Earnings Labs

Hovnanian Enterprises, Inc. (HOV)

Q2 2008 Earnings Call· Wed, Jun 4, 2008

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and thank you for joining us today for the Hovnanian Enterprise fiscal 2008 second quarter earnings conference call. By now, you should have all received a copy of the earnings press release. However, if anyone is missing a copy and would like one, please contact Donna Roberts at 732-383-2200. We will be sending you a copy of the release and ensure that you are on the company’s distribution list. There will be a replay of today’s call. This telephone replay will be available after the completion of the call and run for one week. The replay can be accessed by dialing 888-286-8010; the pass code, 21484758. Again, the replay number is 888-286-8010, and the pass code is 21484758. An archive of the webcast slides will be available for 12 months. This conference is being recorded for rebroadcast and all participants are currently in a listen-only mode. Management will make some opening remarks about the second quarter results and then open up the line for questions. The company will also be webcasting a slide presentation along with the opening comments from management. The slides are available on the investors page of the company’s website at www.khov.com. Those listeners who would like to follow along should log onto the website at this time. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that the cautionary language about forward-looking statements contained in the press release also applies to any comments made during this conference call and to the information in the slide presentation. I would now like to turn the call over to Ara Hovnanian, President and Chief Executive Officer of Hovnanian Enterprises. Ara, please proceed.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

Good morning and thank you for participating in today’s call to review the results of our second quarter and six months ended April ’08. Joining me from the company today are Larry Sorsby, Executive Vice President and CFO; Kevin Hake, Senior Vice President and Treasurer; Paul Buchanan, Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer; Brad O’Connor, Vice President and Corporate Controller; and Jeff O’Keefe, Director of Investor Relations. The home-building industry continues to face challenging market conditions. During these touch market conditions, our focus has remained on reducing inventories, reducing costs, generating positive cash flow, and improving the liquidity of the company. If you turn to slide number one, you can see that the performance for the quarter in most key metrics was off from last year’s second quarter. We gave all of this data, along with some additional detail in our press release, which we issued yesterday. I am not going to go over each data point but instead will focus on some of the key parameters deriving our performance as well as our current initiatives. Whether you look at our data, the other publicly traded builders, or the census bureau data, recent sales reports have continued to exhibit negative trends as we have seen for the past two years. On slide number two, you can see our sales per community by quarter for ’06 through ’08. In each quarter of ’07, sales per community were off from already low levels in ’06. Unfortunately, this trend of declining sales per community has continued through ’08. However, I do want to point out that our net contracts per community for the second quarter only declined 17% compared to the 29% decline that we reported for total net contracts. The 29% decline in total net contracts is partially related to our…

Larry Sorsby

Management

Thank you, Ara. I will start by talking about the land related charges that we took in the second quarter. Land option walk-aways was a smaller component of the second quarter charges at $19.5 million. We walked away from 3,745 lots in the second quarter. If you turn to slide 15, it shows the geographic breakout of these charges, which represent the amount invested in these options, primarily through option deposits but also any pre-development dollars we had invested in getting this land through the approval process. Our land option positions have come down dramatically. In our two most challenging markets, we don’t currently have significant exposure to land options. In Florida, we have less than 1,000 lots under option and none of those will be taken down in fiscal 2008, and less than 50 lots for a purchase price of about $1.7 million are expected to be taken down in fiscal 2009. We see a similar situation in California, where we only have 1,335 lots under option and none to be taken down in the remainder of fiscal 2008, and only approximately 400 lots for a purchase price of $5.6 million expected to be taken down in fiscal 2009, and those are under recently renegotiated options that modify prices and terms. In some of the other difficult markets, such as Minnesota, Arizona, and Chicago, we have slightly less than a thousand lot options in aggregate remaining. Eighty-percent of our total remaining lot options are in our better performing markets of Texas, Washington, D.C., the Northeast, and the Carolinas. For many of these options, the price or terms or both have already been renegotiated. Nonetheless, we are consistently reevaluating every single lot option before we exercise our right to buy even a single lot. For any lot options that we…

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

Thanks, Larry. It appears that the remainder of fiscal ’08 will be difficult for the industry. If this housing correction follows the pattern and duration of the 1975 correction, the housing market should start improving in 2009, just in time for our company’s 50th anniversary celebration. On the other hand, if this housing correction should follow the pattern and duration of the 1981 correction, 2009 could remain as another difficult year, similar to 2008. One unknown is the potential effect of the housing stimulus bill, a version of which has passed both the Senate and the House and is now being considered in joint committee. This could affect consumer confidence and consumer pocketbooks in the short-term and could have an immediate impact on the housing market. Nonetheless, our community level budgets assume no near-term improvements in existing sales pace or price. Given the lack of visibility that we have as to when the market will turn, we have taken recent steps to enhance our liquidity, as we’ve discussed. Having liquidity to weather the downturn is more important right now than ever before. Ultimately, we will also need to have the liquidity to take advantage of land at the bottom, and we discussed a bit of that regarding our joint venture strategy in addition to our own capital. With the capital we have raised, both debt and equity as well as our cash flow expectations for the rest of the year, we believe we have taken all the liquidity concerns off the table. Based on our projected cash flow for the year, we expect to end the year once again with more than $800 million of cash and nothing drawn on our revolving line of credit. Additionally, we have taken significant steps to reposition ourselves, reduce our overhead, and to be…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from the line of Ivy Zelman from Zelman. You may proceed. Ivy Zelman - Zelman & Associates: Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity. I wanted to focus in on your underwriting standards, Larry, in terms of how you are impairing your assets. If I heard correctly, you are using today’s prices for not only impairments but also for take-down or exercises of options on land you control. Realizing we are in a deflationary environment, wouldn’t it be more prudent to assume that home prices continue to fall, rather than having to continue to have more impairments in the future, why not expect them or utilize it as deflationary expectations that the market have?

Larry Sorsby

Management

That’s one point of view, Ivy. I mean, we’ve had the other point of view of the market is down a lot. At some point, it’s going to turn. You can’t continue to see home prices go down forever, so we’ve never done anything other than take current prices and current pace. Our crystal ball is no better than anyone else’s. We don’t know what the future holds, whether it’s going to continue to slide down or whether we are going to stabilize or at some point it will actually go the other way and we’d be criticized if we over-impaired. So our approach has always been that we look at it based on current prices, current paces, and we think it’s a prudent approach to take. Ivy Zelman - Zelman & Associates: Okay, thank you for that. In terms of your margin performance excluding impairments, we show, at least my calculations would show that you basically were still on a negative operating basis excluding impairments, a negative 9% and with impairments, negative 40% if my math is correct. Assuming that’s roughly right or in the ballpark, realizing it would appear that if prices continue to fall, at some point the homes you are delivering, you’ll be generating no cash on those homes. Where are you in the cash generation per home, realizing that you did have some costs that you are recovering on land and given the aggregate numbers of losses excluding impairments, would that not imply that you’ve got a lot more impairments?

Larry Sorsby

Management

That’s a long question. I’m not sure I got all of the components of it down, Ivy, but I’ll attempt. I think the easiest response I can tell you is that we expect our cash balance at the end of the year to be $800 million. At the end of April pro forma for the transactions we did, it was 500, so that’s an increase of $300 million in cash. So I guess you are asking how much is it in a per-home basis. There’s no easy answer to that. Averages don’t make a lot of sense to anyone but if you end up dividing the number of deliveries that we ultimately have between April and the end of the October into the $300 million, I guess that’s one way to measure it. But I don’t think that’s necessarily representative because we are usually less cash flow positive in the first part of the year and more cash flow positive in the back end of the year, so it’s a difficult question to give you an absolute straightforward answer on but at this stage with the impairments that we’ve taken, we are confident that we are in a cash generation mode and I think that’s evidenced by the comments that we made both in our release and in the script today.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

Yeah, obviously there’s differences between GAAP reported earnings and cash flow and even if you don’t have decent GAAP reported earnings, that doesn’t mean you are generating cash flow, as evidenced by what we are projecting for the balance of the year. While margins have been disappointing, there are a few things going forward that are moving in the more positive direction. Some of that includes the mix of the homes in communities we have coming up is a little better than what we’ve gone through. Many of the impairments we’ve taken are going to be reversing a little more aggressively later. We have renegotiated many of the land contracts. Some of those homes are going to be delivering. We have renegotiated some of the subcontractor costs. Those homes are going to be delivering. You know, it’s hard to know how all of that plays out with home prices, but at least there are definitely some positive things that are countering home prices for the future quarters. Ivy Zelman - Zelman & Associates: Well Ara, now that you guys have a so much better capitalized balance sheet relative to what it was prior to the equity raises and private debt placement, could you kind of help us understand how much more flexibility you may have now in being aggressive to improve your velocity and absorption rate? Would you be willing to give up some margin now to generate more sales because you have the balance sheet that enables you to do it today?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

Well, we have had -- I mean, frankly we are constantly looking at this balance between velocity and margin. And if anything, when times are more challenging you are more inclined to work on velocity and not worry about margin. But I wouldn’t say we’ve changed our philosophy in that regard. We look at each and every community. We look at essentially how many dollars are being recovered on the lot if you build a house on some of our poor performers. And where we are not getting a decent lot recovery by building a house and delivering it for a customer, then we are mothballing some of those communities and we are not afraid to do that on the good parcels that we believe in for the longer term. On the other hand, where we can get velocity with price decreases, we are not afraid to do that. We would like to burn through as much of our land inventory as we can reasonably do, clear our balance sheet, generate the cash, and make room for the new land purchases at better economics. Ivy Zelman - Zelman & Associates: Thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Carl Reichardt from Wachovia. You may proceed.

Carl Reichardt - Wachovia Securities

Analyst · Carl Reichardt from Wachovia. You may proceed

Ara, you made a comment about having a -- considering a relationship with a partner for effectively co-investing at the bottom going forward. Do you intend this to be a permanent change in how you think about investing or more a temporary cyclical one? And do you expect other builders in this industry to pursue similar arrangements?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

Well, you know, it’s interesting, Carl. Up until four years ago or so, we did 100% of everything with our own capital. About four years ago, we ventured into a few of our first joint ventures with financial partners. And they were communities that required a little more capital, sometimes mid-rise or in a few of the cases where we actually built a high-rise in those cases, or just where they were big land purchases. The structure was we would put up a smaller amount -- a much smaller amount of the equity but if the communities perform, we get a disproportionate share of the profits. Since we began that, we’ve done numerous joint ventures with Lehman Brothers, Blackstone, Morgan Stanley, and a host of top financial partners. I can say overall, while the market hasn’t been cooperative recently, the experience has been a good one and the notion -- and by the way, all of those we’ve done with non-recourse debt with minimal leverage, as Larry reported, even with our recent impairments. We are still at about 46% debt to cap, so conservatively financed as well. There is a case to be made that having a larger proportion of our operations in joint ventures makes sense, but at this point we are not planning on a major shift but slightly increasing our previous target. I think in the past we said 10% to 20% of our equity might make sense in a joint venture mode. I think it’s likely we may raise that, especially as our equity is going down in the immediate term. But it is something short of saying that this is going to be the fundamental way we are going to go forward permanently.

Carl Reichardt - Wachovia Securities

Analyst · Carl Reichardt from Wachovia. You may proceed

Okay. Thanks for that and just as a follow-up, you were talking about the elimination of private homebuilders on a greater rate. But given that the public builders, at least at this point, seem to have some avenues open for liquidity raises and continuance of existence, and there appears to be a relatively large amount of capital building up on the sidelines from other sources looking to involve itself in the business. Are you confident that the opportunities at the bottom of the land market are going to be available? You may be losing private builders but there’s a ton of capital on the side and a lot of publics looking too. How do you sort of think about that?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

Well, the public builders, we have traditionally through the good times had plenty of capital. We are used to dealing with them but we had to deal with the bigger portion of the market, which is the private homebuilders. They are still the majority of the market. So public builders will continue to have liquidity availability. That doesn’t change, but the private builders will not, or they will be -- not obviously across the board. There are many that find private builders but as a generalization, they are much more thinly capitalized. So net net, publics and privates, I would think there will be good opportunities. And while there are venture funds that are out there buying land, they are not homebuilders and they will be out there to sell land to people like ourselves that will make the profits building the houses.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) The next question comes from the line of David Goldberg.

David Goldberg - UBS

Analyst · David Goldberg

The question is -- first question is about foreclosures and the impact of foreclosures on your communities, and if you are seeing a significant amount of price pressure that’s coming from foreclosures in nearby communities.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

We are definitely competing with foreclosures in certain markets. We see it more really in Florida and northern California, for whatever reason. We see more of that competition from foreclosures in those two markets specifically. That has been a headache. That does drag down pricing but it is something we are dealing with and we feel like we are currently priced appropriately to compete with the foreclosures. Generally speaking, the foreclosure, a comparable home in a foreclosed state clearly has a lower value and they are appraising at lower values, so that’s of some benefit. Hopefully the worst, if everybody is correct, the worst of the resets are behind us and it gets a lot easier in terms of new homeowners reaching monthly payment increases that are difficult for them and the rate of foreclosures will start decreasing certainly has been the projection. At the moment though, there has been an increase over the last six months clearly and we are competing with that day to day, particularly in two of the markets that I mentioned.

David Goldberg - UBS

Analyst · David Goldberg

But doesn’t that suggest that you are competing with the existing home market, whether or not we assume there’s more foreclosures or fewer foreclosures as we move forward, that if the prices are falling in the existing home market, there’s some sort of reliance that the builders, public and private, are generally not going to try to compete with that decline in pricing by cutting their own pricing moving forward?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

I’m not sure I understand.

David Goldberg - UBS

Analyst · David Goldberg

Well, in other words, you’ve had a price [inaudible] existing homes for a while because you cut your prices first, as you noted earlier in the comments, right? And now as existing home pricing comes down, isn’t there some sort of belief that new homebuilders are not going to cut prices to keep that advantage?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

Well, I think right now, as we mentioned on prior phone calls, we’re in a bit of an odd scenario because the new home -- the public homebuilders in particular have reduced their prices rapidly because we want to keep inventory moving. Existing home prices had not dropped as rapidly and that’s part of the reason why resales were more sluggish and the inventory was more sluggish than the new homebuilders new home inventory. And it got to a scenario whereas typically new home prices are at a premium to used homes, used homes asking prices were at a premium to new homes, which is unusual. I would imagine that it’s likely we’ll see more reduction in the existing home prices than builders’ new home prices right now and get back to a more normal relationship where a homebuyer values a new home and pays a premium for it versus a used home.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Michael Rehaut from JP Morgan.

Analyst for Michael Rehaut - JP Morgan

Analyst · Michael Rehaut from JP Morgan

Good morning. This is Jen [Consoli] on the line for Mike. My first question was you talked about that you had largely stopped buying land in some of the more challenged markets but I was wondering if you could kind of go through some of your regions and talk about what are you seeing in terms of bid/ask spreads? Are there any markets at all where spreads are tightening and maybe you would be more inclined to take advantage of opportunities, given your improved liquidity?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

Generally speaking at this moment, other than perhaps Houston, Texas, we do not see sensible land transactions where we can make a good, solid profit at today’s housing prices and today’s housing paces and velocities. So we are being patient even with the enhanced liquidity, even as we are about to finalized a joint venture partner. I would not anticipate us being particularly active at this moment. Remember, and as you know, we’ve been through many of these cycles and patience is a virtue. What we -- we don’t want to buy a property that only works when the recovery happens. Our buy signal is when you can make a good, economic return with enough room for margin for error at today’s house sales prices and today’s house sales paces and generally speaking, we are not at that point anywhere in the market in the country, other than Houston. We are looking and we are keeping our ear to the ground but we are not there just yet.

Analyst for Michael Rehaut - JP Morgan

Analyst · Michael Rehaut from JP Morgan

Okay, great. And in terms of the future cost saving initiatives, you know, you’ve gotten some benefits there but is it coming to the point where you are reaching either critical mass in terms of headcount, that incremental benefits going forward may be limited? Or is there still low hanging fruit that you can take out of the cost structure?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

Low hanging fruit has been eaten a long time ago. We’re on our ladders in this regard, both in terms of our staffing levels and in terms of sub-contractor costs. Having said that, we have reduced our headcount from a peak of about $6,800 to a little over $3,100. That’s a dramatic cut. There are more opportunities, if you can call them that, if we have to do it and if sales slow down even further. We are staffed to deliver and handle our current business volume. If volume slows down more, we may not be able to cut staffing proportionately but we will definitely be able to continue reductions. It’s not low-hanging fruit. It’s painful. We hope to be able to avoid it but we will do what we have to do, as we have in cycles in the past. Regarding subcontractors in the area of -- and the material costs, commodities are commodities. Thankfully they have been moving in a reasonably good direction, particularly in the area of lumber, one of the key driving costs in home-building. And then we are really down to the labor component. I think the sub-contractors generally speaking are not making a profit today. They are just hoping to cover their overheads and their overhead costs have been coming down because they are able to pay their laborers lower rates. So the easy cuts have been done. I wouldn’t call them easy but the lower hanging fruit has been picked and it is going to be more challenging but there are still opportunities in that area too.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Nishu Sood from Deutsche Bank.

Nishu Sood - Deutsche Bank Securities

Analyst · Nishu Sood from Deutsche Bank

First question I wanted to ask was on your gross margin, coming into your fiscal year you had told us that because of -- I think it was about 1,400 Fort Myers closings, which would be happening at close to zero gross margin, we’d probably see a lift in gross margins post the first quarter. But it looks like they came in pretty close to the first quarter, so I was just wondering if you could walk us through the dynamics there, what drove that.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

First, I think you might have misinterpreted what we said. I think what we did say is that the Fort Myers closings dragged down our margin at that time, and I believe something just under a 2% effect, maybe 1.7% or 1.8% effect at that time. I don’t think we were projecting gross margins for the future quarters.

Nishu Sood - Deutsche Bank Securities

Analyst · Nishu Sood from Deutsche Bank

Okay, so just --

Larry Sorsby

Management

Following up on your actual question, I think there’s a couple of things that caused margin pressure in the second quarter, and I touched on them in my prepared remarks. One of them is our focus on trying to sell some of the started unsold homes, which we made significant progress on during the second quarter and those are typically sold at lower margins than to-be-builts. And the other is just the reality of the deterioration in home prices that occurred during the second quarter that led to us booking additional impairments. So there’s been changes since the last time we had this call that are reflective in our results.

Nishu Sood - Deutsche Bank Securities

Analyst · Nishu Sood from Deutsche Bank

Right, and my follow-up question was last time, and this is a question I think that’s being asked of a lot of the builders, interest in knowing of your owned lots, the kind of development stages of them. The last time you said you might look into that and I was just wondering if you can give us an update and help us to understand what percentage of your lots are developed and not fully developed or raw?

Larry Sorsby

Management

We just don’t track the data that way.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

But however, suffice it to say that our land development expenditures are down dramatically and we do have a large amount of developed lots ahead of us and that’s advantageous for cash flow. It’s one of the reasons we’re projecting more positive cash flow going forward now.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Alex Barron from Agency Trading Group.

Alex Barron - Agency Trading Group

Analyst · Alex Barron from Agency Trading Group

I wanted to ask you, what is the total number of communities or percent of your total that has been impaired to date at least one time since the beginning?

Larry Sorsby

Management

Do you have another question? We don’t have it as a percentage. We’ll try to figure it out and give you that answer before the call or call you afterwards, Alex.

Alex Barron - Agency Trading Group

Analyst · Alex Barron from Agency Trading Group

Okay, sounds good. I guess another question I had was if you could walk us through I guess some of the major, how you are thinking about the $300 million between now and year-end? Where does that come from? Does it come from land sales or reducing further spec count? Or is it closing out communities? What are the major components, how we get there?

Larry Sorsby

Management

There’s no significant unusual items in that number. I mean, there’s a tax refund but the tax refund is the same that it was back when we originally made our projection earlier in the year, so that number hasn’t changed. As I mentioned earlier, we are not anticipating any bulk land sales, so that’s not impacted. So it’s just kind of ongoing operation, what we expect to generate from selling homes and our renegotiation efforts on delaying the purchases of land that are currently under option and the land development, or walking away from communities that we were otherwise planning to spend money on previously. So that’s kind of the overall big picture. Nothing really unusual in the numbers.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Joel Locker from FBN Securities.

Joel Locker - FBN Securities

Analyst · Joel Locker from FBN Securities

Just I wanted to talk to you about your west region a little bit. I saw the order decline was a little less on a unit basis and the company only down 17% but -- yet dollars fell more than any other part, being down 31%. And I just wanted to see if you had some kind of push in the west, just because your owned lot counts may be higher there on absorption rate to move home.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

No, we really didn’t have a dramatically bigger push there. I haven’t focused on that fact that you just mentioned but my suspicion is that it may have to do with mixes, part of it, as we are winding down perhaps on some of our higher-end coastal locations more rapidly at the moment.

Joel Locker - FBN Securities

Analyst · Joel Locker from FBN Securities

And therefore the price drop might have been a little more, based on inland communities that sell at a lower price?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

More of the inland community sales versus the coastal community sales. We are closing out of several of our coastal communities.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Paul -- I apologize for the mispronunciation of the last name -- [Frapamenco] from Resurgence.

Steve Gitimal - Resurgence

Analyst

This is Steve [Gitimal], a colleague of Paul [Fredimico]. Ara, our question is you said earlier on the call that your end of year cash balance should be around $800 million and the ideas was to be, you know, I don’t know, defensive and to focus on the balance sheet, but with the recent debt offering of the 11.5%s, you still have a number of bonds that are trading at substantial discounts to par. What are the thoughts on that? I mean, it seemed like you got a negative interest arbitrage right now where you have cash sitting on your books, you know, this $800 million probably earning 2% and meanwhile you’ve got bonds in the high 60s, maybe mid-70s that probably have yields well in excess of 10%. Would you -- are there thoughts to maybe do some open market purchases and retire some of this debt?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

At the moment, the main reason we issued the new capital was we just felt we needed to get an insurance policy, if you will, on liquidity. At this point, until we get a clearer picture on the market, on when the bottom is going to come, on what the effect is of foreclosures or price decreases, we are not overly anxious to, in spite of the fact that it’s quite enticing, we are really placing a premium on liquidity and capital because it’s not easy to obtain in this marketplace. So right now, we just want to -- generally speaking, we want to sit tight and see where the market is going and where the bottom is.

Larry Sorsby

Management

We said when we raised that money, because that was a question that came up, so I’ll just reiterate what Ara said, is liquidity is the primary issue. We want to make sure that we have sufficient capital to weather the storm and we don’t know how long the storm is going to last. The second kind of priority is we want to have some dry powder to pursue opportunities at the bottom of the cycle and I would rank opportunistically buying back bonds below both of those priorities. So I just think it’s premature to expect us in the market.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

I mean, having said that, we will always constantly look. It is clearly not a high priority for us at this point, in spite of the negative arbitrage.

Steve Gitimal - Resurgence

Analyst

Okay. Well, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) The next question comes from the line of Megan McGrath from Lehman Brothers.

Megan McGrath - Lehman Brothers

Analyst · Megan McGrath from Lehman Brothers

Thanks. Just wanted to ask a couple of questions. First, on your level of promotions, I guess how would you characterize where you are today versus maybe two or four months ago in terms of the number and level of promotions that you are doing?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

Well, I’m not sure precisely what you mean by promotions but if you mean concessions or incentives like free upgrades, et cetera, I would say generally they are about level. Now, having said that, there are points where when we continue and the market continues to add to concessions or incentives, there’s a point at which you are better off resetting the base price and reducing the amount of promotion and incentive. That is happening a little more frequently and we are just kind of resetting prices. But regardless, frankly, we don’t particularly focus on base price versus incentive. We look at net net sales price, and obviously that has been challenging and has been creeping down over the last quarter. Regarding national promotions or major sales promotions similar to what we did last September, the deal of the century, I would say we are not overly focused on that. We think we can get similar results just by continuing to deal on a community by community and home by home basis.

Megan McGrath - Lehman Brothers

Analyst · Megan McGrath from Lehman Brothers

Okay, thanks, that’s what I was after. And then, a follow-up on your capital raised; you said that part of the reason that you did it was to anticipate -- you know, you were anticipating potential further tightening by some of the banks. Curious if you had sensed any of that potential tightening or were trying to anticipate it from some of your suppliers or sub-contractors who have certainly been hit, I think, when all of the privates have gone under. Have those relationships changed at all?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

Not at all. No, they are -- both in terms of suppliers and sub-contractors, it’s been solid. We’ve been very conscientious and making sure our payment track record is excellent and those relationships are solid across the board.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Timothy Jones from Wasserman & Associates. Timothy Jones - Wasserman & Associates: First question is your land and options held for future development or sales went up $180 million. Can you tell me, was that a switch out of inventories and what percentage of that is options as opposed to land?

Larry Sorsby

Management

It’s primarily because we mothballed those communities and switched it, Tim. It wasn’t new stuff that we bought. Timothy Jones - Wasserman & Associates: Then how much of that -- what percentage of it is options?

Larry Sorsby

Management

Anybody know? $119 million is the total and that’s been going down, 75 was cash, but --

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

In general, the dollars spent on options or invested in options has been going down regularly, so again to clarify what -- reemphasize what Larry just said, if we mothball a community, then it goes to land in planning, so it’s really a switch from one category to another. Timothy Jones - Wasserman & Associates: Because most of this is mothballed land?

Larry Sorsby

Management

Yes. Timothy Jones - Wasserman & Associates: Okay. And then the other question is -- just explain the variable rate entity, the other options -- is that what you mean by options? And the deposits and notes receivables -- what are those three?

Larry Sorsby

Management

I’m not sure I heard the whole question. Did you ask what the variable interest entity’s inventory is? Timothy Jones - Wasserman & Associates: Just explain the variable interest entities, the other options, and the deposits and notes receivables.

Larry Sorsby

Management

Okay. The variable interest entities and the other options inventories are inventories that we’ve been required to book for GAAP for different FASB pronouncements, whereby we have the items under option and under FIN-46, you are required to look at the rules as to who is the primary beneficiary of the property and you have to -- if you meet those requirements or are considered the primary beneficiary, you have to record the inventory on your books with a corresponding liability or minority interest. So if you looked on the liability side, those inventories that are in the inventory not owned section are effectively offset by liabilities but they are options that we could decide not to exercise and the only thing we are exposed to is the deposits on those items, not the full amount of the inventory. The same is true with other options. It’s predominantly our models that we have under option with GMAC. They basically own our models and we have the option to buy those from them. We reflect them on our balance sheet as inventory for GAAP purposes but again, we don’t have to buy those off those models. We could walk away from them and they go back to GMAC. So in those cases, you don’t -- they are not -- you know, our full exposure is only a much smaller number, the deposits we have on those options. And then your last question was receivables deposits and notes -- that’s principally -- the receivable portion is principally the net due at closing, so when we close homes, if we have not received the cash yet because it hasn’t come from the title company or it is in the closing process, it is usually a day or two later we’ll get that cash. That’s the receivables. The deposits are deposits that we have in place in communities that we have deposits with municipalities or utilities, et cetera. There’s very few notes in there and there are some very minor miscellaneous notes we might have, but nothing of significance. It’s predominantly the net due at closing and the deposits we have in existing municipalities, et cetera, related to our communities.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

And this is all fully disclosed in our Qs and our Ks, so when you -- there hasn’t been a change. If you want to go back and get more details, you can look at the Q, or the new Q coming out at the end of the week.

Operator

Operator

And at this time, we don’t have any further questions in the queue. I will pass the call over to Mr. Ara Hovnanian for closing remarks.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Management

Thank you very much. As you all know, it is a challenging housing market but as I said in my closing comments, housing is here to stay. The market will ultimately recover and we plan to be a major participant in that recovery and hopefully in the not-too-distant future. We will continue to work hard and look forward to giving you an update next quarter. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our conference call for today. Thank you for your participation and have a nice day. You may now disconnect.