Lennar Expands to Urban Northeast in 15-Property Buy

With one exception, the acquisition encompasses developable land, Jon Jaffe, Lennar's COO, tells GlobeSt.com. The exception is a 300-unit rental facility in Port Imperial, a master-planned community in Weehawken and West New York, NJ that stretches along the Hudson River and faces Midtown Manhattan. Lennar will convert the rental units into for-sale condos.

The remainder of the acquisition includes approximately 1,300 residential home sites in Port Imperial and about 1,200 residential home sites in the Greater Boston area communities of Overlook Ridge, which is located in Malden/Revere; Hingham Shipyard, which is located in Hingham, and Portside at Pier One, located in East Boston. Marshall Ames, head of Lennar's investor relations, tells GlobeSt.com that at today's market value, the average home sales prices in this transaction are expected to be in the high $600,000s, and total gross sales proceeds are expected to exceed $2 billion.

The acquired parcels are mid-rise sites. Ames says Lennar has single-family residential operations in New Jersey, but the Roseland properties represent its first foray in urban areas of the Northeast.

"These structured transactions," Jaffe adds, "will position the Lennar brand as a leading homebuilder in some of the most supply-constrained markets in the Northeast." He says Lennar and Roseland will develop the properties together, "beginning later this year with the first closings in 2006. With access to 2,500 home sites," he says, "full build-out will probably take about six years."

Both Jaffe and Ames decline to disclose the price of the acquisition. Calls to Marshall B. Tycher, principal of Roseland, were not returned by press time. In a statement, Tycher says, "Each of the communities in this transaction have been master-planned by Roseland. …We look forward to working with the Lennar team toward achieving our vision of sustainable urban redevelopment for each of these exceptionally positioned properties."

Roseland's experience in waterfront and brownfields development includes the Highlands at Morristown, NJ in addition to Boston's Pier One and Hingham Shipyard. Primarily under the Lennar and US Home brands, Lennar has residential communities in 18 states nationwide.