March 10, 2007

Wow - talk about telling it like it is. DR Horton CEO Donald Tomnitz: "2007 is going to suck, all 12 months of the calendar year"


You got Mozilo out there pumping Countrywide, when we all know what's about to happen there. You have Bob Toll talking bottom, and how he'll easily burn off his inventory and all will be fine in a few months. You have The Corrupt David Lereah, well, let's just forget his BS.

And then you have DR Horton's CEO. Oh, man, do you have DR Horton's CEO. I guess someone has read Sarbanes Oxley. I guess someone doesn't want to do jail time with all the others.

Bravo.

Bleak housing outlook for US firm

The boss of the largest US housebuilder has warned that his company's fortunes are likely to "suck" in 2007.

DR Horton chief executive Donald Tomnitz told investors that the weak US housing market would continue to hit home prices during the year.

"I don't want to be too sophisticated here, but '07 is going to suck, all 12 months of the calendar year," he said.

US housebuilders have been struggling with a glut of unsold new homes in the wake of a wider industry slowdown.

The number of new homes built in the US fell to a near-decade low in January, the US Commerce Department reported last month.

I don't think '08 is going to be a great year, but it's going to be much better than '07 Donald Tomnitz, DR Horton

Mr Tomnitz warned that DR Horton may have to make further write-offs to reflect the number of unsold homes and lower land values.

11 comments:

Frank R said...

I don't see '08 being a great year. '09, maybe, but '08 will still be reeling from the coming 2007 foreclosure bloodbath.

David in JAX said...

I believe he's taking the high road out of fear.

This is great though. I'm going to use this quote at open houses this weekend.

Anonymous said...

His honesty is very re-freshing. I think we've all gotten pretty fed up with all the spin doctoring while the 800 pound gorilla and 2 ton elephant of imploding housing bubble and credit crunch sit and laugh at all of it.

Fall of 07 is the earliest anyone should even think of buying. 08 & 09 will still be good years but the interest rate wild card cannot be predicted that far out.

Chris said...

Three cheers for Donald Tomnitz! I think that he took one look at Bob Toll at that conference, and decided that he wasn't going to be an idiot and act like everything was going to be okay.

I hope his shareholders don't hold his "suck" comment against him. I'm sure several of them have talked to Tomnitz about it. I hope he told them he wasn't going to pump his stock like Bob "The Whore" Toll and Angelo "Need $140 Million for Retirement" Mozilo, and that he preferred his house over a jail cell.

Anonymous said...

Countrywide is cancelling the 100% LTV loan option as of March 12th. Article is on MSN Money page. MEthinks that will have a huge effect in this housing crash. Thats gonna knock out a major segment of 1st time homebuyers. How many of em do you think have 10-15K for the now required 5% down on a 200-300k house?

FlyingMonkeyWarrior said...

Donald Tomnitz is probably a housing bubble blogger.

Anonymous said...

Donald tomnitz must be a bitter renter living in the 400sf basement of a cold building

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Don Tom is the first CEO I've heard lately that wasn't full of $h^t.

Anonymous said...

Before the internet these guys could get away with whatever they could. Now we have HP and we know what there all about. It is only to there benefit that they come clean. We need time to work ourselves out of this mess before the entire economy goes down.

Todays kids aren't going to be able to afford to take care of every out of work, homeless, FB. They will have student loans and there own family financial obligations.

We need honestly now and the home builders, banks, brokers etc.. have to take there losses and move on.

Anonymous said...

It seems that the last really hot real estate market in the U.S. is just south of the Salt Lake City (Utah) valley, specifically areas around the championship golf-course communities of The Ranches at Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs. Home sales and price appreciations are strong. The reasons for strong home sales seems to be a limited supply of homes and the increased migration of Californians to this area as e.g. Micron is hiring 1,000 new workers and 60% of Utah companies are planning to hire this year. Also, its expected that approx. 1 million people will move to the Wasatch front within the next 10 - 12 years.
The home appreciations are taking place because the whole Salt Lake City valley is a few years behind the national average - after the Olympics the real estate market took a dive with real estate prices beginning to recover in 2005 and the momentum is increasing.

$300k will still buy you a very nice newer home in this area, although some surrounding areas have already appreciated a lot in the last 6 - 9 months like Highland, Alpine, Cedar Hills, and even Lehi and Pleasant Grove, and also Saratoga Springs is appreciating quickly followed by The Ranches at Eagle Mountain which is still lagging behind a bit. Where else can you get million-dollar views of a lake, mountains, valley, city, canyon and hills at a bargain price?

Here are some Websites that might be interesting for researching the area:
http://scherf.com/realestate.htm
and
http://greathomesutah.com