The quarter in figures
PulteGroup reported net income of $472 million, or $2.48 per share, for the quarter ended June 30, down from $608 million and $3.03 per share a year earlier, in results published July 22.
Home sale revenues of $3.8 billion were 11% lower than in the second quarter of 2025, on 6,997 closings — a decline of 8%. The average sales price on those closings was $544,000, down 3% year over year, which accounts for the gap between the revenue and volume declines.
Home sale gross margin came in at 25.0%, 60 basis points higher than the preceding quarter. The company repurchased $373 million of its common shares during the period.
Orders moved the other way
Net new orders rose 6% from a year earlier to 7,536 homes, with order value up 5% to $4.1 billion. Unit backlog grew 2% to 10,966 homes, valued at $6.8 billion.
Analysis: orders of 7,536 against closings of 6,997 means the company sold more homes during the quarter than it delivered, rebuilding backlog rather than drawing it down. That is the opposite of the pattern the largest builders reported in adjacent quarters.
It also means the revenue decline is a story about deliveries and price, not about demand for PulteGroup's product during the quarter. Orders are the forward measure; closings reflect sales agreed several months earlier, in a period when the company was delivering fewer and cheaper homes.
Margin against the peer group
A 25.0% gross margin is high by current industry standards and improved sequentially in a quarter when several peers reported compression. Toll Brothers posted a 23.9% home sales gross margin for its quarter ended July 31, down from 25.6% a year earlier, and KB Home reported an adjusted housing gross margin of 16.8% for the quarter ended August 31.
Those numbers are not strictly comparable — the builders serve different price points, use different adjustments, and their quarters end on different dates. The spread between them nonetheless indicates that margin outcomes in 2026 depended heavily on where in the market a builder operates.
The 3% decline in average selling price is the mechanism worth watching. Price reductions and buydowns reduce realized revenue per home directly, and a builder that holds gross margin while average price falls is absorbing that concession somewhere else in its cost structure.
What it says about the market
One builder's quarter is a data point about that builder. Read alongside the wider 2026 record, though, PulteGroup's combination of rising orders and falling closings adds a complication to the simplest reading of the year.
The national data through the summer described weak new-home sales and an inventory overhang — Census and HUD recorded 9.6 months of new-home supply in July. A large builder growing its order book in that environment is doing so by competing on price, location or product against the rest of the market.
The backlog is the number to revisit. At 10,966 homes against a quarterly delivery rate near 7,000, the company entered the second half with roughly a quarter and a half of committed work — a thicker cushion than some competitors carried.