Lennar affiliate with California projects going public

Lennar's Stuart Miller
Lennar's Stuart Miller

Five Point Holdings Inc., founded by Miami-based Lennar Corp., filed a registration statement for an initial public offering that will test the stock market’s appetite for a housing-based IPO.

The last flurry of IPOs by home builders came in 2013 and the first half of 2014. But the stocks of many of these companies are trading below their IPO prices, and no home construction companies have gone public since 2014.

Six-year-old Five Point is a developer of communities and a seller of lots to home builders. The firm is developing six California projects that encompass up to 50,000 home-construction sites and commercial space totaling 20 million square feet.

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In 2009, Lennar created Five Point to manage several sprawling redevelopment projects the home building company tackled in California, including the multiyear redevelopment of a former naval shipyard at Hunters Point in San Francisco and a former military base in Irvine, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Lennar would still own one-third of Five Point after the IPO and would remain the largest investor in the firm.

Separately, on July 7, WCI Communities  filed a registration for the sale of 3.25 million shares by two major shareholders, private-equity investment providers Monarch Alternative Capital LP and Stonehill Capital Management LLC. Their combined share of WCI would fall to 24.8 percent from 39.2 percent. [Wall Street Journal] — Mike Seemuth