Builder Online
From the article:
Home building's "next generation" of public companies rang in loud and clear this morning with the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange, as executives of TRI Pointe Homes opened the markets, and launched a bid to raise upwards of $230 million in new equity through the sale of 13.7 million shares via an IPO.
As a flurry of war-wizened public home builders bellies up to the earnings disclosure bar in turn this week, many of them reporting that finally, sales velocity, operating statistics, and new investment costs in lots and development are cranking into balance, an upstart newcomer to the crowd may raise some eyebrows.
Not for long, though.
TRI Pointe, founded by home building veterans--a former William Lyon Homes brain trust of executives--during the cataclysmic weeks of America's deepest housing downturn since the Great Depression, has about 350 home closings under its belt since it hung up its shingle, and current holdings of about 775 lots in Sourthern and Northern California, as well as Colorado. For simplicity's sake, divide that total lot pipeline in to seven operating communities, and give them a run-rate of 3.5 homes sold, per community per month, and you're looking at about 30 months or so of lot supply. The reasons for its meteoric prospects:
- Start-up capital, compliments of Starwood Capital's Barry Sternlicht
- Opportunistic land buying during the downturn years by a team
- Absence of legacy land issue to write down or work through