Lennar defends even-flow, land banking strategy as risks build

In his 2006 hit song “Gravity,” an introspective John Mayer proclaimed, “gravity is working against me, and gravity wants to bring me down.”On Lennar’s Q3 2026 earnings call Thursday, the Miami-based builder’s President and CEO Stuart Miller sang a similar tune, acknowledging that a challenging housing market, if anything, worsened over the past quarter. Housing’s parabolic ups and downs feature their own kind and force of gravity. And although homebuilders don’t get to dodge its effects, they all face having to deal with them head-on and continue to produce results acceptable to financial investors and lenders.“We keep in mind that sometimes the best companies are called on to defy gravity for some period of time,” Miller said during his prepared remarks. Lennar, the second-largest homebuilder by sales volume, continues its strategic shift, from playing offense to defense as headwinds get stiffer with little to no let-up in sight. The builder’s use of incentives continued to moderate, falling to 12%, down from 12.9% in Q2 and 14.1% in Q1. Gross profit margins also improved sequentially by 20 basis points to 15.8%. However, gravity, in this case an unrelenting market plagued by ris...