When the builder stocks started selling off after the boom, they bottomed last July at roughly 1.0x book. They then re-traced roughly 50% of the selloff. Starting about February 1, the second leg down began.
Since then, it's just been massive distribution. They are once again trading around book value but the deep value guys who became buyers in July '06 aren't yet stepping in.
Many of the builders have mortgage finance subsidiaries. I think investors are going to be reluctant to buy the stocks until they see if the authorities are going to extend the investigations started at Beazer to the whole group. The Beazer investigations are serious stuff, not trivial.
If you didn't hear about the Beazer investigations, here's a link to the story:
http://www.businessweek.com/print/bw...327_838032.htm