Wednesday, August 26, 2009 2:25 PM

By: Dan Weil

Homebuilders are snapping up land again after spending months shedding properties and suffering write-downs during the real estate bust.

The builders seek bargains in areas hit hardest by the real estate slump of the past three years, Bloomberg reports. That includes California, Florida, Arizona and Colorado.

“Like a shark has to keep swimming or it’ll die, it’s the same thing with builders,” Kathryn Boyce, regional director in Sacramento for Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, a real estate research company, tells Bloomberg.

“They have to keep building or they’ll die.”

The land purchases represent another sign that the real estate market is improving.