PulteGroup makes three significant land deals west of Lake Worth Beach in six months

Homebuilder PulteGroup has a knack for acquiring small patchwork properties in Palm Beach County with three such purchases in the past six months of land likened to “gold” by one real estate consultant.

The most recent deal, a $22 million sale that closed April 5, folds 36.5 acres of former cow pasture near Wellington into the PulteGroup portfolio. The land, previously owned by the same family for a quarter century, will become a boutique community of 108 single-family homes on Lake Worth Road just south of State Road 7.

The three purchases made since October in unincorporated areas west of Lake Worth Beach and Lantana were all smaller than 45 acres. In one case, the final contract included convincing five different private property owners on adjacent lots to sell for between $1 million and $12 million. One seller had owned the land for 37 years.

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"We are incredibly bullish on this area of Palm Beach County," said PulteGroup Southeast Florida Division President Brent Baker.

Baker touted PulteGroup's 50-year history in Palm Beach County and a talented land acquisition team for finding and assembling nuggets of vacant land for new construction.

Hunter Housing Economics President Brad Hunter calls the land treasure hunters “bloodhounds.”

“In a market like Palm Beach County, land is scarce, and it’s even more scarce in a very popular area like Wellington,” said Brad Hunter, president of Hunter Housing Economics. “I tell my homebuilder clients that land in that kind of area is like gold.”

Georgia-based PulteGroup plans to call its newest community Hendrix Reserve in honor of Charles and Charlotte Hendrix who owned the property since 1998. Houses will be built under the luxury brand DiVosta, with prices starting in the low $700,000s.

“That’s not necessarily affordable, but it’s comparable,” said Lesley Deutch, managing principal with the Boca Raton-based John Burns Real Estate Consulting firm, about the pricing. “There is still very strong demand for new houses in Palm Beach County.”

But Deutch noted that the rate of new home construction has tapered off. Part of the slowdown is an increase in competition from the sale of existing homes where inventory has been on the rise. Higher interest rates buoyed by stubborn inflation are also a concern, she said.

In Palm Beach County, developers reeled in their permit requests from about 4,200 a year in both 2020 and 2021 to 3,435 in 2022, according to data provided by Hunter. In 2023, permit requests were down to 3,100.

That’s a stark contrast to the height of the last, and ultimately cataclysmic, building boom in the early 2000s when Palm Beach County new home permits reached a peak of nearly 11,000 in 2003.

After the housing bubble burst, leading to a multinational financial crisis and foreclosure disaster, new home permits in Palm Beach County dropped to a low of 1,102 in 2009.

Seth Weissman, managing partner of lender Urban Standard Capital, said there is a niche of people relocating to Palm Beach County who want new homes, and not always in planned communities. His firm lends to individual home builders in West Palm Beach, Manalapan and the Town of Palm Beach. He said areas in older neighborhoods where old homes can be razed and new ones built are particularly popular.

"A single-story ranch-style home isn't necessarily what people want anymore," Weissman said. "There is a legacy housing stock that doesn't correspond to the needs of a younger family or how people live today."

Nationwide, sales of newly-built homes nationally saw a 6% increase in February from the previous year, according to a Commerce Department report released last month. In the South, a 17-state region that includes Florida, there was a 10% decrease during the same time period.

Deutch said Florida may be an outlier in the southern region with her company finding a 1% increase in sales statewide in March from the previous year.

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“The fundamentals are still strong, the builders are still optimistic, they are just trying to make land deals work when owners want to sell at the highest price,” Deutch said.

Pulte was at least the second developer to consider building on the 36.5 acres on Lake Worth Road near State Road 7. The county rejected a DR Horton proposal in 2021 that would have put 199 housing units on the property.

Pulte got the contract on the land and neighbors approved its proposal.

“Until we got Pulte, this wasn’t going to happen,” said Legend Lake Estates resident Brad Biggs in a November 2022 county meeting. “This is fine. We have berms, we have fences, we have everything we need. We are on board with it and we recommend it.”

The three recent land purchases west of Lake Worth Beach won't be the last for PulteGroup. It won approval in February to build 145 zero-lot line homes off State Road 7 south of Hypoluxo Road on multiple lots currently owned by Thomas Yee and Nancy Yee and the Cypress Polo Club LLC.

By late 2026, PulteGroup will have more than 10 communities in Palm Beach County, Baker said.

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Kimberly Miller is a veteran journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate and how growth affects South Florida's environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism, subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Land like 'gold' in western Palm Beach County sought by developers