Good morning, and welcome to Taylor Morrison's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce Mackenzie Aron, Vice President of Investor Relations.
Thank you and good morning. I am joined today by Sheryl Palmer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Dave Cone, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Sheryl will provide an overview of our performance and strategic priorities, while Dave will share the highlights of our financial results. After which, we will be happy to take your questions. In the interest of time, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Today's call, including the question-and-answer session, includes forward-looking statements that are subject to the safe harbor statement for forward-looking information that you will find in today's earnings release, which is available on the investor relations portion of our website at www.taylormorrison.com. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections.
These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those factors identified in the release and in our filings with the SEC, and we do not undertake any obligation to update our forward-looking statements. In addition, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures on the call, which are reconciled to GAAP figures in the release. Now, let me turn the call over to Sheryl.
Thank you, Mackenzie, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. I will begin today's call with the highlights of our third quarter performance and the market environment, and then provide an update on our strategic focus on operational and capital efficiency. I am pleased to share that our teams delivered a strong quarter that met or exceeded our expectations across each of our key operating metrics as they overcame the intense supply side challenges facing our industry. Most notably, we delivered 3,327 homes, which was within our prior guidance range at a significantly stronger than anticipated home closings gross margin of 21.2%.
This margin improvement of 400 basis points year-over-year and 210 basis points sequentially is largely a reflection of revenue and cost synergies from our William Lyon Homes acquisition that we had indicated would begin to materialize at this stage of our integration. These advantages help to more than offset the timing and cost pressure from material and labor constraints that intensified during the quarter and are unlikely to abate in the foreseeable future. With these bottlenecks introducing a much greater than normal degree of uncertainty into near-term production schedules and delaying our construction timelines by 2-4 weeks, we are adjusting our prior full year home closings guidance by approximately 5% to around 14,000 units.
However, despite these delays, we are increasing our home closings gross margin expectations to the low 20% range this year, followed by at least 200 basis points of improvement to a margin in excess of 22% in 2022 based on our confidence in continued synergy realization, operational enhancements, and the strength of our sold backlog. As you would expect, we are proactively working to stay ahead of further supply chain challenges by communicating closely with our trade partners and suppliers to ensure visibility into our vertical and horizontal development cycles, control costs, and maintain our commitment to delivering an exceptional customer experience and fully complete houses for our home buyers. In addition, during the quarter, we started 3.5 new homes per community per month, made further progress in rebuilding our inventory of spec homes, and continued to align our sales pace with production.
Because of this disciplined approach and our attractive land pipeline and product portfolio, we are in a strong position to capitalize on favorable market tailwinds while also navigating supply-related disruptions. From a demand perspective, activity was healthy across each of our consumer groups and geographies, albeit at a more normalized and sustainable level of activity compared to earlier in the year. Notably, in contrast to typical seasonality, we experienced accelerating month-over-month sales momentum in both order volume and absorption pace as the quarter progressed, and October is on track to post similarly strong results. Amid this positive demand backdrop, we continue to strategically limit sales releases in approximately 70% of our communities to manage our backlog and balance pace versus price to maximize our return potential.
Among our consumer groups, the 55+ active lifestyle segment once again experienced the strongest trends. With year-over-year growth in both orders and absorption pace, as these buyers have the financial resources and motivation to move ahead with their purchase decisions. Representing over a quarter of our year-to-date net sales, we believe the 55+ active lifestyle demand is poised to continue to outperform as demographic household growth is forecasted to be more than 2x the overall market rate over the next four years within our footprint. The 73 million strong baby boomer generation progresses through peak retirement ages. The national expansion of our premier lifestyle brand, Esplanade, is well-timed to meet this growth with a consistent strategy that continues to perform well in its core Florida markets and has exceeded expectations to date in its newest West Coast communities.
Across the business, forward-looking indicators such as community traffic, conversion rates, and consumer credit metrics suggest demand and buyer interest remain healthy and supportive of further pricing power. However, as I indicated last quarter, we're cognizant of the impact of higher prices on consumer sentiment and affordability and expect market dynamics, including the pace of price inflation, to stabilize at more sustainable levels, which we're already beginning to see evidence of. This outlook is reflected in our pricing strategies, which are calibrated at a community level to optimize performance, and in our disciplined land underwriting assumptions, which have remained grounded in long-term market fundamentals and a preference for prime core locations. In addition, our well-balanced consumer diversification and the relative strength of our buyer profile provide additional layers of risk mitigation.
Specific to our consumers' financial health, our home buyers financed by Taylor Morrison Home Funding, which held an 83% capture rate, had credit scores, incomes, debt ratios, and down payments that were stable or improved from the prior quarter and a year ago. Because of this strength, our buyers' ability to absorb higher pricing remains significant, with the estimated buffer between their average actual interest rate and the maximum rate allowed for qualification purposes after considering compensating factors remaining at roughly 700 basis points for conventional borrowers and 500 basis points for government borrowers, both of which were more favorable than historic norms by approximately 50-100 basis points.
This is not to suggest that our buyers would want to or be willing to absorb a rate shock of that magnitude, but rather indicates that the financial durability of our consumer set is strong in both absolute and historical terms. In addition, we continue to see our diverse consumer groups are spending more on higher square footage floor plans and the home site of their choice, as well as enhanced design specifications to meet their needs and preferences, which have clearly evolved post-COVID. This ongoing strength can be partially attributed to migration trends as we continue to see a growing share of out-of-state buyers, particularly from higher-cost markets such as California, New York, and New Jersey to Texas, Nevada, and Florida.
It is also worth sharing that when we parse our consumer survey data, we have seen a growing trend of home shoppers expecting to pay more of their income towards housing, with the greatest impact among first-time home buyers. With low interest rates enabling this trend to date, we are monitoring these metrics closely and taking proactive steps to ensure continued affordability and design flexibility, such as intentionally increasing lower square footage floor plans within our spec home inventory. From an operational perspective, our priority remains to streamline and simplify our business to effectively leverage our scale and improve construction efficiency. As you have heard me discuss in recent quarters, we are focused on operational strategies designed to create a more efficient, predictable, and profitable business now that we are past the integration phase of our transformative multiyear acquisition journey.
This strategic focus is already delivering strong results, as evidenced by the 400 basis points year-over-year improvement in our third quarter home closings gross margin. Let me now provide an update on the work underway to continue this positive momentum going forward. First, our teams are working closely to optimize our product portfolio by evaluating our floor plan and option offerings for value engineering, cost rationalization, and consumer appeal with the greatest runway for improvement still within our William Lyon Homes-impacted markets. To frame the financial opportunity from such efforts, our Florida operations are a compelling example from which to start. Without the operational complexity inherent in other markets where we have been more acquisitive, Florida is furthest along in leveraging the power of shared architecture, floor plan repetition, and option rationalization.
This contributed to an average year-to-date home closings gross margin advantage of nearly 300 basis points and cycle time benefit of about one month compared to our markets on the West Coast that have the most opportunity for product and process consolidation due to more recent acquisition impacts. As we achieve similar operational efficiency across the country, we expect comparable results to drive meaningful margin and return accretion in the coming quarters. Second, our purchasing departments are driving further SKU rationalization to improve our procurement processes, control costs, and manage production timelines, an effort that has become even more critical in helping us overcome material shortages. Over the last three quarters, we have reduced our option count by nearly 1/3 , exceeding our goal for this year, and expect to achieve further gains in utilization rates as we roll out enhanced national specifications.
This progress is supported by the success of our Canvas standardized design packages, which have gained swift traction in our entry-level communities and increasingly in our move-up price points. These curated option palettes offer a more consumer-friendly design experience that removes time and complexity of a traditional design center approach. The average revenue of these packages is aligned with the historical range of option spend in our design centers by consumer group at an improved margin and more efficient production timeline. Lastly, but certainly not least, from a sales and marketing perspective, we are continuing to lead the industry in the digitization of home buying to empower consumers to complete their home shopping journey with the same ease and flexibility they have come to expect from the world of e-commerce.
Over the last year and a half, we have introduced industry-leading capabilities to reserve inventory homes online, which was then expanded to enable consumers to select a home site and floor plan and design a to-be-built home online. Building on these advancements, we recently launched a first-of-its-kind digital community that empowers consumers to schedule a visit online, independently tour, and virtually design and reserve a home. Because of the functionality of these tools, we eliminated the need for a traditional on-site sales team by designing our model homes with Amazon's Alexa to seamlessly guide home shoppers through their visit with informative and interactive touch screens and QR codes. They can then reserve a home and select their Canvas design package online, either immediately on-site or later from the comfort of their couch.
Please take a look at the new slide added to our third quarter investor deck once it is posted later today for more details. Since our model opening in this groundbreaking community on October 1st, we have already enjoyed an overwhelming positive response with an interest list of more than 1,300 prospective buyers and a reservation to sales conversion rate that is 2.5 x higher than our company average despite no in-person sales team and lower than normal external broker participation rates. With similar results across each of our virtual capabilities, we have meaningful opportunity to leverage these tools for a more cost-effective sales strategy.
Following this community's early success, we have two additional digital communities expected to open under our new Venture brand in the coming months and look forward to continuing to expand this promising new chapter of our virtual evolution that provides a seamless and on-demand home buying experience that we believe is unparalleled in our industry. I am proud that we achieved these milestones because of our team's forward-looking approach to technological innovation and serving our home buyers on their terms that predates the pandemic-driven acceleration in consumer adoption. Our focus on these operational strategies to drive stronger earnings are matched by an equal commitment to enhancing our capital efficiency to achieve greater balance sheet and cash flow optimization.
The new land financing vehicles that I announced last quarter are an important element of this strategy by enabling us to meaningfully decrease the upfront capital intensity of our investment in land acquisition and development and accelerate our pivot to an asset-lighter balance sheet. We have quickly operationalized these new vehicles with the initial assets slated to close this year, representing total expected balance sheet relief of approximately $850 million over the life of these projects. These and other arrangements that enable us to cost-effectively increase the controlled percentage of our land portfolio are accretive to our long-term return expectations and importantly mitigate cyclical risk.
We have also been active in returning excess capital to our shareholders with approximately 8.6 million shares repurchased year to date while also remaining committed to reducing our net debt leverage to targeted levels below 30% next year. Collectively, these operational and capital initiatives are expected to drive our return on equity to the high teens range this year, followed by further improvements to over 20% in 2022. These return expectations would mark new company highs and meaningful accretion over the historical results as the enhanced scale and operational advantages that we achieved through our strategic journey have transformed our ability to sustainably generate long-term value for our shareholders. Now let me turn the call over to Dave for his financial review.
Thanks, Sheryl, and good morning, everyone. In the third quarter, we generated net income of $168 million, or $1.34 per diluted share, marking a 54% year-over-year increase. Net sales orders totaled 3,372, while our monthly absorption pace was a healthy 3.3 net sales orders per community, with notable month-over-month strength throughout the quarter that persisted into October despite continued sales restrictions in the majority of our communities. In addition, our cancellation rate remained below historical averages at 6.7%. Among our consumer groups, we experienced the greatest strength within our 55+ active lifestyle segment, which increased 700 basis points to 27% of our total net sales orders.
With above average lot premiums and design spend compared to our entry-level and move-up consumer groups, this mix impact, combined with ongoing market strength, drove a 31% increase in our average net order price to $641,000. At quarter end, our backlog was 10,273 homes, representing a sales value of $6.1 billion, up 63% year-over-year. Our community count averaged 338, which was ahead of our prior guidance range. We expect our community count to remain in line with this level in the fourth quarter, driving our full year average guidance range slightly higher to 335-340. With approximately 78,000 lots under control, we have a strong land pipeline to support future community growth, particularly as we reach 2023.
However, supply side challenges have also extended into horizontal land development, and if these issues persist or worsen, it could delay the timing of some community openings in the back half of 2022. Turning to closings, we delivered 3,327 homes, which was within our prior guidance range. However, as Sheryl noted earlier, because of the unpredictability of material availability, elongating construction timelines, and severe labor constraints, we now expect to deliver about 4,600 homes in the fourth quarter and around 14,000 homes for the full year. This represents a 5% reduction from our prior full year guidance range and attempts to fully account for the fluid day-to-day operating environment that our construction and purchasing teams are navigating in the field.
Each market is experiencing challenges at different stages of the construction process, and generally speaking, bottlenecks are more severe as we move east along our coast-to-coast footprint with the least amount of pressure in our California markets. As our teams work to stay ahead of these challenges to deliver sold homes to our home buyers in a timely manner, we have also rebuilt our inventory of spec homes to more normalized levels in advance of the upcoming spring selling season. At quarter end, our total spec inventory equaled 5.3 homes per community, nearly all of which were under construction. This was up from 4.7 homes per community at the end of the second quarter. Our home closings gross margin improved 400 basis points year-over-year to 21.2%.
This exceeded our prior guidance of approximately 20% due primarily to stronger than expected pricing and volume of inventory homes sold and closed during the quarter. In the fourth quarter, we expect a home closings gross margin of about 21%, given favorable pricing and operational leverage that is expected to more than offset higher construction costs. This drove an increase in our full year home closings gross margin guidance to the low 20% range. Following the strength, we now expect at least 200 basis points of year-over-year improvement to a home closings gross margin in excess of 22% in 2022. This positive trend reflects the sustainable structural changes in our scale and production efficiency that we have achieved throughout our strategic growth and operational enhancements.
Our SG&A as a percentage of home closings revenue was 9.5%, and we continue to anticipate a full year SG&A ratio in the mid-9% range, despite the reduction in our home closings guidance. Turning now to our land portfolio, we invested approximately $478 million in land acquisition and development during the quarter and continue to expect our total land investment to be approximately $2 billion this year. Our total lot supply increased to approximately 78,000 home sites, representing 6.2 years of total supply and four years of own lots. At quarter end, 36% of our lots were controlled via options and other arrangements, which was up approximately 700 basis points year-over-year.
Going forward, we expect to expand this share further as we utilize the new land vehicles that were announced last quarter, as well as our traditional asset-light land strategies, such as joint ventures and seller or project financing. We expect these tools to enable us to cost effectively increase our option land position to at least 40% within the next year, thereby improving the capital efficiency of our land portfolio, reducing long-term risk, and enhancing our returns. Shifting to our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $1.1 billion of total liquidity, including $373 million of unrestricted cash and $722 million of available capacity on our revolving credit facilities. Our net debt to capital ratio equaled 41.1%.
Deleveraging our balance sheet remains a top capital allocation priority, and we continue to expect our net debt to capital ratio to reach the low 30% range by year-end, followed by a further decline to below 30% in 2022. In recognition of our success to date in improving our leverage since our acquisition of William Lyon Homes, I am pleased that S&P Global recently revised its outlook to stable and affirmed its credit rating. Lastly, during the quarter, we repurchased 3.3 million shares outstanding for $92 million, bringing our year-to-date total to 8.6 million shares for $237 million. We have repurchased just over half of the shares issued in connection with our William Lyon Homes transaction and more than a third of our total shares outstanding since 2015.
Going forward, we expect to continue to utilize share repurchases opportunistically to return excess capital to our shareholders. Now I'll turn the call back over to Sheryl.
Thank you, Dave. To recap, our strong third quarter performance reflected the strategic and operational focus our teams have been driving toward since our acquisition of William Lyon Homes a little over 18 months ago. We have communicated that milestone as a critical pivot point from which we would begin to meaningfully benefit from the synergy and scale opportunities that became available to us after integrating into one company. Going forward, our focus is squarely on operational execution to fully take advantage of our scale, product and geographic positioning, and balance sheet strength. While the unprecedented level of supply chain disruptions has added complexity and timing delays into the current operating environment, market fundamentals remain positive, and our fourth quarter is still expected to mark a significant inflection in our growth and profitability that will carry into 2022 and beyond.
As we enter this exciting next phase, I'm thrilled to announce that after an exhaustive search of both internal and external candidates to identify the best qualified person to succeed Dave following his retirement at year-end, we have appointed Lou Steffens as our next Chief Financial Officer. Lou is one of Taylor Morrison's most tenured and proven leaders with over 30 years of home building operational and financial experience, and is uniquely qualified to lead our company in the next leg of its strategic journey.
From his role as president of Mergers and Acquisitions, in which he led and executed each of our six acquisitions and integrations, and his background in finance and operations as an area and divisional president in various markets across the country, he brings an invaluable depth of knowledge and expertise to our finance team that we expect will expedite the execution of our strategic plan and elevate the level of cohesion between our finance and field operations. Since gaining the scale and diversification we set out to achieve with our M&A strategy, Lou has most recently shifted focus to lead our results management office, where he has spearheaded the rationalization of our operations and other initiatives that are contributing to our enhanced margin and returns.
He has been instrumental in deploying strategies to enhance the profitability and resiliency of our business, and is deeply familiar with our capital markets, accounting and financial planning processes, making him well suited to seamlessly step into this new role effective January 1st after a collaborative transition with Dave. With this announcement, it's equally bittersweet to approach the end of Dave's decade-long history at Taylor Morrison, in which he oversaw our transformation from nearly a 5,000-unit home builder at the time of our initial public offering in 2013 into one that is on track to deliver approximately 14,000 units this year with further momentum ahead. Along this journey, he has been a true partner for me, an effective leader to our teams, and a key contributor to our company's culture that will be missed dearly by all.
However, we are excited that he'll be able to spend more time with his family after achieving so much in his professional career, and I wish him all the best in his next chapter. Lastly, I wanna end with my deepest appreciation to our teams across the country who are working tirelessly to deliver our largest year-end ever during this unprecedented operating environment, all while maintaining their commitment and passion to delivering an unmatched customer experience for our home buyers. To our construction, sales, and mortgage teams that are on the front lines making this happen day in and day out, I sincerely truly thank you. Now, I'd like to open the call to your questions. Operator, please provide our participants with instructions.
Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star then one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound key. We ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Matthew Bouley with Barclays. Your line is now open.
Hi, this is Ashley Kim on for Matt this morning. Really nice gross margin result in outlook here. Can you just quantify any pressure in gross margins you're experiencing from supply chain constraints? You know, whether that's outright cost inflation or a lost leverage on delayed closings, anything along those lines?
Yeah. Ashley, you know, I'd say on the direct build costs, we saw, call it, low single digits increase sequentially from Q2. That excludes lumber, though. I mean, lumber is actually working in our favor now, as you know. Pricing power has more than covered cross-cost increases year-to-date. To quantify it's hard because there's so many moving pieces, though. What we're seeing right now, I mean, we're definitely seeing increased costs, some bonuses. But again, pricing power is there to help offset that. We're working closely with our trade partners to ease some of that burden as well.
Thanks. That's helpful. Just on the sales base, are you finding that you're still kind of capping sales to the same extent that you were, you know, throughout this year?
Hi, Ashley. You know, as we said in the prepared remarks, it's about 70% of our communities, but you really have to deep dive into that because they look different. Some of those might be, you know, that we're releasing a certain number of lots on a monthly basis, and we, you know, provide kind of notice to the public and then do lotteries. We certainly aren't seeing the level of HOBOs. I'd say there's only a handful across the country. Mostly, it's really to just align with production. We're not holding back specs, you know, we're pretty much releasing those at the start of construction. I'd say it's a very healthy market, but it's normalized from where we were earlier in the year.
That's helpful color. I'll leave it there. Thank you.
Thank you, Ashley.
Our next question comes from the line of Mike Rehaut with JP Morgan. Your line is now open.
Hi, I'm [Doug Harbaugh] in for Mike Rehaut. In terms of incentives, where are you guys currently versus around three months ago?
Yeah. From an incentive standpoint, if you look at the Q3 deliveries, they're down meaningfully year over year, and also down sequentially from Q2. In our backlog, we do have reduced incentives on a go-forward basis. I would tell you that, you know, out in the market in general, are they starting to come back a little bit? I would say we're seeing it probably more in the periphery, probably more than anything. It's still very, very modest.
Yeah. I think as we look across our portfolio, Dave, really our incentives continue to be focused on mortgage. Beyond that, they're very, very sparse anywhere in the country.
Our next question comes from the line of Truman Patterson with Wolfe Research. Your line is now open.
Thanks. It's actually Paul Tabolski on. I guess starting off with your 4Q closing guide, it implies, you know, an increase year-over-year conversion rate, which hasn't really happened, I guess, for the past four quarters or so. What gives you the confidence that you're gonna be able to get those homes across the finish line given, you know, the supply constraints, the bonuses, the whole industry making the year-end push?
Yeah. Paul, I wanna be clear, you're talking about backlog conversion when you're saying conversion rate?
Yes, I am.
Okay. Maybe just a minute on kind of how we got here. You know, the material shortages, they've been an issue for some time. We're watching it closely. It's been difficult to predict given the unprecedented challenges that we're faced with, as an industry as well as a country. Based on what we do 90 days ago, and I would say even 30 days ago, we expected to deliver on our original guidance. However, we saw delivery dates on material slide more meaningfully over the last month. Even if all the material that we need were to show up before year-end, we think that we would struggle to get the labor there to install it. We adjusted our guidance to take that into consideration, in that shift in material deliveries and probably those labor challenges that are there.
It's still a big quarter for us. You know, our teams, our trade partners, we're all poised to deliver. I mean, this is effectively just a little bit of a timing push of what we're seeing, what we thought would be in Q4, just going into early 2022.
Paul, the only thing I'd add is, you know, your point is well taken. It's a big quarter. It's gonna be a big December for us. It'll be the company's largest. We're having to pull lots of different levers to make sure we're ready, but we've been working on that for some time. You know, that will include weekend signings to get, you know, through mortgage and closings. We believe we've taken all of that into account. You know, the challenges you've seen across the industry, there are some that become very unpredictable until the day they happen. We think we have the universe to do this. It's a unique environment and something we've not seen before. The teams have done really a masterful job, even getting into our closing range in Q3.
It's a big push, but we're planning on getting there.
Okay. Then on your 4Q gross margin guide, it's flat quarter-over-quarter, and you guide, you know, elevated closings. Is there, you know, higher lumber costs? Or what's kind of the swing there 'cause I would have thought you would've been up a little bit just from a leverage perspective.
Yeah. I mean, when you look at kind of Q3, Q4 for us, Paul, we've talked about that being more of the inflection point from a margin perspective, but you are seeing it in lumber. The biggest pressure is coming from lumber. We actually anticipate lumber, the cost peaking here in Q4, and then it will start to step down a little bit in Q1, Q2, but more meaningfully step down in the second half of next year.
The only other thing worth mentioning, Paul, is just at the end of the day, it's gonna come down to mix.
Right.
When we look at what we pushed into next year, those generally tend to be the bigger, more complicated houses. Some of those carry higher margins. If we could bring any of those over the finish line this year, it could have an impact. But it's the pressure of lumber, and then it's really good news for 2022, right, Dave?
Yep.
It does keep us kind of flat for the year.
Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Carl Reichardt with BTIG. Your line is now open.
Thanks. Morning, everybody. It's Carl on for Carl.
Good to hear your voice, Carl.
Good morning, Carl.
Hey, Dave. Hey, Mackenzie. I wanna go back to the comment you made about the 70% sales restrictions, Sheryl. Or Dave or anyone. Are there specific guideposts we should be looking for to then conclude that it's now time to remove those restrictions? I mean, what do we need to see or you need to see in order to feel comfortable that now you can start reducing those restrictions? I think just because I think this is a part of it, can you tell me of the 3.5 homes per community per month that you started in 3Q, what percentage of those were specs versus pre-solds?
You bet. We'll tag team this. I wish I could tell you that there's just one theme, you know, that we need to look at here. This is a decision that's gotta be made community by community. One of the big areas is really the production capacity in the marketplace, because as you've heard, I think us and everybody else talk about Carl, it's really about trying to align production and sales. As you can see, we've put our start a little bit ahead of our sales to make sure that we're bringing more inventory into the business. We've made, you know, had some good movement this year, and we'll continue to grow that to get us ready for the spring selling season.
Even though we're managing sales in a number of our communities, I still think it's a more normalized environment because it's not like we're seeing, you know, these massive wait lists. We're still seeing some. We're generally selling through them. If we weren't able to sell what we were releasing, that would probably be a signal that we would be more just open, and we are open in, like I said, about 30% of our communities. I think it's production capacity. I actually expect, Carl, that as we move into the spring selling season, we're gonna see a very strong spring, and that could put us back in a more managed sales program again. It's gonna be supply chain generally, market conditions generally, supply and demand in the individual local markets that will really drive that.
Dave, you wanna talk about kind of the spec starts in total?
Yeah. I mean, we've been increasing our percentage of specs relative to where it was a year ago. As you know, we kinda got that down a little bit lower. We were focused on to-be-builts. As we've kind of moved through the year, we've been able to put more specs in the ground, and you can see that just based on our spec level and our inventory. We're about 5.2 specs as a total company per community, again, which is a pretty good chunk. We're still running more to-be-builts than specs, and that'll continue to be the case going forward, but we like the position that we're in from a spec perspective.
Yeah. Because I would say looking historically, Carl, I mean, you know, being a to-be-built business has always been something that's been very favorable over the years for me. It certainly wasn't the first couple of quarters this year, but now I think that trend reverses, and you'll see that as we pull through. I think we have a healthy number of specs. To Dave's point, we wanna get probably closer to that 6-7, especially in our more affordable business. We're delighted now that the to-be-builts, you know, I think will be a more advantageous mix for us.
Okay. Thank you both. I appreciate that. Then, Sheryl, another comment you made in the prepared remarks was about out-of-state buyers, and I wanted you to expand on that, if you can. Can you talk about the percentage of your deliveries that are to out-of-state buyers, how that's changed, what the impact in your mind, what impact that's had on your sales prices? In other words, is it an arbitrage opportunity, folks coming from expensive places to cheap places? What does that do to the local buyer who may be looking at prices saying, "This is too, and these are too expensive." Seems like an important dynamic. I'd just like you to expand and give us some more color on how you look at that. Thanks very much.
You bet, Carl. It's a savvy point that you bring up because in some of our markets, I think our teams would specifically outline that with the price movement that we've seen, it's much more difficult for the local consumer to adjust to that pricing. As I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we're seeing a strong influx from really what I would call high-cost markets. That would be your California, that would be your kind of Northeast markets. They come to the markets. Let's talk about the Northeast coming into Florida with a very different expectation on what they're selling their house for and what they can afford to buy. They're able to spend more and buy up. That's why I think we're seeing what we are. Once again, I'll use Florida.
When I look at what we have in backlog, you know, an example would be, Carl, what these folks are able to spend on lot premiums and options. You know, if I look at our third quarter lot premiums and I compare those to my whole 2020 year, they're up about 40%. When I look at the 2022 backlog, they're up again a similar amount. The options are also very telling. They're putting more money into the house. They're up about 10% over 2020. When I look at 2022, they're up about another 20%. That is really the power of the migration trend that we're seeing.
If I look at our Californians, we're seeing probably 2 x the penetration that we've seen historically in places like Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Colorado from California, and I think that's why we continue to see the pricing power that we have.
Great. Thanks for that. I appreciate it.
You bet.
Our next question comes from the line of Alex Rygiel with B. Riley. Your line is open.
Thank you, and very nice quarter. First question here. You sound very confident in capturing 200 basis points of margin growth to 2022, and that would be fantastic. Can you break that down a little bit between lumber, price, mix, so on and so forth?
Yeah, Alex, it's hard to break down all the moving pieces just because of all the activity that we're seeing out there from a pricing, from a cost. But yeah, to reiterate, you know, we expect home building closing margin in excess of 22% for next year, which is up from our prior comments. We're confident on the margin improvement. It's evident in our 2022 backlog we built so far. You might recall, we came out 6 months earlier than we normally would to talk about the 2022 margin, just given that level of confidence. We do anticipate seeing margin improvements sequentially over the next several quarters. We're excited that we're at this inflection point after, you know, being focused the last few years on integration activities. We talked a little bit about it earlier.
We expect, you know, lumber impact on deliveries to start to increase in Q1 and Q2, be more meaningful in the second half. We've also left a little bit of room in our 2022 margin guidance, for any upside if lumber were to, you know, go above kind of the current level. We create a little bit of buffer there in case that were to happen. We're gonna be back to you in 90 days with a little bit more specific margin guidance for 2022.
Yeah. I would just add a couple things. I think Dave's exactly right. It's hard to break it apart, Alex, because there are so many moving parts and pieces. I'd probably simplify it and say all the work that we've been talking about on these operational enhancements are really coming through. That's number one. Number two, we didn't have any spec inventory at the beginning of last year, and so what we had was the drag of these lumber, you know, the lumber impacts on our to-be builds. Now, you've got all that benefit working for you. The pricing, because we had contracts locked in in 2020, and they got the negative impact of the lumber.
Now what you have is our pricing has caught up to market with our new contracts, and you've got specs that are real time, along with the operational enhancements, the 200 basis points that Dave's describing, you know, we are extremely confident about. I think we'll be able to give you more detail around that next quarter.
You've been progressing down the path of digitizing the home buying process for some time now. Where do you think we are in this, number one, process from your standpoint, and number two, consumer adoption of it?
I think that's the exciting part, Alex, is, you know, the consumer is asking for it. I think as an industry, you know, we've probably talked in the past that we've been somewhat antiquated in adopting kind of this whole world of e-commerce in this demand environment. We said housing was different. Well, the consumer doesn't feel that way. Certainly, COVID, I think, changed the perspective of our industry. What's been really interesting is we've been talking to the consumers that have been subscribing. When I look at, kind of the, all of the virtual tools, and I look at the conversion rate, and I look at what we're hearing from the consumer. I'll give you a couple examples. Our conversion rate on inventory homes that are being reserved is about 17%.
Our conversion rate on to-be-built homes that are being reserved is about 19%. These are 2x generally in general industry conversion rates. When I look at our reservations just in the last 30 days, nearly 800 reservations came through our system. By the way, those generally tend to come with a lower realtor. When we talk to the consumer, with our new project Venture, we have been interviewing every consumer to see why they, you know, how they enjoyed it, why they did it. The biggest takeaway from all of the exit surveys is that people enjoy having the freedom to do this on their own. That's kind of the way with all on-demand services. I think the adoption is really strong, and we are in such early days. I think when this becomes more of the norm, you'll see continued efficiency that can be built from here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Jay McCanless with Wedbush. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one on the active adult, the growth that you're seeing there, is the growth there being driven across the board by some of the legacy communities you acquired a few years ago as well as the newer communities, or is most of the growth weighted to those newer communities?
Hi, Jay. I would tell you it's both. I really would. We have some new communities in California, but we also have a number of new communities throughout Florida. I think they're all doing quite well. I think really the brand acceptance of Esplanade and the brand growth of Esplanade has also helped. I also think you have to just think about the change in attitude that's come with this consumer having been through COVID. I think there's a real urgency in their buying decision. I think social interaction and all the things that come with an Esplanade are of key importance to this consumer group. We talk about the migration from some of these high-cost markets, the Midwest. I think that's also playing into it.
In all fairness, I think it's important to say when you look year-over-year, you know, they didn't come back to the market as quick as other consumer groups. When I look at the pace and total absorption, I mean, improvement, some of that, I think, is because last year wasn't as strong as it could have been. I think it really started picking up in Q3, so I'd say there was kind of a half of a quarter lag there, but I think it's all of it.
Okay. That's great. Thank you, Sheryl. My second question on the fully automated communities. I guess maybe where does that go as a percentage of total community count? You know, the homes, presumably the, you know, these buyers are picking a package, et cetera. I mean, are these homes that should have a shorter cycle time, even than your traditional entry-level product where you have a salesperson in there? I'm just I just wanted a little more depth around, you know, where does this go as part of the business, but then also, you know, does this help shrink down your overall cycle time because these homes are, I guess, you know, very low option level, et cetera.
Yeah. It's a great question, and I don't wanna get ahead of my skis. I love the question. I'm quite excited about the new Venture brand. If I look at our first community in Orlando, what I would tell you is those are all pre-panelized houses. Just that, the simplification of the product absolutely drives efficiency and reduces cycle time. You know, when you have the buyer in the mix and you've got different options being selected, you just can't help elongate that. I'd say, yes, we will get greater efficiency. I think you'll see this move to other consumer groups, but I think our first few pilot communities will be at the more affordable, fully panelized product, which will absolutely, to your point, reduce cycle time. You know, where do we go from here? It's really early days.
I think we're very excited for these communities this year. I think the consumer will tell us. I have great expectations that as we move into 2022, we'll continue to introduce new Venture communities. It's probably a little early for me to tell you what it will be as a percentage of the portfolio, but I think as we bring new communities to market, it gives us the opportunity to say, what's the best way? You know, I'm not sure we're prepared to do it in the active adult environment yet because that's a consumer that probably needs a little bit more interaction. I think it's also, we know it's a consumer that enjoys the design center experience and spends a lot of money there. We'll look at the portfolio and understand the best places, but I think you'll continue to see growth through the portfolio.
That's great. Thanks for taking my question.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Alan Ratner with Zelman & Associates. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning. Nice quarter, and congrats to Lou and Dave. It's exciting.
Thanks.
So-
Thanks, Alan.
My first question, hoping you can give a little bit of forward-looking kind of thoughts into the mix of your business. You know, you obviously flagged the active adult share going up. You know, when I look at your pricing, obviously pricing in the market's up a ton, but you know, your pricing is increased well in excess of peers. You know, I look at your order price. It's up almost $200,000 over the last 1.5 , two years, and it's running over $100,000 above what you delivered this quarter. I'm trying to figure out, you know, going forward, what's the right mix of your business to think about.
You know, obviously, if your price is gonna be going up $100,000+ next year on deliveries, that's pretty impactful to the model. At the same time, if you're, you know, selling more kinda higher end move-up homes, even active adult homes, I would guess there's probably a downshift in absorptions over time, you know, at those higher price points. Can you give a little bit of clarity in terms of where you see the business going and, you know, try to strip out some of the quarterly volatility here?
Yeah. I think we'll tag team this one, Alan. Good question. You know, when you look at the mix this quarter, of sales, I think it will give you a pretty good indication of what kind of the next 12 months look like. I think when we come back next quarter, you'll probably see an ASP, no surprise, given the backlog numbers, that will be higher. Certainly, the quarter is highly influenced by the high percentage of active adult sales in the quarter for all the reasons we've talked about. I wanna be careful, though, because active adult is not always. The active adult brand doesn't have to be exclusively the higher price point. We have some of our active adult offerings that are much more affordable price points.
When I look at the introduction of the new communities that really impacted the quarter, I look at the Sacramento price point, I look at the Temecula in California, you have just higher price point active adult positions, as well as some of the country club offerings in Florida. I think you'll see active adult be a healthier blend of the total portfolio, but we have a lot of new affordable positions coming to market in late 2022 that I think will probably bring down the overall company ASP as we move into 2023, even though.
I think, I mean, based
You wanna say, Dave?
Based on what you're seeing ASP orders, Alan, obviously, it's gonna trend to something higher for an ASP in 2022 versus 2021. I'm with Sheryl. As we look out in the business in the growing affordable segment, I think you're gonna then see that revert back starting in 2023, and we'll see some moderation.
Yep.
Okay. That's really helpful just to talk through that. I guess the second part or third part of that question was just kind of thinking through absorptions in the mix of the business. 'Cause, you know, a few years ago, before you did William Lyon Homes, if I remember correctly, you know, you were thinking about, like, a 2.5 per month absorption pace being-
Right
you know, the target. You know, obviously, the market's improved a ton since then, but you know, you're running probably closer to 3.5 this year. You know, putting aside whatever the market's going to do, is there you know, kind of a right absorption rate that you're underwriting land deals to today that you think about as a sustainable run rate?
You know, once again, Dave, let's
Yeah
see how we both feel about this. Certainly, we saw peak absorptions early in the year, and I think we all know those were not sustainable, especially as you look kind of globally outside of just Taylor Morrison, the number of new communities that will come back into the marketplace. I think you should have expected to see absorption rates grow given kind of across the country, Alan, we're probably down about 20% communities. As those come back to market over the next 12 to 24 months, I think you'll see just absorptions across the industry stabilize. The math would suggest if demand stays where it is today. We don't underwrite to a target rate. We rarely look at each piece of land.
I think your general view on something higher than what our historical number was in the low 2% to mid 2%, that takes you over 3% probably makes more sense as you look long term.
Right. I would just add, I mean, if you look at the strategic acquisitions we've done over the last couple of years, Alan, some of that was designed around, you know, pace and increasing turns. Something with a three handle on it seems more likely on a go-forward basis.
Got it. That's very helpful. I appreciate, you know, all the insights there, so good luck.
Our next question comes from the line of Mike Dahl with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Hey, this is Ryan Frank on for Mike. Thanks for squeezing me in here. Also just wanted to say congrats from Mike and myself, Dave, to you on your retirement, and Lou on the new role. Looking forward to working with you.
Appreciate that, Ryan.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Yep. In the interest of time, I'll just ask one here. It's a little bit of a two-parter. Last quarter, starts were roughly five per community, and this quarter is closer to 3.5. Can you just piece out kind of what was driving that, whether it's seasonality or supply constraints? Then kind of given those dynamics, how confident are you in the 2022 and 2023 community count targets that you guys laid out last quarter?
Yeah. I mean, from a community count perspective, that is by far the toughest thing for us to predict. There are so many moving pieces from availability of the trades to the municipality approvals. The good news is we have the land ahead of us to grow the communities, but we're currently seeing the challenges on the horizontal side of the business. Labor is always a challenge, and I'd tell you that's being magnified in this environment. Material shortages are also hitting the horizontal side. One of the largest shortages is coming from pipe to support community infrastructure, especially sewer pipe. We've seen shortages of labor and materials across all aspects of home building, but we're definitely seeing the bottleneck here in the horizontal side.
I mentioned in the prepared remarks, if the challenges persist or worsen on the horizontal side, we could see some delays. We're constantly evaluating our cadence of community openings, taking the necessary actions to bring the communities online. We'll have better insight into 2022 around the community count on our next call, so we'll give you an update on that in about 90 days.
Yeah. You know, it's interesting because I think everyone's fully up to speed on the supply chain challenges that have hit the vertical side of our business. 90, 60, 90 days ago, pipe wasn't an issue. You know, you've gone from zero to now pipe's probably 3-4-month delays. So what we really have to dig through, honestly, is the stuff that was scheduled to open the back half of the year. You know, we have virtual tools that will assist us even pre-opening, but that's the color we really wanna dig into, so we give you an accurate view on the 2022 community count. Dave said, we have all the land, so we're in a good place. 2022 is fully subscribed, and 2023 is actually quite strong as well.
Dave, you also wanna talk about the starts because we did, you know, we did see a peak start in Q2.
We did. I mean, I would argue that, you know, we were well above four, and that was a level that is very difficult to sustain. A lot of that was we saw some of the higher demands, we were trying to meet that. We were trying to put specs in the ground, but also us, and I think a lot of folks in the industry were dealing with weather challenges, so there was a little bit of a catch up. We ran in Q3 from a orders perspective, a 3.3 pace. Our starts pace was about 3.5 per community. I would tell you that's a little bit of a healthier spot for us, where we'd like to be, and we'll hopefully be somewhere in that kinda mid-3s from a start perspective going forward as well.
Got it. Thank you very much for the time.
Thank you.
Our last question comes from the line of Alex Barron with Housing Research Center. Your line is now open.
Thank you and good job on the quarter.
Thanks, Alex.
I wanted to ask about share repurchases. I know you guys stepped up. There's little left on the authorization, so can you guys comment generally on your thoughts around share repurchases going forward?
Sure, Alex. Yeah. We have $100 million remaining on our current authorization. We're gonna continue to be opportunistic, and kinda weigh our investment options from there. I'd tell you the focus continues to be on share repurchase, and probably so in the foreseeable future. I mean, First of all, we strongly feel that we're undervalued. You know, reinvesting through share repurchase is gonna be accretive to us and a driver from ROE. Also, with that, you know, we have a strong focus to bring down our debt, but we're a little bit handcuffed right now because of the premiums to kinda refi and pay down some of that debt. But every quarter that goes by, those premiums come down, the math looks a little bit better.
You know, short of paying down some of that debt, you're gonna see us continue to focus on share repurchase. Once we get through this authorization, we will, like we always do, go back to our board and talk about potentially putting another one in place. We'll give you an update, you know, when and if that happens.
Okay, thanks. Also along those lines, any thoughts on starting a dividend?
It's a good question. It's actually one that, you know, we debate, I would say a couple times a year, both with the management team and our board. I would tell you right now, our priorities are, as I said, focused on paying down debt and then taking advantage of our stock, given that we feel it's so undervalued. You know, we're probably a couple years from a dividend. That's something that we'll continue to address going forward.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. There are no further questions. I will now turn the call back to Sheryl Palmer for closing remarks.
Well, thank you very much for joining us today. We were excited to share our Q3 results and look forward to speaking to you in the new year. Take care.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.