Tri Pointe Homes, founded by three out-of-work homebuilders in Irvine during the Great Recession, is being sold to the Japanese building materials group Sumitomo Forestry for $4.5 billion, the companies said Friday, Feb. 13.
Tri Pointe cited high home costs and mortgage rates, coupled with the state of the U.S. economy, as reasons for the sale, which is expected to close in the second quarter. The shift to Sumitomo also will take the company private.
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“Concerns over a resurgence of inflation driven by tariff policies, as well as uncertainty regarding employment and the broader economic outlook, have weakened consumer sentiment, resulting in a continued tendency for prospective buyers to postpone home purchases,” Toshiro Mitsuyoshi, president of Sumitomo Forestry, said in a statement.
Mitsuyoshi added that the sale was “a friendly transaction” approved by Tri Pointe Homes’ board. Stakeholders will get $47 per share in the all-cash deal.
The company, which stands among the top 20 U.S. homebuilders, launched in 2009 and went public in 2013, growing across the Southwestern, Western and Southeastern regions. Then called TRI Pointe Group and comprised of six regional firms, it was consolidated 11 years later as Tri Pointe Homes. While the homebuilder’s home office is in Irvine, its corporate headquarters is in Incline Village, Nevada, where companies pay no corporate or franchise taxes.
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Tri Pointe in its third-quarter earnings last fall reported a slowing in new home orders, which fell 21% to 995 compared with 1,252 for the same year-ago period. In looking more broadly at other metrics released at the time, Tri Pointe also saw its backlog fall 44% to 1,298 homes from 2,325 from a year earlier. Net income in the latest quarter fell 50% to $56 million versus $112 million for the same period in 2024.
Tokyo-based Sumitomo Forestry has had its stake in construction materials going back to 1691, when the Sumitomo family managed copper mine reserves in the Japanese Alps. The company entered the U.S. market in 2003, and also owns homebuilding companies throughout Asia and Australia. Tri Pointe is its fifth homebuilding acquisition in the U.S. Sumitomo also owns other companies focused on land development and construction materials.
Sumitomo said in the announcement that it will use the Tri Pointe acquisition to grow its footprint in existing areas while also expanding in California and Nevada.
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The sale comes as builders scramble to create more housing amid high labor costs, tariffs and a homebuying stall. Last month, the nation’s largest homebuilders said they were working on a plan to develop “Trump Homes” which would address the nation’s affordability crisis while allowing private investors to back the initiative, according to a Bloomberg report.
Tri Pointe’s CEO Doug Bauer told team members on Friday that business would stay as usual.
“There are no changes planned to staffing, team member roles or responsibilities, pay, benefits, incentives, our company name, brand pillars, logo or how we work day to day as a result of this acquisition,” he wrote in a company email that was part of a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
He said in the news release with Sumitomo that the sale offers the homebuilder “compelling cash value” for its shareholders, while helping it grow as an independent brand within its Japanese parent.
Bauer was the former chief operating officer at homebuilder Lyon Homes’ when he and Tom Mitchell and Michael Grubbs — Lyon’s former executive vice president and chief financial officer, respectively — launched the company after being approached by the Irvine Co., which needed builders for new homes in north Irvine. The pivot came as much of the nation was still reeling from the housing crash in 2007-08.
