Toll Brothers eyes China home market

By Scott Malone

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Luxury U.S. home builder Toll Brothers Inc (TOL.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is looking for a partner in China to help it jump into the housing business in the world's fastest-growing economy.

"We've discovered that we are known in China without ever having been there, which came as a complete surprise, but it's there," Chief Executive Robert Toll said at the Reuters Real Estate Summit in New York. "I can envision Toll suburbia, I can envision golf course communities, I can envision high-rise."

A team from the Horsham, Pennsylvania-based company, which last year generated $6.12 billion in revenue, is leaving next week to visit major and second-tier cities across China. Toll said the aim is to join forces with a well-established builder in the China market that would benefit from the Toll name.

China is urbanizing rapidly, with some 8 million people moving to cities each year and a growing middle class pushing up property values. That has brought soaring profits to developers, although the government has recently taken steps to try to slow the torrid growth.

Two years ago, Toll publicly toyed with the idea of international expansion, then focused on Mexico and Canada. But in the midst of a strong boom in the U.S. housing market, the CEO pulled the plug on that effort.

"The U.S was so good and when the low-hanging fruit is so fabulous, why the heck would you put a ladder at the trunk of the tree and go to the top to get that fruit?" Toll said. "And I was wrong."

Further in the future, the company would consider looking other Asian markets, Toll said.

"We'll concentrate on the China market a little bit," he said, "and then we will explore India and Korea."