Company: LEN
Filing Date: 2025-07-01
Form Type: 10-Q
Source: 0001628280-25-033777
Chunk: 47

Company: LENNAR CORP /NEW/
Filing Date: 2025-07-01
Form: 10-Q
Item: Item 1
Chunk 47
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 continues to soften.

The macroeconomic landscape remains challenging, with higher mortgage interest rates and diminished consumer confidence being affected by a wide range of uncertainties, both domestic and global. At the same time, supply remains constrained by years of underproduction. New construction has slowed as builders have pulled back on production due to mixed demand signals, exacerbating the chronic supply shortage. Additionally, restrictive land permitting, along with higher impact fees, remain as constraints on supply, while labor and material costs, and costs of lumber, in particular, are generally increasing. Demand, however, is still high, as people want and need homes. Millennials are reaching the prime buying age and are realizing the benefit, and perhaps importance, of homeownership. But affordability and waning confidence are sending confusing signals. Actionable demand continues to cool. This is a difficult cycle, as low supply fuels high prices which lock out many of our homebuyers.

Our operational strategy is clear: we are building and delivering consistent volume by meeting the market at affordability and pushing efficiencies through our platform. We strongly believe this will produce greater efficiencies and drive down costs. Financially, we are focused on driving an efficient, land-light balance sheet to effectively have land banks and third parties hold and develop our land assets while we build cash flow. We have intentionally maintained volume rather than protecting our margin. In the past, we protected margin as market conditions slowed. However, we have learned that once we step backwards and lose momentum, it becomes difficult to restart and recapture volume. The recovery is difficult and expensive, and we end up coming back as the exact same company that we were before, with no significant changes for the future. We believe we are starting to see a bottom in the free fall in our margin that began with the spike in interest rates in 2022. Our construction costs have decreased over the past two and a half years, and we believe our margins will stabilize as we use our growing volume to work with our trade partners to reduce costs and build efficiencies. 

With regard to our financial strategy of driving a land-light balance sheet, the Millrose spin-off was a critical part of this strategy, but there is more to accomplish. Predictable volume creates greater certainty for the capital markets and will help build more capital-efficient land banking vehicles to interface with our business. We are continuing to drive certainty with dependable volume for our land banking partners. That dependability will translate into certainty and predictability for us. 

Additionally, this part of our strategy benefits from efficiencies derived from our technology-enabled solutions.