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Less Risk, Fast Sales Appeal to Publicly Traded Firms
Orange County's largest masterplanned developments are driving a bulk of the recent new-home sales in the region, but plenty of builders are also finding success buying land for residential projects off the beaten path.
Half of the county's top 30 builders by sales last year generated at least a portion of their 2014 sales from infill land sites in existing urban communities where land has been dedicated to new uses, according to Business Journal data (see list, page 20).
Notable entries on this year's list include Brandywine Homes, No. 17 on the list, an Irvine-based builder that specializes in infill development and has projects moving ahead in land-constrained markets, such as Yorba Linda and Costa Mesa.
Likewise, Irvine-based City Ventures Inc., No. 14, a 6-year-old builder whose business strategy embraces taking on hardto-entitle infill sites larger builders tend to shy away from, notched 75 sales in the county last year and has projects for sale or in development in Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa and Yorba Linda.
Large builders, including some of the country's biggest publicly traded ones, have occasionally been tapping OC's infill development sites for a portion of their recent sales, although their strategies in the area differ.
Miami-based Lennar Corp., the country's second largest homebuilder by sales last year, ranked No. 6 on the Business Journal's list for sales last year. A large part of the sales came from the massive development going on at Great Park Neighborhoods, where it's an initial investor.
The company, which has large operations in Aliso...