By Robbie Whelan and Dawn Wotapka | The Wall Street Journal
The nation’s biggest publicly traded home builders are on a buying spree, snapping up small privately held companies who made it through the housing slump but now are struggling to find financing.
Big builders are seeing their profits healthy and their homes selling at higher prices. For their smaller, privately owned competitors, times remain tough.
What sets the big builders apart is access to capital. The bond market has been kind to big builders, which issued a record $8.1 billion in bonds last year. Bond issues are on pace to have one of the strongest years ever this year, according to a recent analysis by J.P. Morgan JPM +0.22% .
