WCI scouts Jacksonville, Orlando

WCI Communities is scouting sites in Jacksonville, Orlando and other areas of Florida where it plans build new residential communities.

Jacksonville would mark the Bonita Springs-based development company's first foray into Northeast Florida. WCI emerged from bankruptcy reorganization in 2009 and has since successfully raised capital by selling debt and equity in an initial public offering of stock.

In the transcript of a call with investors recently and posted on SeekingAlpha.com, WCI president and CEO Keith Bass revealed two previously undisclosed deals: “We also contracted for approximately 1,400 additional home sites, including a potential large master-planned community in Jacksonville, making our initial entry into this market, and a large master-planned community in Fort Myers.”

WCI has developed residential communities on the Gulf Coast and in Southeast Florida. “Now this is the first push in the Jacksonville, it's a market I have worked in before,” Bass told investors. “There is definitely a shortage of the higher-end, second, third move up communities. Toll [Brothers] will be our primary competitor up there. But it's a market I have worked in for many, many years.”

Still, a formal announcement about the Jacksonville project may not come until 2015, and the exact location hasn't been disclosed. “Of the ones that are under contract that we've not closed, the Jacksonville deal is a long lead deal, so that could be year and a half before we close on the property, just depends on the entitlements,” Bass says.

Meanwhile, Bass told investors that other locations are under consideration too, including Orlando. “There is an opportunity for retirement-type product in the center of the state primarily in the Orlando metro area,” he says. “So that could be a market for us but there is a lot of opportunity on the East Coast and we're working pretty hard over there to pick a few things up.”