Thread: Calif. homebuilder acquires land in San Diego

Calif. homebuilder acquires land in San Diego

By Lily Leung
February 8, 2011 at 2:45 p.m.

A Santa Ana-based homebuilder has closed 13 land deals that represent 1,300 housing units throughout California, including two new projects in San Diego County. (See a full list.)

Leaders at City Ventures, which has a San Diego division, said the latest acquisitions are part of an 18-month plan to strengthen the company's presence in "California's rapidly recovering housing economy," said City Ventures CEO Mark Buckland.

The San Diego projects include a 19-home development in Encinitas priced in the low $900,000s and a 53-unit townhome project in Carlsbad priced in the mid-$400,000s.

Company officials chose two sites in San Diego County because the area has a diverse economy, steady job sectors, such as biotech, and good schools, said City Ventures spokesman Tony Pauker.

Why acquire land during the worst year on record for homebuilders?

"We don't suffer from legacy loans or legacy projects," said Pauker, who added that City Ventures has been around for about 18 months.

He added, "We know the market cycle was way down and that allowed us to enter...It seemed like the right time to jump into the market. Even if it was going down, it didn't exactly matter because we didn't have problem projects in San Diego."

The other recent acquisitions are in different parts of the state, from Sunnyvale in the Silicon Valley area to French Valley in Temecula.

City Ventures, a company of 45, has three active projects in San Diego County, in Scripps Ranch, La Costa and Rancho Santa Fe.

The U.S. homebuilding sector got some encouraging news in late January from the the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. A report showed that monthly sales of new single-family homes in the U.S. increased 17.5 percent in December with the West accounting for most of the growth. (See the U-T's coverage.)

In context, new home sales for 2010 ended up at the lowest level on record. They fell 14 percent to an annual rate of 321,000 — the worst year since records began in 1963.

Despite the sluggish market, Pauker and his colleagues are confident there is a market for their San Diego properties.

"In the county, there's very, very little high-quality new construction," he said. "Any construction in that sub-market is very, very desirable."

Lily Leung: (619)293-1719; lily.leung@uniontrib.com; Twitter @LilyShumLeung

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011 ... san-diego/

Yeah! Lets build more, more , MORE houses! (Despite the fact that we are in a water shortage and our infrastrructure can barely keep up. Be sure and plant lots of that pretty SOD to waste precious water on too!)