BIS Was Quite a Hit

This year's Building Industry Show was a hit, with great programs and attendees who really were the "who's who" of the Southland's building industry. We tweeted live from the Big Builder Breakfast on Wednesday (check out @BIALAV on twitter.com) and Leslie Berkman of the Riverside Press Enterprise wrote a great article about the conference.

We hope you were able to attend and participate in the learning and networking. And mark your calendars now for next November!

Help Restore Conforming Loan Limits

NAHB has put out the call to all members to urge your Congressman to support extending conforming loan limits. The week of Nov. 7 is a District Work Period for the House of Representatives so there's a good chance your Congressman will be in the district office. NAHB asks you to arrange a meeting, call or email your Member and urge him or her to follow the Senate's lead and restore the higher conforming loan limits that expired on September 30.

All the information you need is available on this NAHB Web page.

Learn About Green Building Requirements at BIS

Besides all of the usual educational sessions and the opportunity to see the latest homebuilding products, this year's Building Industry Show will also include the first in a series of free L.A. County-sponsored training sessions to help residential and commercial building professionals comply with state and county green building requirements.

The session will be held from 1-5 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 9, at the Long Beach Convention Center. Remember that this year, BIS will be held on Wednesday and Thursday instead of its usual Thursday-Friday setting.

You can read more about the training in our press release and you can register online here.

L.A. County Gives Final OK to 2nd Phase of Newhall Ranch

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday gave the final approvals for Mission Village, the second phase of the Newhall Ranch project west of Santa Clarita. Lennar Corp., which owns the property, expects to break ground for the first phase, Landmark Village, early next year.

The Board's action is the latest step in a 15-year process compounded by litigation by environmental groups to obtain entitlements for the project. Lennar plans to build 4,000 homes in Mission Village and another 270 homes and more than 1,100 condos in Landmark Village. In all, more than 20,000 homes are expected to be built in the master-planned community. Here's the L.A. Times account and the Santa Clarita Signal story.

And speaking of Newhall Ranch, Steve Zimmer, who as executive VP for Newhall Land and then Lennar shepherded the project for 11 years until his recent retirement, announced recently that he has joined the real estate and business law firm of Gilchrist & Rutter, PC as Of Counsel. Zimmer will also continue to serve as a consultant to Lennar on the project.

You can read the full press release here.

Single-Family Housing Starts At Record Low Levels, but L.A. Times Sees Signs of Improvement

We have a couple of items for you today on the homebuilding front.

First, we're out with the latest housing start figures for L.A. and Ventura counties. The big news there is the continued dearth in single-family home construction locally and statewide. In fact, the Construction Industry Research Board now projects that just 21,500 single-family permits will be issued statewide - the lowest level on record.

But apartment construction is doing reasonably well, which has driven the total permit numbers up nicely in both counties — albeit from a very, very low level in 2010. To date, total housing starts in L.A. County are up 35 percent from last year, and in Ventura County they're up 45 percent.

The press release and links to local and statewide permit activity can be found here.

But there are continued signs the long winter in the homebuilding industry may be coming to an end.

The L.A. Times reported Sunday that there are early stirrings of recovery in the Inland Empire, which was hit even harder than coastal California by the Great Recession.

The article, by reporter Alana Semuels, points to foreign manufacturers opening shop there to take advantage of low land prices and the cheap dollar, increased retail sales and job growth. And on the housing front, it quotes a real estate investor who has snapped up 3,000 residential lots in Riverside County during the past three years. Jim Lytle's Rancon Group plans to sell them to homebuilders as the market recovers. He sees that happening within the next year or so:

We really believe we're at the bottom. We're already seeing pockets of strength in some of these locations.

And if you read to the end of the lengthy piece, it gets even better. The reporter interviews a young couple looking to buy a new home in Corona, priced some $300,000 less than a similar home in Orange County. And even Christopher Thornberg, an economist who was one of the first to predict the housing crisis would occur, is becoming a bit more bullish:

I do think that ultimately this will all get cleaned up. The cycle is being drawn out, but Southern California is moving again, and that's going to have an impact.

You can read the entire article here.