Hovnanian’s headquarters, at Maple Avenue and West Front Street, will become “HQ II” for OceanFirst Financial. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
In what may be a record-setting transaction for the borough, 
OceanFirst Financial paid $42.5 million in late October to buy the Red Bank headquarters of homebuilder Hovnanian Enterprises, redbankgreen has learned.
Hovnanian’s headquarters in Red Bank, as seen from Maple Cove at the foot of Maple Avenue. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
[This post has been updated with comments from Mayor Pasquale Menna.]Eleven years after moving in, dramatically shrunken homebuilder Hovnanian Enterprises is selling its gleaming Red Bank headquarters and moving to Matawan, redbankgreen has learned.
Hovnanian’s headquarters in Red Bank. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
After a $16.2-million net loss in the year-prior period, Red Bank-based home builder Hovnanian Enterprises just about broke even in its first fiscal quarter of 2017.
The company reported a net loss of $100,000 on a 4.1-percent drop in revenue for the period in results posted Wednesday.
Hovnanian’s headquarters in Red Bank. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
Red Bank-based home builder Hovnanian Enterprises‘ posted a sharply reduced net loss in its third fiscal quarter, compared to year-ago results, the company reported Friday.
Hovnanian’s headquarters in Red Bank. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
Red Bank-based Hovnanian Enterprises‘ departure from the Minnesota market contributed to a $16.2 million net loss in its first fiscal quarter, the company reported Wednesday.
The company tied the loss to $11.7 million of land-related charges, primarily related to assets in Minnesota, which it said it is exiting. The result compares to a net loss of $14.4 million, including $2.2 million of land-related charges, in the first quarter of the previous year, the company reported.
The exit from Minnesota is part of a broader strategy of “deleveraging,” or reducing debt, by leaving select markets, CEO Ara Hovnanian said in a prepared statement.
Hovnanian Enterprise’s headquarters in Red Bank. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
Hovnanian Enterprises posted a net loss of $19.6 million in its second fiscal quarter, more than doubling the $7.9 million loss in the comparable 2014 period, the Red Bank-based homebuilder reported Tuesday.
In the current fiscal year, which began November 1, the company has racked up net losses of $33.9 million, compared to a loss of $32.4 million in the first half of fiscal 2014, Hov reported.
President and CEO Ara Hovnanian said in a statement that the company was “disappointed” with the results.
Hovnanian’s national headquarters in Red Bank. (Click to enlarge)
The red ink continued to flow at Red Bank homebuilder Hovnanian Enterprises in the recently ended fiscal fourth quarter, though the size of the loss was smaller than that in the year-prior period.
Hovnanian reported an after-tax net loss of $98.3 million, or 90 cents per share, compared with a $132.1 million loss, or $1.68 per share, in the comparable 2010 period.
It was the 20th loss in the last 21 reporting periods for the publicly traded company, which is New Jersey’s largest homebuilder, according to Bloomberg.com.
It’s been a few years since anybody’s operated in there, but a bank hopes to make the old Hovnanian home base its new digs. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
For the first time in four years, the former headquarters of home builder Hovnanian Enterprises has a serious candidate to take up residence in the Middletown building overlooking the Navesink River.
Neighbors don’t want it.
Valley National Bank, which is listed as the owner of the 27,000 square-foot, four-story building, has submitted plans to build a drive-through at the Route 35 location and use the other three levels for already-zoned office use.
The Wayne-based bank chain, with branches nearby in Red Bank and Middletown, is in the midst of zoning board hearings as it seeks a variance to use the property for bank purposes, said Jason Greenspan, Middletown’s planner.
Hovnanian Enterprises, the Red Bank-based national homebuilder, has announced the death of its founder, Kevork Hovnanian.
No details were given about the cause or date of death. Hovnanian lived in Rumson and was 86 years old.
Hovnanian's headquarters on West Front Street.
Red Bank-based Hovnanian Enterprises sharply cut its net loss in the quarter ended April 30, compared to year-prior levels.
But the publicly traded homebuilder continued to slash prices in the face of contract cancellations and write-downs on the value of real estate in its inventory.
Hovnanian’s head office, as seen from the foot of Maple Avenue.
Red Bank-headquartered Hovnanian Enterprises, one of the nation’s largest homebuilding companies, saw its losses accelerate in the most recent quarter.
The company posted a net loss of $178.4. million in its second fiscal quarter, up from $130.9 million a year ago.
On a per-share basis, the most recent shortfall equated to $2.29, versus last year’s $2.07. Polled analysts had expected a loss of $1.47 per share, the Wall Street Journal reports.
HOV HQ on West Front Street, Red Bank.
A near stoppage in mortgage lending drove Hovnanian Enterprises to its ninth consecutive quarterly loss in the period ending October 31, the Red Bank-based homebuilder reported yesterday.
According to Bloomberg, the loss was more than three times the deficit that analysts had expected.
For Hovnanian and its shareholders, the upside was that the latest loss, at $450.5 million, or $5.79 a share, was smaller than the $466.6 million, or $7.42 a share, deficit of the comparable year-prior period.
The company’s headquarters overlooking the Navesink River.
Red Bank-based national homebuilder Hovnanian Enterprises saw its second-quarter losses increase elevenfold from last year as land valuations and revenues plunged again amid what Dow Jones calls “the worst housing downturn since the Great Depression.”
Still, as the company reported its seventh consecutive net loss, chairman and CEO Ara Hovnanian said the business has “ample liquidity to weather the current downturn,” thanks to a recent refinancing and other measures.
Today’s Star-Ledger takes a look at the “dismal” year that Red Bank-based Hovnanian Enterprises has had. And the coming year doesn’t look at lot brighter.
But to make that point, the page-one story kicks off with an an anecdote that appears to confuse, or perhaps conflate, members of the Hovnanian family:
The Hovnanians have been building homes in New Jersey for almost a half-century, but the measure of their success was never more indelibly stamped than in a 1992 mishap, when the family’s 123-foot yacht sank off Cape May.
Outfitted with teak paneling, gold-plated fixtures and other luxuries, the $10 million sport-fishing boat seemed more worthy of an oil sheik than crafters of humble condos.
In the years since, Hovnanian Enterprises has grown into the nation’s sixth-largest homebuilder, snapping up smaller businesses and expanding into a total of 19 states. Riding the great housing boom of the past decade, the company built developments as fast as it could, with homebuyers queuing up overnight to sign sales contracts like groupies camping out for Hannah Montana tickets.
The credit crunch and a glut of unsold homes has put an end to those glory days, however. And this time, it’s the Red Bank company itself that’s taking on water.
But the yacht belonged to Hirair Hovnanian, a brother of the man who founded and controlled Hovnanian Enterprises.
File photo of Hovnanian’s Red Bank HQ, as seen from the foot of Maple Avenue.
Amid a widespread credit shutdown, Hovnanian Enterprises said its fourth-quarter net loss quadrupled over year-ago results.
The Red Bank-based homebuilding company yesterday reported a net loss of $469 million in the quarter, compared to $118 million in the fourth quarter of 2006. Contract cancellations rose to 40 percent, from 35 percent in the third quarter. Revenue for the year was down more than 22 percent, to $4.58 billion, from $5.9 billion in fiscal 2006.
As a result, the company said it won’t pay a dividend this year on a class of preferred shares.
Still, the company saw a glimmer of better days to come after the fiscal quarter ended.
Both the Asbury Park Press and the Record of Hackensack have interviews today with Ara Hovnanian, scion and CEO of Hovnanian Enterprises, the Fortune 500 homebuilder headquartered in Red Bank.
On the table in each is the state of the real estate market and the outlook for a turnaround at HOV, which has posted two consecutive quarters of losses and forecasts a third.
From the Press interview, conducted by business writer David P. Willis:
“We’ve seen and weathered and experienced many housing market slowdowns and this is yet one more notch in our quiver of experiences,” [Hovnanian] said. “And it is not uncommon and not to be unexpected to have periods where our profitability not only is less, but in some cases like the last two quarters, where we have the losses.”
Red Bank-based K. Hovnanian Homes has pulled the plug on a controversial plan to build up to 4,500 homes in Ocean County’s Berkeley Township after an adverse court ruling.
“We are not going to pursue this,” company spokesman Douglas Fenichel told the Asbury Park Press.
“I don’t have to tell you the market has changed,” Fenichel said. “It was as much a market decision as anything.”
The decision comes two months after a state Superior Court in Ocean county rejected Hovnanian’s claim in a lawsuit that Berkeley wasn’t providing its fair share of affordable housing. The company wanted to force the town to rezone more than 800 acres at the New Jersey Pulverizing gravel pits to allow for development.
“It’s a tremendous boost to the township’s efforts to control sprawl,” Berkeley Mayor Jason J. Varano said of the company’s decision, according to the Press.
Hovnanian Enterprises, the publicly-traded homebuilder that last year moved its corporate headquarters to the heart of Red Bank from Middletown, is scaling back its ambitions in the borough, according to a published report.
GlobeSt.com, a real estate industry publication, says Hovnanian is now planning on subleasing 66,000 square-feet of the 88,000 SF it had committed to use for itself in the PRC Corporate Plaza. That building, shown above, is under construction on West Front Street, just across the street for Hovnanian’s new 65,000 SF HQ.
Instead of taking all four floors for itself, the company will be using just one floor, according to GlobeSt.
What is Hov saying about this self-haircut? From the report:
We are very excited with the expansion of our presence in Red Bank, says president/CEO Ara Hovnanian in a prepared statement. A spokesman declined further comment on the reduced occupancy.
Red Bank-based Hovnanian Enterprises was blindsided by the swift drop in values on its inventoried land, the company acknowledged yesterday in reporting a $115 million fourth-quarter loss.
“We did not anticipate the suddenness or magnitude of the fall in pricing that occurred this year in many of our communities,” the company said in a statement on Monday. “Our profitability, and the pace of new home sales, in our markets continues to be adversely impacted by high contract cancellation rates, increases in the number of resale listings, and increases in the number of new homes available for sale.”
The downturn occurred just as the company began moving into its gleaming new digs overlooking the Navesink River.
Yet the homebuilding giant forecast a profitable 2007. Chief Executive Ara Hovnanian said he’s “started to see a glimmer of hopeful indicators that the markets may be stabilizing,” according to MarketWatch.
The stall-out of the real estate market in recent months isn’t only a matter of potential buyers staying out of the market. It’s also a function of contract cancellations, which appear to be a significant factor in the woes of Red Bank-based Hovnanian Enterprises, New Jersey’s largest homebuilding company.
For the second time this year, the company has amended the earnings ‘guidance’ it gives to Wall Street analysts and investors to reflect expectations of sharply lower earnings. Other major homebuilders have suffered similar embarassments.
In an announcement issued Friday, company chief executive Ara K. Hovnanian said results for the rest of the year are expected to be negatively impacted by a slower sales pace, high cancellation rates on contracts in backlog that were projected to close this year, and more pronounced use of concessions and incentives, particularly on the resale of those homes which have experienced contract cancellations.
According to Bloomberg.com:
Hovnanian is also likely to incur walk-away fees for renegotiating “a significant number” of land-buying contracts, it said.
As a result, the company reported that it now expects its earnings-per-share will be in the $1.10 to $1.20 range for the quarter that ended July 31, down from a prior forecast of $1.40 to $1.50 per share. For the full fiscal year, the company is now saying it’s earnings will be in the $5.00 to $5.75 range, down from a previous expectation of $7.20 to $7.40 per share.
Hovnanian’s stock price has been cut in half over the past year, to just above $29 at this morning’s opening.
Hovnanian’s headquarters in Red Bank, as seen from the borough library. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
OceanFirst Financial plans to buy the Red Bank headquarters of homebuilder Hovnanian Enterprises, redbankgreen has learned.
Homebuilder Hovnanian Enterprises, based in Red Bank,posted its eighth consecutive quarter in the red, reporting a net loss of $202.5 million for the fiscal quarter ended July 31.
The loss equated to $2.67 per share, compared with a loss $1.27 per share, or a total $80.5 million, in the year-ago third quarter. Analysts had predicted a loss of $1.68 per share, Reuters reported.
Revenue plummeted by 37 percent, to $716.5 million, from $1.1 billion in the comparable 2007 period, as Hovnanian, the nation’s sixth-largest homebuilder, has tracked the industry trend of losses in the worst real esate market in decades. Thirty-two percent of the company’s contracted buyes canceled their deals in the quarter.
Hovnanian Enterprises says it is tripling its forecast for positive cash flow this year to $300 million from earlier “guidance” given to investors.
The announcement came with this morning’s report by the publicly traded homebuilder, based here in Red Bank, that it had achieved positive cash flow in the just-completed second fiscal quarter, one quarter ahead of expectations.
The focus on stanching a loss of cash comes as Hovnanian, like most players in its sector, struggles with one of the worst housing markets in a generation.
Red Bank-based Hovnanian Enterprises reported its sixth consecutive quarterly loss yesterday, this time a $131 million shortfall that was double the year-prior amount.
The publicly traded homebuilder, which operates in 19 states, managed to sell more units in its lastest fiscal quarter 3,604 homes, up 10 percent from a year ago but at lower average prices, the company disclosed. As a result, quarterly revenue fell 6.2 percent to $1.09 billion, from $1.17 billion.
From the Associated Press:
“Market conditions remain challenging across many of our markets,” President and Chief Executive Ara K. Hovnanian said in a statement.
The company will continue to reduce inventories, maximize cash flow and shrink overhead, he said.
“Despite the persistence of negative factors impacting the homebuilding industry, we are diligently working to position the company to take advantage of the stronger demand for new homes that will inevitably return once the current housing correction ends,” Hovnanian said.
He did not suggest when that might occur.
This time three weeks ago, shares of Hovnanian Enterprises were at a seven-year low, trading below $5 apiece.
Four dollars and eighty cents, actually, as of the close on Jan. 9. No doubt investors who’d bought the stock as it peaked above $72 in mid-2005 weren’t too pleased. Even a year ago today, the price was about $36.
The giant homebuilder, headquartered on West Front Street, has been suffering through the prolonged, multi-symptom flu that’s devastated the real estate and lending industries nationally and fueled fears of a U.S. recession around the world.
So when Standard & Poors downgraded Hov’s preferred shares and put the company’s debt on watch with “negative implications” one week after that low, one might have expected the common stock to fall farther. But it didn’t. Instead, it rose.
And it’s kept rising.