Pardee Time in Sacramento?

From the Sacramento Bee:

For 20 years, executive David Ragland has bought land and built houses for three different national home builders in Sacramento. Now he's readying model homes for a fourth, the newest corporate builder to set its sights on the capital region.

That's Los Angeles-based Pardee Homes. Beginning Saturday, it will compete with 86 home builders already working the Sacramento-area market. Pardee, a familiar name across the decades of growth that built Southern California and Las Vegas, is about to open eight model homes in Natomas.
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Pardee's debut comes at a difficult time in the regional market cycle for new home builders. The firm launched its division during the housing boom, but its first project arrives during a serious sales slump. The models' doors are opening amid price cutting by other home builders, excess inventory of both new and existing homes for sale and a pronounced slowdown in building activity.

But Pardee, which weathered the far deeper 1990s Southern California slowdown, is gambling that strategic land buys -- even at housing boom prices -- will carry advantages. Meanwhile, local privately owned builders who bought land at low 1990s prices have been gaining market share this year with their ability to discount.
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A subsidiary of Washington-based timber giant Weyerhaeuser Co., Pardee hired Ragland at the height of the housing boom in 2004 to launch a Sacramento division. It has since invested more than $150 million on land and other startup costs in Natomas, Rancho Cordova and Stockton, he said.

"It's kind of a feel-good story," said Greg Gross, who tracks Northern California home builders as a director for Houston-based Metrostudy. "As slow as things are, someone is taking the opportunity to enter this market. They're going to be a competitive builder."