Operationally, orders were up more than 15% year-over-year, driven by a sales pace that was up more than 40%.
From a supply perspective, our industry has delivered far fewer homes in the last 10 years, than job growth and household formation would have predicted.
We think this cumulative deficit is conservatively well above 1 million homes, which means that a few good quarters are unlikely to exhaust the need for new homes.
That's because the dollar value of our backlog is up nearly 60% compared to last year.
In numeric terms, it means all of our homes will achieve a Home Energy Rating System or HERS rating of 45 or less, which is an energy conservation standard that is far beyond most existing Building and Energy codes.
Underscoring this commitment, we're a proud builder partner of the Department of Energy's Zero Energy Ready Homes Program and we're the first national production builder to commit to building 100% of our homes in accordance with the program.
To fund this ambition, last year we started a title insurance agency called Charity Title, that will donate 100% of its profits to charity.
Looking at the first quarter compared to the prior year, new home orders increased 15% to 1,442, despite a lower community count.
Sales pace was up over 40% to 3.5 sales per community per month.
Homebuilding revenue increased about 2% to $424 million on flat closings.
Our gross margin, excluding amortized interest, impairments and abandonments was 22.1%, up approximately 230 basis points.
SG&A was down approximately 60 basis points as a percentage of total revenue to 12.7% driven by controlling overhead expenses.
This led to adjusted EBITDA of $43.6 million in the quarter, up nearly 50% and exceeding 10% of revenue.
Total GAAP interest expense was down about 3%.
Our tax expense for the quarter was about $4.1 million, for an effective tax rate of 25.5%.
Taken together, this led to $12 million of net income from continuing operations or $0.40 per share, up over 3 times versus the same period last year.
Closings are likely to be up 10% to 15%.
Our ASP is expected to be approximately $390,000.
SG&A as a percentage of total revenue should be down at least 50 basis points, reflecting the benefit from top-line leverage.
We expect EBITDA to be up more than 20%.
Our tax rate is expected to be about 25%, and combined, this should drive net income and earnings per share up more than 60%.
This improvement is largely driven by increased profitability, as we expect gross margin to be up at least 50 basis points versus the prior year in the second half of fiscal 2021.
At the low end this would have represented earnings per share of less than $2 per share.
We now expect earnings per share of at least $2.50.
And finally, we committed to reduce debt by more than $50 million last quarter.
We now intend for that to be closer to $75 million.
We expect to end fiscal 2021 with a book value per share in excess of $22.
Our expected level of profitability, our return on average equity for the full year should be approximately 12%, and if you exclude our deferred tax assets, which don't generate profits, our ROE should be over 17%.
During the quarter, we spent $110 million on land acquisition and development and ended with nearly $500 million of liquidity, up more than $200 million versus the prior year.
We expect land spending to accelerate in the remaining quarters of 2021, ultimately exceeding the $600 million we initially anticipated, funded by our cash from this liquidity and cash from operations.
The initial results of this effort were evident in the first quarter as we grew our active lots by about 8% to over 18,000, and importantly, we control 42% of our active lots through options at quarter end, a 7 point sequential increase.

Summary:
Looking at the first quarter compared to the prior year, new home orders increased 15% to 1,442, despite a lower community count.
Taken together, this led to $12 million of net income from continuing operations or $0.40 per share, up over 3 times versus the same period last year.