Time to Love Building Two Custom Homes Per Year

The market's still above 13,000, but it's a bad day to be a Big 5 Homebuilder. Yesterday Centex announced that its Q4 2006 profits (free)fell 49% due to a 14% drop in closings (The stock promptly dropped $1.72/share). It seemed unnecessary to also call out an extreme rise in cancelled contracts across the Ryland/Centex/Lennar/Pulte/KB board (and Champion too, if you please), despite price decreases and increased buyer incentives.

Closer to home Pulte has pulled out of their plan to build 500 condos in SOMA at the San Francisco Tennis Club site, after many months of hand-to-hand with a well-organized and well-represented area group.