Acquisition Likely to Bolster Avatar's Position in Active Adult Market

The recent $62 million acquisition of Phoenix-based builder Joseph Carl Homes (JCH) by Coral Gables, Fla.-based Avatar Holdings brings together a new company that emerged from the housing recession’s wreckage with a nearly 50-year-old builder/developer that has been trying to shake off the ill effects of the severe downturn. The deal had been in the works for about 45 days, and came together “very quickly,” explains Carl Mulac, JCH’s founder and CEO, who is now executive vice president of Avatar Holdings’ subsidiary Avatar Properties. “It was really a ‘fit’ issue for both of us.” It is likely that active adult “will be a big part” of the company’s marketing efforts and growth, he says. Mulac points specifically to Avatar’s 4,300-acre Solavita master-planned community in Poinciana, Fla., and JCH’s CantaMia active-adult community, which is entitled for 1,781 homes in the Estrella Mountain Ranch master plan in Goodyear, Ariz., as examples of the similarities in both companies’ approaches to targeting the active-adult buyer segment. On Thursday afternoon, BUILDER spoke with Mulac and Reuben Leibowitz, managing director with JEN Partners, the New York-based investment firm that provided JCH with startup capital in 2009. Mulac, who will commute between Florida and Arizona in his new job, says JCH’s management team and employees are staying on as part of this agreement, which closed on Monday. Beyond that, though, he and Leibowitz were circumspect in discussing how this transaction could reshape Avatar’s operations.

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