Dive Brief:

• California developer Five Point Holdings this week became the first homebuilder to file for an initial public offering in more than a year, sparking speculation that rising home prices and strong new home sales will convince others in the industry to go public.

• Five Point Holdings develops and sells new-home lots to builders. Publicly traded Lennar owns approximately one-third of the company, which oversees the big builder's large California redevelopment projects.

• The company did not release the particulars of the IPO, but observers in the finance world speculated the IPO would help finance those development costs. Five Point has spent billions of dollars developing tens of thousands of home sites since its founding in 2009, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Dive Insight:

A cluster of eight builders went public in 2013 and the first half of last year, and five of them are trading at or below their IPO prices. Still, the Dow Jones U.S. Home Construction Index of six large public builders' stocks grew by 10.2% since January, and reached a five-year high in April, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The new IPO could prove to be a test case for other private builders considering taking their companies public.