I think you are right. If you go back over the last six quarters our impairment numbers are lower and I think what you are really alluding to is we were ahead of the curve in taking our impairments. We did a very large transaction and moved a lot of land off of our balance sheet with the Morgan Stanley transaction and you can’t impair what you don’t own any more. And then we also had a lot of joint venture investments where we shared impairments with partners.
We have a 20% discount rate as we look at the impairments so we are looking at this and I think our assumptions are very conservative and we have been believing for a couple of quarters that we are very near the end of the impairment process and the reason that we have impairments still is because prices have been coming down the last couple of quarters.
Stuart A. Miller
We haven’t talked about it much and we are not likely to spend a lot of time on this but the fact is we did get out early and we have reacted to the market condition early. Bruce is absolutely correct. We sold a number of parcels strategically earlier on in the cycle. Once you have sold something you don’t impair it any more, it’s gone, it’s turned to (inaudible).
Additionally, there’s been a lot of discussion about our joint ventures and we sat back and we focused on dealing with our ventures. In a lot of ways the term joint venture has become synonymous with something that is not good or evil or something. But remember, that each of our joint ventures was backed and is backed by an asset, a real hard asset. That is the way they were structured and they were structured as risk mitigating programs so there might have been debt at the time conservatively put in place but our ownership, our actual ownership of the land, the asset and participation in the venture was somewhere between 10% and 50%. So we might have had a very small piece of ownership in that overall asset. The more we tied up and had under control a lot of assets we were invested in a small percentage of it and I think that’s working a little bit to our favor right now. And I think that our impairment as we go forward, I think that we are taking as conservative and consistent a view of how to impair property. As anybody else we have suffered through the downward turn in market conditions and that’s why we continue to have impairments but I think we are benefiting from the fact that we got out early and we mitigated risk with some of our structures.
Michael Rehaut - JPMorgan
Great. I appreciate that, Stuart. Second question on the sales and order pace and certainly you came in solidly above my number and you commented on your thoughts of different drivers, I was wondering if you could perhaps by segment that you could break it up, perhaps highlight on a more metro or regional level, particular areas of improvement on top of the numbers that we see East, Central, West if there are some regions that maybe have performed better than the segment average or worse. And also, intra-quarter trends, in your prepared comments you had mentioned that perhaps more recently with higher rates or with the tax credit starting to reach their expiration, if you have seen any type of slowdown or any type of commentary on a broader basis in terms of months to months how it has progressed.
Stuart A. Miller
Well, Mike, first let me say, a) I know that that’s a compound question so it accounts for multiples ones, you don’t get any more. And second of all I would never presume to take away from Bob Toll the opportunity to grade each opportunity individually. So I can’t step on his toe but I can give you the following color. I can say that pretty much across the board the tax credit that was offered nationally has been somewhat of an incentive to the marketplace. It’s gotten a number of the markets moving for first time homebuyers and that is the $8,000 non-monetizable tax credit that was offered nationally.
I think what is most notable though is the California credit and the California experience where we have seen a discernible pick up in our California market primarily driven by the additional incremental $10,000 tax credit that has been offered in that marketplace and is on the verge of going away because the fund available were limited and were coming to the end of that. But the California example is a really good one in that it has done a lot to stabilize that market. It has a meaningful impact both on volume and on stabilizing pricing as well and the fact that that credit is going away will potentially have a negative impact.
The positive side of that is that we are kind of starting to see legislators, both locally in California and nationally, start to recognize that stimulating the market, bringing the demand side back to the market is what is going to stabilize housing prices and ultimately get the economy overall back on its feet and I think that we are seeing the key to the kingdom being highlighted right now whereas what we are also seeing is that the foreclosure prevention programs that have been highlighted and been primary drivers out there are having very little effect.
So the negative is that we could see a fall off in demand as these programs go away. The positive is that we are likely to see the program’s effectiveness that we have seen in California and to a lesser extent nationally translate into new programs being initiated. On the national front you are clearly seeing with Johnny Isakson reintroducing his Bill for $15,000 tax credit and the movement towards the monetization you are seeing that start to get into the active discourse and in California I can tell recently with a group of builders that were with the Governor and it is clear that that governmental group is looking at how they can get more money into the program because they have seen it have a meaningful positive impact in what is a distressed state.
So across the country we have seen impact from these programs. In California, we have seen even more impact from the program and I think that we are going to see more programs to help housing back on its feet and moving forward.
Michael Rehaut - JPMorgan
Just before I am cut off here returning to the question, any more granular detail on the East region in particular – Florida, New Jersey, Mid-Atlantic and also any commentary on intra-quarter trends?
Stuart A. Miller
On the eastern side in Florida we certainly haven’t sent the kind of accomplishments that we have seen in California at a market level. Relative to our divisions we are getting to stabilization, breakeven and profitability even in these distressed market conditions. Along the eastern seaboard we are seeing a little bit more stabilization and strength and you really have to look market by market, New Jersey and Virginia might be a little bit stronger than some of the Carolina markets. I really can’t go through each one now. I am not really prepared to go through each one. Okay, next.
Operator
Our next question is coming from David Goldberg of UBS. Your line is open.
David Goldberg - UBS
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