HOBBorg

Housing's New Look

David Urani:
Have you looked at the downside of builders constructing these smaller, much cheaper homes in existing larger home communities where the property values were still holding steady or increasing in value? The fallout and the further devaluation of property values this marketing strategy will have on communities have yet to be recognized. Case in point, KB Home’s rational for building these homes in its yet incomplete communities is to compete with the foreclosure market, which are the very homes they built. As they boost sales designed to undercut the foreclosure market with a cheaper product it drives down the foreclosure market even further, as well as the other occupied homes they sold in that same community. Common sense dictates that this strategy only further devalues foreclosures and ultimately the rest of the market.

Selling Toll Brothers on Good News

With all of the allegations of KB Homes legal woes over defective construction, federal investigations, toxic loans, and illegal manipulation of home appraisals in KB developments; why would investors continue to gamble on their stock.

Cramer's Mad Money - Social Insecurity (12/17/08)

Is this a cruel joke?
Bernanke’s statement that the government would aid the economy”. ..to breathe new life into housing stocks of KB Homes, Lennar… Surely Bernanke saw the October 18, 2008 New York Times: “Building Flawed American Dreams” and BusinessWeek AUGUST 13, 200, “Bonfire of the Builders” and the building industry’s involvement in the creation of massive Toxic Mortgages.

Please… Give us a break. A bail out for who?

The same KB Home that paid HUD $3.2 million for its mortgage affiliate (KB Mortgage) loan “irregularities”? KB Home whose other affiliate is Countrywide Mortgage? KB Home that was sued by the FTC in 1979 and has continued violations of the original FTC federal consent decree. The same KB Home with ties to AIG that got a huge government bailout and then got caught while on junkets to the luxury St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, and again when top executives secretly gathered at the Phoenix luxury resort. The same KB that built the infamous substandard $22M federally funded Mirasol homes with no back doors or windows that made residents sick and underwent $6M of wasted repairs.

Then there is Lennar… whose construction defects and development of contaminated and bombing range land development is rivaled by none other than KB Home…

Have Wall Street and its financial advisors and Washington gone mad? This is the very industry that successfully conjured up the whole insane scheme to target a market of people who didn’t qualify to buy new homes.

Don’t be surprised if you hear that the “Ponzi” schemer Bernard Madoff and the Illinois Governor Bernard Blagojevich are given community service sentences for their crimes and become the administrative czars for all the federal bailouts.

End of Monster Buybacks? - Cramer's Stop Trading! (9/25/08)

Cramer's Comments: Help for Housing - KB Home
"KB Home is a "good company, obviously in a terrible industry," with a good balance sheet and a safe dividend,...

I respectfully disagree; KB Home is a terrible company, obviously in a terrible industry. KB was one of the first builders to target unqualified buyers and participate heavily in predatory lending, which contributed greatly to the massive real estate market meltdown. In fact, KB paid a token $3.2M fine to HUD for loan irregularities not long ago. KB should be given the recognition due as a key player in this national financial crisis. KB Home is a giant to be prosecuted, instead of trusted by investors.

Homebuilder Trends: Another Private Builder Fails [Housing Tracker]

KB Home's Toughest Market Competition May be Its Owner
This is really remarkable! Let me see if I have this right, KB is in using this very odd promotional spin to compete with the “highly competitive foreclosure marketplace.”

A foreclosure market that most likely is glutted with the very same KB cookie cuter models, cheap!

If the housing and financial market collapse wasn’t such a far-reaching disaster I might fall off my chair in laugher reading this article. If I understand this unique advertising angle it sounds like KB Home is desperate to effectively compete with this giant competitor (85 percent of the market); the very same predatory lending foreclosure scam it was highly instrumental in creating.

My… my…KB’s creation is now its strongest competition?