Turning now to our expectations, with our sold and already started backlog up more than 50% and continuing strength in lead and traffic trends, our visibility and confidence in fiscal 2021 results is quite high.
The headline is that we now expect full-year earnings per share to be above $3.
First, our current backlog already contains nearly 700 homes scheduled to close in the first quarter of next year, that's more than half of our typical first quarter closings.
And remember, these communities were tied up six to 12 months ago, before the recent run-up in home prices.
Looking at the second quarter compared to the prior-year, new home orders increased approximately 12% to 1,854 as our sales pace was up more than 40% to 4.7 sales per community per month.
Homebuilding revenue increased about 12% to $547 million on 9% higher closings.
Our gross margin, excluding amortized interest, impairment and abandonment was 22.2% up approximately 140 basis points.
SG&A was down 100 basis points as a percentage of total revenue to 11% as we benefited from improved overhead leverage.
Adjusted EBITDA was $64.2 million up over 45%.
Our EBITDA margin was 11.7%, the highest second quarter level in the past 10 years.
Interest amortized as a percentage of homebuilding revenue was 4.4% down 20 basis points, and that led to net income from continuing operations of $24.6 million, yielding earnings per share of $0.81, more than double the same period last year.
We now expect EBITDA to be up over 20% or more versus the prior-year, a significant increase from the previous guidance.
This level of improvement implies EBITDA growth of more than 10% in the second half of this year, with greater year-over-year growth expected in the third quarter.
Our full-year EBITDA guidance equates to earnings per share above $3 up from last quarter's guidance of at least $2.50.
We now expect our return on average equity for the full-year to be approximately 14%.
If you exclude our deferred tax asset, which doesn't generate profits, our ROE would be over 20%.
Many of these restrictions remain in place and as such, we anticipate new homeowners to be down 10% to 20%.
Our ASP should be above $400,000 for the first time ever, gross margin should be up over 100 basis points.
SG&A as a percentage of total revenue should be down at least 20 basis points.
Our interest amortized as a percentage of homebuilding revenue should be around 4% and our tax rate will be about 25%.
We ended the second quarter with over $600 million of liquidity more than double this point last year, with unrestricted cash in excess of $350 million and no outstanding draws in our revolver.
During the quarter, we retired approximately $10 million of our senior notes.
And with two remaining terminal repayments, we're on a clear path to achieve our goal of bringing our total debt below $1 billion by the end of fiscal 2022.
During the quarter, we spent almost $100 million on land acquisition and development.
Based on land pipeline and approvals, we expect our land spend to accelerate in the remaining quarters of fiscal 2021, resulting in over $600 million of total land spend for the year.
We also increased our option percentage in the second quarter and now control more than 45% of our active lots or options up from less than 30% in the same period last year.
We still anticipate community count troughing around 120 later this year, but we expected to grow steadily from there in fiscal 2022 as we benefit from our increased land spending.

Summary:
Interest amortized as a percentage of homebuilding revenue was 4.4% down 20 basis points, and that led to net income from continuing operations of $24.6 million, yielding earnings per share of $0.81, more than double the same period last year.
Our interest amortized as a percentage of homebuilding revenue should be around 4% and our tax rate will be about 25%.