Pulte Homes Moves Northern California Headquarters to Hacienda

By Hacienda Network Staff Writer

Pulte Homes - a division of PulteGroup, Inc., one of the country's largest publicly-traded homebuilding companies - has moved its Northern California headquarters to Hacienda and created a new regional design center in the park. The 25,000 square foot space, at 4511 Willow Road, marks a significant expansion from the company's previous 16,000 to 18,000 foot facility.

"I wanted something more open with higher volume ceilings and just a much different feel for the space," says Steve Kalmbach, president of Pulte's Northern California division. "As soon as I saw this, I really liked it. We expanded the area between the cubes to provide more flow and then we completely gutted the center part of the space and added four new conference rooms with glass. It's a great feel when you come into this space."

The addition of the design center is also a key move for the company. "For the past 15 years, we've had a design center for our home buyers in our model home in our model parks," Kalmbach says. "What we're doing across the country now is having a centralized design center in each of our divisions, so our homebuyers can come in and see kitchen layouts, cabinetry, counter tops, flooring - all the different ways to upgrade your home - in a nice, finished setting. The new design center here looks great as well, so we're pretty excited."

The Northern California division covers the Bay Area as well as Sacramento, the Central Valley, and Reno, but Kalmbach notes that the company's focus is primarily in the counties surrounding San Francisco Bay. "This is where we feel we have the best opportunity to build homes, so we're building up. That's the reason why we wanted more space here."

Currently, Kalmbach says the company has projects in San Jose, Milpitas, Mountain View, Fremont, Dublin, Richmond, and Brentwood, and "we're just about to start a community in Walnut Creek." In all, the Northern California division totals approximately 130 employees.

In the Bay Area, Pulte Homes focuses on infill projects, often converting vacant or disused warehouses and other commercial property to attached residential developments. "That means three- to four-story condos, townhomes, and lofts," he says. "Many of them are located close to BART stations or to VTA lines in San Jose or to the Cal Train line in San Mateo and on the Peninsula. We're a big believer in building smart housing next to transportation corridors and next to employment centers, and fortunately our customer is very receptive to that type of housing."

The other key to Pulte Homes' approach is that they handle almost every aspect of the development. "We're pretty much a full service firm," says Kalmbach. "We're a developer and a general contractor, which means we put the land under contract and then we engage an architect and an engineer and design the project with them. Once we get approvals, we do all the land development and then we build the housing. As general contractors, we contract with all our trades. We have our own marketing team here and then we sell the houses through our in-house sales team, and then our partner Pulte Mortgage Corporation provides the financing for buyers when they purchase the homes."

Other PulteGroup brands include Centex, Del Webb, DiVosta Homes, and John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods. For more information on Pulte Homes and their various developments, access www.pulte.com.

Photo: Pulte Lobby, photo credit: Bernard Andre

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