Century Communities Buys Houston Land Amid Homebuilder Spree

A single-family subdivision will rise near Galveston, as builders look to cash in on tight home supply and returning buyer demand.

Century Communities bought roughly 46 acres in La Marque, 15 miles south of Houston. The property, which sits off Main Street and a short drive from Interstate 45, was sold by a local investor.

A Colliers team of Harrison Kane, Chris Hutcheson and James Kadlick represented the seller.

While homebuilders are ramping back up production after a temporary slowdown from increased mortgage rates, entitled land is hard to find. Particularly for smaller homebuilders, competition from large builders like Lennar and D.R. Horton has made it ever-more difficult to acquire land ready for development.

“Houston is still undersupplied on lots, and the secondary market is tied up because of interest rates,” Kane said.

La Marque is 4 miles north of Galveston. While it hasn’t grown at the same speed as other suburbs in the Texas Triangle, La Marque’s population increased 4.2 percent between 2020 and 2022, to about 19,000, according to Census data.

Even as mortgage and interest rates remain high, homebuilder stocks have rallied in the past year. Shares of S&P Homebuilders ETF tracking homebuilder performance increased 13 percent in the past year.

Century Communities is based in Colorado but builds in 18 states. Some 17 percent of the company’s 10,000 home deliveries last quarter were in Texas, and the Lone Star State accounted for $500 million of its revenue, according to its most recent public filings. Earlier this month, it began sales at an 80-home development in Fort Worth. Since 2021, its share price has nearly doubled to $84.44.

Elsewhere in the Texas Triangle, DFW Land Real Estate has been on a land-buying spree. It added 71 acres in Prosper to its portfolio earlier this week, and has bought 1,600 acres in Dallas-Fort Worth since 2012.