According to a ranking from the South Florida Business Journal, three builders dominate the South Florida residential construction landscape.
Lennar Builders comes out on top of the rankings, by number of units sold. The newspaper’s numbers say that, through March 31, 2015, Lennar closed 1,928 homes.
Carlos Gonzales, president for Lennar’s South East Florida division, says that for fiscal 2015, the company is set to close on 2,230 units.
Lennar operates 39 communities in Gonzales’ division, with 16 sales offices. The service offered there include a separate mortgage branch.Those communities are located from Homestead to the Stewart area.
Gonzales says that Lennar serves primarily the local market.
“Seventy-five to 80 percent of our customers are local, with that being a blend of first-time homebuyers, and move-ups,” he said. “The rest are foreign nationals– mostly from Central and South America, but we truly have clients from around the world.”
He says that the company offers homes in a variety of price ranges, with homes as small as a villa in the low $100,000 range, to estate-style homes on private lakes.
The average buyer, though, comes in for a home in the high $300,000 range.
“We offer single-family townhomes that fill in existing neighborhoods, all the way to big master planned communities with 1,300 homes, and multiple clubhouses for the property.”
2015 was a great year for the company, he said. And, 2016 looks to be promising.
“We exceeded our goals for the year, with double-digit growth year-over-year. And we see demand continuing to be strong.”
He says that the company continues to be strong for two very important reasons: careful research, and it’s dedicated people.
Port St. Lucie is an example of a place that Lennar has had it’s watchful eye on. Even though the company had exited that market in 2006-2007, Gonzales says that the time is right for a reentry into that city on the A1A.
“We’ve bought a lot of property in ‘A’ locations when the market was down – places where there are great schools, great geography and great shopping. Like Parkland and Hialeah,” he explained. “Ours is a story of great submarkets.
For example, he said that the company we took a gamble on Kendall in 2011, and now almost 700 homes that Lennar built there are gone.
“We do a lot of homework,” he continued. “We figure out what buyers want most, such as the right feature packages. When we find an area that fits our profile, we get into it. Lennar has a reputation as a good land buyer, and land sellers seek us out.”
The other part of the winning combination is Lennar’s dedicated people.
Gonzales says that he’s been with the company for 26 years, but he’s far from the only long-tenured employee.
“Our Director of Closing has been with the company for 30 years, and to find employees with 15 years of tenure is not uncommon.”
Executing well is a key ingredient in that success as well.
“All of these things make us as successful as we are,” he concluded. “ We’ve studied the market. We have great people. And we offer a great value proposition to our customer.”
