“But that's what we anticipate for the fourth quarter.”

In context

“onality has certainly been a little bit tricky over the past few quarters, and you guys did better-than-normal seasonality in the most recent quarter. Just curious how you're thinking about absorption as we move into the fourth quarter, given what you're seeing out there in the market today. Douglas Yearley: Yes. It feels right now, John, like it's trending very similar to Q3. And I think our comments around the three weeks of August helped explain that. We're running at a pace right now of about 24 homes sold per year per community. Last year was 25 homes sold per year per community. So it's relatively flat, and that's what we're projecting. The 2010 to 2019 time frame, again, pre-COVID, we tracked at about 22 sales per community per year. So we're modestly call it, 10% or so above that. But that's what we anticipate for the fourth quarter. John Lovallo: Okay. That's helpful. And then you guys mentioned cycle times improving. Just wondering if you could help us kind of quantify where they are today maybe versus last quarter, maybe pre-COVID. And then how much of that improvement is getting better on the to-be-built side versus just offering more spec? Douglas Yearley: Cycle times are coming down slowly. We're picking up a couple of weeks. For the next home sold a range is about 10 to 11 months. I think the exact number, I think, is 315 days is what we project when you average out the entire company. That's obviously down dramatically from the COVID years and it's similar to what we saw pre-COVID. But we are more efficient. There's no question. We changed our operating model in the field. and we're enjoying those efficiencies”