ST Gate
From the article:
As home prices skyrocket, developers are embarking on a new California land rush.
That was underscored late Wednesday when luxury home builder Toll Bros. agreed to pay Shapell Industries $1.6 billion for its homebuilding business, primarily consisting of 5,200 sites in affluent coastal California markets, including the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Orange County and Carlsbad.
"The tremendous land portfolio that the Shapell family has amassed over decades in California presents an amazing opportunity for Toll Bros.," Toll CEO Douglas Yearley said in a statement.
More than 97 percent of the Shapell sites are entitled, meaning they have received local permits for construction to proceed. Such ready-to-build land is at a premium.
"The key word there is 'entitlement,' " said Christopher Thornberg, principal of Beacon Economics. "For a number of years (during the real estate downturn) when home-builders were in a complete panic, they weren't spending money on anything in California. This is a state where it can take five or six years to entitle property because of all the lawsuits and NIMBYs and other nonsense. Now the market is clearly moving; California is one of the fastest-growing economies out there. Those 5,200 entitled lots are a gold mine."