southern California Divisions Report 39 New Homes Sold in Just Three Weeks Indicating A Possible Turn in the Tide
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., March 17 /PRNewswire/ — At what just might be an indication of the tide turning for homebuilders, William Lyon Homes reports a phenomenal 39 new home sales in just three weeks at its Southern California neighborhoods. Division President, Brian Doyle noted that the company’s new lower 2009 pricing, generous State and Federal Tax Credits* and FHA** loan programs have generated the increase in traffic at William Lyon neighborhoods resulting in growing sales activity and demonstrating that the housing market could be at the pivotal point to recovery.
“When the tax credits were authorized, we began to see interest among those individuals who needed to have their confidence restored in order to return back to the housing markets where they have been absent from for so long,” explains Doyle. “In the past three weeks, we have experienced sustained momentum at our sales offices telling us that Southern Californians are feeling more comfortable and that the tax credits make a big difference in how they perceive real estate today. I sense we are seeing people who have waited on the sidelines for a year and they are anxious to get on with their lives, anxious to make the decision to buy now and feel good about it.”
Doyle is quick to point out that increased affordability is driving first-time and move-up buyers to take advantage of these historical opportunities. “We are excited to assist potential buyers as their interest level has accelerated, moving them out of the ‘wait-and-see’ mode. We stand ready to help every buyer find a home they love and financing that fits their needs so they too can achieve the American dream of homeownership.”
Both the State and Federal governments believe that the tax credits will spur sales, reduce inventories, stabilize prices and prompt new construction to aid in recovery of the housing industry and overall economy. The $100 million set aside for State credits is projected to cover about 10,000 homes on a first-come, first-served basis, based on when homes close escrow. “As sales continue to escalate, there is a sense of urgency for buyers to purchase now and benefit from these unheard of tax credits,” adds Doyle.
To benefit from new lower 2009 pricing, generous State and Federal Tax Credits and FHA loan programs, visit a William Lyon Homes’ Southland neighborhood for complete details.
An amenity-rich environment surrounds residents at the Columbus Square neighborhoods in the villages of Columbus in Tustin. Cambridge Lane’s townhome-style residences start from the low $300,000s. Verandas‘ single-family detached floorplans present a great value at $569,990. Priced from the low $1 millions, Ciara is now selling its final two homes.
Priced from the low $200,000s, the gated Amador enclave in Rancho Cucamonga on Route 66 has attached triplex townhomes.
Priced from the low $200,000s, Adelina’s townhome designs in north Fontana offer one of the most affordable new home opportunities with private recreation.
Rosabella boasts a versatile collection of townhomes amidst gated Shady Trails in north Fontana with prices starting from the low $200,000s.
Residents of Sollara and Canela at Vintner’s Grove in Rancho Cucamonga enjoy gated privacy and exclusive recreation. Priced from the $300,000s, Sollara offers single-family detached homes, while the townhome style designs at Canela start from the low $200,000s.
Nestled behind dramatic entry gates, the townhomes of Serafina in Eastvale offer prices starting at $199,990.
With no Mello Roos, an extremely low 1.1% tax rate and access to great schools Vintage and Tradition at gated Arboreta offer the right financial savings in Glendora. Vintage’s townhome-style designs are priced from the high $300,000s, while single-level and two-story floorplans at Tradition start from the low $600,000s.
Priced from the low $400,000s, Sunset Cove’s attached floorplans in San Diego offer a central location near Mission Bay and downtown amenities.
Altair has the only new gated, attached tri-level townhomes in Santee and some of the most attainable new home opportunities in all of San Diego County at prices from the high $200,000s.
One of the last neighborhoods to be built at 4S Ranch in San Diego, Maybeck offers single-family detached designs priced from the low $600,000s.
*The State Tax Credit reservation is being allowed on a first-come, first-served basis, and funding is subject to be exhausted before the March 2010 deadline. William Lyon Homes is not responsible for confirming whether the state tax credit is still available, nor is giving legal, accounting or tax advice or consulting of any kind. The Federal Tax Credit applies to qualified buyers who close escrow prior to December 1, 2009. Please consult with your tax professional or attorney for complete details.
**FHA program guidelines and loan limits are subject to change. All loans subject to credit approval; restrictions may apply. Down payment, payment terms and rates vary based on market conditions and qualifying requirements.
William Lyon Homes’ recent news of mounting sales activity is an early indicator that California’s building industry is beginning to rebound. The company’s new lower 2009 pricing coupled with the State and Federal Tax Credits* and FHA** loan programs are three positive factors for home shoppers to consider as they return back to the housing market in the weeks and months ahead.
For more information on the variety of William Lyon Homes’ neighborhoods throughout Southern California, visit www.lyonhomes.com.
SOURCE William Lyon Homes http://www.lyonhomes.com