I finally stopped into the new Standard Pacific development up in Mission Grove (or is it Woodcrest or Orangecrest). Heck I don't know what area it officially falls into but it's near King high school. It's right next to the old Centex development. I don't know if Standard bought the lots from Centex for pennies on the dollar or if they owned these all along. My guess is they picked them up cheap, they seem to be buying a lot of land if they can get it at the right price. But I digress....onto the homes.
The homes are still big which surprised me a bit, however they are smaller than the bubble monsters. They range from 2500 s/f up to 3500 s/f. Prices are in the mid $300s. At those prices the cost per square foot is between $105 and $120. Remarkably enough that is almost in line with many of the regular resales in the area. The homes themselves are pretty nice and seem bigger than the square footage indicates. The bedrooms in particular are quite large which we found a pleasant surprise. Many other builders make huge homes with tiny bedrooms. In order to pull this off they eliminated the formal living rooms. So if you are a fan of a room no one uses you will be disappointed in these floorplans. The lots are still good sized with most of them around 1/4 acre (although many of them have a slope taking up some of that).
The builder was offering some incentives and I'm sure you could negotiate the broker fee back to yourself if you go in alone. I would imagine you could probably get them to throw in some upgrades since it looks like they have a lot of homes to sell. Of course the drawback to buying new is you get a "lot" of dirt. So you will need to spend some coin on landscaping. Of course many of the REO's and shorties still have dirt yards too. The good part is you still get to pick your flooring, cabinet colors, counters and even the exterior to some extent. So there are some definite advantages of buying new. It's often hard to find everything you like in a resale home and most of them will need carpeting or painting. So those costs often can offset the cost of landscaping a new home (unless you want a pool or some fancy back yard).
All in all, I found them not a bad deal. The prices seemed ok, the floorplans were decent and the area is good. The only drawback is Miller middle school is right across the street and traffic is horrific when school goes in and out. So if you are tired of looking at REO's short sales and such you might want to check these out.