twilight: restores communities
Feature Story
TIM MCNANEY, MICHAEL FIETZ AND VINNIE PIZZONIA BRING THREE DISTINCT SKILL SETS TO TWILIGHT
HOMES, but their merger in 2011 left the company well-positioned to take advantage of the wreckage leftover from the housing disaster. When the real estate bubble – primarily residential housing – imploded and collapsed upon itself, it left everyone in the business seeking ways to find money. Unfortunately, most companies did not have the wherewithal or expertise to do so.
“The banking industry wasn’t involved because of the regulations they face,” said Fietz, who knows a thing or two about that end of the business. His dad owned a bank in which Fietz worked, he also stayed with the business for a number of years once the family sold it. Fietz graduated from Albuquerque Academy and received an accounting degree and a master’s from Texas Tech in management. He then went on to earn a master’s in banking from the University of Colorado.
building blocks
“There was so much downward pressure and where banks lost so much money was in residential construction,” he said. “That became the unique building block of Twilight Homes because we were able to not involve banks.” And that was huge when other builders simply could not find any working capital.
“My knowledge of deal structure gave us the opportunity and competitive advantage to go after deals,” he said. “There were a lot of distressed assets out there and when you look at the early years of Twilight, we built in distressed communities.” As matter of fact, the company was able to help save other builders from even greater disaster by taking over and completing projects that otherwise might have simply gone wanting. restoring confidence in communities
“In those first few years, we made a name for ourselves that if you have a troubled community, the men of Twilight were the ones to finish or revive it,” Fietz said. A good example is the convoluted escapades at Mariposa, a master-planned community on the extreme northwest corner of Rio Rancho that appeared destined to be left unfinished with numerous unhappy homeowners in the lurch.
A community center was padlocked, the major land developer had stopped work and all the builders had left. Twilight was able to broker a deal for the community center and sell it back to Mariposa’s homeowner’s association while carrying the note, which regained some of the amenities existing homeowners had expected. It also began building homes