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Metro scoops up 1,000 lots

The investment group is using the housing market slump to buy up land on the cheap.

By JAMES THORNER, Times Staff Writer
Published December 29, 2007

A month after buying 8,300 home sites from Lennar Corp., Tampa's land-hungry Metro Development Group has closed on another 1,000 lots, this time from M/I Homes.

Metro and M/I have been joint venture partners in the Cypress Creek neighborhood near Sun City Center in southeastern Hillsborough County. Without disclosing a purchase price, Metro announced Friday it was buying out its partner's share of the land.

"They came to us and said, 'We'd love to get rid of this asset and you're the natural buyer,"' Metro vice president Rob Ahrens said Friday.

M/I hasn't posted the spectacular losses of builders like Lennar, but the Ohio company said Florida accounted for $22-million of its $35-million loss in the third quarter ending Sept. 30.

Formed in 2003 by Canadian developer John Ryan, Metro has been scooping up lots on the cheap from builders hemorrhaging money in Florida's slumping housing market. A New York private equity firm supplies financing for the Metro deals.

Metro has about 30,000 lots in Florida it will sell to builders when the housing market recovers, which Ryan estimates will happen in 2010.

Only 100 homes have been completed at Cypress Creek, a 562-acre development off Interstate 75 approved for 1,400 single-family homes and 825 town homes.

Metro's biggest single purchase to date was the Lennar acquisition. About 3,900 of the 8,300 lots were at Pasco County's Epperson Ranch. Another 530 home sites were at Waterleaf in Riverview.

James Thorner can be reached at thorner@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3313.

New home sales take hard fall

The housing market plunged deeper into despair last month, with sales of new homes plummeting to their lowest level in more than 12 years.

The slump worsened even more than most analysts expected, heightening fears that the country might be thrust into a recession.

New-home sales tumbled 9 percent in November from October to a seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of 647,000, the Commerce Department reported Friday. That was the worst sales pace since April 1995.

By region, sales fell in most parts of the country. In the Midwest, new-home sales plunged 27.6 percent in November from October. Sales dropped 19.3 percent in the Northeast and fell 6.4 percent in the South. In the West, however, sales rose 4 percent.

Associated Press

[Last modified December 28, 2007, 22:51:49]