SF Gate
From the article:
In the depth of the recession, home builders stopped building. Sales offices closed. Buyers vanished. Developers mothballed housing projects.
But as the housing industry reeled from a global economic meltdown, Irvine's Standard Pacific Homes began to invest in the next housing boom.
By late 2009, the company had begun to buy land.
"If there's a silver lining to the lousy market, it's the land-buying market," former CEO Ken Campbell said during a 2010 call with industry analysts. In "2014, the market's going to be good, and you need to buy the land now for 2014."
Huge purchases
By the end of 2012, Standard Pacific had spent $1.6 billion, accumulating almost 20,000 home sites in seven states in three years. The company plans to spend from $600 million to $900 million more on land in 2013.
"You never know when you're at the bottom of the market," Todd Palmaer, the company's California and Southwest regional president, said recently. "But the outlook (in 2009) was tomorrow will be better than today, and we ought to be investing in land - aggressively."
Standard Pacific wasn't the only company making a land grab. Many other large home-building firms across the nation - particularly publicly traded firms - began investing in land during the recession.
Land was cheap. Many struggling developers were selling property at bargain rates to stay afloat. Some projects had gone bust and went back to lenders to be auctioned off to the highest bidders.
Developers such as Lennar, Pulte Group, DR Horton and KB Home - four of the nation's biggest builders - spent $500 million to $1 billion apiece buying land in the past year. Standard Pacific - ranked 13th in the nation by Builder Magazine in terms of sales - has been one of the most aggressive property buyers.
Standard Pacific spent $711 million buying lots and undeveloped land in 2012. Top-ranked builder DR Horton - which had four times the revenue as Standard Pacific, according to Builder magazine's latest survey - spent $785 million.