by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Cutting construction costs by “aggressively rebidding” projects, and “walking away” from land deals: executives in their own words.
Meritage Homes, which specializes in building entry-level houses, reported Q4 earnings on Thursday. In terms of revenues and income, they’ve been working through their backlog.
But sales order volume collapsed by 46% in Q4 year-over-year, to just 1,808 houses. Sales order volume in terms of dollars collapsed by 52%, to $704 million.
Orders got hammered by “weaker overall demand,” they said during the conference call, and because customers cancelled 39% of their contracts, up from a cancellation rate of 12% in Q4 2021.