Toll Brothers Swings to Profit on Improved Sales
Builder Toll Brothers Inc. swung to a bigger-than-expected profit in the fiscal second quarter, boosted by increased sales and fewer cancellations.</br></br>The results continue a strong selling season that is leading many industry watchers to declare that the hard-hit market has finally struck bottom. Builders nationwide are reporting increased sales and orders from a year ago, and existing-home sales are also up.</br></br>Sales of new homes climbed 3.3% in April from March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 343,000, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. Sales were up 9.9% from a year ago. Tuesday, the National Association of Realtors reported that existing-home sales climbed 3.4% from March, and prices increased about 10% from the prior year to $177,400, the strongest year-over-year gain since January of 2006.</br></br>Toll, which caters largely to affluent move-up buyers in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, is seeing improvement along Florida's east coast and around Phoenix, markets that were hit hard by the housing-market crash.</br></br>"The housing market has moved into a new and stronger phase of recovery as we have experienced broad-based improvement across most of our regions over the past six months," said Chief Executive Douglas C. Yearley Jr. in the premarket statement. "The spring selling season has been the most robust and sustained since the downturn began."