The pair priced their first homes at $13,740, about 14% less than the competition, by leaving out basements and replacing bricks in the front with wood. Broad called the model “The Award Winner,” though it hadn’t won any awards, and defied skeptics who said he couldn’t make money at that price. He sold 120 in the first year, worth $1.6 million.
“That was a long way from scraping by as a $67.40-a-week accountant,” he wrote in his autobiography.
Builds Company
During the go-go markets of the late 1960s and early ’70s, Kaufman & Broad had a market value of $1 billion, trading at 40 times earnings. The company, which later moved to Los Angeles, is among the top 10 homebuilders in the U.S.
Kaufman & Broad acquired Sun Life Insurance Company of America for $52 million in 1971 as a way to diversify from the boom-and-bust cycles of home building. Although life insurance wasn’t a business he knew, Broad researched the industry, finding that people continued to pay premiums, even in hard times. Broad shifted the company’s emphasis to annuities, or mutual funds with life-insurance wrappers, as he called them.
“Our customers would be the same baby boomers who purchased Kaufman and Broad’s houses,” he said. “A big generation of spenders who would live long past retirement.”
His foundations focused on science and education. For 13 years, Broad granted an annual, $1 million prize for improvements in urban school districts. He paused the program in 2015, citing “sluggish academic results.”
Broad’s legacy is visible in his adopted hometown of Los Angeles, where he led the fund raising for the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Broad Stage performing arts venue and a contemporary-art wing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Eli Broad, simply put, was L.A.'s most influential private citizen of his generation.
He loved this city as deeply as anyone I have ever known.
— MayorOfLA (@MayorOfLA) May 1, 2021
“People often think it’s strange how briskly I go through museums,” he said. “Sure, I could stand in front of each piece and stare at it for a good long time. But that’s not me. As much as I would like to stay, I have to move on.”
With Edythe, his wife of more than 60 years, Broad had two sons, Jeffrey and Gary.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.