Regency Homes Lays Off ALL Employee's

[Covenant Clone]

I wonder which Des Moines area builder is next to go under. Cy Bookie?

I would assume Accurate would be in trouble. They have a ton of specs sitting for sale and I think the lowest price on any home they have available is over $500,000, and most of them are over 600K. I know they have incredibly deep pockets but that can only take you so far when extended that far. I know that a lot of developers are in trouble too. Somebody mentioned Walter's and he is definitely in deep. Stanbrough and Knapp have had to give back some property to the bank as well. People just keep buying land and building houses, completely ignoring the indications that things were going to get rough.

 

[jmb]

It was just a question, curiosity.


It's a shame for all their employees and contractors who will not be paid.:no:

VT
I was only answering, nothing implied in my response. Sure hope you didn't see anything beyond that.

 

[06_CY]

I think we're on the same page. I didn't want you or anyone else to think I was hinting at something else.

 

[Wx4Cy]

Who else do you expect them to lay off?

It's awful hard to run a company (or whatever is left of one) if you don't have management.

They had the same management and were unable to run the place which is why they are where they are, right?

 

[DanCyn]

There are a lot of people quick to throw darts at the Myers. Althought this had been building for a long time, the death knell came when Wells Fargo pulled the line of credit.

I have seen first hand Jamie working tirelessly for two charities - MDA and LLS. Regency Homes isn't the only thing that will be missing in Des Moines this summer. Without Jamie the MDA golf tournament won't be seen either.

 

[SeattleClone]

"...because character counts."

Hopefully this means the end of those stupid commercials with 8 year old girls preaching about character.

 

[CYdTracked]

Regency Homes in trouble

Cash gap paralyzes Regency, Iowa's top home builder | DesMoinesRegister.com | The Des Moines Register

Laid off over 100 employees and don't have the cashflow to pay their lenders. Anyone looking to buy a home may be able to get one at a discounted price eventually but I'd worry about what kind of warranty you'll get on them or if you recently bought a home how that affects you too.

I've heard some shaddy things about Regency before such as some homes having poor workmanship or tax abatements they did not file correctly so the owner got stiffed with the tax bill. Looks like they got in over their head this time by building too many homes in a down market.

 

[CYdTracked]

My bad, I missed this thread when I posted

 

[isuno1fan]

There are a lot of people quick to throw darts at the Myers. Althought this had been building for a long time, the death knell came when Wells Fargo pulled the line of credit.

I have seen first hand Jamie working tirelessly for two charities - MDA and LLS. Regency Homes isn't the only thing that will be missing in Des Moines this summer. Without Jamie the MDA golf tournament won't be seen either.

Jamie was/is very charitable and I commend him for that. I do believe with a bit better business saavy, he could have kept the ship from sinking entirely however.

 

[jpete24]

Regency down....Hubbell next. There are alot of developers/builders hurting right now, I also heard Jerry's Homes are going belly side up.

It will be interesting to see how and when it turns around. Alot of these guys need to clean out the inventory they have and then we also need to end the sub prime scare. (Key word being scare.)

 

[CyBobby]

Wells Fargo said NO MO MONEY......


Regency Builders said....Bankruptcy "here we come"!!!!!:yes:

 

[brianhos]

Regency down....Hubbell next. There are alot of developers/builders hurting right now, I also heard Jerry's Homes are going belly side up.

It will be interesting to see how and when it turns around. Alot of these guys need to clean out the inventory they have and then we also need to end the sub prime scare. (Key word being scare.)

Jerry's home are complete and utter junk! Go into any Jerry's home and do the marble test, take a marble, drop it in the middle of the kitchen floor and watch it roll. At least regency tried to make good homes, Jerry just built the cheapest crap they could.

 

[CYdTracked]

I love the comments section in that article. People made some good points, lenders expect their loans to be paid on time. Regency got in over their head so why should their lenders cut them some slack? Same goes with all these foreclosures and people wanting to blame lenders. Don't get yourself into a loan if you can't afford to pay it. It's nothing new that lenders expect to be paid on time, its how you establish credit in this system.

I think the biggest losers here are the contractors that will likely have to put liens on the houses they have to finish and won't get paid for right away.

 

[06_CY]

I can see their stockpile of homes being priced fairly low, but I would not want to buy one. I would not be surprised to see a couple more area builders go under.

 

[brianhos]

I love the comments section in that article. People made some good points, lenders expect their loans to be paid on time. Regency got in over their head so why should their lenders cut them some slack? Same goes with all these foreclosures and people wanting to blame lenders. Don't get yourself into a loan if you can't afford to pay it. It's nothing new that lenders expect to be paid on time, its how you establish credit in this system.

I think the biggest losers here are the contractors that will likely have to put liens on the houses they have to finish and won't get paid for right away.

It is not the fault of the borrowers here, it is all the fault of the evil lending companies that tricked these poor souls into signing bad loans! Really, I see that all over.

 

[DanCyn]

There are some people that were truly misinformed and were sold subprime loans. I'm a CPA and have several clients that I counseled away from mortgages they were being sold - and most of them already owned the homes and were considering refinancing. In many cases, I hold the lenders responsible.

In Regency's case, it's a business and had an established line of credit. Wells Fargo made a business decision not to renew. That doesn't make them evil, but the loss of the line was the single blow Regency couldn't absorb. Should the company have allowed itself to become dependent on the line to survive? Of course not. But it doesn't change the outcome - and the employees/contractors are the ones that are going to pay. Any contractors out there better being filing liens immediately. You're already in line behind the lenders, better get yourself as close to the front of the line as you can.

But it's also a loss to Des Moines. Regency was a decent company, like the advertising or not. And the brothers did a lot of philantrophic work. Des Moines needs to keep the leaders/companies its got - although my understanding is that Jamie had already moved to MN last year.

 

[ISUAlum2002]

In many cases, I hold the lenders responsible.

The borrower has the final say in whether they sign the note or not. No lender holds a gun to their head and forces them to sign it.

Can't afford the payments? Don't think its a fair loan? Don't sign it. Lenders can offer whatever they want, the borrower has to put their Herbie Hancock on it.

 

[Phaedrus]

One of our jobs as human beings is to develop the savvy to not be duped.

A really apropros quote I've seen is "You can't Con an honest man".

Too many people are drooling idiots who really, really think you can get something for nothing. And their ignorance should be punished/rewarded by being allowed to experience the consequences for their actions.

 

[CYdTracked]

The borrower has the final say in whether they sign the note or not. No lender holds a gun to their head and forces them to sign it.

Can't afford the payments? Don't think its a fair loan? Don't sign it. Lenders can offer whatever they want, the borrower has to put their Herbie Hancock on it.

Exactly. If anything I think it is the realtors that do more of the deception on what someone can afford. Realtors are paid on commision and of course they want to put you in a more expensive home because they'll get more money out of it. I bought my house 4 years ago when the lending rates were great and the housing market was booming and my realtor was trying to get me into a house nearly 20k more than I was willing to spend just because I was approved for a loan for much more than I realistically was going to spend on a house. I think the comission on a house sale is about 7-8% these days right? So depending on what the split is between the buying and selling realtors she could have possibly made around another $1000 in comission if she could talk me into buying a house for more than I wanted to spend.

I don't think the lending companies are to blame, it's uneducated buyers that don't manage their finances well and know what they can realistically afford. Lenders also have to deal with laws against discriminatory lending which sometimes results in giving a borrower terms that they may qualify for per lending policies/guidelines but they may not necessarily be able to afford.

 

[matmann22]

Could someone help explain why they had to shut down this suddenly when their bank (I'm guessing Wells was their main bank, but there has to be others) pulled the plug at the end of 2007 ? Why didn't they stop housing starts after that happened ? I'm guessing that the huge number of houses to complete couldn't have all been started in 2007. Or could they ?

They hired a turnaround executive (how did that investment workout and did this exec get fired too ?) at the beginning of the year so they knew they were in dire straits over 4 months ago and the best they could do is a sudden move to let everyone go and put out a press release that admits more questions than answers.

Were they banking on selling to someone and that fell through at the last minute ?

Did housing sales suddenly slow more than we know in the past month or so ?

Were folks quietly direct away from their homes by real estaters that suspected this was coming ?

It just seems pretty odd the way this went down and the fact their is no bankruptcy filing...