In the first quarter, home builders D.R. Horton, Pulte Homes, Centex and Weyerhaueser again posted large losses due largely to the avalanche of lower-priced foreclosure properties, but all of them said they are on their way to recovery as they increased their home building activities in April.
D.R. Horton, currently the country’s largest homebuilder, said its losses in the first quarter dropped, but it is still struggling against cheaper foreclosure properties, high inventories of new homes, lack of affordable home credit and rising unemployment levels.
Meanwhile, Pulte Homes and Centex Corp., set to combine operations in 2009 to create the nation’s biggest homebuilder, said they were able to lower their losses in the first quarter, but they are still being devastated by low-priced foreclosure properties and the high inventory of unsold new homes.
Donald Tomnitz, chief executive of D.R. Horton, compared the problems of foreclosure properties, job losses and others as head winds that are battering the company’s foreclosure home sales.
Tomnitz’s statements are in contrast to reports that consumer confidence levels are improving and that signs pointing to recovery from the recession are growing.
Richard Dugas, Jr., chief executive of Michigan-based Pulte, explained that he cannot yet state that housing prices are bottoming as there are still large inventories of foreclosure properties.
Even so, both D.R. Horton and Pulte Home increased their orders of new homes in the first quarter by over 50 percent, compared to last year’s fourth quarter. Centex Corp. also added that its sales pace has been steady in the first quarter.
Pulte posted a $514.8 million loss in the first quarter, representing a loss of $2.02 per share. It also marked a decrease from the $696.1 million loss in last year’s first quarter.
Pulte’s sales fell by over 50 percent from last year’s first quarter to 2,147 houses, with the average home sales price falling to $263,000.
In the first quarter, Centex’s loss decreased to $402.8 million from its $910.5 million loss in last year’s first quarter.
D.R. Horton posted a loss of $108.6 million in the first quarter, a big drop from its loss of $1.31 billion in last year’s first three months.
Washington-based Weyerhaueser increased its loss to $264 million in the first quarter, but its CEO Dan Fulton is hopeful the market is nearing recovery from foreclosure properties because it increased its home sales in April.
Search Foreclosure Properties by City:
back to top
Comments on this entry are closed.