Earnings Labs

Hovnanian Enterprises, Inc. (HOV)

Q3 2013 Earnings Call· Mon, Sep 9, 2013

$117.24

+1.09%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-1.36%

1 Week

+1.75%

1 Month

-4.27%

vs S&P

-3.06%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for Hovnanian Enterprises 2013 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. An archive of the webcast will be available after the completion of the call and run for 12 months. This conference is being recorded for rebroadcast. [Operator Instructions] Management will make some opening remarks about the third quarter results and then open up the line for questions. The conference 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 turn the call over to Jeff O'Keefe, Vice President, Investor Relations. Jeff, please go ahead.

Jeffrey T. O'Keefe

Analyst

Thank you very much. Before we get started, I would like to quickly read through our forward-looking statements. All statements in this conference call that are not historical facts should be considered as forward-looking statements. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements of the company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that our plans, intentions and expectations reflected in or suggested by such forward-looking statements are reasonable, we can give no assurance that such plans, intentions or expectations will be achieved. Such risks, uncertainties and other factors include, but are not limited to, changes in general and local economic, industry and business conditions and impacts of the sustained homebuilding downturn; adverse weather and other environmental conditions and natural disasters; changes in market conditions and seasonality of the company's business; changes in home prices and sales activity in the markets where the company builds homes; government regulation, including regulations concerning development of land, the homebuilding, sales and customer financing processes; tax laws and the environment; fluctuations in interest rates and the availability of mortgage financing; shortages in and price fluctuations of raw materials and labor; the availability and cost of suitable land and improved lots; levels of competition; availability of financing to the company; utility shortages and outages or rate fluctuations; levels of indebtedness and restrictions on the company's operations and activities imposed by the agreements governing the company's outstanding indebtedness; the company's sources of liquidity; changes in credit ratings; availability of net operating loss carryforwards; operations through joint ventures with third parties; product liability litigation; warranty claims and claims by mortgage investors; successful identification and integration of acquisitions; significant influence of the company's controlling stockholders; changes in tax laws affecting the after-tax cost of owning a home; geopolitical risks; terrorist acts and other acts of war; and other factors described in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended October 31, 2012. Except as otherwise required by applicable securities laws, we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, changed circumstances or any other reason. Now, I'll turn the call over to Ara Hovnanian, our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. Go ahead, Ara.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

Thanks, Jeff, and thank you all for participating in this morning's call to review the results of our third quarter, ended July of 2013. Joining me today from the company are Larry Sorsby, Executive Vice President and CFO; Brad O'Connor, Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer and Corporate Controller; David Valiaveedan, Vice President of Finance and Treasurer; and Jeff O'Keefe, Vice President of Investor Relations. Let me start on Slide #3. Our operating results continued to improve during the third quarter of fiscal '13. We see in the top left-hand portion of this slide that our revenues increased sequentially each quarter in fiscal '13, with the first quarter shown in gray, the second quarter shown in yellow and the third quarter shown in blue. Below this, in the bottom left-hand quadrant, you can see that as our revenues increased, both SG&A as a percentage of revenues and interest as a percentage of revenues declined sequentially each quarter from prior quarter. Since the first quarter of this year, we saw SG&A and interest percentages decrease 200 and 210 basis points, respectively. This demonstrates our ability to leverage the fixed component of these costs as we grow the top line. Moving now to the upper right-hand corner, our gross margin has also shown sequential improvements each quarter during fiscal '13. In the third quarter of fiscal '13, our gross margin increased 140 basis points when compared to the second quarter of 2013. And it improved 330 basis points compared to our first quarter. We've been telling you for many quarters that we were steadily marching back toward normalized gross margins in the 20% to 21% range. And we are pleased that our third quarter gross margin of 20.3% has begun to enter a more normal territory. Our positive operating trends resulted in approximately…

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

Thanks, Ara. On Slide 19, we show our homebuilding gross margin percentage each of the past 10 quarters. We've seen a steady trend of increasing gross margins over this time period, ending with the third quarter gross margin of 20.3%. During the third quarter of 2013, 77% of our wholly-owned deliveries were from newly-identified land parcels compared with only 39% in the second quarter of 2011. This increase in deliveries from newly-identified land parcels have certainly played a role in getting the gross margin back to normal levels. As Ara mentioned, we will be taking appropriate actions to increase our sales pace going -- in the future, including lowering home prices when necessary, but don't leap to the conclusion that our gross margin will drop. The gross margin for the third quarter reflected homes that were contracted in prior periods and in the vast majority of cases, do not reflect the price increases we implemented during the third quarter. Our fourth quarter deliveries are largely in backlog and will not be materially impacted by any actions we take to regain our sales momentum. Turning to Slide 20, we continue to make good progress on leveraging our total SG&A expense. On this slide, we show total SG&A as a percentage of total revenues. Here we show 2011 in gray, each quarter of 2012 is in yellow and the first 3 quarters of 2013 are in blue. Below each of these bars, we show the absolute dollar amount of our total SG&A for each quarter. As seen on this slide, SG&A as a percentage of revenues has declined each of the past 7 quarters on a year-over-year basis. During the third quarter of fiscal 2013, our total SG&A dollars increased slightly to $56 million compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2013.…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of David Goldberg representing UBS.

David Goldberg - UBS Investment Bank, Research Division

Analyst

My first question was on land acquisition and I wanted to get an idea how you guys are thinking about this potential uncertainty. I know you believe it's kind of a blip in the road here in July, and consumers maybe just needed to adjust to higher rates and the increase in home prices. But given you've had to pull back price in some of your communities to restart sales as you kind of reviewed in the presentation, how are you thinking about the potential downside on land acquisition? And how are you kind of managing against that risk?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

Right now, obviously, as we always do, we use the most current prices in evaluating our land acquisitions. So if there were sites where we have done a downward adjustment and frankly, they're tiny adjustments relatively speaking, then we use the current pricing, which would be lower. At the moment, we still see lots of opportunity, and we're moving forward on our acquisition plan without hesitating. Obviously, as always, we'll look at every month's results. And if we really felt like there was a broader overall market slowdown, we might alter our plans and we have plenty of time to do that. We're well below our targeted investment levels. So we've got a while to catch up to where we'd like to be and have the capability of being. And so we'll have an opportunity to adjust if we need to. I'd be surprised.

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

David, in addition to Ara's comment about price, our underwriting also self-adjusts for current absorption pace as well. So whatever is currently going on with home prices, currently going on with weekly, monthly absorption pace is taken into account towards our IRR hurdle rate.

David Goldberg - UBS Investment Bank, Research Division

Analyst

That's very helpful. My follow-up question was actually kind of on price discounts. I know you mentioned in a couple of slides taking pricing down. And obviously, after big moves in taking very slight price adjustments relatively. So I'm not trying to focus on the negative, I think pricing gains you've had are fantastic. But what I'm trying to understand is when you decide to cut prices, what are the other options that are available to you? Maybe taking some amenities out of the home to keep the price a little bit more affordable for the buyer or maybe doing them -- offering incentives in other ways like buying down rates or something like that. How do you thinking about the profit before you actually go to cut prices, which is, I would believe, much more visible to the buyer? Can you give some of the tools that are in the tool belt to use and how you think about employing those tools to help if needed to kind of restart the sales level you're comfortable with?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

Yes. There are a number of different approaches, and we really leave it up to the local management to decide what's the best approach that they would like to make. And by the way, in some cases, even though they've seen sales, let's say, below their budget for a month or 2, they may choose to do nothing and unless it really became a significant issue, we're okay with that. It's often in cases where they're way head of sales already for construction, and they don't mind having a little period of slowdown in a specific community for that community to catch up. But as you point out, there are a variety of ways to do it. One way is to just make an adjustment on spec homes that are ready to go. And that's often is a little less visible, it's a specific home. In other cases, they may do adjustments on lot premiums. Also, a little less visible perhaps than some. Although we're not overly concerned about the visibility because we, in many cases, where we've got too aggressive, more of the homes -- most of the homes are sold at lower prices anyway. So it's not as though there are a lot of buyers that would be upset at those higher prices. In other cases, it might be an incentive for somebody that buys a home and closes by our fiscal year end with a period. Maybe they'll throw in some appliance package or some nominal little promotion. And yet, in other cases, a couple of our divisions are looking at -- for specific communities perhaps for it's -- again, for specs looking at a short-term rate buy down with a limited amount. So they're looking at all the different tools, and we really leave it up to the local divisional management to make the selection.

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

And, David, just a final point, which may not have come across 100% clearly during the presentation. Those 3 slides that we gave as examples, that showed net pricing. So if one of our local teams decided to add incentives or some other form of concession rather than absolutely lowering the price, it still shows up as a net price decline, but they would've used some other tool other than just lowering the price.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Dan Oppenheim with Credit Suisse. Daniel Oppenheim - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: Just wondering if you can -- just start by talking about the idea of terms of raising price and what have you in the community level but also thinking what you're doing there in Red Bank in terms of just offering some guidance towards the regional level. And then, if we look at those 3 communities you're highlighting, there are some meaningful price increases that were taking place and implemented, call it, in May into June, at a time when rates were going up. And while it's clear that there's strength there and you could see from the springtime the demand, what about sort of just taking a step back saying, gee, with rates going up like this, should we be a bit less aggressive here? And just given the -- what can be problematic in terms of cancellations as you end up having to bring down pricing, just how do you think about that overall in terms of just guiding those -- the price increases and the pricing decisions at communities?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

We generally do not get from the corporate level, do not get very specific about prices other than to give general ranges. Generally speaking, we have encouraged our management teams to find the market. I think there were homes that were sold by ourselves and others that were under what the market was willing to bear. And perhaps, in retrospect, we could have or should have taken into account the effect of the rates. But we certainly saw pretty good sales even while the rates were going for some extended period of time. So we felt it was most prudent to continue to find the pricing and then we just adjust and react accordingly as we know how to do. Unfortunately, we had do it on the way down when things were really going down and we were able to do that effectively. And we wanted to find the top this time as well. And as we've shown you in a few cases, we've had to adjust it and that's been fine. In other cases, we really didn't do much adjustment and the market just got used to it for 4 or 5 or 6 weeks. And eventually, sales just picked up on their own without any additional incentives, just as they got over the sticker shock. So I mean, it's hard to call it perfectly, but we feel okay about what we're doing. If the sales continue much at slow paces in September and October, we would certainly look at doing some broader based adjustments. But hopefully, that won't be the case. Daniel Oppenheim - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: Great. And then, I guess, one follow-up. In terms of the -- just having seen some things in the past, we always just worried when there aren't any down adjustments in terms of cancellations. But given that -- the way that the orders did slow up since the last price increases, there probably isn't much of the backlog that would be if price is higher than where we are today. So feeling pretty confident in terms of what the future cancellation risk there in terms of just deliveries, correct?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

Yes, exactly the point. I mean, we didn't typically sell many homes at that IRR price, which is why we're looking at lowering now.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Michael Rehaut representing JPMorgan. Jason Aaron Marcus - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: This is actually Jason Marcus in for Mike. Just moving back to the land market for a minute. I was just wondering if maybe you could comment on some of the recent trends that you've seeing as you're looking to purchase new land in terms of the competition and the pricing. And maybe if you've seen anything meaningful given the interest rate move over the last several months in terms of what you're seeing in the land market.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

It's interesting, and it's a good question, we -- in some of the very heated markets, we found some peers were beginning to either factor in a lower hurdle rate than we were willing to take on the IRR or they were factoring in some appreciation or so it seemed to us because there were prices that transacted that were a little higher than what we could justify. Just anecdotal feedback from the road, I was out on the West Coast a few days ago, was that they felt in the last month or so that, that has tapered a bit. And again, this is unscientific, but the feedback was that many of our peers that were anxious to fill the pipeline made some progress in filling their pipeline and are now not being quite as aggressive, which is frankly helpful for us but we shall see. That's just anecdotal from the last month or so. Jason Aaron Marcus - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Next question. In terms of your buyer mix, have you seen -- in terms of the impact from interest rates over the last couple of months, has there been one segment that has -- maybe was more impacted than some of the others as you look across the different buyer segment?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

I think, I would say, the comments are pretty much like we have been making over the last few quarters and that's that the market overall has improved and perhaps, the group that still has not jumped in as much as the others is the first-time homebuyer market, which I've mentioned on prior calls was counterintuitive to me because they didn't have a home to sell, so they weren't burdened with an underwater mortgage. But that is the group that's been the most affected typically with the stricter qualifications right now, in my opinion, too strict. There are people that we were able to approve for decades are having a tough time today. I'm not talking about the ones that got subprime but those that were tried and true borrowers, really did not have problems. Those buyers at this moment because the pendulum has really over swung in my opinion, they are having a tough time. Eventually, the pendulum, I think, will swing back to normal. Normal not being the subprime days but before subprime. And I think that will help really round out the recovery by bringing that part of the food chain, if you will, the entry-level buyer into the overall market as well. But generally, we're seeing the active adult buyers come in, the move-up buyers come in. It's been -- and by product, I mean, whether they're townhouses or singles, we've seen it do well. Generally speaking, a little higher price points in larger homes are fairing quite well. Jason Aaron Marcus - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Lastly, can you provide the order number for August excluding JVs for this year and last year?

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

Hold on for a second. We'll see whether we have it at our fingertips here. Got it, Jeff?

Jeffrey T. O'Keefe

Analyst

Yes. It was 390 during August 2013 versus 430 during August of '12.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Adam Rudiger representing Wells Fargo Securities.

Adam Rudiger - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division

Analyst

I guess, sticking with just with the same topic we were just discussing, mortgage availability, given your comments on--there was an article today in the Wall Street Journal on conforming loan lids. Any thoughts on how that will impact your business, if at all?

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

What did the article say?

Adam Rudiger - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Just that the temporary extension up to the $600,000, $700,000 range is going to be reduced.

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

We all sell -- I mean, our average home price is a little over $300,000. I don't think it will have a significant impact on us. It may have a very incremental negative, but we are seeing a little bit of money coming in on the nonconforming side. So I'm not overly concerned about it. Obviously, nonconforming mortgages are more expensive. So again, it's an incremental negative but because of where our price point is, I don't think it's anything to be overly concerned about.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

Yes. Interestingly, I've heard some comments and I haven't even had a chance to chat with Larry about it, that some of the jumbo rates we're hearing about on the private sector are coming in lower than our GSC rates. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

Adam Rudiger - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Okay. And then going back on Dave's question earlier, could you actually -- can you tell us what the incentives were this quarter as a percentage of sales price relative to a year ago?

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

No. We just don't track it that way.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

Yes, yes.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ivy Zelman representing Zelman & Associates. Ivy Lynne Zelman - Zelman & Associates, LLC: You gave a lot of great information. I thought your presentation and the examples you gave of the 3 markets on what your pricing and sales pace were was very, very helpful on transparency or gave us great transparency. But if you walk through the portfolio, sort of as you looked at it in aggregate, maybe you can talk about what the magnitude of communities where you were, let's say, forced to reduce price versus those that held steady versus those increased in total to give us sort of a broader perspective? And then just, Larry, in one of your comments, you talked about that the margins and backlog going into fourth quarter are going to be higher given that any of your price actions would not be reflected in fourth quarter. Are price actions that you've taken going out when those units do get delivered going to be a drag on margins where we'd actually see some potential margin compression because of the price actions that you took that won't close in for a few more quarters?

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

Let me just address the second part of your question first. To clarify, what I said was don't leap to the conclusion that these recent price tweaks that we've done are going to cause margins to deteriorate. I didn't say gross margin is going to be higher in the fourth quarter. I didn't make any prediction about fourth quarter gross margins. I just didn't want anybody to think that all of a sudden, we're going to have a big decline in gross margins for fourth quarter because even in the third quarter, the price increases that we instituted in the third quarter weren't a part of our third quarter deliveries. They are still in backlog, which may have led you to conclude that I'm saying that gross margins are going to go up, but I didn't quite say it that way. And I would also say that these tweaks in pricing that we've made community-by-community and again, we've encouraged our divisions where appropriate, to make adjustments. But it isn't widespread that they've actually occurred. So we're just kind of playing the market out to see what's happening at this point. Maybe Ara wants to add additional color.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

Yes. I think -- well, again, to even further clarify or reiterate Larry's point, that the examples we gave where we actually lowered prices a bit, the deliveries from those sales will probably have higher margins than the deliveries from those -- from our third quarter in those communities. So they were minor in amount and our prices are still higher than what we delivered in those. So I wouldn't be overly concerned on that. The -- if you look at our contracts from the release by geography, you'd see the West had the biggest decline, and that's the place where we saw the most price increases and where we've done a little bit of adjustment. Some of our other markets, we haven't done a lot. They still were up. You'd see that in the Midwest was up year-over-year. The Southeast was up year-over-year, so we haven't had to do a lot of adjusting in some of those markets. More of it was focused on the West. Mid-Atlantic was -- maybe had more examples because they were up only a couple of percent versus the Midwest and the Southeast where we had sales up -- net contracts up in the mid-20% range, if that gives you some clarity. Ivy Lynne Zelman - Zelman & Associates, LLC: No, that's helpful. If you guys talk about maybe more specifically, your spec strategy. I know that industry as a whole has not that much inventory in the market, completed specs certainly, even just started spec. With respect to the slowing that we've seen or softness and not realizing if it's going to pick up anytime soon. We know other builders are already in some markets that are not as -- I guess, don't have as easy access to capital could start to get nervous and start to use more concessions. So tell us about your spec strategy, what percent of inventory would you start specs or started specs? And will you change that strategy in light of a softer market? And how do you react to competitors who are starting to use concessions that are worried about getting their money out of the ground?

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

In the appendix to the slide deck is some pretty good information on our current position on unsold homes. We had 617 started unsold homes as of July 31, excluding models. Since 1997, we've averaged 4.7 started unsold homes per community. As of July 31, 2013, we're only at 3.3 started unsold homes per community, so we're lower than average. And you can even see kind of the yellow on that slide trending downward. So we've been pretty conservative in terms of the amount of started unsold homes. I understand your point with respect to there may be some builders that have been a little more aggressive, and they may cut prices. We've seen that in prior cycles, prior quarters. And we just address it community-by-community rather than kind of broad-based situation. And it's usually short term in nature, short lived kind of proposition. Ara, do you have any other comments?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

No. I would just end, overall, that we have fewer specs than our peers per community. If anything, I just recently reviewed the data. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I was surprised that we were quite a bit lower than some of our peers that had ramped up a bit more. Maybe that ramp up helped them in their recent few months of sales because they really had some homes that were obviously available for quick delivery that we didn't have. But we're not making any general change in our strategy right now. I think our decline in specs really resulted from faster sales than we had planned as opposed to any wide strategy to reduce the number of specs that we have.

Operator

Operator

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

Nishu Sood - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division

Analyst

I wanted to follow up on some of the land spend questions earlier. Your pace on lot acquisition has increased pretty impressively. And so I wanted to just get a sense of where you've been most successful in acquiring new lots just geographically. And maybe if you could kind of color that with your commentary earlier about what's driving the land market right now.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

I'd say just quick thoughts. And I don't have the exact numbers at my fingertips, but we haven't been as successful in Northern and Southern California and I -- as I'd like. I don't think they've held their percentage of our acquisitions. And probably in Minneapolis, we haven't been quite as able to get the sites that we'd like that pencil out. The other market that might come to mind is Orlando. We'd certainly like to be more aggressive than we've been. Those are the only quick standouts that come to mind. Having said that, I think we are making some progress in each of those and would hope to enter contracts and get through land committee in those markets with some more parcels.

Nishu Sood - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division

Analyst

Got it and I agree. And following up on Ivy's question earlier about spec strategy. Just thinking about it a little bit differently, I wanted to get your thoughts on the industry, the evolving spec strategy here. With the volatility in interest rates obviously waiting for a to-be-built home especially with the rising material and labor shortages, 6 to 8 months is a long period of time to wait in terms of mortgage rate volatility. So you laid out what your strategy is going to be. Do you think the industry might begin to respond with a greater number of specs just due to the volatility in mortgage rates?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

That's an interesting thought. I really haven't focused on that. Generally, by the way, our spec strategy is a little different geographically. Houston, in particular, we run -- generally run our business with a spec strategy. Almost everything starts as a spec in the Houston geography, maybe not quite that extreme in Dallas but close to that. And then, if you exclude townhouses in the D.C. or the New Jersey market, we build virtually no specs and almost everything is to order. It is probably something worth pointing out, worth us focusing on in a potentially rising mortgage rate environment to think about that. It's a good point, and we'll probably kick it around a bit.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of Susan Berliner representing JPMorgan. Susan Berliner - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: I guess, just starting with land spend going forward. Are you guys updating your land spend forecast for the remainder of the year at all, are you changing that at all?

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

We didn't make one to begin with. So I don't think we're going to adjust it now, Sue. But I think you can just assume that we're out there busily looking. And we've been -- we certainly spent a lot more in the third quarter than we had the previous 4 quarters on average as we indicated in the script. And we're continuing to look for deals and do not believe that liquidity is a limiting factor on being able to continue to do numbers similar to what you saw in the third quarter, but we've never made a formal land spend projection per se.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

We'll add that the addition of the Citibank line of credit gives us a little more dry powder to increase our land spend. Susan Berliner - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Great. And just turning to liquidity. I guess, I assume the bank agreement will be filed with the 3Q. Is the $52.2 million available, is that based on the borrowing base calculation?

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

I'm sorry, repeat the question. Susan Berliner - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Is the $52.2 million, is that limited by the borrowing base calculation of the revolver?

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

Yeah. Susan Berliner - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Can you tell us what the differential is besides the LCs?

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

There's -- I mean, we can fully draw whenever we want without a financial covenant whatsoever with respect to drawing it down.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

Yes. So that is -- the LCs are the only differential.

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

Yes. Susan Berliner - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Okay, great. And then any update on the GSO land banking relationship?

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

I think we've now identified everything to fill the second bucket, and we've almost closed out the second bucket. And the GSOs recently inquired whether we're interested in obtaining a third bucket, but nothing formally has been done yet.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brendan Lynch representing Sidoti. Brendan Lynch - Sidoti & Company, LLC: You mentioned that the landmark in California is particularly constrained. In light of that, can you comment on your mothball lot situation there? And I know you're bringing some of those back online, and just an update on what that status is.

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

Yes. So just a summary of where we are, I mean there's 4,767 mothballed lots in California. Go ahead, Ara.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

Yes. And a good chunk of those are in Northern California, and that market is certainly gotten heated up. So in some of them, we're in the process of resite lining [ph] them to really optimize it for the current market. But we've been unmothballing some sites somewhere almost every quarter. And I suspect that's going to be continuing. I don't have any specific comments on the California ones and the timing, but I think we'll make steady progress as we determine the right timing on those.

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

Yes. Similar to my comments in the formal comments in the script, I mean, we clearly view those mothballed lots in all geographies, but especially in California, as very attractively priced future land for growth. So as the market continues to improve, you'll see more of that unmothballed. Brendan Lynch - Sidoti & Company, LLC: Okay, great. And could you also just comment on the higher cancellation rate during the quarter? I'd imagine this is mostly due to interest rates, but your thoughts on that. And also if any of the cancellations you see resulting in an order of a less expensive home just due to the pricing power that customers have.

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

Cancellation rates in our opinion are below normal levels. It was down year-over-year, it might have been up just a touch sequentially. But we think we're below normalized cancellation rates. Ara, I don't know, you want to address the second half of his question?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

I'm sorry, could you repeat the second half? Brendan Lynch - Sidoti & Company, LLC: Yes, sure. So I was asking whether if you see cancellations, I think they're at 21% this quarter versus 18% last quarter, if you see any of those cancellations resulting in order for a less expensive home.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

I cannot say that I have heard that specifically, no.

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

Cancellation rates were 18% compared to 21% a year ago, so we're actually down 3% this year versus last year. You said it the opposite.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Megan McGrath representing MKM Partners.

Megan McGrath - MKM Partners LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Most of my questions have been answered, but we haven't heard a lot lately about input prices. Maybe you should give us an update on labor and supply cost?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

Well, thankfully, lumber, which had been climbing quite a bit earlier in the year has settled back a little bit. That has been helpful. Other than that -- and that, by the way, is the primary ingredient in a home, if you will, the primary material. There's more dollars spent on lumber than any other material. So that's a good thing. There have been a few other products that have gone just slightly the other way, but I'd say in the last couple of months, we felt a little less pricing pressure for sure than we did last quarter.

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

And we're hearing less anecdotal comments about our divisions having trouble finding labor for this particular component or that particular component. So it seems to have abated somewhat.

Megan McGrath - MKM Partners LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Okay, great. And then maybe a little more color. We've talked a lot about the East Coast and the West Coast markets. But clearly, your results, at least on the order growth, were better in the Midwest and the Southeast on a year-over-year basis. Any specific areas you'd like to highlight there?

J. Larry Sorsby

Analyst

Midwest and Southeast, I don't know that we have any real color other than they've had a little bit more success there. But I can't think of any particular communities, Ara, maybe you can, that outperformed in those areas per se.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

Well, I mean, the Southeast, we've certainly done well in the Florida market, South Eastern Florida specifically, which is the most constrained. We've done relatively well in Orlando as well. We're doing well in Tampa, but not -- we don't quite have the pricing power in Tampa, where land is not quite as constrained as the other 2 markets.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Eli Hackel representing Goldman Sachs.

Eli Hackel - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst

Just 2 questions. One, how much do you think the increase in supply in existing homes has been impacting the business of new homes? And then just more of a higher level question, you had a good slide about your affordability relative to history. If houses still really are affordable relative to history, why do you think people aren't buying at the 4.5% or 4.7% mortgage when theoretically, they could still afford it?

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

Sure. I think regarding your -- the latter part first, I think it's a little bit of sticker shock when we've had that much price increase at that -- in this soon of a period. I just think it takes a little adjusting time for people. By the way, the same thing happened on the way down. A lot of sellers did not want to sell their home initially as their values came down. But then eventually, they adjusted to the price, and people did decide to sell their home. The same thing happens to buyers on the way up. And sometimes, it just takes a little bit of time and a little bit of that sense of urgency diminishes, and they take their time. Regarding the other part of the question, month's supply in virtually every market were built in has been going down in terms of existing homes on the market. In fact, many of our markets, if not all of them -- not all of them, many of our market, if not most of them is what I meant to say, are below what we consider the normal range. The normal range would be 4 to 6 months’ supply. And you get there by just taking the total number of listings and dividing it by the sales in the most recent month. Most markets are below normal that we build in. So that's a pretty positive environment right now.

Operator

Operator

I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Hovnanian for closing remarks.

Ara K. Hovnanian

Analyst

Thank you. Well, we're pleased with the results. We tried to give you as much clarity and granularity in terms of the data as we could. And we look forward to delivering another great quarter and even hopefully, stronger quarter in the fourth quarter. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our conference call for today. Thank you for all participating, and have a great day. You may now disconnect.