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DAN DeWITTWith improved access to Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, more large builders are staking claims in Hernando.
Pulte Home Corp. has big plans for Hernando County.
The company, by some measures the largest home builder in North America, has won tentative approval to build an 807-home subdivision called Trillium near the Suncoast Parkway north of County Line Road.
This may be just the beginning for Pulte - as well as for other industry giants.
"It's just that time to go to Hernando," said Pulte's Tampa division president, Jim Bowen.
"The Suncoast Parkway provides a viable and easy commute" to Tampa and even parts of Pinellas County, Bowen said, and homes in Hernando County will attract "people who are looking for good value homes and good locations."
The presence of large builders in Hernando is not entirely new. Timber Pines was developed, starting in the 1980s, by U.S. Homes, which is the only company with a bigger presence in Tampa Bay than Pulte, said Marvin Rose, publisher of Rose Residential Reports.
Pulte, which sold 916 homes in the Tampa Bay market in 2002, is the area's second-largest builder, Rose said. Its developments include Lexington Oaks, on State Road 54 in Pasco, and South Point in Hillsborough.
Another similarity between Trillium and Timber Pines is that Pulte, like U.S. Homes, will build the houses in its own development, at least initially, said Bowen.
One crucial difference between them, though, is the developments' demographics.
While Timber Pines attracted mostly retirees, Trillium is seeking working families, especially those who commute to Tampa, Bowen said, and may offer homes for as little as $125,000.
That may not seem inexpensive for Hernando County, where the median home price is $104,000. But it will seem like a bargain to home buyers from Pasco and especially Hillsborough, where the average price of a new house is $202,000, Rose said.
And, though Pulte builds homes in all price ranges nationally, in Tampa Bay it mostly concentrates "on kind of the entry-level, moderately priced homes," said Doug Tripp, the former president of the Tampa division Pulte.
The company has built 330,000 houses since it was founded in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., in 1950, according to its Web site. It grew to its current size partly because of good marketing and training programs, said Lewis Goodkin, a real estate consultant from Miami.
One of the company's techniques, for example, was to hold meetings at apartment houses, where it explained to residents the advantages of owning a house rather than renting an apartment.
"They were one of the early companies that got into training in quality control, and they were very innovative in their marketing," Goodkin said.
More recently, Pulte has grown by acquiring developers of retiree communities, including Del Webb, Goodkin said.
During their meeting last month, most of the members of the county Planning and Zoning Commission treated Pulte's arrival as good news.
The commission tentatively granted the zoning changes the company needed to build on its 287-acre parcel, setting the stage for the County Commission to hear the proposal at its land use meeting next week.
Not everybody was happy, though. Some neighbors worried about the stress the development would put on local resources. So did Anthony Palmieri, the only Planning and Zoning commissioner to vote against the proposal.
"I'm concerned about the water. I'm concerned about the traffic. I'm concerned about the schools," Palmieri said.
- Dan DeWitt can be reached at 352 754-6116. Send e-mail to dewitt@sptimes.com