by Calculated Risk on 8/08/2007 05:04:00 PM

From the Financial Times: Toll warns on deepening housing slump

The chief executive of Toll Brothers said buyer interest in its homes was at the lowest in 20 years in the last quarter, as the largest luxury home builder warned on Wednesday that the US housing slump might get even worse.

Six weeks in the earlier part of the quarter, which ran until the end of July, saw the "lowest traffic on a per community basis that we have ever had", said Robert Toll, meaning that the company's housing developments had received on average less visitors than at any time since it went public in 1986.
...
[Toll] cautioned that increasingly tight lending standards for mortgages would deepen the crisis.
...
“We are now in the 23rd month of a down housing market,” Mr Toll said.

He added: “Surely it can go on for another year to a year and a half with no problem at all.”

Toll's comments about this being the lowest buyer interest in the company's history are interesting.