D.R. Horton Inc. said Monday it narrowed its losses in the most recent quarter as the nation's largest homebuilder dramatically decreased the charges it took against falling land values and unsold homes.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based company said it lost $108.6 million, or 34 cents a share, in its second fiscal quarter ended March 31. That compares with a loss of $1.31 billion, or $4.14 a share, a year earlier.
The results included a pretax charge of $48.1 million to write down the value of unsold homes and land contracts, a far cry from the $834.1 million in charges it booked in the same quarter last year.
Homebuilding revenue fell by half to $775.3 million, missing Wall Street's estimate.
Analysts had expected a loss of 30 cents a share on revenue of about $815 million, according to Thomson Reuters.
D.R. Horton has operations in 27 states and is closely watched as a possible bellwether for industry sales. And one bright spot in the company's results was a 50 percent quarterly jump in home sales as the traditional spring homebuying season got under way.
Homebuilders have reported an uptick in traffic this year as prospective buyers responded to low mortgage interest rates, lower prices and incentives like tax credits, stoking optimism that the housing market's slump might be easing.
On Monday, the National Association of Realtors said that its index of pending contracts to buy previously owned homes rose for the second month in a row in March.
Nevertheless, Horton gave a cautious outlook on the housing market in a filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission: We believe that housing market conditions may continue to deteriorate, that challenging conditions will persist for some time and that the timing of a recovery in the housing market remains unclear.
Investors appeared disappointed with the builder's results, driving Horton's shares down 52 cents, or nearly 4 percent, to $12.97 in aftermarket trading following the release of the earnings. In the regular session, the stock added $1.13, or 9 percent, to $13.49.
In the latest quarter D.R. Horton sold 3,585 homes — even after 30 percent of buyers canceled.
The company took in 4,160 orders for new homes during the quarter, down from 7,528 homes a year earlier.
The number of homes under contract to be sold also fell. D.R. Horton had 4,581 homes worth $963 million under contract at the end of the quarter. It had 8,947 homes valued at $2.1 billion under contract on the same day a year earlier. Horton closed the quarter with $1.5 billion in cash.
For the first six months of the fiscal year, Horton's loss narrowed to $171.1 million, or 54 cents a share. That compares with a loss of $1.4 billion, or $4.55 a share, in the same period last year.
Homebuilding revenue totaled $1.7 billion versus $3.3 billion.
(Source: AP)