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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: shades who wrote (40722)	9/6/2005 12:11:31 AM
From: Doughboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Home Builders: Unlikely To Enter Mkts Affected By Katrina By JANET MORRISSEY September 1, 2005 3:32 p.m. Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK -- Hurricane Katrina's devastating path through Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama will have little impact on the nation's largest publicly traded home builders, as most do not build homes in those markets. And even though demand for housing will likely surge in those areas in the wake of Katrina's destructive journey, many have little interest in entering those markets. "Probably not," said Technical Olympic USA Inc. (TOA) Chief Financial Officer David Keller. "There's a reason the large builders weren't in Louisiana (in the first place)," he said. Builders don't see these states as strong housing markets based on demographics, the local economies, and general business conditions. One executive described the business environment as an "old boy's network" that requires significant local connections and relationships to get building permits and hire local construction contractors. Some home-building executives speculate that much of the housing demand in Katrina's aftermath will be for rebuilding, remodeling or refurbishing existing damaged homes rather than buying new ones. "We're not remodelers and rebuilders. That's not what we do," said Gordon Milne, chief financial officer at Ryland Group Inc. (RYL). "So I don't think we're going to branch out into that kind of business." Milne said his company drafts business plans based on lots that will contain hundreds of homes. "It's not like they're going to bulldoze it and give us 100 lots to build 100 homes and let people pick," he said. Instead, he said each homeowner would likely want to negotiate whether each home is refurbished or rebuilt. "It's a lot different when negotiating one at a time, where somebody wants a brick, somebody wants a two-story and .. everybody would want like a custom home being built for them on their lot." Keller said hurricane-related building isn't easy. He recalls the problems following Hurricane Andrew in which there were delays in getting insurance settlements and a big scramble to get contractors. Still, some builders are looking at the situation. "It's only three or four days after the event - it's too early to kind of put anything on the table," said Ken Smalling, spokesman for Centex Corp. (CTX), who doesn't rule out the possibility of entering these markets. KB Home spokeswoman Heather Reeves also said it's "too early" to consider this option. She said her company is focusing on ways it can help in the relief effort. -By Janet Morrissey, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-2118

To: shades who wrote (40722)	9/6/2005 1:54:43 AM
From: patron_anejo_por_favor	Respond to of 306849

TEOTWAKI isn't TEOTW...the "AKI" can be quite a wide range of outcomes of varying severity. I think that's the point yer missing (I'm not really in the TEOTWAKI camp, humans are amazingly clever and adaptable. As many have pointed out, predicting the end of the world is problematic, because it's usually a one-time event....<G> In a sense, every new day is the end of the world as we knew it...something changes every day, no?