Uh Oh Beazer Owes Money, 68% Cancellation Rate, More..

Highlights Below.
Full article here.

Beazer Homes USA on Monday offered creditors cash for backing off demands that the company immediately repay $1.5 billion in debt.

Beazer already is battling bondholders in court over the issue, where it seeks to prevent trustees from demanding the money because the company has missed deadlines for filing required Securities and Exchange Commission reports.

Now the company wants creditors to adopt a covenant that obliges Beazer after May 15, 2008, to file reports with the SEC and deliver those reports to trustees. The covenant also would require Beazer to pay an additional 0.5 percent interest per year "if Beazer fails to comply with such obligations on a timely basis." Beazer, which offered to pay a "consent fee" for every $1,000 in principal outstanding, repeated its belief that it's not in default.
"If they thought they'd win (in court), why are they doing this?" said credit analyst Vicki Bryan of Gimmie Credit. "They blinked."

She predicted Beazer will strike a deal, similar to the arrangement KB Home struck with bondholders after the homebuilder was late filing an earnings report last year. The company delayed its filing to complete an internal review of its historical stock option grants and related accounting.


In a research note Monday, Bryan said Beazer's "most pressing issue is its dramatically poor performance in this weak homebuilding cycle, which is worsening by comparison to other builders that compete for the same buyer."

(Hey Look.....another big builder owned mortgage/loan scandal. Go figure.)
Last week, Beazer said it found evidence its employees violated unspecified federal housing regulations, "particularly in relation" to down-payment assistance programs for Federal Housing Administration insured loans dating to at least 2000.
Beazer said it would try to reach a settlement with regulators for between $8 million and $15 million.

Beazer also reported some financial results for the quarter ending Sept. 30. Home closings dropped 39 percent from the same time last year. New home orders declined 52 percent, "driven by an unusually high cancellation rate" of 68 percent, the company reported.
The revelations were part of an interim internal investigation, launched in April after the Observer published a series that questioned Beazer's business practices and its high foreclosure rate in the Charlotte area.

Beazer's mortgage subsidiary was among the most active in the Federal Housing Administration home loan program in the Charlotte area. Many foreclosures involved loans where an arranged gift from a charity or nonprofit was used to cover a borrower's down payment. The Observer found that Beazer incorporated the cost of the down payment into the price of some homes in Southern Chase, a Concord subdivision.