Toll Brothers Takes A Beating, But Keeps On Ticking
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Toll Brothers, one of America’s largest builders, is still moving on even after posting an eighty million dollar loss. The company did better than analysts expected but still had a very rough quarter as contracts fell nearly 50 percent from the same period last year.
This is a good sign as it is forcing the builders to stop trying to play a market share game and go into survival mode. The problem with the market is an inventory problem as the speculators left a significant hole when they bailed out. Now that builders are slowing down, inventory can stabilize and backfill, which in turn will start to stabilize pricing.
So for the Toll Brothers employees and shareholders I feel your pain, but we all know that the run up you experienced was bubbly and all we are hoping now for is a stable marketplace where the buyer will feel comfortable knowing that they are making a sound financial decision.
For the fourth quarter ended on Oct. 31, Toll posted a loss of $81.8 million, or 52 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $173.8 million, or $1.07 a share.
But the results were not as bad as the market was expecting. Reuters Estimates said analysts were prepared for a loss of 79 cents per share, including write-downs.
U.S. home builders have been suffering a severe downturn, fueled initially by soaring home prices and exacerbated by rising subprime borrower defaults and falling home prices.
“By many measures, fiscal 2007 was the most challenging of the forty years that Toll Brothers has been in business,” Chief Executive Robert Toll said in a statement. “1974 was perhaps rougher, but the difficult times lasted only one year.” via Reuters.com.
It probably is a really good time to buy real estate - monthly payments are about equal to market rents ...
The part about the inventory is right on but in my area they are mostly low end and beat up ...
I worked for this man, he is a great con man and has done this in more than States then ...
You're right. If you come from Central Jersey (as the Boss and I do), you go to Florida at some ...
Maybe it was kryptonite...
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By Mike ...
I couldn't agree more.
The newspaper has always "stuck" it to the real estate agent with rates that were much higher ...
By the way, homeowners trying to get short sale approval should be aware that lenders are comparing the initial loan ...
Ouch! Thankfully I haven't come across anything like that yet. We normally don't have situations like that in ...
well, the guy was here illegally.
serves him right. 
BY USING FIRST CLAIM INSURANCE ADJUSTERS YOU WILL HAVE THE ABILITY TO LOOK AT YOUR INSURANCE SETTLEMENT AND REALIZE FIRST ...
Comment by Paul on 6 December 2007:
This is a perfect example of what is going on all over the country for home builders. During the “good times” builders were seeing such an increase in sales and profit. Now that the market is sliding down and starting to stabilize builders are just paying back some of that unnatural profit seen over the last couple of years. I hope that the market will not continue to decline like some analysts and economists predict.