Landsea Homes has tapped a longtime homebuilding executive as president of its division in Dallas-Fort Worth, the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the country.
Stewart Parker, in the new role for about two weeks, said his goal is to help Landsea differentiate itself from competitors in the Dallas region. Ways to do that include offering buyers more farmhouses and "clear, crisp, linear" home designs, he said in an interview.
Parker replaced Melissa Kelly, who left Landsea, the company said.
In recent years, persistently elevated mortgage rates have hurt housing demand across the nation, and rising construction costs pushed new homes out of reach for some U.S. consumers.
"I feel very confident that we can gain a market foothold, even with some of the headwinds all builders are facing," Parker said. "People are buying homes. We just have to present them with something they find attractive."
Landsea's core customer is move-up homebuyers. Parker said he hopes to boost the average sales price in Dallas-Fort Worth to about $550,000 from $425,000 last year.
"His expertise will help guide our Dallas-Fort Worth team as they create high quality and attainably priced homes for our homebuyers,” Mike Forsum, Landsea's president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.
Publicly traded Landsea entered the Texas market in 2021 and moved its corporate headquarters from California to Dallas in 2023. The company’s Dallas-Fort Worth division was created when Landsea acquired Antares Homes last year. Landsea now has 15 active developments there.
Dallas-Fort Worth, the nation's fourth-largest metropolitan area, led all regions by adding nearly 152,600 residents between 2022 and 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Builders are scouring the Lone Star State to find land to accommodate all the growth.
Parker, an avid hiker and traveler, joined Landsea from Homebound, a residential and commercial construction company. He began his career in Dallas as a warranty manager for a public homebuilder and has spent more than a quarter century in senior management positions with national homebuilders.
In addition to Texas, Landsea has built homes in New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Arizona, Colorado, Florida and California.