Blandford Homes' E.V. projects thriving

Gilbert-based Blandford Homes is finishing two communities in the East Valley that were abandoned by home builders when the new-home market and economy fell apart.

In April, Blandford purchased 86 developed residential lots at Dobson Crossing, at the southwest corner of Arizona Avenue and Queen Creek Road in Chandler. The lots were defaulted on earlier this year by Randall Martin Homes.

Blandford purchased the bank-owned lots for $2.8 million.

In March, Blandford purchased 229 developed residential lots at Tuscan Villas at Painted Mountain near McKellips and Recker roads in Mesa. The golf community was being developed by Mehan Construction.

Blandford purchased those bank-owned lots for $9.8 million.

"It's certainly a strategy in a market like this, but it's more of an opportunity," said Lori Anderson, Blandford's director of public relations. "We believe that with a quality product and quality location, you can sell homes, and I think we're proving that. We've sold 98 homes in the last 30 days in all of our communities combined."

Buying the lots at Dobson Crossing gave Blandford the opportunity to build and sell homes in the highly coveted area of Ocotillo in Chandler, she said.

"We felt strongly that we would have a lot of people who would want to purchase our homes," Anderson said, "As far as I know, they (Randall Martin) were on track to complete it, as well as other neighborhoods, and were just one of the casualties of the market. We were able to look at it as an opportunity when it became available."

In the past three weeks, Blandford has sold 27 homes at Dobson Crossing. Three are under construction and the rest will be coming out of the ground by the first half of June, said Ernie Haycraft, a sales manager for Blandford.

"Blandford Homes had decided to price the community competitive with bank-owned properties of similar square footage in the neighborhood ... so folks couldn't say, 'well, geez, I could get this bank-owned home over here for less'," he said. "We priced it to that because bank-owned homes are selling. Because of that we expected to be busy and we have been."

Completion of Dobson Crossing is proceeding at a faster-than-expected pace, Anderson said.

"We didn't realize the demand was going to be so high," she said.

Homes also are selling swiftly at Tuscan Villas at Painted Mountain, said Jay Scott, a Blandford sales representative there.

"We are at 68 (home sales) since March 7," he said. "We have 51 homes under construction. It's unbelievable."

Blandford is building detached and attached villa homes at Tuscan Villas, he said.

"(When completed) there will be 291 homes altogether," Scott said. "The original builder built some speculative homes, and some are sold and some are still for sale."

Completing Tuscan Villas was planned as a two- to three-year project originally, he said. Now, the timeline is likely two years at most, he said.

Blandford developed Las Sendas, an upscale gated community in northeast Mesa.