as a person in this business, i can tell you that there are a lot of tracts in varying stages of entitlement and construction that are changing hands right now. there are indeed investors/developers interested in the fire sales, but many of these tracts are way upside down. when you’re dealing with $20-$50M loans, you won’t find many homebuilders willing to write checks at closing(and even fewer banks willing to sell short). so they go back to the bank. while i can’t say for certain whether Centex did actually find a buyer for their most likely non-performing asset, i think it is much more likely they let the piece go back to the bank. what the bank will eventually do with it is the real question, with implications that reach far into the fibers of the entire economy.
just be wary of these projects, especially if you are interested in buying a house in one of these half-built numbers, ESPECIALLY if there is an HOA that will need to fund amenities with less than expected revenue.
