UDC Homes

UDC Homes was an American homebuilder that operated from 1968 to 1998. The company, founded as the Universal Development Company in Chicago in 1968, became an active homebuilder in the Southwest and Southeast. The firm changed its name to UDC Homes in 1986; the next year, it completed a move of its corporate headquarters to Tempe, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. UDC was a highly productive builder, the ninth-largest in the U.S. by 1992; it was the second-largest in Phoenix, a market that represented most of its revenues, and the third-largest in Charlotte, North Carolina. Its homes largely targeted the "move-up" market.

The company converted to a corporation in 1992, but a complicated three-tier share structure led to indebtedness as dividends paid to prime preferred stockholders further drained its finances. The firm filed a pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy case in 1995, emerging as a subsidiary of developer DMB Property Ventures and exiting its unprofitable operations in the Southeast. Shea Homes acquired UDC in 1998, at which time it was the largest homebuilder in Phoenix.

History

UDC was founded by Gary Rosenberg in Chicago in 1968[1] and began operating as a company by 1972. The firm began developing Fountain of the Sun, an adult living community in Mesa, in 1971;[2] home sales began in 1976, with models named the Pima, Papago, and Hopi.[3] Over the course of the 1980s, UDC expanded beyond the Phoenix area. As early as 1980 with homes in the Rancho Bernardo development near San Diego, UDC entered California;[4] while it built single-family homes in Southern California, its two developments in Northern California by 1991 were adult communities.[5] In 1983, UDC bought Mulvaney Builders and entered the Charlotte, North Carolina, market.[6]