The firm changed its name to UDC Homes in 1986; the next year, it completed a move of its corporate headquarters to Tempe, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix.
UDC was a highly productive builder, the ninth-largest in the U.S. by 1992; it was the second-largest in Phoenix, a market that represented most of its revenues, and the third-largest in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The company converted to a corporation in 1992, but a complicated three-tier share structure led to indebtedness as dividends paid to prime preferred stockholders further drained its finances.
The firm filed a pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy case in 1995, emerging as a subsidiary of developer DMB Property Ventures and exiting its unprofitable operations in the Southeast.
[11] In the late 1980s, UDC established a reputation in the Phoenix high-end "move-up" market for homes that backed onto golf courses, artificial lakes, and mountains.
[24] Shea Homes and Standard Pacific made offers to buy UDC in June 1998,[25] by which time it had become the number-one homebuilder in Phoenix with 1,041 starts over the first six months.
Shea acquired UDC for an undisclosed price that July; it was billed as the largest transaction in industry history, surpassing D. R. Horton's $350 million purchase of Phoenix builder Continental Homes earlier that year.