Profile: Beazer Homes USA, Inc. (BZH)

Beazer Homes USA, Inc. (Beazer) is a diversified homebuilder. The Company designs, sells and builds single-family and multi-family homes. The Company acts as the general contractor for the construction of its home communities. Beazer’s project development operations are controlled by its operating divisions. The Company also offers title insurance services to its homebuyers in several of its markets. During the fiscal year ended September 30, 2009 (fiscal 2009), the Company had three homebuilding segments operating in 17 states and one financial services segment.

Beazer develops a design and marketing concept for each of its projects, which include determination of size, style and price range of the homes, layout of streets, layout of individual lots and overall community design. The product line offered in a particular home community depends upon many factors, including the housing available in the area, the needs of a particular market and its cost of lots in the home community. As of September 30, 2009, excluding models, the Company had 1,646 homes at various stages of completion, of which 959 were under contract and included in backlog at such date and 687 homes (270 were completed and 417 under construction) were not under a sales contract.

As of September 30, 2009, the Company maintained 341 model homes, of which 241 were owned, 80 were financed and 20 were leased from third parties. Beazer sells its homes through commissioned new home sales counselors (who typically work from the sales offices located in the model homes used in the subdivision), as well as through independent brokers. Through January 31, 2008, Beazer Mortgage Corporation (Beazer Mortgage) financed certain of its mortgage lending activities with borrowings under its warehouse line of credit or from general corporate funds prior to selling the loans and their servicing rights shortly after origination to third-party investors. Beazer Mortgage provided qualified homebuyers a range of financing options, including conventional, Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans’ Administration (VA) financing programs.