Washington Homes

WASHINGTON -- Washington Homes Inc. could raise a maximum of about $20 million by selling common shares to the public.The Landover-based company, taken private in a management-led buyout in 1988, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday to sell 1.6 million common shares. After the sale, the public would hold almost a 30 percent stake in the company, while company officers and directors would control more than 70 percent of outstanding common shares.A group including PaineWebber; Dean Witter Reynolds and Ferris, Baker Watts will underwrite the sale, according to the SEC filing.

Steven Muller, former president of the Johns Hopkins University and a major figure in American higher education, died Saturday of respiratory failure at his Washington home. He was 85. A child refugee from Nazi Germany who went on to earn a doctorate in political science at Cornell University, Dr. Muller became the president of Hopkins in 1972. Over the next 18 years, he directed the most ambitious growth of the institution since its founding in 1876, enhancing the national and global prestige of the institution he shepherded.

Washington Homes Inc., which builds primarily in the Baltimore and Washington areas, is heading south and increasing its national presence by acquiring the top homebuilder for the Mississippi Gulf Coast and northern Alabama.Landover-based Washington Homes announced yesterday that it had reached an agreement to buy Breland Homes, a privately owned homebuilder with operations in Huntsville, Ala., and Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss.The agreement was for just more than $10 million, according to Christopher Spendley, chief financial officer for Washington Homes.

WASHINGTON - He has always had one of baseball's smoothest, most efficient deliveries, and his arm, at times, might as well have been made out of rubber. And when Livan Hernandez stood on the mound, his right hand dangling by his hip, he looked every bit like an Old West gunslinger. But for whatever reason, greatness, at least the sustained variety, has eluded him during his career. At least until this season, anyway. Hernandez pitched 7 1/3 solid innings for the Nationals last night, giving up only two runs, helping his team defeat the Toronto Blue Jays, 5-2, in front of 39,881 at RFK Stadium.

Washington Homes Inc., which has grown in the past five years to become the second-largest homebuilder in the capital's metropolitan area, said yesterday that it had agreed to be acquired for $77.4 million by Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. of New Jersey, the nation's 16th-largest builder. The Landover company has a scattering of projects in the Baltimore area, while most of its 90 subdivisions are in suburban Washington and Northern Virginia. It also operates in the South as Westminster Homes, with projects in Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee.

Washington Homes Inc., whose $25.5 million offer to buy the assets of bankrupt Regency Homes Corp. was rejected by lenders, came to terms yesterday with two banks to purchase part of the assets for $7.3 million.Christopher Spendley, chief financial officer for Washington Homes, said Provident Bank of Maryland and First Union National Bank of McLean, Va., had sold 100 lots in various communities in Maryland and Virginia to his Landover-based company.A bankruptcy court order this month cleared the way for Provident, First Union, Bank United of Sterling, Va., and Ohio Savings Financial Corp.

Hundreds of homebuyers, stranded by the demise of Regency Homes Inc., may have gotten a glimmer of hope when Washington Homes Inc. of Landover yesterday announced it had entered into a preliminary agreement to purchase certain assets -- including contract rights -- of the bankrupt builder.The tentative agreement for $25.5 million made between Zvi Guttman, the trustee appointed to the Regency case by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, and Washington Homes is subject to the reaching of a definitive agreement, a review of all contracts and bankruptcy court approval.

Washington Homes Inc. is selling finished building lots in 20 of its Baltimore/Washington area communities through a sealed bid process.The program, called "Builder-OPP '96," is geared toward small- and medium-volume builders.Geaton DeCesaris Jr., the company's president, said the lots are in subdivisions where Washington Homes had sold nearly all the houses, but had some parcels left.Catalogs have been compiled describing each of the properties. MNC Mortgage and Key Federal Savings Bank have committed funds for acquisition and construction financing, according to Jeff Ludwig of the Michael Companies, which is handling the sale.

Washington Homes Inc. yesterday reported profits rose for both its fiscal third quarter and nine-month periods that ended April 30, despite the continuing weakness of the District of Columbia's housing market.The Landover-based homebuilder generated net income of $1.3 million, or 16 cents per share, a fifteen-fold increase from earnings of $78,000, or 1 cent per share, in the comparable period last year.Revenue also increased significantly, to $39.8 million, a 64 percent jump from the same three months in 1994.

Eagle Pointe Washington Homes is offering 23 home sites and five floor plans in the Eagle Pointe community in Annapolis. The Anne Arundel County community offers home sites on lots ranging from 1 acre to 20 acres. The homes are on well-and-septic systems and come with propane heat and cooking. Standard features include 9-foot first-floor ceilings, luxury bath, ceramic tile tub, brick front, two-car garage and professional landscaping. The community's five floor plans range in price from $584,990 to $683,990 for 3,750 square feet to 4,550 square feet.

WASHINGTON - A Navy chorus sang "God Bless America," members of the U.S. Army National Guard unfurled a giant American flag and the beaming President of the United States threw out the first pitch. For the first time in 34 years, America's pastime returned to the nation's capital last night, doing so with patriotic gusto and a who's who list of Inside the Beltway heavyweights. Yet the real movers and shakers here were a Mexican third baseman, a Cuban pitcher and the rest of the shiny-new, first-place Washington Nationals.

City police were searching for clues yesterday in the fatal stabbing of a 68-year-old man during an apparent burglary in Mount Washington - a crime that stunned residents unaccustomed to violence in their neighborhood. "We're all very upset about it," said Jan Franz, president of the Mount Washington Improvement Association. "It's very scary." Police say the killing occurred about 2 p.m. Sunday when a caretaker living in a home in the 5600 block of Greenspring Ave. confronted a burglar.

STAFFORD, Va. - George Washington's boyhood home may not look like much above the surface. But with every layer of dirt archaeologists scrape away, remnants of 18th-century farm life are revealed. A team of diggers from Mary Washington College and the University of South Florida spent the summer excavating at Ferry Farm in southern Stafford County. This is the first full-scale archaeological dig done at the site between the Rappahannock River and Route 3. The project will continue for 10 years.

Bank volunteers help Habitat for Humanity Bank of America volunteers participated last week in beginning construction on a Habitat for Humanity home in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of West Baltimore. The project is part of a national homebuilding project named in honor of Hugh McColl Jr., Bank of America's former chairman and chief executive officer. The McColl Habitat for Humanity project is a community effort that is expected to produce 120 new homes over the next five years in cities where Bank of America does business.

Two white oak saplings - the first successfully cloned from Maryland's famed, 460-year-old Wye Oak tree - were planted yesterday at George Washington's Mount Vernon estate in Virginia. The Arbor Day plantings marked the start of a 10-year, $150,000 effort to restore and revitalize the first president's beloved woodlands, which have been thinned and weakened by time and hungry deer. "The planting of the Wye Oak at Mount Vernon is only the tip of the iceberg," said David Milarch, founder of the Michigan-based Champion Tree Project International, a partner in the project with the National Tree Trust of Washington and Neighborhood Friends of Mount Vernon.

Beneath pictures of a lovely urban park and a four-story brick Victorian townhouse, the print advertisement teases, "You thought you'd never afford something this great in D.C." "You were right." The ad, part of a campaign starting today in Washington publications, shows Baltimore's Mount Vernon, one of the city neighborhoods promoted in a new marketing effort aimed at enticing Washingtonians to move here and ride the train to work. The $80,000 civic sales pitch is the first in 20 years aimed at Baltimore's neighbors to the south, said Tracy Gosson, director of the nonprofit Live Baltimore Marketing Center.

Bank volunteers help Habitat for Humanity Bank of America volunteers participated last week in beginning construction on a Habitat for Humanity home in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of West Baltimore. The project is part of a national homebuilding project named in honor of Hugh McColl Jr., Bank of America's former chairman and chief executive officer. The McColl Habitat for Humanity project is a community effort that is expected to produce 120 new homes over the next five years in cities where Bank of America does business.

Washington Homes' acquisitionLandover-based Washington Homes Inc. announced a $15 million acquisition yesterday of the homebuilding division of Westminster Homes Inc., a North Carolina single-family home builder.The purchase gives Washington Homes control of more than 1,300 building lots and a contract backlog of 79 sold homes, said President Geaton A. DeCesaris Jr. Westminster, a subsidiary of Weyerhaeuser Real Estate Co. of Tacoma, Wash., built 309 homes in North Carolina last year.Times Mirror stock dropsStock of Times Mirror Co. fell sharply yesterday, losing nearly all the gains it made on Friday when the company announced an agreement to sell its cable television interests to Cox Enterprises Inc. for $2.3 billion.

Eagle Pointe Washington Homes is offering 23 home sites and five floor plans in the Eagle Pointe community in Annapolis. The Anne Arundel County community offers home sites on lots ranging from 1 acre to 20 acres. The homes are on well-and-septic systems and come with propane heat and cooking. Standard features include 9-foot first-floor ceilings, luxury bath, ceramic tile tub, brick front, two-car garage and professional landscaping. The community's five floor plans range in price from $584,990 to $683,990 for 3,750 square feet to 4,550 square feet.