Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Ivy Zelman of Zelman & Associates.
Ivy Zelman - Zelman & Associates
Good afternoon. I really appreciate all the details that was excellent. When you were talking about your unsold land at $396 million and then looking at the breakdown you said $229 million was finished unsold lots, I think 4,185 does I got it right. What are you expecting, I think you gave it as well, but I did not catch it, just quickly land spend to be maybe for this year and then '09 given you have all that finished inventory?
Phil Creek
Yes. Ivy, you are right. At end of June, we had 4,185 finished lots. The land spend in the quarter was only $3 million and our current estimate for '08 is about $25 million.
Ivy Zelman - Zelman & Associates
Assuming roughly the same or low on '09 or at this point, it is too hard to say?
Bob Schottenstein
Hi Ivy, how are you doing?
Ivy Zelman - Zelman & Associates
Good, Bob. How are you doing?
Bob Schottenstein
I am doing, good. Too hard to say but very selective, very limited and only deals that make sense.
Ivy Zelman - Zelman & Associates
Got it. Bob, you have been always very frank and straight forward about the challenging market environment and clearly the reason, it seems like another leg down in terms of trends with respect to absorptions. Can you tell strategically how you move forward from here in an environment, where its getting even tougher to sell homes because of whether it would be tighter mortgage credit or as the fact that unemployment rising are you going to be more aggressive on pricing if necessary or do you sit back and mothball what is M/I's strategy?
Bob Schottenstein
Well that is a great question. There was a magic answer. First of all to subdivision business every subdivision is different even within the same market. If it makes sense to mothball a project, we would. We do not have any at this point that we have. Where we have excess inventories we maybe more aggressive. We are trying to move through our land position.
I think things are going to be very tough this year. I think things may even be tougher next year. I would like to believe and nobody knows but based on some of the things that you produced and what others have said that '10 maybe the year, where things begin to turn. We just want to make certain that when they do because I think prices still have a little bit of room to fall in most markets. That we are not sitting here with a lot of projects that are overpriced even though they maybe well located, if they are way overpriced. We want to make sure; we work through most of them now. We feel very good about most of our land position it is just that we do not feel good about it right now.
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