Ex-KB Home chief reaped big riches in housing boom

The resignation of KB Home's (KBH.N) long-time chief over backdated stock options grants is focusing renewed attention on the big riches that home-building executives reaped in recent years.

Few people have ridden the housing wave as successfully as former KB Home CEO Bruce Karatz and other heads of publicly traded home builders, whose business exploded from late 2003 until the end of 2005 as consumers armed with low mortgages rushed to buy homes in hot markets

I'm not sure how much of this was his fault or how much he should be punished. At the least he should pay back the unjust profit.

One thing that is certain, is that KB has been building a lot of houses:

The past few years have been particularly lucrative for heads of home-building companies, with compensation packages often tied to rising profit at their businesses. In announcing Karatz's departure, KB Home noted that the company's total annual revenue had soared to more than $9.4 billion in 2005, up from $1.4 billion a decade earlier.