May 29 2008 2:01PM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
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Southwest Florida move-up builder Lee Wetherington fell out of the Giant 400 rankings this year, after rising as high as No.220 in 2006 and hanging in there at No. 225 in 2007. With only 54 closings for $48.6 million in 2007 revenue, he didn't make the cut for the 2008 list. But while Lee's still telling a lot of horror stories about the market in Sarasota and Manatee Counties, he's not totally pessimistic. "We're going to survive," he says, "and when the market comes back in 2010, the few builders who are still around will do well. The market won't have to come back much for people like me and Pat Neal and John Cannon to do pretty well."
     Wetherington believes the survivors will gain market share--as Woody Allen said--just by showing up. His mood was brightened in early May by selling six houses in a week. "There are buyers out there," he says, "but nobody is interested in paying retail. They're all looking for 50 percent off list. But there's a good uptick in traffic and, to some extent, sales."
     In the go-go mid-2000s, Wetherington got into land development, but now he says "my developer days are over." He believes everyone--including the big public builders--will soon follow NVR's business model and buy lots from developers. "We've got enough lots available today, in this market, to last ten years," he says. "I'm 61. I won't be doing this when I'm 91. Nobody's going to make much money building houses in Southwest Florida before 2010, but after that, we won't need to develop land to do well. Finding the lots we need at a fair price will be the least of our worries."

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