RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE : In Constructive Spirit, Market Finally Starts to Build Momentum

It’s not the same as the boom of the late 1980s, but it is getting better, they keep telling us:

* The Construction Industry Research Board in Burbank reports that builders in Orange County were issued permits in January to build 268 single-family homes and 123 multifamily homes. That compares to permits issued in January, 1991, for 72 single-family units and 57 multifamily units.

* Foothill Ranch Co., developer of the 2,743-acre Foothill Ranch planned community, says it has sold 308 residential lots--or about 36 acres--to three Southern California builders in recent months.

Fieldstone Co. of Newport Beach bought 102 of the lots, Vintage Communities, the Newport Beach-based upscale division of Kaufman & Broad Home Corp., bought 104 lots, and Rainier Homes Inc. of Irvine bought 66 lots for its first-ever project.

* Roland Osgood, president of Vintage Communities, said the company sold out the first two phases of its 98-home Anaheim Hills project, selling 30 homes in the first two weeks of February. Osgood said more than 50 people have signed up for a chance at the next release of 15 homes later this month.

* Rick Sherman, senior vice president and general counsel of William Lyon Co., says sales agents at the giant home builder’s projects throughout the Southland are convinced there is life in the market.

Lyon launched a massive sweepstakes contest in January, promising to give away a home worth up to $150,000--or a $150,000 credit toward purchase of any of Lyon’s more expensive products--to someone who visits at least four of 29 participating Lyon developments by April 12.

Since then, Sherman said, traffic at the projects “has gone up, significantly. We’ve seen it increase four- and fivefold in some tracts since the promotion started.�

That sweepstakes is keeping officials at William Lyon Co. happy, Sherman said, but at least one potential customer has complained that the company wasn’t living up to its promise that people can enter as many times as they wish.

The problem, Sherman said, has apparently been taken care of--every Lyon sales office has been informed that the rules simply require entrants to pick up an entry card and have it stamped at the sales offices of four Lyon developments before turning it in.

If someone wants to make the rounds of the same four sales offices a dozen times a day, then that person can turn in a dozen stamped cards, without restriction.

The only “interpretation� of the rule, Sherman said, is that entrants can only pick up one card at a time.