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Builder CEOs Call Market Bottom

might be bouncy, rocky, and long, but the housing recession's bottom is here, agreed CEOs on the opening panels at Hanley Wood's Housing Leadership Summit in Chicago. The big questions home building executives are struggling with now are how to tie up the right land and find the means to buy and develop it. "I am actually declaring the market has bottomed, and it happened last quarter," said Tim Eller, former CEO of Centex and currently vice chairman at PulteGroup, during the Builder 100 Advisory Council Roundtable on Monday. "I think I agree with him," said M/I Homes CEO Bob Schottenstein. "I think it's going to be a long climb back, and I think reasonable levels of profit are a long way away." Furthermore, the sentiment among these CEOs is that the climb back up is likely to be easier for the publicly traded home builders than for private ones because they have more access to the capital it takes to buy land and grow. Even industry veteran Larry Webb, who has started a new home building company and has been a stout champion of the advantages of being a private builder over the years, said he thinks private builders have it tougher because financing has all but dried up for land purchases and, in some cases, land development and vertical construction.

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