Lennar Shrinks From Pasco Market

WESLEY CHAPEL - At the peak of the housing boom, Lennar Corp. was building more houses than anybody else in Pasco County.

The Miami-based company, along with its subsidiary U.S. Home Corp., turned acres of former farmland into affordable middle-class communities with names like Bridgewater, Suncoast Meadows and Concord Station.

In 2005, as the boom peaked, every second building permit the county issued went to Lennar or U.S. Home. Many of those homes, in turn, went to investors aiming to make a fast buck in the rising market by flipping their never-lived-in houses.

All that ended last year, as the housing market came down around the heads of investors, builders and homeowners alike.

The results are visible at Bridgewater, Lennar's 3-year-old subdivision at Curley and Wells roads on the northern edge of Wesley Chapel. There, homeowners like Bobby Martin live beside empty houses, some apparently abandoned by their overextended owners.

Property records show nearly two-thirds of Bridgewater is owned by non-residents. Residents say that's a significantly higher proportion than what Lennar told them when they were buying into the community.

"They fooled a lot of people," Martin said of Lennar. He and his wife, Cheryl Spinks, were first-time homebuyers in 2004 when they bought their 1,700-square-foot home on Tagus Loop.

Lennar sold to investors from California, New York and elsewhere in Florida, all of them looking for a quick profit in an overheated housing market. Those sales helped make Lennar one of the nation's biggest builders in 2005 and 2006.

By the end of 2007, Lennar had lost nearly $2 billion as the housing market ground to a virtual halt.

Company officials declined repeated requests to discuss their plans for Pasco County beyond saying through a spokesman that they remain committed to doing business in the area.

Two years after it dominated the Pasco housing market, Lennar's future here is no longer clear.

Lennar is still building in Pasco, albeit at a pace far slower than the boom years.

In 2007, the company held fewer than 200 single-family building permits in Pasco - about one-tenth of the total issued for the year countywide. The majority of those permits were for Concord Station in Land O' Lakes.

Lennar still owns hundreds of acres near U.S. 41 and State Road 52 in the northwest corner of the Connerton development in central Pasco. It also owns dozens of vacant lots that are ready to build on in town house communities near Zephyrhills.

But like its competitor Pulte Home Corp., which backed out as primary developer at Wiregrass Ranch, Lennar is getting out of the cash-intensive business of turning virgin land into ready-to-build home sites.

It pulled out of a three-way deal with the developers of Bexley Ranch and Sunlake Plaza, a shopping center fronting on State Road 54, intended to help extend Sunlake Boulevard north from S.R. 54. The road's route takes it through Concord Station and into the heart of Bexley Ranch.

Lennar designed the road and eventually turned those plans over to Amprop Development Corp., which is building the plaza and the first phase of the road.

In November, after years of negotiating with county planners, Lennar sold its Epperson Ranch project on Curley Road to Tampa-based Metro Development Corp. Epperson was the largest chunk of 8,300 potential home sites Metro bought from Lennar in November.

Metro has yet to say what it will do with the 1,700-acre Epperson family homestead. Before it walked away from the project, Lennar had agreed to build part of a downtown-style town center projected to straddle Curley Road. The company also was committed to realigning Curley to the east to meet up with Meadow Pointe Boulevard at State Road 54.

The same day as the Metro deal, Lennar sold another 11,000 home sites across the country to investment bank Morgan Stanley. The two companies created a development partnership that gives Lennar 20 percent ownership and the first right of refusal on all developed lots, according to documents filed with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.

Lennar sold the land to Morgan Stanley at a 60 percent loss - a move that could let the company claim an $800 million refund on taxes it paid over the past two years, according to the company's year-end report.

Reporter Kevin Wiatrowski can be reached at (813) 948-4201 or