HHHunt officials could have gone elsewhere to expand. But Wilmington was a good fit in several different ways, said Buck H. Hunt, president and CEO of family-owned HHHunt.
The real estate development, building and management company, which has corporate offices in Virginia and North Carolina, is bringing its single-family and multi-family brands to the Port City.
“It’s not a huge market, but it’s not a small market either,” Hunt said. “There’s enough room for us to have a presence.”
One reason for that is HHHunt is not having to compete with a long list of giant companies.
“There’s not as many publicly traded homebuilders as there are in like Raleigh or Charlotte,” he said. “If it’s not a big permit market year after year, you get fewer of those national companies, and that’s just a better fit for us because our capital structure is different. We have a different risk profile when it comes to buying and holding land.”
“If it’s not a big permit market year after year, you get fewer of those national companies, and that’s just a better fit for us because our capital structure is different.” – Buck H. Hunt, president and CEO of family-owned HHHunt
HHHunt also wants to build 49 single-family homes for sale (likely to start in the $400,000s) in a community called Fawn Valley off Myrtle Grove Road.
HHHunt’s apartment plans evolved from its contemplation of a single-family presence in New Hanover County.
“The discussion at first within the company was around expanding our homebuilding group into a new market. But then, when we landed on Wilmington, and the Wilmington MSA, as a market to build homes in, we thought if we’re going to go there for homebuilding, it also made sense ... to find a location for an apartment project because we have yearly goals around apartment starts that we want to meet,” Hunt said.
HHHunt is set to build a $74 million, 253-unit apartment complex in Ogden on a nearly 20-acre tract in the 7700 block of Alexander Road. The city annexed the site for Abberly Landing Apartments in December and approved its rezoning Jan. 7.
“We’ve wanted to be there (in Wilmington) for some time, and we made a stronger push here in the last, say, year and a half, to really find a site down there that would work,” Hunt said. “I think that location, the local submarket, is very appealing, all the growth there. That seemed to make a lot of sense. And then it was supported by the (city council) for both the annexation into the city of Wilmington and then the rezoning as well.”
While most of the apartments will be market rate rent, about 25 of the units will be set aside for workforce housing, according to HHHunt’s plans.
HHHunt also wants to build 49 single-family homes for sale (likely to start in the $400,000s) in a community called Fawn Valley off Myrtle Grove Road.
Hunt’s company was founded in 1966 and has an office in Cary. In addition to Virginia and North Carolina, the company also builds developments in Georgia, Maryland, South Carolina and Tennessee. HHHunt has a dozen Abberly apartment communities in North Carolina alone.
Since 1992, the company has been building new homes, townhomes and condominiums in Virginia and North Carolina. It lists its headquarters as being offices in Richmond and Blacksburg, Virginia, as well as Cary.
The appeal to homebuilders for entering or expanding in the Cape Fear region boils down supply and demand as usual, said Cameron Moore, executive officer of the Wilmington-Cape Fear Home Builders Association (WCFHBA).
A trade organization chartered in 1965, the WCFHBA is one of the largest homebuilders’ associations in the state.
“We have a lot of demand, not a lot of supply,” Moore said. “But the challenge for builders is going to continue to be trying to find buildable lots. If they have a development faction to their company, then more likely they’re coming in and buying properties and doing the development side to create their own lots.”
Hunt said his firm runs into markets where land prices get driven up. “Land gets gobbled up quickly, and then oftentimes, if there’s a slowdown in the homebuilding market. … It’s nothing for (a company that builds 50,000 homes a year) to slash prices in a couple neighborhoods in a market somewhere just so they can offload inventory,” Hunt said. “Being in a market where they’re more stable definitely is a better fit for us. We’re not really going for just volume and market share.”
Moore sees both new builders coming into the area and existing builders finding new markets within the region to tap. For the WCFHBA’s purposes, the region is made up of New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender and Onslow counties.
“You have folks that are a younger generation that are to the point where they’re starting their own homebuilding businesses. They’ve obviously worked as a superintendent, project manager (or other, similar role) for years, have gained their relative experience and have taken a kind of leap of faith and jumped into owning their own business,” Moore said. “And then I think there’s some folks that have shuffled around a little bit from other areas in the Cape Fear region.”
Finding lots and actually building homes takes time. In recent months, news stories have detailed developers’ plans for thousands of homes in Brunswick County, but it might be years from the time county or city officials approve a plan before that plan really gets going.
“It typically takes about two to three years before you ever see any lots come to fruition on the ground,” Moore said.
Plus, larger developments typically have multiple phases. Just because a proposal calls for 1,800 homes, that doesn’t mean all 1,800 will be there tomorrow, he said.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Moore said.
Overall, Moore said, homebuilders in the region have a lot to be happy about, even with higher interest rates that haven’t budged much, putting a damper on sales.
“We’re in a very strong market,” he said. “The market conditions, as far as the economics, are really good. A lot of people are continuing to move here. I don’t see that changing.”
