Real-Estate-Related Stocks Move Down : Investing: The slow housing market is affecting the county’s six publicly traded building and real-estate finance firms.

If the stock market were an elevator, Orange County’s half-dozen publicly traded building and real estate finance companies would be in the basement.

J.M. Peters Co., the Newport Beach builder of posh move-up homes for the upscale Southland buyer, is a case in point.

Peters’ stock plummeted 27% Monday for no apparent reason other than investor skittishness. It has lost 84.5% of its value so far this year, falling to an all-time low of $1.63 a share from a high of $10.50 at the beginning of the year.

But in the past six months, companies such as Standard Pacific, Hammond Co., Pacesetter Homes and Covington Technologies also have seen their stock values dive as earnings have plunged and investors have abandoned them in droves.

“The whole market is bad,” said Barbara Allen, housing industry analyst for Kidder, Peabody & Co. in New York.

The overall sluggishness in the housing market caused by high prices has been exacerbated by consumer uneasiness amid growing fears of an economic recession and trouble in the Middle East.

“Orders for new homes have been awful since the guns of August,” Allen said, referring to Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.

It isn’t just the builders who are suffering on Wall Street.

The Hammond Co., a Newport Beach mortgage banker, has lost 52% of its stock value this year. Hammond’s earnings have fallen as home sales have declined, because there are fewer consumers taking out mortgage loans.

Although it is little consolation to local publicly traded companies or to investors who bought stock at the market’s peak, the housing industry slump is not just an American problem.

Mark Frazier, president of Irvine-based Barratt America, a unit of British home builder Barratt Developments PLC, said the parent company’s stock has taken a drubbing on the London exchange.

“The (housing) market is worse in Great Britain than here” because interest rates are so much higher, Frazier said.

Barratt America is not traded separately in the United States, but Frazier has little doubt that if it were, the stock would be in a similar downward spiral.

“It is just part of a cycle,” Frazier said. “Right now, because of a whole series of events, certain industries involved in real estate, credit and banking are being viewed with a great deal of skepticism, and you can hardly blame investors for that.”

Covington Technologies provides a clear example of what is happening.

The company, in its third-quarter financial statement Monday, said that earnings had fallen 21% to $279,000 from $356,000 for the period the year before, despite a nearly 43% increase in revenue.

For the first nine months, Covington earned $1.1 million, down 70% from $3.7 million for the corresponding 1989 period. Revenue dipped 16% to $48.2 million.

Covington’s improved third-quarter performance was because of a sales surge--it moved 60 single family homes, contrasted with 51 in the third quarter of 1989.

But the higher revenue was offset by increased sales costs as the company increased its marketing efforts. Covington’s profits were pared by the price cuts it made to attract buyer to homes in its California projects--a marketing ploy most builders these days are using.

For some, however, the housing slump might have an up side.

Mark Matheson, research director for the Newport Beach investment bank Cruttenden & Co., said he finds the housing firms “an interesting play right now.”

“A company like J.M. Peters could easily go to $4 or $5 a share in the next 18 months if the residential market picks up late next year like many analysts believe it will.” HOUSING STOCKS SLIDE

The stock of local companies involved in the home-building industry have lost much of their value this year as the residential market hit the skids.

Stock Company Price High Low 10/29 1990 1990 Centennial Group $0.38 $1.75 $0.25 Covingtion Technologies .38 .94 .38 Hammond Co. 2.50 5.25 2.38 J.M. Peters Co. 1.63 10.50 1.63 Pacesetter Homes 7.50 9.25 6.00 Standard Pacific 5.00 15.00 4.88

Source: Newport Securities and Times wire reports.