Lennar, from Motley Fool ... by gimleteye

Today's Miami Herald front page story puts up the good news: housing in Miami-Dade is affordable again. It is hard to see how this is good news for production homebuilders like Lennar whose business model depends on attracting buyers to new growth suburbs like that the company's lobbyists are trying to ram through the zoning process outside the Urban Development Boundary: Parkland 2014.

Here's what the investor site, Motley Fool, wrote about Lennar recently. Maybe some Lennar employees in Miami would be willing to share their views with Eyeonmiami. Read to the bottom of the barrel:

1-Star Stocks Poised to Plunge: Lennar?

http://www.fool.com/investing/small-cap/2009/02/04/1-star-stocks-poised-to-plunge-lennar.aspx

Brian D. Pacampara
February 4, 2009


Based on the aggregated intelligence of 125,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, homebuilder Lennar (NYSE: LEN) has received the dreaded one-star ranking.

With that in mind, let's take a closer look at Lennar's business, and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.

....fully 399 of the 466 All-Star members who have rated Lennar -- or 85.6% -- believe the stock will underperform the S&P 500 going forward. These bears include icanpickm and floridabuilder2, both of whom are ranked in the top 3% of our community.

Two weeks ago, icanpickm tapped Lennar as a highly levered, high-risk situation: "Mountains of debt and no way to pay it off until land appreciates. That could be a decade."

In a pitch from earlier in the month, floridabuilder2 replies to inquiring Fools and raises several more red flags:

I don't like [Lennar] because they have 1.1 billion in cash but they have an aggressive debt maturity schedule the next two years ... Additionally, no one is building [spec homes] today and [Lennar's] backlog of sales is SIGNIFICANTLY below its competitors. What does that mean? It means that in order to build backlog they need to slash prices, which brings in sales, but because they have so few specs it means they will have a lot of cash outflow as they ramp up construction.... plus [Lennar] is trying to do [joint ventures] to off balance sheet their land (shell game). They are the only one doing this tactic, which is stupid because no one is landbanking for anyone today. At this point in the game you don't off balance sheet unless there are issues.

...

Report this Comment On February 04, 2009, at 11:05 PM, timfrommn wrote:
As a CURRENT dissatisfied Lennar employee from MN can attest, there is definately something up with this company and it doesn't feel good. They recently slashed our take home pay so low, I'm better off quitting and working part-time at Wal-Mart. All of our competitors haven't resorted to the drastic measures Lennar has sunk to. They keep telling us at the monthly meetings that everything is great but anyone with half a brain can understand that things are going downhill and FAST.

Report this Comment On February 05, 2009, at 3:40 PM, LENNAREX wrote:
Tim, I used to work for Lennar also, upper management are absolute snakes in Miami, I can attest that you cannot or should not trust them. Stuart Miller has a massive ego and is a nasty evil human being who isn't out for anyone but himself. My advice is to get out now...