Art Falcone — a prominent real estate developer with more than 40 years of experience in developing single-family, multifamily, hospitality, mixed-use and retail properties — recently launched a new homebuilding venture, AmeriCraft Homes.
Falcone’s decision to launch a new homebuilding company during a down cycle reflects the contrarian strategy that has defined his career.
“Historically, in my career, for anybody that followed it, I’ve always been a contrarian investor. So when things are not good, that’s when I like to be going into a business and restarting. I’ve been doing that for the last 45 years pretty consistently. When I was in the fast-food business, the hotel business, or any type of business, I’ve always been that way,” Falcone said in an interview with HousingWire‘s TBD.
But the timing of the new venture wasn’t a mere coincidence. Falcone founded AmeriCraft Homes as Encore Capital Management, which he co-founded, began to wind down its homebuilding pipeline.
Instead of laying off a team of seasoned professionals, Falcone offered his employees positions at AmeriCraft Homes and spent the past year preparing for the new company’s launch.
Falcone — who is best known for developing Miami WorldCenter in downtown Miami, the Margaritaville Resort Orlando, Encore Resort at Reunion in Orlando and a host of other residential, retail and hospitality-driven projects — is no stranger to homebuilding. Most prominently, he sold a prior homebuilding venture, Transeastern Properties, and its affiliated land company for $1.6 billion in 2005.
Leveraging Falcone’s hospitality and resort development experience, AmeriCraft Homes aims to bring a hospitality-inspired, resort-style living experience to residential communities, a strategy Falcone said addresses an underserved segment of the market.
“Art’s been a trendsetter, a placemaker for so many years in his career, and that’s really what the path is for us as a company,” said Mark Bines, president of AmeriCraft Homes.
Hospitality-driven approach to homebuilding
AmeriCraft Homes initially launched with operations in Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina, with plans to ultimately expand to other Sun Belt states. Some communities will feature condominiums, while others will have a single-family focus.
Every community will feature an extensive lineup of resort-style amenities, but because each market has its own buyer profiles and characteristics, the builder doesn’t plan to take a one-size-fits-all approach.
“We’re all about the placemaking, so depending on where we are and where we see the need, will determine the amenity package that we we would put in place,” Bines said.
For example, one of the company’s first projects, Lumara Norman Village in Mooresville, North Carolina (a suburb of Charlotte), will feature more traditional residential amenities like a clubhouse and pickleball courts. Meanwhile, Aurora at Epperson Ranch, a townhome community set to be located just north of Tampa, will have access to the 7.5-acre, man-made Epperson Lagoon.
Another inaugural AmeriCraft Homes project — the Margaritaville Vacation Residences Myrtle Beach in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina — will feature 271 vacation condominiums. Residents will have access to a large resort-style pool with private cabanas, a tiki-style Chickee Hut bar, an on-site restaurant, a gym and close access to the beach.
For AmeriCraft Homes, the goal is to build communities with a wide array of amenities tailored to local needs and preferences. Some of these will be branded communities, including the partnership with Margaritaville and a license deal with Nicklaus Companies to develop golf communities.
“Our intention is to do more branded types of communities where it makes sense,” Falcone explained.
Falcone pointed to his decades of experience across various companies and teams — spanning large-scale golf course communities of roughly 1,500 to 2,500 homes, master-planned lagoon communities with retail, and thousands of residential units and hospitality and hotel operations — as a differentiating factor.
That combination, he argued, means that few competitors have the same pedigree in building highly amenitized communities. Just as importantly, this gives the company the flexibility to either meet existing market demand or act as a market maker in areas where Falcone believes that demand for these highly amenitized communities exists.
“We’re used to doing resort rental homes with hotels. So there are not a lot of companies that have the pedigree and understanding of what it takes to do highly amenitized communities, or an understanding of what’s important to people today and what people are willing to pay for those amenities,” Falcone said.
Focus on attainable luxury
For AmeriCraft Homes, the goal is to go after the “attainable luxury” segment of the market. The amenities play into this approach, but so does the design of each home. The idea is to be the next step up from a traditional production homebuilder, blending a mix of production homebuilding and semi-custom building.
This approach, Bines said, aims for a higher-end, less cookie-cutter feel through extensive personalization options. As an example, he cited lockout basements being added to some North Carolina lots, an uncommon feature that sets the community apart. He also pointed to premium finishes like wet bars, dry bars and club rooms as details that appeal to buyers of larger homes.
“Attainable luxury is really where we’re looking to be. There are a lot of people who want nice things in a house,” Bines said.
Bines said that many of the homes will also be designed to accommodate the growing need for multigenerational living, which comes down to floor plans. This includes features like ensuite layouts that separate a second owner’s suite or larger bedroom from the rest of the house — effectively creating an in-law suite for a family member living with them.
Scaling into a large regional builder
The goal is to ultimately scale AmeriCraft Homes into a large regional builder operating throughout the Sun Belt.
The focus on a higher-income buyer profile and a differentiated product mix gives Falcone confidence that the newly formed homebuilding venture will succeed. The recently launched Margaritaville Myrtle Beach has already secured more than 40 prebuy contracts, with an expected pace of eight to 10 sales a month going forward.
Falcone also pointed to some of the firm’s Orlando residential communities as proof of the model. Margaritaville sold roughly 800 homes in three years, while Bear’s Den, a luxury community with homes starting around $1.5 million, posted a slower sales pace of about two homes per month.
But combining different product types within the same market, Falcone said, helps spread overhead costs, allowing slower-selling luxury communities to remain financially viable.
“Obviously, we have our work cut out for us in the first three states first. As we all know in our business, you have to have revenue and you have to have scale, right? But you also have to have margin. We’re we’re not targeting a lower-margin type of product, like first-time home homebuyers,” Falcone said, while explaining that expansion decisions are driven by whether projected home deliveries can efficiently absorb regional overhead costs.
