Ask the chairman of Oriole Homes Corp. about the future of home building in South Florida and he grabs a crystal ball off a shelf in his boardroom.

“Let me take a look,” Richard D. Levy says with a large grin.

What he sees are many more retirees moving here from the North with bigger expectations for their home-buying dollar. In Florida, the 65-year-old and older population has more than doubled from almost 1 million in 1970 to more than 2.4 million in 1990, according to U.S. Census Bureau information.

But those retirees don’t want geriatric shuffle board clubhouses or nursing home style dwellings. They want it all, Levy says.

Zeroing in on the active adult market has helped Delray Beach-based Oriole Homes quietly blossom into one of the state’s largest home builders and the 62nd largest nationally in terms of revenue, according to Builder’s magazine. Its secret has been accumulating a vast inventory of undeveloped land well in advance of need and providing affordable housing with lots of extras, according to real estate analysts.

Just take a look at the 50,000-square-foot clubhouse at Oriole Homes’ Huntington Pointe adult community in Delray Beach. It looks like a country club with a two-story, 600-seat theater for the performing arts, a ceramics studio, his and hers saunas and gyms, and indoor and outdoor swimming pools. The club also has a poolside cafe with snack bar.

Since Oriole began building homes in 1963, the company has quadrupled the amount of space it devotes to community clubhouses because the customer demands it, according to Levy. And building homes, condominiums and townhouses for the lucrative active adult community niche has paid off.

From 1989 through 1991, Oriole Homes has built the most condominiums in Palm Beach County by dollar volume and units sold. Through Sept. 30 of this year, Oriole has become the fifth-largest condominium builder in Broward County.

Last year, 75 percent of Oriole’s customers paid cash for their homes and the company reported revenues of $83.7 million and profits of almost $5.2 million. In 1991, its stock, traded on the American Stock Exchange, earned $1.04 per share.

Oriole Homes has a strength in the moderately affluent retiree market, Richard M. Lilly, a real estate analyst in Boca Raton, said in a recent report on Oriole Homes.

Lilly lauded the company as a “land rich and well-capitalized participant in a highly fragmented Florida home building industry.”

The third-generation, family-run business has its roots in the hotel business. Levy and his son, Mark A. Levy, Oriole Homes’ president, both have degrees in hotel management from Cornell University.

In 1963, Richard Levy’s father, along with some other investors, founded Oriole Homes. The name comes from baseball’s Baltimore Orioles, the hometown team of several of the partners. After working in the hotel business in Chicago, Richard Levy joined Oriole Homes in the late ’60s and became chairman and chief executive in 1974.

“We sensed the change of people wanting to come down to Florida for longer than just a stay in a hotel,” Levy said.

Originally, Oriole Homes purchased 160 acres in Lauderdale Lakes for the development of Oriole Estates. In 1967, the company’s Normandy style, three- bedroom, two-bath patio home sold for $15,990 with a 25-year mortgage at 6.25 percent interest, or $84 a month. Today, some of Oriole’s original customers have upgraded to one of the company’s newer communities, Levy said.

Today’s prices range from the low $70,000 to $260,000. Average prices during 1991 were $100,200 for condominiums and $161,600 for single-family homes.

Oriole Homes’ active adult community niche looks like it could continue its profitability throughout this decade. The 1990s will enjoy the most affluent preretirement market in U.S. history, according to Lewis M. Goodkin, president of Goodkin Research Corp.

“People will stay where they are if you don’t motivate them to move by building a superior alternative within a price range that they can afford or are willing to spend,” Goodkin said.

To meet the demand, Oriole Homes has two communities in the planning stage and nine under development. The projects under way include Huntington Pointe, the last section of the 789-acre Villages of Oriole project. Palm Isles, an active adult community of 992 residences in Boyton Beach priced from $100,000 to $170,000, and Cypress Bend, a complex of five- and nine-story lakefront condominium buildings in Pompano Beach.

One of the biggest changes in the way the homes are being built concern space, said Richard Levy. In the 1970s, the retirees moving down here were coming out of rental apartments in the Northeast, Levy said. Today, they are coming out of homes and they want more space, he said.

Looking into his crystal ball, Levy doesn’t expect the migration of retirees from the North to Florida to stop anytime soon despite concerns about overcrowding and depletion of the state’s natural resources.

“They enjoy the ocean, the weather and the lifestyle,” Levy said. “The traffic jams here are nothing compared to where they come from. They have a better life here. Florida gives them the pace and lifestyle they worked so hard to get.”

ORIOLE HOMES

Company’s profits were hurt by the downturn in housing but Oriole Homes has remained near the top in construction of condominiums.

Condominium sales:

Number of units sold and avg. price.

Palm Beach County Sales Average

(through Oct.31) price

Oriole Homes 235 $109,102

Minto Builders 138 $83,862

Yale Properties 31 $285,135

Sea Ranch Club 23 $242,126

Villa Costa/Mare 12 $400,575

Broward County Sales Average

(through Oct.31) price

NewCen Communities 235 $72,222

Lennar Homes 176 $78,977

Minto Builders 175 $67,429

Pompano Yacht Club 29 $131,034

Oriole Homes 52 $71,154

—-SOURCE:AREEA Report for South Florida