Toll Bros. and Shea team up for new Lake Forest MPC

In what is definitely some good news for the slowly rebounding housing market, luxury builder Toll Bros. and Shea Homes plan to build more than 2,000 homes and apartments on nearly 400 acres at Baker Ranch in Lake Forest in Orange County.
From the story:

Economists and analysts said the involvement of Pennsylvania-based Toll Bros., the largest builder in the luxury niche, was an encouraging sign for the market, jump-starting a long-planned development and infusing it with some high-end cachet.

"It is the most promising news announced since the bust, and since we have had this very slow turnaround," said Patrick Duffy, principal of MetroIntelligence Real Estate Advisors. "This is the first big announcement of this kind where they are going after the upper-end buyer, so I think there is the assumption that people are going to be able to sell their existing homes and pull out their equity to move up."...

The renewed interest in large-scale development of homes in Orange County means that builders are increasingly confident that the move-up market for homes is beginning to recover, said Duffy of MetroIntelligence Real Estate Advisors.

Much of the scarce development in Southern California since housing tanked has been in the Inland Empire, where builders have focused on small, affordable properties that can compete with foreclosures.

Home sales and prices overall in California have been improving this spring, although few experts anticipate a return to the frenetic buying and selling of the bubble years.

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