Lennar Earnings Call Nuggets: Mortgage Market Visibility and Business Outlook

Lennar Corporation (NYSE:LEN) recently reported its fourth quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call.

Mortgage Market Visibility

Ivy Zelman – Zelman & Associates: I wanted to drill down little bit on your comments related to the mortgage market. I guess my first side is do you think that the stringent mortgage environment is impediment to growth for 2013. 2014 and beyond and that is necessary for that marginal buyer to have access to mortgage liquidity, or can you continue to show robust growth despite the fact that there is credit stringent, if you do business not pent-up demand or incremental buyers and have the credit. And then secondly on the QM, you mentioned QM, the clarity we have, do you have any comments for us to understand that 3% cash flow as it relates to your mortgage company please.

Start 2013 better than ever by saving time and making money with your Limited Time Offer for our highly-acclaimed Stock Picker Newsletter. Click here for our fresh Feature Stock Pick now!

Stuart A. Miller – CEO: As to the first question, Ivy, I think that there is a lot of pent-up demand and that’s what we are seeing in the field. There is a lot of sentiment that people want to find their way into home ownership and are willing to push through a much more conservative mortgage market in order to do that, remembering that new homebuilding is coming off historic lows and trending upward. We think that that there is a lot of room for growth even in a somewhat moderated environment. I think that the mortgage market does present itself as somewhat of a limiting factor. We do not see nor do we think it’s healthy for the mortgage market to revert back to the liberal standards that we came from, but a reversion to normal, which will take some time, is likely as certainty has brought to the rules surrounding the financial market. So, given the fact that there is very, very strong demand, very compelling reasons to move from a rental world to a for-sale world given the low monthly payment and given the fact that at the margins, the mortgage market is opening up a little bit at a time, we think that there is – there are very healthy growth prospects as we look ahead to 2013. And Bruce, I’ll give it to you for the second part.

Bruce E. Gross – VP and CFO: Sure. Let me comment on the Q end definition that just came out this past week. So, there is a year before this goes into place and it’s been given a year to work through some of the clarifications that are included. So, this clarification needs quite a bit of further clarification. So, it’s unclear at this point, how it’s going to work out, but right now, the 3% we think if you include the closing cost that we contribute to the buyer in the process, if that’s not included in the 3% then it’s essentially a very minimal issue. So, the clarification of how our contribution is included is…