The Tucson office of the Land Advisors® Organization (LAO), announced the successful closing of ±70 acres with a preliminary plat for 242 lots. Located on the north east corner of Sanders Road and Barnett Road in Marana, Arizona. Will White of Land Advisors Organization in Tucson negotiated the transaction for the buyer.

The acreage was sold by the Barnett Family Trust and purchased for $2.25 million ($9,298 per lot) by Randall Martin – Randy Bury, Founder and President. This acquisition is Bury’s 4th major acquisition in the north Marana area since 2011.

“We’ve had a long relationship working with Land Advisors and Will White,” stated Randy Bury. “I appreciate their experience and diligence in getting our deals closed.”

In another transaction, Maracay Homes took down five more lots of an option agreement in Tortolita Vista for $987,088 ($197,418 per lot). Located north of Tangerine Road on Thornydale, the one acre sites feature lush desert open space. Maracay is building a total of 54 homes in Tortolita Vista that began October 2013. Will White of Land Advisors Organization in Tucson represented Maracay in the rolling option.

For additional information regarding this transaction contact White at 520.514.7454.

To learn more, see RED Comp #3592 and #3563.

KB Home is planning a new infill project at Prudence and Escalante in the eastside of Tucson; Kinneson Overlook is named after the arroyo in the area. Property was re-platted from 51 to 46 SFR lots, 45’x 100′ by the seller, OT Huachuca, an affiliate of Oasis Tucson (Jim Campbell, president). The subdivision had a prelimary plat when it sold.

The 6.84 acre Kinneson Overlook sold for $828,000 ($18,000 per lot). Both buyer and seller were self-represented in the transaction.

To learn more, see RED Comp #3614.

Mattamy Homes bought 15 SFR lots at The Enclave at Stone Canyon V for $2.78 million ($185,000 per lot) from Enclave Construction & Sales (David Williamson, manager). Located in Stone Canyon at Rancho Vistoso, north of Tortolita Mountain Circle and east of Hohokam Village Place in Oro Valley, the property is also known as the Stone Canyon Donut Hole due to its vicinity to Stone Canyon Golf Course. Surrounded by the Stone Canyon Golf Course, the subdivision sits on approximately 28 acres of vacant land and features single-story homes on lot sizes ranging from 10,000- to 15,000-square-feet with 80 foot frontages.

Thrac Paulette with Cantera Real Estate in Tucson represented Mattamy and can be reached at 520.904.5055 for more information.

To learn more, see RED Comp #3433.

Meritage Homes is active in Stone Canyon, and recently purchased a 48-acre parcel of land there for $1.8 million ($50,000 per lot) with plans to re-plat the property from 38 lots to 36-home sites in this northwest community.

The seller was Diamond Venture (Bill Kelley, CFO). Both buyer and seller were self-represented in the transaction. Meritage Homes plans to develop 36-lots for customized home sales.

To learn more, see RED Comp #3488.

Lennar Homes purchased 53 platted lots and common areas in the Robb Hill subdivision for $1.65 million ($31,132 per lot), another infill project within the City of Tucson limits. Lots are 50′ x 115′ on approximately 12.5 acres, located to the east of Pantano on Speedway. Bob Solfisburg was with Tucson Realty & Trust when this transaction was completed and is now with JBS Real Estate. Solfisburg can be reached at 520.977.9006 for more information.

To learn more, see RED Comp #3524.

Richmond American purchased a 30.6 acre parcel located at the southeast corner of Sandy Desert Trail and Cortaro Farms Road in Marana for $1.38 million ($20,000 per lot). Minutes from Interstate 10, Willow Vista offers breathtaking views of Arizona sunsets over the Tucson Mountains and lies within the Town of Marana and the Marana Unified School District.

The seller, Heater Investments of Tucson (Joe Heater) had rezoned the property, which had previously been platted for 35 – 16,000-square-foot lots under R-16 zoning. The new plat provides 69 – 7,200-square-foot lots under R-6 zoning, yet still preserving more than 40% of the site as Natural Undisturbed Open Space (NUOS), with greater attention to maintaining the wildlife corridors throughout the property. Besides rezoning, the seller provided the topography and boundary survey and Final Plat.

To learn more, see RED Comp #3528.

In another option agreement, DR Horton purchased 9-SFR lots at Sunset Pointe at Midvale Park for $305,280 ($33,920 per lot). Horton is buying a total of 55-lots in this subdivision platted in 2007, with 3,600-square-foot minimum lot sizes. The seller is D.B.S. Midvale, LLC (Bill Estes, Jr.) of Tucson. Dan Feig and Aaron Mendenhall of Chapman Lindsey represented D.R. Horton.

Feig and Mendenhall should be reached at 520.747.4000.

To learn more see RED Comp #3494.

Randy Bury honored by Builder and Developer Magazine

Scottsdale, Ariz. –  Randy Bury, president and founder of Randall Martin, was recently named by Builder and Developer Magazine in the Who’s Who in Home Building for Bury was recognized for his leadership in the industry and 20 years of experience developing residential communities in the southwest.

“It is always an honor to be recognized by your peers,” said Bury. “I know I am fortunate to get to do the work I do and to have the opportunity to work with some incredible people. It’s a tough business, but also very rewarding.”

Randall Martin is a Scottsdale based company that specializes in land investments, real estate advising and real estate developing and homebuilding.

The company provides expertise and advisement on real estate and land investments ranging from $1 million to over $20 million and has a successful history in real estate development and negotiation, helping clients and partners to maximize their profits.

Before focusing on advisement and investment, Bury generated over $140 million in revenue from real estate development and homebuilding under the Randall Martin Home brand. Prior to launching his own venture, Bury spent nearly a decade working for Pulte Homes where he held positions as Division President for the company’s Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tucson regions. In his more than 20 years in the industry Bury has developed and built thousands of homes throughout Arizona, Nevada and California.

To learn more about Randall Martin and its real estate investment and development projects and services, visit randallmartin.com or call 480-993-7690.

We all rely on a monthly parade of housing reports to get a sense of the state of the U.S. housing market, thinking that the data offers some-instantaneous insight in much the same way a stock market index does while trying to extrapolate conditions for our own local housing market.

But the information available is hobbled by the very nature of the market itself. Building houses is a slow, lumbering, inefficient process that takes years to complete entitlements before dirt can be moved and a house constructed on the site.

There can also be a significant lag time from a meeting of the minds between a builder and a developer to when the sale gets reported to the public, not to mention the platting process through the local authorities. Yet market experts hang on each report and try to predict whether or not there will be an adequate supply of lots to handle the demand in the Tucson market.

Some market experts speculate that national builders entering the Tucson market, some for the first time, are changing the supply and demand for lots. It’s true our local market has dropped 84% from the peak of 12,627 permits in 2005, but is the pipeline for new lots adequate?

During the first 6 months of 2014, 71% of a total 1,129 building permits issued were to 8 public builders. Interestingly, the top three publics account for almost 50% of the market. These overall permit totals seem to be tracking on the same level as last year.

But, with KB Homes’ resurgence, and LGI, Toll Brothers and Mattamy Homes newly joining the market, and with all aggressively pursuing land purchases, a growing demand is apparent. Homebuilders buying pre-platted land instead of finished lots is not an ideal situation for them, but that’s what they are having to do, and with more public builders looking to add Tucson to their portfolio.

We spoke with Randy Bury, President of Randall Martin, a Scottsdale-based land developer with significant holdings in the Tucson market at Rancho Marana and Sanders Grove in Marana.

“Whether there already are lot shortages or not depends on whose perspective you take,” Bury told us. “From a public homebuilders’ perspective, whose business it is to build houses, there are already shortages of finished lots in such locations as Northwest Tucson where builders want to be. From a developers’ perspective however, we feel good about our holdings and can wait. In fact, we are looking for more land deals in Tucson.”

Bury continued, “The housing industry could use some help with job growth, but it’s just a matter of time before we start seeing the 2008 – 2010 home foreclosures and bankruptcy homeowners coming back after the 4 to 7 year wait period with FHA eligibility restored.”

“Tucson hasn’t experienced the drastic number of foreclosures as Phoenix and Las Vegas, but on the other hand Tucson hasn’t seen the ‘big money’ come in to clean up foreclosures like Phoenix and Vegas either, that’s the trade-off,” Bury went on to say.

Will White of Land Advisors Organization in Tucson says, “We’re experiencing an anomaly, you have homebuilders in Tucson with very large market shares and new homebuilders expanding to this market to gain market share. Either way you look at it requires more land to be purchased than normal. The market is steady and we have not experienced too many situations where homebuilders are competing directly in the same project which has been good.”

White believes we have about an 18-month lot supply. With less than 3,500 finished lots remaining and only a small amount of re-zonings on the horizon, a lot shortage is inevitable. To put it into perspective, the UA estimates permits by the year 2019 to be close to 6,000 per year. In order to deliver this many homes, there will need to be approximately 21,000 – 26,000 lots delivered over the next 5-years. Making that task even more daunting is the 10-year projections of approximately 8,500 permits per year. This will require approximately 60,000 lots to be delivered over this same time period. White points out that since the mid-90’s, Tucson has averaged about 27,000 permits every five years. Due to poor conditions, there has not been enough lots put into the pipeline over the past 5-years. “The market is going to be playing Catch Up for the next 24-36 months,” says White.

White says, “One can be as conservative as they would like about these forecasts, but the trend is going higher over the next 10-years. To get back to a supply balance the homebuilders will need to do what they did in 2013 and purchase 3,500 lots annually. If permits make a run up like they did in the late 90’s then it becomes even more critical. Adding to this challenge is the fact that very little lot inventory was put into production this year and it won’t be ready for selling season 2015. The rush will soon be on for 2016!”

If there’s one thing the market data does agree upon, it’s that we can look forward to land sales increasing over the next few years.