Comstock Homebuilding Companies Inc. Reports Operating Results (10-Q/A)

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Nov 23, 2009
Comstock Homebuilding Companies Inc. (CHCI, Financial) filed Amended Quarterly Report for the period ended 2009-09-30.

Comstock Homebuilding Companies is a production homebuilder that develops, builds, and markets single-family homes, townhouses, and condominiums. The Company currently operates in the Washington, D.C. and Raleigh, North Carolina markets where it targets a diverse range of buyers, including first-time, early move-up, secondary move-up, empty nester move-down and active adult home buyers. Comstock Homebuilding Companies Inc. has a market cap of $12.02 million; its shares were traded at around $0.79 with and P/S ratio of 0.26.

Highlight of Business Operations:

In early 2009 no significant improvement in market conditions was evident. Accordingly in an effort to stabilize the Company management formulated a Strategic Realignment Plan, a strategy for reducing market exposure, reducing project count and inventory and eliminating debt and settling obligations of the Company. A key part of this strategy was the identification of the real estate projects that management believed provided the best possibility for rebuilding the Company to be profitable again in future periods. Management outlined a plan for securing the necessary modifications of existing loans on these key properties and initiated negotiations with the subject lenders on these projects as well as negotiations with all of the lenders associated with the projects that the Company would seek to eliminate from its portfolio. Managements goal was to reach amicable agreements with all of the Companys major creditors before year end 2009. As a result management has spent much of 2009 focused on negotiating with our creditors to eliminate debts and otherwise settle obligations of the Company. As previously reported and as detailed herein the Company has made significant progress with respect to eliminating debt and restructuring the loans for the projects it desired to retain. As of September 30, 2009 the Company had successfully negotiated settlements with the majority of its secured lenders where the Company was a guarantor and had reduced the outstanding balance of debt from $102.8 million at December 31, 2008 to $83.4 million at September 30, 2009. With respect to projects that the Company did not seek to retain, in most cases the Company was released from the obligations under the loan in return for its agreement not to contest the foreclosure of the real estate assets securing the subject loan and in certain cases the Company provided the lender a non-interest bearing deficiency note in an amount equal to a fraction of the original debt with a term of three years. In one instance the Company also made a cash payment to the lender. Due to the time required to complete the requisite foreclosures on certain real estate assets, the foreclosure actions were not all complete at September 30, 2009 and will occur in future periods. The Company expects that all such foreclosures will be completed in 2010.

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