Greetings, and welcome to Tri Pointe Homes' Q2 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, David Lee, General Counsel for Tri Pointe Homes. Thank you. You may begin.
Good morning and welcome to Tri Pointe Homes' earnings conference call. Earlier this morning, the company released its financial results for the Q2 of 2022. Documents detailing these results, including a slide deck, are available at www.tripointehomes.com through the Investors link and under the Events and Presentations tab. Before the call begins, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made on this call which are not historical facts, including statements concerning future financial and operating performance, are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. The discussion of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are detailed in the company's SEC filings. Except as required by law, the company undertakes no duty to update these forward-looking statements.
Additionally, reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures discussed on this call to the most comparable GAAP measures can be accessed through Tri Pointe's website and in its SEC filings. Hosting the call today are Doug Bauer, the company's Chief Executive Officer, Glenn Keeler, the company's Chief Financial Officer, Tom Mitchell, the company's Chief Operating Officer and President, and Linda Mamet, the company's Chief Marketing Officer. With that, I will now turn the call over to Doug.
Good morning, and thank you for joining us today as we go over our results for the Q2 of 2022, provide some color on current market conditions, and update you on our company strategy and market positioning. Tri Pointe Homes delivered another quarter of strong profitability, generating earnings of $1.33 per diluted share, representing a 33% increase over the Q2 of 2021. We met or exceeded our previously stated guidance for all relevant operational metrics for the quarter, including new home deliveries of 1,485, average sales price of $677,000, homebuilding gross margin of 27.2%, and SG&A of 9.5%.
I want to thank our teams for these outstanding results as they once again did a fantastic job of managing backlog, overcoming labor and supply issues, and delivering homes in a timely manner. We also ended the Q2 with a record backlog of nearly $3 billion, which puts us in an excellent position to continue to deliver strong top and bottom-line results as we head into the back half of the year. We generated 1,356 net new orders during the quarter on a sales pace of 3.7 orders per community per month. This pace is consistent with our company's pre-pandemic order performance for a Q2 . However, we experienced a noticeable decline in order activity as the quarter progressed, with April's order pace coming in at 4.7, May at 3.6, and June at 2.8.
While we typically see a seasonal slowdown in demand as we approach the summer months, it's clear the combination of higher rates and lower consumer confidence to the most important drivers in our industry has resulted in a slower buying pace in most markets. With the uncertainty around the economy, we believe it may take some time for consumers and the market to find their footing again. Fortunately, Tri Pointe is led by seasoned home building professionals, both at the local and national level, who have successfully navigated prior housing cycles and are skilled at operating through such times. We have maintained a strong balance sheet throughout this cycle, which will allow us to make smart, rational decisions from a position of financial strength going forward.
While there is uncertainty surrounding today's new home market, we are confident that our company and our teams are well prepared for what comes next. Despite changing market conditions, our operational playbook remains similar to the one we outlined during our Investor Day in May. First, we are taking steps to ensure that the buyers we have in backlog feel confident about their purchases and close on their homes. We're working closely with buyers at every stage of the home buying process, particularly as it relates to their ability to secure attainable financing. We are leveraging our financial services arm, Tri Pointe Connect, to provide incentives such as forward rate commitments, rate buydowns, and rate locks to offset some of the impact of higher mortgage rates.
While these steps should help us maintain a steady pace of activity at each of our communities, we are prepared to pull additional incentive levers to maintain that pace if necessary. We believe that our outstanding lot position in prime locations, combined with our innovative premium homes, gives us a distinct selling advantage in a challenging market. As we highlighted at our recent Investor Day, we are in a fortunate land position with a good portion of our lots at a favorable cost basis relative to today's lot prices. This will give us flexibility with pricing homes as we open new communities over the next few years. In addition, we have adjusted our hurdle rates for new land deals to reflect the uncertainty we are seeing in the market.
For land deals in the pipeline that have been approved but not yet closed on, we are stress testing project assumptions and reevaluating where appropriate. By focusing on converting our existing backlog, maintaining a steady flow of new orders, opening new communities and reducing future land spend, we believe Tri Pointe is in an excellent position to generate positive cash flow from operations while adapting to the changing landscape. In addition, we enter this period of uncertainty with a record backlog and healthy operating margins, giving us great confidence in our ability to generate profits and increase book value for the foreseeable future. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Glenn, who will provide more detail on our results this quarter and give an update on our guidance. Glenn?
Thanks, Doug, and good morning. I'm gonna highlight some of our results and key financial metrics for the Q2 , and then finish my remarks with our expectations and outlook for the Q3 of 2022. At times, I will be referring to certain information from our slide deck, which is posted on our website. Slide 6 of the earnings call deck provides some of the financial and operational highlights from our Q2 . We sold 1,356 homes during the quarter at a sales pace of 3.7 orders per community per month. Order activity in the West region was healthy, with a sales pace of 4.3 orders per community per month.
While all markets felt some impact due to the softening demand trends, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and the Southern California markets of San Diego, Inland Empire, and Los Angeles showed the most resilience. The central region reported a sales pace of 2.1 orders per community per month. While the lower sales pace in that region was largely tied to slowing demand during the quarter, lot development delays also played a role, particularly in Austin and Dallas. The East region had a sales pace of 4.1 orders per community per month, driven by the Charlotte market, where our new community openings during the quarter were met with strong demand. As demand slowed during the quarter, we also saw a rise in our cancellation rate to 15.6% of gross orders. Total cancellations were 6.3% of our opening backlog for the quarter.
Because the majority of these cancellations are financing related, we are proactively working with our buyers to find the right financing options for them. On the financial side, we reported outstanding results on all key metrics this quarter that either met or exceeded our stated guidance. We delivered 1,485 homes at an average selling price of $677,000, which resulted in home sales revenue of approximately $1 billion. Our home building gross margin percentage for the quarter was 27.2%, a 260 basis point improvement year-over-year. The strength of our margins is the result of the strong demand and pricing power we experienced last year and early in 2022.
Finally, SG&A expense as a percentage of home sales revenue came in at 9.5%, which was a 10 basis point improvement year-over-year. Turning to communities. We opened 19 new communities during the quarter and closed out of 12 to end the quarter with 123 active selling communities. We had a strong new community pipeline, as highlighted during our recent Investor Day, and we anticipate generating double-digit community count growth over the next few years. Looking at the balance sheet, at quarter end, we had approximately $3.5 billion of real estate inventory. Our total outstanding debt was $1.3 billion, resulting in a debt-to-capital ratio of 35% and a net debt to net capital ratio of 30.1%.
We ended the quarter with approximately $938 million of liquidity, consisting of $270 million of cash on hand and $668 million available under our unsecured revolving credit facility. During the quarter, we executed a modification of our credit agreement that extended the maturity date of both the revolving credit facility and our term loan facility to June of 2027. We also added an additional $100 million of borrowing capacity to our revolving credit facility from a maximum of $650 million to $750 million. Now I'd like to summarize our outlook for the Q3 . For the Q3 , we anticipate delivering between 1,300 and 1,500 homes at an average sales price between $700,000 and $715,000.
We expect home building gross margin percentage to be in the range of 26%-27% for the Q3 and anticipate SG&A expense as a percentage of home sales revenue to be in the range of 10%-11%. Lastly, we estimate our effective tax rate for the Q3 to be in the range of 25%-26%. Due to the quickly changing market conditions and the significant uncertainty related to the broader economy, we are no longer giving full year guidance at this time. We will continue to update you on our progress for the year at our next quarterly call. With that, I will now turn the call back over to Doug for some closing remarks.
Well, thanks, Glenn. I'm very pleased with how our company executed in the Q2 and how we are positioned going forward. While our industry is entering a period of uncertainty, Tri Pointe does so with the advantage of a solid land position, a record backlog of nearly $3 billion, an attractive margin profile, and a strong balance sheet and liquidity. Higher mortgage rates and lower consumer confidence may put a damper on our sales efforts in the short term, but we believe the long-term outlook for our industry remains favorable given the undersupplied nature of our markets, disciplined mortgage underwriting standards, and the favorable demographics that support the need for new housing. We remain confident that Tri Pointe, along with the other public home builders, have an inherent cost advantage over the smaller industry players and should emerge from this slowdown with increased market share.
As a result, we remain very optimistic about the long-term outlook for our company. Finally, I wanna thank all our team members for their contributions, delivering another fantastic quarter. Too often on these calls, we focus on what comes next rather than appreciating what we've accomplished. The profitability we achieved in the Q2 and the backlog we built is no small feat, and I'm really proud of where we stand today. Thank you all for your hard work and unwavering commitment to Tri Pointe. That concludes our prepared remarks, and now we'd like to open the call for questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, you may press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. Our first question comes from the line of Truman Patterson with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. First, on your cancellation rate, it moved up about 9 points year-over-year. I'm just trying to understand the cadence of that cancellation rate as we move through the quarter. Any chance can you all give any color on the vintage of those cancellations? You know, were these from buyers that had been in the backlog for 6-9 months with a large amount of, you know, equity embedded or, you know, buyers that were signing contracts more recently?
Hi, Truman. This is Linda. We did see an increase in the cancellation rate as we proceeded through the quarter. In terms of the timing of those cancellations, it was split, 48% towards sales that had occurred during that quarter, and 52% on sales that had been prior to the Q2 .
Okay. Okay. That's super helpful. You know, clearly, we've heard of incentives starting to move higher, you know, either through price reduction, rate locks, rate buydowns, option incentives, et cetera. Just trying to understand what incentives you all are deploying to get sales, protect the backlog, and I'm hoping you all might be able to help quantify that impact to your Q3 or maybe even Q4 gross margin, because I know you all occasionally will have some regional shifts and everything in there.
Yes. To begin with, we have found that the financing incentives have been helpful both for home buyers and backlog as well as new sales. We are starting to see incentives return to a more normalized level of what we would've had pre-pandemic, in, you know, something around the 4% range for financing promotions. T hey're not always being used by every home buyer.
For the margins, Truman, this is Glenn. You're not gonna see much of an impact at all to Q3 guidance. Obviously, you saw our guidance there, and it's pretty much in line with where we've been running. It might have some slight impact to the Q4 , but overall, I don't think it's gonna have a material impact.
Okay. On those financial incentives, are they primarily closing costs, rate locks, buydowns, et cetera?
Yes.
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
Thanks, Truman.
Our next question comes from the line of Alan Ratner with Zelman & Associates. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions here. You know, Doug, I think you kinda talked through a little bit your strategy on the pricing side. Obviously, you've got a big backlog of homes that you wanna protect and make sure those buyers get to the finish line, and you know, cutting price or significantly increasing incentives in existing communities, you know, probably creates more risk there. On the other hand, you know, you are opening up a lot of new communities with attractive you know, vintage land bases. I t sounds like maybe you're kinda going back and maybe coming out with a lower price perhaps than you would've thought a few months ago.
Correct me if I'm wrong on that, first off, but second off, I'm just curious, you know, what are you seeing on the elasticity of demand when you're coming forward with either increased incentives or a new community opening at a perhaps more attractive price? Are you seeing markets where it is resulting in a, you know, an uptick in traffic and conversion, or are there markets where perhaps, you know, you've, on the margin, kinda done things and hasn't really moved the needle because maybe we're in the summer and it's a seasonally slower time of year?
Yeah. I'll take a couple of those. Just the last question. You know, it's pretty spotty across the markets. I mean, we saw kind of the middle of June moderation in demand, and then, you know, increased cancellation rates, slower absorption. You know, we attacked the backlog and forward-looking sales, as Linda talked about. You know, right now we've kind of gone from order takers to financial therapists as home builders, and it's just kind of back to normal. I mean, you're really, you know, blocking and tackling. Right now, for sure, I think the buyer is, you know, a little bit in shock and awe. I mean, negative news definitely has changed the psychology of the buyer. We all know that, and that's not anything new.
We knew that was coming and it's here. It'll settle out over the next, you know, maybe several quarters. As far as new communities, yeah, definitely. As we talked about at our Investor Day in May, we've got a fantastic land base. You know, we put a pause on land. We don't need to be buying land. Frankly, every builder that has a good land book is their inventory, land inventory is obviously gonna elongate 'cause absorptions are gonna slow down. We are definitely going into the market with new communities at a more aggressive price positioning relative where we underwrote it. We still have very healthy margins, as we talked about at our May Investor Day.
Hey, Alan, this is Tom. The only thing I would tag on to that is that we still do see strong demand. I mean, buyers are interested in our products, in our new offerings. I think their concern is with the relative stability of the real estate market, and they are just concerned with price discovery and wanting to make sure they're making a smart purchase decision at the right time. It seems like timing is more on the forefront of their minds.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Obviously it kind of creates a tough decision for you guys whether, you know, how aggressive you do get, because it sounds like, you know, there is that shock period there where perhaps just-
Yeah
Cutting price or discounting might not even move the needle a whole lot in the near term.
You hit the nail on the head. You need to be patient. You know, many of us will pull back on our starts and let this shock therapy kind of get through the market, and there's still plenty of demand, though. I mean, you still look at, you know, the demand profile of our buyers across all our communities is still there. It's just elongated, and they're just gonna be in that wait and see mode.
Makes sense. You know, you mentioned the land book, and, you know, I'll give you a kudos for, you know, at least I think last quarter you even signaled perhaps slowing things a little bit, and your land book gives you that flexibility. When you look at your option lots, you know, presumably those are lots that are somewhere in the development process and there's gonna be a takedown schedule, you know, stretched out over the next several years. What percentage of those 18,000 or so option lots are, you know, when you look at them, are kind of due for takedown over the next 12 months? And how are you thinking about that? Have you started, you know, looking for extensions there or renegotiating at all?
Is it possible we start to see you walk away from some of those deals if the market stays at these levels?
Yeah, Alan, you're right on with relative to strategy there. The first course of action is trying to match our construction and start pace, you know, with our business and absorption flow. That is going to require some extension relative to takedowns, and we're working with the sellers to be able to do that. You know, we're hopeful that there's not going to be a significant walk away from options, but we are 100% committed to buying land that correctly underwrites and buying it at the right price. We're gonna have to stay tuned on that. So far, you know, we're not an outlier in that equation. Every builder's in the same situation.
Land sellers are coming to the table now as they're getting educated on things, and so we're confident we're gonna have success in getting those extensions.
Appreciate the color, guys. Thanks a lot.
Yep.
Our next question comes from the line of Carl Reichardt with BTIG. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks. Morning, everybody. Just back to Alan's question on traffic. O n a gross orders basis, what did traffic conversion rates do during the quarter? If traffic dropped a ton and that was a driver to lower gross orders, is your conversion rate still normal or even better?
Carl, this is Linda. As Tom said, we are seeing.
Can you?
Hello. It is taking longer for buyers to go through the home shopping process, so that is impacting conversion rates as well as lower traffic. We did increase our advertising, and we have seen that that is driving higher traffic levels to our website. Month to date in July, we're seeing higher registered traffic rates than what we were seeing at the end of June.
Okay, that's perfect. Thank you for that, Linda. I appreciate that. Okay. T hen just as you talked about differences in geographic performance, but in terms of relative price points, are you seeing much difference between stuff designed straight for the first-time buyer versus more move-up product versus the segment of active adult that you have in terms of net order performance?
No, it seems to be fairly universal across the different product segments, Carl. However, we are seeing obviously on the entry-level buyer the qualification and financing being more of an issue.
Just to give you the breakdown of our orders by order pace by segments. In the Q2 , entry level was at 4.5 per month pace, move up at 3.4, luxury at 2.8, and active adult at 3.8.
I appreciate the color.
Again, just very, very consistent with past performance.
Okay. Thanks very much. I appreciate it all.
Thanks, Carl.
Our next question comes from the line of Jay McCanless with Wedbush. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess the first one, you know, the magnitude of the increase in the cancellation rate. I guess, what are you seeing so far in July on that front? You know, you talked about the pain being equally distributed across your different buyer groups. Has that continued in July?
The cancellation rate that we are seeing so far month to date in July is similar to what we experienced in June. Again, similar across buyer segments and geographies.
I know you've pulled the full year guidance, but maybe Glenn, could you talk about what you're expecting for community count in the Q3 ? Is there still an expectation that we'll see year-over-year growth into 2023?
Yeah, definitely you'll see year-over-year growth into 2023. Some of the timing may shift out of the Q4 into the Q1 , depending on, you know, how demand looks in the Q4 . You know, you may make the decision to open in the spring selling season versus a Q4 , depending on, you know, what demand looks like there. There may be some timing shift, but overall, total community count that we have planned to open is opening. You may just see a 1-quarter shift on timing. Still looking good there.
Okay. The deliveries, closings were better than we expected this quarter. I guess, any update on cycle time and maybe, issues with vertical construction versus horizontal? Are you seeing any improvements on either one of those fronts?
Not any significant improvements. We are beginning to see more trade availability on the front end of the process. We've still got a lot of tension on the back end with the finished trades. Our cycle time is remaining fairly consistent with where we have been performing.
Okay, great. Thanks for taking my question.
Thanks, Jay.
Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Kim with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.
Great. Thanks a lot, guys. Wanted to see if I could get just a couple of housekeeping items first. If you could give us a sense for what your finished homes and construction in progress number was. I guess you call it homes completed and under construction, what that was in dollars. Then in units, I was curious if you could give what your starts were in the quarter and your ending quarter under construction finish spec counts were.
We had 42 completed unsold units at the end of the quarter, if that was your ask. We had 1,402 unsold in process units, so spec starts, at the end of June. Were those your 2 main questions?
Those are 2. Then how many actual starts you did in the quarter? We could probably back into it, but if you had that handy. Then also the dollar amount of your homes completed and under construction. You know, that was $1.49 billion last year, for example.
Yes, Stephen, this is Linda. We made 2,147 starts in the Q2 . 64% of those were spec starts. Just to give you perspective on orders, we sold 59% spec orders in the quarter.
I'll have to follow up with you on the dollar amount, Stephen.
All right. Yeah, appreciate that. Switching gears to your cancellations, I thought it was, you said that, you know, half of your cancellations are related to sales in the same quarter, that your cancel rate did not increase in July. It seems that your cancellation rate, while it was up, you know, overall, you know, sequentially it's kinda like at a kind of a normal rate. I guess I just was curious as to how we should be thinking about cancellations going forward, assume we don't see another big move up in the mortgage rate. I would think that most of those cans that occurred from recently sold homes, that probably would dissipate, right?
Because that was due to the shock of this big move that we saw in rates in kinda June. Whether you agree with me that the current rate that you're at right now is, you know, kind of like a normal kind of condition. I'm curious if you sort of opine on that.
I mean, certainly we did see cancellation rates increase. We were at 21% cancellation rate in June, and as you said, Stephen, consumers were certainly impacted by seeing rates peak in the middle of June. We are also now seeing some concern from consumers about the general economy. I think going forward, we would expect to see a more normalized cancellation rate of somewhere around 20% of gross orders. For us, we include all types of cancellations, including home site transfers within a number like that.
Yeah, I think, Stephen, that the remaining part of this year is gonna be very choppy, hence the reason we didn't give full year guidance. I mean, you know, we have no idea where the Fed is gonna land 100%, neither do you, none of us do. We do know that. You know, this all started mid-June, which we saw coming, and there's an elongated sales cycle, and the psychology of the consumer is dented. To Linda's point, first you get hit with, you know, interest rate therapy, and then you know, the concerns are the continuous negative headlines about recession, potential jobs, and so forth.
You know, that's gonna cause the consumer, you know, to pause, but we have all the right tools and mechanisms in place to continue to draw them across the finish line. It's just gonna take longer.
Great. I appreciate that. I should have clarified, but the cancel rate I was referring to was about cancel rate, but that's fine. Last 1 for me is regarding single-family rental. You know, rental homes, single-family rentals. You know, I know that y'all don't have a specific separate carve-out to target that kind of business like peers do, but I was curious. It seems that the stigma against single-family rentals in communities has significantly and is rapidly dissipating. I'm curious if there's any consideration on your part to relax restrictions on sales to investor buyers who would want to rent those homes out.
My understanding is that in the past, you, like most builders, have sort of tried to really keep those buyers out of your communities, and I'm curious as to whether there's any thought to changing that perspective or changing that approach?
Yeah, we still strongly believe in having an end user be our buyer. However, as single-family rentals is an asset class that we do think is more accepted throughout the industry and the communities, there's an opportunity for us through land sales to carve out, you know, more significant pieces of land to allocate to that asset class and work with single-family rental or build-for-rent community operators.
That's interesting. Great. Appreciate that, guys.
Our next question comes from the line of Mike Dahl with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Yeah, maybe first one, just you know, understand the lack of visibility and quickly changing environment here. When you know, we think about your comments on some of the shifts that happened as June progressed and the cancellation comments you've made, you know, June ended up at a 2.8 pace for the month, and presumably it was kinda tracking a little lower by the end. How should we be thinking about what you're experiencing in July to date? I know this is the second part of the question. I know it's really difficult to forecast given the market conditions, but you know, what
You know, given the shifts you've seen, you know, what do you think is a reasonable pace to be able to target, looking out the next couple of quarters as you balance kind of what you're willing to do on incentives versus how you're managing starts and things like and community openings, things like that?
Hey, Mike. This is Glenn. I'll take the first part of that. So far in July, and it's early, but absorption's been closer to around 2 per community per month. It has ticked down a little bit compared to June. Now you have normal seasonality built into that, and we're just, you know, kind of starting to target incentives in certain communities, so we'll see how the consumer responds to that. Like Ted said, there's a lot of uncertainty out there, so it's really hard to kind of give a forecast right now of what we can expect for absorption back half of the year.
We would like to expect 2.5-3 during the next 2 quarters, Mike, but it's gonna be very choppy.
Got it. Yeah. The cost of getting there is probably changing, so that, I guess, would dictate where you wind up there, as you balance that. Okay. Then I guess a clarification on the incentives comment. I think, Linda, your comments were incentives on financing returning to the more normal 4% range. Did I hear that correctly, that that's just financing? You know, can you give us where that has been running? Then could we broaden that out and, you know, give a point of view on total incentives, where that range, you think, is returning to versus where it's been?
Yes, Mike, the 4% would be total incentives, but we're definitely seeing customers wanting to use those incentives towards financing. We would provide those dollars as closing costs, and then those are typically being used towards interest rate buydowns, rate locks, extended long-term locks, is how they're typically wanting to use that level of incentive.
Incentives have been running 1%-1.5% recently, Mike, just as the market's been so strong. Just so you have some context.
Yeah, that really is current and forward-looking, because as Glenn said, our incentives for 2Q was running at about 1.3%, and that compared to a year ago of about 2.5%.
That's on deliveries in the Q2.
The 4% is more on the what you're seeing on orders today, right?
Correct.
Yes. We're using financing promotions, but as I mentioned, that's not necessarily every sale at that level.
Right. Okay, thank you so much.
Our next question comes from the line of Deepa Raghavan with Wells Fargo Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Doug, I know you addressed this a little bit already, but I was a little surprised with your full-year guide withdrawal. It looked like you have full visibility into the rest of 2022, 2 quarters worth of backlogs. You know, it's in there. You know your construction times are stable too, and your costs should have been locked in as well, just given your backlogs. I understand the buyer rate lock could be the wild card, but curious, what are the specific key metrics you're most concerned about that led to this, you know, Q4 guide withdrawal?
I mean, most of the comments you gave so far were on order pace, outlooks, what the Fed would do, but then you already have backlogs worth of 2 quarters, and it looked like you could have provided Q4 guide. Just curious if you're able to talk through that.
Hey, Deepa, it's Glenn. I'll take that one. We actually don't have backlogs specifically full of Q4 . You know, some of the backlog that you see is actually homes that will be completed in 2023 and delivered in 2023. We need to sell roughly 600-700 homes to hit the midpoint of our previous full year guidance. You know, when you take that into consideration and kind of the quickly changing market conditions, we thought it was prudent to pull the full year guidance like we did. That's kind of how that works, Deepa.
It's a combination of order uncertainty as well as some construction cycle time uncertainty out there. We just think it's prudent to not guide to that full year right now.
Got it. I know you mentioned, you know, July is trending maybe could be trending slightly better because you increased your advertising spend. The traffic's at least increased. Any other puts and takes or any other levers that you're pulling at this point in time that's pointing to a better July absorption rate than June's? What are some of the actions you're taking that you hadn't taken in the last quarter that could help us think how Q3 is progressing? Thanks.
Hey, Deepa. This is Doug. You know, the market started moderating, you know, mid-June. That was just a little over a month ago. It's very fluid right now. I wouldn't take any puts or takes out of anything in the short term. You know, the Fed is on a mission to put out the inflation fire, that's gonna have an impact on interest rates, potentially the economy. We all know that. There's really, again, the consumer is taking longer. There's still good demand showing up at our communities, but they're just taking longer. That sales process will continue that way because of the uncertainty in the economy, hence the reason why we didn't provide the rest of the year's guidance.
I don't see anything to take away in July versus June versus August. It's gonna be choppy. Very normal. We've been there before. This management team's been doing this for over 30 years, so this is a very normal reaction that the consumer's having. There's nothing in the immediate term that I could tell you that is a great put or take.
Fair enough. Thanks very much. Good luck.
Mm-hmm.
Our next question comes from the line of Alex Rygiel with B. Riley. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you and good morning, gentlemen. A few questions here. The land spend in the quarter, what was your land spend in the quarter, and thoughts on what it could look like in 2022 versus 2021?
I actually don't have that in front of me. I can follow up with you, Alex. Overall, our land spend in 2022 versus 2021 is pretty consistent.
Starts in the quarter were 2,100, while orders in the quarter were 1,356. Historically, what is the ratio of starts to orders you like to target?
That's a good question, Alex. I don't know that we have looked at it as a ratio to that degree, but I'd say what we experienced in this last quarter is very consistent.
Yeah. We look more at our starts related to our pace. You're gonna see naturally, builders like ourselves pulling back on starts because your pace is slowing down.
Historically, Alex, what we've targeted is to start enough homes to have, you know, 3-5 specs per community. That's how you kind of overall plan your starts.
Very helpful. Thank you very much.
Uh-huh.
Our next question comes from the line of Alex Barron with Housing Research Center. Please proceed with your question.
Yes, thank you. Yeah, I wanted to follow up on that to see, you know, if you guys could talk about your thoughts and approach to, you know, new starts, especially specs, and also to share buybacks given what's going on.
Yeah, Alex, this is Tom. Relative to the start philosophy, you know, as Glenn said, we want to match our, you know, construction pace to our absorption pace. That's the core of the business. Earlier, I think he alluded to having 1,400 unsold units in process. Obviously we wanna make sure that our order flow is going to be matching the completion schedule on those homes. We are currently restricting starts. We think it's the right thing to do to try to get those 2 objectives in alignment. I think you'll see most builders hopefully pulling back on starts relative to that.
Relative to the share buyback, Alex, as you saw, we bought more shares during the Q2 . I think we're gonna take a more conservative outlook for the rest of the year on the share buyback with the uncertainty in the market and then watch it and see. We still have availability under our authorization, but we'll probably take a little bit more of a conservative approach for the rest of the year.
Got it. Another question. I don't know if you guys have implemented, you know, any type of price reductions, but if so, are those being applied to people in backlog as well, or how are you guys handling that?
No. We're using incentive tools, as Linda pointed out, in backlog to lock people in place and keep them in the queue to close. We haven't used any base price reductions. You know, I think somebody else mentioned earlier on some of our newer communities, 'cause we've got some very healthy margin profile, we are coming in at a more aggressive value proposition to combat where interest rates have come. You know, we're seeing that kind of play out with most builders in the market. I mean, we all wanna make sure our backlog is protected and I don't think wholesale price reductions are very healthy for backlog.
Yeah, I tend to agree with you. Okay, great. Thank you.
There are no further questions in the queue. I'd like to hand the call back over to Doug Bauer for closing remarks.
Well, thank you for joining us today, and we look forward to chatting with you next quarter. Have a good weekend. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.