HOV - Hovnanian - Now, This Makes More Sense

High end homebuilder Hovnanian is getting spanked with a more than 3% decline after posting a loss of $118 mln to take a variety of charges to walk away from $141 mln in land deposits and pre development costs. If you have any interest in the state of the real estate market, this release from HOV gives an eye opening view: (click here). They're expressing some optimism by noting that more people are at least looking and resale inventories in some markets have relaxed a bit. Still, they issued weak guidance for 2007 with a guess that earnings could be as low as $1.50 a share vs expectations for earnings of $2.50 a share.