M/I Homes, Inc. (MHO) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the MI Homes First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are any listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Wednesday, April 22, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Bill Crick. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us today. On the call is Bob Schottenstein, our CEO and president, Derek Clutch, president of our mortgage company. To address regulation fair disclosure, we encourage you to ask any questions regarding issues that you consider material during this call because we are prohibited from discussing significant non-public items with you directly. And as to forward-looking statements, I want to remind everyone that the cautionary language about forward-looking statements contained in today's press release also applies to any comments made during this call. Also be advised that the company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during this call. I'll now turn the call over to Bob.

Thanks, Phil. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We had a very solid first quarter, highlighted by revenues of $921 million, pre-tax income of $89 million, and a strong pre-tax income return of 10%. Clearly, during the quarter, new home demand and home building conditions continued to be challenging and impacted by affordability, uneven consumer confidence, the conflict in the Middle East, and general uncertainty and volatility in the broader economy. Despite this, we were very pleased to increase our first quarter new contracts by 3 percent, generate gross margins of 22 percent, and produce a return on equity of 12%. Our sales momentum from late last year continued into January and February, even with the winter storms that had a pretty significant impact on a number of our markets at the beginning of the year. During this period, we saw improved traffic and heightened home buyer activity as we began the spring selling season. However, However, market conditions slightly shifted at the end of February and into March as events in the Middle East pushed mortgage rates up higher, impacted gas prices, and contributed to further market uncertainty. In managing all of this, mortgage rate buy-downs continue to be an important part of our sales strategy. We continue to successfully balance margins and sale pace at the community level and offer mortgage interest rate buy-downs, both on spec sales and to-be-built sales, as a leading incentive to promote our sales activity. During the quarter, we closed 1,914 homes, a 3% decrease compared to a year ago. Our first quarter total revenue decreased 6% to $921 million, and pre-tax income decreased 39% to $89.2 million. Still, we end the quarter with a record $3.2 billion in shareholders' equity, and our book value per share is now at a record $125, up 11% from last year. As I mentioned, our sales improved 3% year over year. We sold 2,350 homes during the quarter. Our monthly sales pace averaged 3.4 homes per community, consistent with 2025. We continue to see high-quality buyers in terms of creditworthiness, with average credit scores of 747 and an average down payment of 15%. Our Smart Series, which is our most affordable line of homes, continues to be an important contributor to our sales performance. During the first quarter, Smart Series sales were about 47% of total sales compared to 53% a year ago. Company-wide, about half of our buyers are first-time homebuyers, while the other half are first, second, or third move-up. The diversity of our product offering remains an important factor in contributing to our sales performance and overall profitability. We ended the first quarter with 230 communities and are on track to grow our community count in 2026 by an average of about 5% from 2025. Turning to our markets, our division income contributions in the first quarter were led by Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Orlando, and Raleigh. New contracts for the first quarter in our northern region decreased by 4%, while new contracts in our southern region increased by 8% compared to a year ago. Our deliveries in the northern region decreased 9% compared to last year and represented just under 40% of our company-wide total. Our southern region deliveries increased by 1% over a year ago and represented the other 60% of our deliveries. We have an excellent land position. Our owned and controlled lot position in the southern region decreased by 13% compared to last year, and increased by 21% compared to a year ago in our northern region. 40% of our owned and controlled lots are in the northern region, the other 60% in the south. Company-wide, we own approximately 24,200 lots, which is slightly less than a three-year supply. In addition, we control approximately 25,800 lots via option contracts, which results in a total of roughly 50,000 owned and controlled lots, equating to about a five-year supply. Our balance sheet continues to be very strong. As I previously mentioned, we ended the first quarter with an all-time record $3.2 billion of equity. zero borrowings under our $900 million unsecured revolving credit facility, and over $750 million in cash. This resulted in a debt-to-capital ratio of 18% and a net debt-to-capital ratio of negative 2%. As I conclude, I'll remind everyone that 2026 marks our 50th year in business. We're very proud of our record and look to build on our success in 2026. Given the strength of our balance sheet, the breadth of our geographic footprint, an excellent land position, and well-located communities, along with a diverse product offering, we are well-positioned to continue delivering very solid results in 2026. That, I'll turn the call over to Phil. Thanks, Bob.

Our new contracts were up 3% would compare it to last year. They were up 11% in January, up 7% in February, and down 6% in March. Our cancellation rate for the quarter was 8%. Our monthly new contracts increased sequentially throughout the quarter. Last year's March new contracts were the highest month of 2025. 50% of our first quarter sales were the first-time buyers, and 70% were inventory homes. Our community count was 230 at the end of the first quarter compared to 226 a year ago. The breakdown by region is 91 in the northern region and 139 in the southern region. During the quarter, we opened 22 new communities while closing 24. We delivered 1,914 homes in the first quarter. About 50% of these deliveries came from inventory homes that were both sold and delivered within the quarter. And as of March 31st, we had 4,600 homes in the field versus 4,800 homes in the field a year ago. Revenue decreased 6% in the first quarter. Our average closing price for the first quarter was $459,000, a 4% decrease when compared to last year's first quarter average closing price of $476,000. Our first quarter gross margin was 22%, down 390 basis points year over year. due to higher homebuyer incentives and higher lot costs versus the same period a year ago. Our first quarter SG&A expenses were 12.7% of revenue versus 11.5% a year ago, and our first quarter expenses increased 4% versus a year ago. Increased costs were primarily due to increased selling expenses, increased community count, and additional headcount. Interest income, net of interest expense for the quarter was $3.1 million. Our interest incurred was $9 million. We had solid returns for the first quarter, given the challenges facing our industry. Our pre-tax income was 10%, and our return on equity was 12%. During the quarter, we generated $99 million of EBITDA, compared to $154 million a year ago. and our effective tax rate was 24% in the first quarter, same as the prior year first quarter. Our earnings prediluted share for the quarter was $255 per share compared to $398 last year and our book value per share is now $125 a share, a $12 per share increase from a year ago. Now Derek Clutch will address our mortgage company results.

Thanks, Phil. Our mortgage and title operations achieved pre-tax income of $14.1 million, a decrease of 12% from $16.1 million in 2025's first quarter. Revenue decreased 1% from last year to $31.2 million due to slightly lower margins on loans sold and a lower average loan amount, but offset by an increase in loans originated. Average loan-to-value on our first mortgages for the quarter was 85%, compared to 83% in 2025's first quarter. 66% of the loans closed in the quarter were conventional and 34% FHA or VA, compared to 57% and 43% respectively for 2025's first quarter. Our average mortgage amount decreased to $401,000 in 2026's first quarter, compared to $406,000 last year. Loans originated increased to 1,579 loans, which was up 3% from last year, while the volume of loans sold increased by 1%. Finally, our mortgage operation captured 96% of our business in the first quarter, up from 92% last year. Now I will turn the call back over to Phil.

Thanks, Derek. Our financial position continues to be very strong. We ended the first quarter with no borrowings under our $900 million credit facility and had a cash balance of $767 million. We continue to have one of the lowest debt levels of the public home builders and are very well positioned. Our bank line matures in 2030, and our public debt matures in 2028 and 2030, and has interest rates below 5%. Our unsold land investment at the end of the quarter was $1.9 billion compared to $1.7 billion a year ago. On March 31st, we had $844 million of raw land and land under development and $1 billion of finished unsewed lots. During the 2026 first quarter we spent $79 million on land purchases and $104 million on land development for a total of $183 million. At the end of the quarter we had 740 completed inventory homes and 2,584 total inventory homes. And of the total inventory, 999 are in the northern region and 1,585 in the southern region. On March 31, 2025, we had 686 completed inventory homes and 2,385 total inventory homes. We spent $50 million in the first quarter repurchasing our stock and have $170 million remaining under our board authorization in the last four years we have repurchased 18 percent of our outstanding shares this completes our presentation we'll now open the call for any questions or comments thank you ladies and gentlemen we will now begin the question and answer session should you have a question please press star followed by the number one on your touchstone phone you will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised should you wish to decline for the following process, please press star followed by the number two.

If you are using speakerphone, please slip the handset before pressing any keys. Your first question comes from the line of Natalie Kulisekir from Zilman Associates. Your line's now open.

Hey, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I'm just curious, have you received any form of communication regarding any cost increases from your vendors because of field prices? Maybe it could be fuel surcharge stacked on top of your existing contracts. And if you have, do you think it's something that you could negotiate with your trade partners?

Thanks, Natalie. The short answer is yes. The issue of increased fuel has come up in several divisions. I don't know if it's come up everywhere. I'm aware of two or three or four instances where it has, and it could well be more. So far, there hasn't been much impact. In fact, so far, I think there's been no impact. Having said that, if the condition were to persist at some point, you know, we've been in business for 50 years, and one of the things we're most proud about is not only the consistency of our strategy, but the longstanding relationships both at the national level and at the local level that we have with so many of our subcontractors and suppliers, many of whom we've been doing business with for a long, long time. And one of the reasons that we're able to do business with people for a long time is, you know, we try to deal very fairly with them both in good time and in bad. You didn't ask maybe this as part of your question, but during the last year, we've gone back to a number of those subcontractors from our point of view and sought to seek cost reductions. We had a very, very aggressive, intense internal cost reduction effort that we launched, I think, a little over a year ago, maybe a little more than a year ago, in anticipation of, you know, the current conditions with declining margins and so forth. And we had quite a bit of success doing that. We know that's a two-way street. And, you know, there's times that they work with us, there's times they're going to have to work with them. So far on the gas, gasoline and oil situation, though, I'm not aware of any impact unless you are, Phil. I hope that's helpful.

Yes. Thank you so much. And I guess I just have one more follow-up. So your ASP was in the 470 to 480 range, if not higher across most quarters since 2022. So is there anything specific that drove this lower this quarter? And if so, how should we look at it going forward? Should it kind of be lower than the 470, 480 range? Or do you think it's going to, do you reckon it's going climb back off to that.

You know, it surprised me that it was, we knew it would be lower. I didn't think it would be, you know, maybe quite this much lower. It's not that much, you know, when you really look at it, 470 versus 460. Having said that, you know, affordability is the favorite buzzword in our industry today, other than maybe rate buy downs, as I think about it. But affordability is up there. Really, it began in our company about five years ago where we began a very concerted effort to produce more affordable product, particularly attached townhome product. Company-wide, it's probably passing maybe 20 or 25 percent of our business. Somewhere in there, it moves a little quarter to quarter with new communities and so forth and timing of closeouts. And I actually think it's more mixed than anything else. I'd expect our average sell price to be at this level, maybe slightly higher, sort of bounce around in the upper fours for the foreseeable future.

Got it. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star, followed by the number one on your touchstone phone. Your next question comes from the line of Kenneth Zinner from Seaport Research Partners. Your line's now open.

Good morning, everybody.

Morning.

I wonder, given your SMART series, very successful, 47, I'm just going to call it half. Can you talk to that, are most of your intra-quarter order closings coming from the SMART series almost by definition because it's, like, pre-built. Is that the correct assumption that I'm making?

Not necessarily. We manage our spec levels or inventory home levels on a subdivision by subdivision basis, and it's less related to maybe the price point of the community at times than it is. I think it's more, it more relates to the location of the community, where we think the buyers are coming from. Clearly, I think there's a few more specs with attached product as you build building by building. Right. And some of that smart series, some of it isn't. I don't think there's really any discernible difference between I mean, intra-quarter closings coming from Smart Series spec homes versus the other half of our business. And, by the way, you know, not every Smart Series buyer is a first-time home buyer either. It's just a product line that we've tried to push really hard to take advantage of bringing our price points down. But, Phil, do you want to add something to that?

And, overall, you know, we feel really good about where our spec levels are. As Bob says, it really varies, you know, community to community. You know, this has been a higher percentage, you know, about 50% of the closings occurring, you know, within the quarter. Reduced cycle time has helped. It doesn't take us as long to get houses built as it did, you know, a year ago. We're also trying to continue to be focused on when we put specs out there, Let's make sure we put the right specs out there on the right lots. You know, we're like most builders. We would prefer to have more dirt sales, more to-be-built sales, because in general, you know, those houses have more upgrades, higher price point, higher margins. But you also have to balance off when you're offering interest rate buy-downs. When you start getting, you know, longer term, it's harder to get, you know, those effective rate buy-downs. So a lot of those things are being balanced off. But overall, we were pretty pleased with the quarter, you know, with our closings. But we feel good about our investment level and specs.

The other thing I'll mention, just because it gets a lot of attention, for years the differential in margin between specs and to-be-builds has been an issue in our industry, where anywhere from 100 or 200 basis points of margin erosion occurred between specs and to-be-builts to, in some cases, 300, 400, 500 points. It sort of moves around market to market and period to period. That issue has never been lost on us. We've always, always tried to generate more to-be-builts than spec sales. Having said all that, we're also trying to successfully balance pace, and initially when we first got into rate buy-downs, it was strictly for specs, but for some time now we've been heavily focused on rate buy-downs for to-be-builds as well because they do generate higher margins, and it should go without saying, but I guess I'll say it anyway. All of that gets poured into the strategy, which we think has helped us generate very strong returns compared to our peers quarter to quarter.

Yes, and I see that. I wonder if, you know, home building doesn't, companies in general, you're not unique in this, you know, don't report the segment data. And you have two segments, right, with the South Texas and Florida being big inputs there. Given the margin swings that we had over, you know, last 18 months where the north is now doing better than the south, yet as I look at your new contracts and closings, I see the north is, you know, declining in terms of the mix, right, as a percent of the total, just the year-over-year change was down in the north, for example, on deliveries. Can you talk to how much of that, you know, the margin we're seeing is just that the higher margin north isn't flowing through? And then maybe comment a little bit on, you know, the southern mix. I think in the past you've talked about, right, Texas being larger than Florida in that southern segment. If you could just give us a little sense of how those different regions are impacting the margin trend. Thank you.

I'm happy to do it. In general, over the last, have held up better in our Midwest markets than in our Florida markets. You know, for a while, our Florida markets had some of the best margins in the company. That's not the case today. We have had very strong margins in Dallas for a long time. They're lower now than they were. That market, like many, is off a little bit. But comparatively speaking, and to give good context, you know, we still have very solid margins in Dallas. The percentage of our business, our Texas markets, which really you can't claim newness anymore. They were new for a while. But those markets are really growing a lot for us. And, you know, our margins in Charlotte are very strong. We have very solid margins in Raleigh as well. It's sort of market to market. I think I mentioned that our most profitable divisions in the first quarter were Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Orlando, Raleigh, but I don't want to leave out Charlotte or as I think about it, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, very solid operations in these markets. Look, I wish all 17 of our markets were performing at a high level, but most are. And we're very encouraged by that. When I say high level, given the conditions, holding up quite well. I think right now, if I had to identify any part of our business that is feeling the pinch more than others, it would be the west coast of Florida, really from Tampa down through Sarasota. That appears to be the most challenging right now. It's not horrible, but it's just nowhere near what it once was, and we're working through it.

We're really pleased with where we are, having the 17 markets, having the diversification. Sure, we all remember a couple years ago how hot Florida and Texas were. Of course, those markets have come back down. The Midwest, Carolinas, never got quite that hot. And plus, we have, you know, a really good presence. You know, we talk about meaningful presence all the time. We have a good presence in most of our markets. You know, we're a pretty big player. So having this diversity, you know, in markets and also in price points and products. We do have 50% first-time buyers, but that tends to be the, you know, 4-4-50 type price point as opposed to that kind of down and dirty, which there's a whole lot of competition. So, again, you know, we try to react to every market based on what the competitive landscape is, land position, and those type things. You know, we try to really focus on, you know, having better locations, you know, in better school districts, near better shopping, better transportation. Again, try to give people a reason to buy, not just price. So that's what we focus on.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. your next question comes from the line of jay mccullis from citizens your lines now open hey good morning guys um i guess kind of hey jay morning guys um so sticking on kind of the questions on the north could you talk about the increase year-on-year in the lots from the north and is that something that potentially can help gross margins down the road i think that the increase in the lot position, some of it's, what's the right word, episodic.

I don't know if that's the right word or not. Sometimes things come on at different times because they're delayed and it skews a quarter. We have a lot of opportunity to grow in Indianapolis, still Chicago, Minneapolis, Columbus, Cincinnati, maybe slightly less so in Detroit. But you take those others, we, you know, we believe we can grow our operations there five to 10% a year for the foreseeable future, in some cases, maybe slightly more. We have a lot of growth opportunities. Having said that, though, in Charlotte and Raleigh, our Raleigh operation is as underperformed from a volume standpoint, not profitability, in large part just because of the incredible delays we've experienced in bringing some new deals to market. We're super excited about where we, as we look out over the next number of quarters, we're very excited about what we have coming on in Raleigh over the next several years. And, you know, we still have big plans to grow in Houston and Dallas, maybe slightly less so in Austin, but we still intend to grow in Austin, and we're growing in San Antonio. Big plans for Fort Myers, Naples. We're really just getting started there. We expect that to be a very meaningful contributor to us down the road. Tampa and Orlando, we've had top five positions in both those markets for a long, long time and are not going to give up market share in either place. And then Nashville. Nashville has been a slower start for us. I thought we'd be a little further along than we are right now. The only encouraging thing is I don't think we're alone. I see, you tend to see that with other builders as well. But having said that, we, you know, we're clearly going to grow our operation there this year. It's well, well ahead of where it was a year ago. And all of this should contribute, you know, as the markets It's, you know, I mean, we don't know what's going to happen with the economy. We'll adjust as necessary. You know, what will happen to margins down the road? I think that over time, I mean, I don't know what will happen, but I think over time we've always pushed very hard to be in the upper tier. And I believe wherever home building margins settle, I think you'll see MI in the upper tier of margin performance relative to our peers. our mortgage operation contributes to that as well you know we we had a 95 percent plus capture rate in the first quarter given all the activity with rate buy downs even though i'm very proud of our mortgage operation if we weren't at least a 90 percent capture rate i think that would require a discussion because you know it seems like everybody should be going through our mortgage company with with all the rate buy downs that we and our peers are doing but having said that MI Homes capture rates the highest in the industry, and we're very proud of that, and that contributes to profitability as well.

And also, Jay, you know, this is Phil, just to add as far as, you know, from a land position standpoint, I mean, you know, what we try to do, we really focus on, you know, what do we own? And, you know, we own today about 24,000 lots. A year ago, we owned about 25,000. It's kind of changed a little bit inside. you know, today we own almost, we own 10,000 finished lots. We like to own about a year's supply. And with our run rate a little less than 10 right now, we're really well positioned there. Our finished lot cost today is up about 5% versus a year ago. Land development costs have kind of settled down a little bit the last couple of quarters. So we feel like we're really in good situation from a land position standpoint. Bob talked about growth. We do have a few less houses in the field than a year ago. But again, when we're building houses faster, we don't need to put the investment out there as fast. So we're trying to be efficient. We're trying to have specs where we need it. So again, we are very focused on trying to continue our growth. We just give a bunch of houses away. We think we do have a really good land position. So we are excited about where we are.

That's great, guys. So the second question I had, if you think about Smart Series, are most of those communities located in the southern region or I guess what's the mix between the northern and the southern for the Smart Series communities?

It's pretty evenly balanced with a couple of exceptions. San Antonio is almost 90% Smart Series. Houston, approaching 90% smart series, maybe even a little higher. But if you take those out and look at the other 15 markets, it's pretty close to 30% to 50% of our business. They tend to have slightly higher absorptions, so it skews and distorts the actual sales number. But it's somewhere between a third and a half.

That's good to know. Thanks, Bob. And then if you could, Phil, maybe talk about what the gross margin looked like and backlog at the end of the quarter?

Sorry, the backlog?

Yeah, gross margin and backlog at the end of the quarter.

It hasn't changed much, Jay. Of course, the backlog is not that big. We are focused on trying to do more to-be-built houses with higher margins in general and so forth. It really hasn't moved much. The thing that's hard is that like this quarter, when half of our closings got sold and closed in the quarter, so it's just really, really hard to predict average sale price, really hard to predict margins, because so much stuff goes through, you know, I mean, you know, I know that you all would love to see us give, you know, margin guidance.

I think it's, I think it's a bit of a, I'll just say it, fool's errand. There's just so much uncertainty. You know, during our last conference call, we weren't talking about a war. We weren't talking about $4 gas prices. In 90 days, look how things like that have changed. It's very, very hard to predict what's going to happen. Conditions right now are marked with uncertainty. Having said that, I think housing's holding up pretty damn well. I've seen a whole lot worse, and so has anyone that's been in this business more than a couple of years. We've been in business 50 years. you know, this is going to be one of our five or six best years in company history. And that's pretty damn good. Sign me up. So, you know, I think we're very well positioned to deal with the conditions as they are. I think we were encouraged that our first quarter gross margins sequentially were almost the same as they were in the fourth quarter. Does that mean they're leveling off? I guess we'll know when we know. I just know that we'll continue to do everything we can to push profitability. We're very proud in this environment to have a double-digit pre-tax income percentage of 10%. Not easy to do. I know a couple of builders do, but most don't. And I think that, you know, it's one thing to say we're focused on profitability. It's another thing to deliver it, and I think we're delivering it.

And we spend a lot of time, you know, Jay, talking about flow, not just the flow of spec inventory. You know, for instance, at the end of the quarter, as I said, we have about 740 completed specs. At the end of the first quarter of last year, it was 686. We also not only track those getting through, that doesn't mean we fire sell them to move them through, but again, we don't want to get too big on specs. We also keep track very closely of what specs are coming through the system. them? Are they drywalled? What's the stage of them? So, again, you know, not just throw specs out there, you know, nilly-willy, you know, every subdivision, but what can we work through? What is the demand? What can we settle to the decent margin? And we do the same thing at land. You know, we make sure that, you know, when we buy raw land, you know, we get into development. We put the finished lots out there that we need that we can work through. But again, trying to do a better job on manage our investment levels. But again, we think we're in good shape and we can react to whatever we need to.

You know, the last thing I'll say, and it sounds like we're patting ourselves on the back, maybe we are, never gotten a build to rent business. We were the only builder that didn't. Don't land bank. We're one of the only builders that doesn't. Our strategy has been pretty damn consistent for as long as I've been here. Focus on our communities. We focus on quality. We strive to deliver the highest levels of customer service that we can. We try to build our homes in excellently well-located A communities all the time. There's no issue that distracts us from pace and margin on a community-by-community basis. Nothing gets more attention than that in our company. And, you know, we have, within certain of our cities, special rate buy-down programs that are only applicable to certain lots and certain communities. We don't paint with a broad brush. We really try to manage this business on a subdivision-by-subdivision basis, even within markets. And that's what we've always done. And that's what our management team's focused on. and it's worked for us.

That's great. And actually, any qualitative, not quantitative, but qualitative commentary you can give about traffic or web traffic for April, just again, given some of the uncertainty that's out there. And then also, if you don't mind, Phil, can you repeat what the monthly order cadence was? I missed that part.

The thing I'll say about traffic is given the market, I've been pleased with our traffic through the first quarter. So we'll just leave it at that because we don't – the month's far from over, and, you know, we're optimistic, but we'll see. Phil, you want to comment on – No, I'm really focused also.

I mean, we're opening a lot of stores. You know, last year we opened about 80. This year, you know, we plan on opening more than 80. So we're trying to open them the right way. In general, they're at a higher price point where we see a little more steady demand these days. but again just staying on top of it community by community right and and phil if you could what were the monthly order cadence again please yeah yeah the first yeah the first quarter the cj we were uh we were up 11 in january we were up seven percent in february march was down six percent but last year's march was the highest month of last year and we did sell more houses in February than we did in January, and we sell more houses in March than we did in February. So overall, we were pretty pleased, you know, with our sales.

Okay. That's great. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Take care. Take care, Jeff. Thanks, Jay.

You too. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. And again, as a reminder, please press star one to ask a question. Your next question comes from the line of Backhorn from Raymond James. Your line's now open.

Hey, good morning, guys. Appreciate the time. Kind of want to ask you a question in slightly different ways. I'm wondering, thinking through the monthly cadence or just how you responded to March's volatility in terms of incentives, did you have to or did you increase or lean into certain incentives more in March to try to offset the mortgage rate volatility? Or conversely, was there just enough natural seasonal demand where you kind of were able to keep the same strategy in place. I'm just kind of wondering if there's a potential carry forward to second quarter margins just due to the incentives that were provided.

You know, normally I wouldn't want to get too specific, even though it's all on our website for our competitors to see. What has worked for us on specs, for the most part, is even though we've got, you know, we've got, some buyers, some subdivisions. We see some arm product. But the vast, vast majority of our buyers want one thing, and that's a 30-year fixed rate mortgage. And what we have led with for quite some time now and been pretty consistent with it on homes that can be delivered within roughly 60 days, so call it inventory homes, is a four and seven-eighths rate on both FHA, VA, as well as conventional. And we've also offered on to-be-built, this has a long-term rate lock, a rate in the very, very low fives. And we have found those two things, there's some exceptions, you know, probably more than two or three or five exceptions, but we have 200 plus communities. The vast majority of our communities, those programs are what is working for us now and resulted in our 3% year over year increase in sales. The cost went up, went down, then it went up during the quarter. It went down before we started bombing Iran, and then afterwards it went up. And it's been bumping around quite a bit since, you know, we live in a minute-to-minute news cycle where there's a constant overreaction to good news or not. So, you know, all that affects what's happening with rates, and there's been a fair amount of volatility with the 10-year, I mean, between 440 and the low 420s. So, but, so when it goes up, it costs us a little more if we're buying it on that day. We look at it every day. Derek's sitting right here. His team at MI Financial is pretty intensely focused on this every single day.

That's very helpful. I think that's pretty clear. I appreciate that extra color there. Secondly, I'm kind of curious, thinking through the way the business is set up right now, you're throwing off quite a bit of positive cash flow. You've dialed back the land spend. Your land position seems to be in a really good position already. So I'm just wondering if you think through the possibility of the, you know, you've been very programmatic about the share repurchase schedule, but you're still building up quite a bit of cash. I'm just wondering if you think that there's a possibility that you'd kind of increase the kind of the the schedule of, of the, the buybacks that you're, you're, you know, you're, you're penciling in for the remainder of the year, just some at some point in the future.

Talk about it with our board, maybe not every board meeting, but at least every other. We have a meeting coming up in two weeks. We'll probably discuss it at that meeting. I don't really see any change, but it's possible, I guess. I don't know. I think we're going to stay sort of where we are. And I don't know if you want to add to that.

No, I agree. Also, we're not really anticipating the cash to build up that much more. We are a little lower now than we thought we would be internally. I thought I would have a few more spec dollars out there than I have. I did a little better job managing that. I did mention we're going to be opening quite a bit more as far as new stores and so forth. So I would still expect to have a pretty strong cash position. Would not expect it to be up very much more. And again, spending at the rate of $200 million a year to buy stock back, which we've done for the last quarter, it's 50 a quarter, we still think is pretty good. We bought back almost 20% of the stock the last couple of years. But that's something we'll continue to look at.

All right.

Sounds good, guys. Congrats. Appreciate the color.

Thanks, Buck.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. Turning over back to Mr. Crick.

Thank you for joining us. Look forward to speaking to you next quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.