Austin Housing Demand Sparks 12 Communities by Kaufman & Broad

AUSTIN-Enthused by the Austin market, Los Angeles-based Kaufman & Broad Home Corp. is making the most of the region’s tight housing market, plotting a building pipeline with 12 residential communities under development or set to break ground on an aggregate 1,014 acres.

The latest is a 135-acre development, Westwood, a 505-lot community in Leander. The North Austin development’s model homes won’t be up until mid-first quarter 2001 and already inquiries are being fielded, says Ken Anglin, Kaufman & Broad’s Austin marketing manager. Westwood homes will start in the low $100,000s.

Just three years ago, Kaufman & Broad’s Austin division had closed the year with four communities. This year’s goal, says Anglin, is to cop the honor as the state capital’s most aggressive builder.

More than 11,400 news homes and in excess of 10,000 apartments are under construction in Austin, according to a recent report by American Metro/Study Corp. And still, says the study group’s director Jack Inselmann, Austin’s builders aren’t able to keep pace with demand. He says the primary shortage is in the under-$100,000 sector.

Kaufman & Broad’s Saddlewood community, a 55-acre development with 212 lots, supports what Inselmann has been saying about the region’s single-family housing market. That South Austin development, Anglin told GlobeSt.com, has broken all records for the region and possibly the corporation. About 45% of the project had been sold out before the model homes had been constructed, says Anglin. Few sites are left in the project, which is delivering homes in the low $90,000 range – the leading factor for the hardy sales pace.

Overall, Kaufman & Broad has 3,671 home sites in its 12-community pipeline, which includes two more projects that will break ground in first quarter 2001 in the state capital’s southeastern corridor. On the planning roster is a 147-acre project with 692 home sites at Berdoll Farms and the 76-acre Springfield Village, which will have 297 sites.

Currently, Kaufman & Broad has 11 developments under way in major Texas cities, with six more on the verge of breaking ground in San Antonio, New Braunfels and Boerne, all south of the state capital’s border.