Sun Belt housing markets are so weak that homebuilder Lennar’s average home price is down 22%

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For much of the past three years, Lennar, America’s second-largest homebuilder, has pursued an aggressive strategy: prioritize sales pace and market share, even if it meant slicing deeper into margins through price cuts and heavy incentives in the currently housing affordability strained market. That approach helped the company keep homes moving in softer Sun Belt markets like Florida, Texas, and Arizona. But now, after reporting its weakest gross margin since 2009, Lennar is signaling it’s ready to shift gears.

On Friday’s earnings call, co-CEO Stuart Miller told analysts that Lennar will “pull back just a little bit” on its sales-over-margin strategy after seeing profitab