J.M. Peters Buys Las Vegas Home Builder : Acquisition: The purchase, in a deal worth about $5 million, signals a turnaround for the Newport Beach company.

In an ambitious push into one of the West’s few hot housing markets, J.M. Peters Co. said Thursday that it has acquired a major Las Vegas builder in a cash-and-stock deal worth an estimated $5 million.

The Nevada company, Durable Homes, has been consistently profitable through the past three years of recession. Its acquisition signals a significant turnaround for J.M. Peters Co., which was on the ropes just 13 months ago when builders Hadi Makarechian and Dale Dowers bought a controlling interest in it from the federal Resolution Trust Corp.

Peters Chairman Makarechian said Durable will remain a separate subsidiary under its current management. Makarechian said Peters has formed a second Nevada subsidiary, J.M. Peters-Nevada, to build in Las Vegas the kind of high-end tract housing that has made the company a major influence in Southern California for nearly 20 years.

Peters, based in Newport Beach, might also set up a Southern California subsidiary of Durable to build affordable housing here under the Durable name, Makarechian said.

Under terms of the purchase agreement, Durable owner Ronald Nix will receive $1.3 million in cash, a $400,000 note and 1 million newly issued shares of J.M. Peters common stock with a book value of about $3.3 million. The arrangement will give 39-year-old Nix a 6.2% share of J.M. Peters Co.

Durable, founded in 1967, specializes in new homes for first- and second-time buyers. Prices for its single-family detached houses range from $81,000 to $220,000, with most priced between $90,000 and $130,000.

The company has sold an average of 385 homes a year since 1989 and expects to sell 450 to 500 homes this year, which would make it Nevada’s sixth-largest builder. For 1992, the privately held company had sales of $36 million and a profit of $2.5 million.

Peters in the past specialized in homes priced from $350,000 to $600,000. But since Makarechian and Dowers bought controlling interest in Peters last year, they have lowered prices substantially.

Dowers said that the average price of homes being sold in the company’s Southern California developments--six in Orange County and three in Riverside--is now $278,000.

Peters had reported a string of losses since 1991, but since the ownership change in August, 1992, the amounts have diminished substantially. The company posted a loss of $3.5 million for the first half of its current fiscal year, compared to a loss of $81.6 million for the same period a year earlier.

Observers expect a profit for the publicly traded company’s current quarter, which ends Nov. 30.

Dowers projected that the company will sell about 250 homes this year and 500 in 1994, which would make it one of the top 25 builders in California.