As I have gone out to each division, I’d met with the entire operating staff and have spoken with the people that are working in each aspect of the division. The focus incentive purpose can be felt. As an example, just yesterday I was in our Chicago division and that was where all the associates wear the Lennar name badge in that market. While we have materially reduced the size of the division the associates are a lean tight-knit group who are determined to get to profitability so that they can begin to look for new opportunity in today’s distressed environment. Clearly, this market has gone through enormous change.
At the peak, we employed over 400 associates and occupied 92,000 square feet of our office space and we delivered over 1,200 homes. Today, we have a group of just 31 professionals. Our office space is roughly 6,900 square feet and we are positioned to deliver approximately 225 homes. This group is rapidly approaching breakeven performance and will be looking for new opportunities in the distressed market very soon.
Our team in Chicago has endured significant and painful change but the spirit and positive attitude of associates like these keep us all focused on the opportunities in these difficult times. Now the Chicago example is just one example and is certainly alone. I could be speaking of any of our divisions that I visited. They are all in the same situation having reduced their operation and having repositioned themselves for a profitable future.
Now, while we have not yet recognized the full impact of all of our initiatives in every division yet, in all of our divisions as in Chicago we’re well along the path to recapturing profitability. More importantly, we are positioned to leverage our lean operating structure with minimal incremental expenses as the housing market recovers.
Prior to our reorganization, we operated in extremely decentralized organization while today we are organized for efficient operation in this most difficult market condition and prepared to grow as opportunity presents itself.
On the balance sheet and asset management front we’ve continued to fortify our company at the corporate level by continuing to manage and restate our land assets while we continue to manage our inventory of completed homes and reduced the number and composition of our joint ventures. We have continued to review all of our land assets on a quarterly basis and have restated asset values to match market conditions. Over the past years, we’ve significantly reduced our land asset base which now requires less management time and is a far smaller base to a bear should market conditions continue to worsen.
As I said in prior quarters we have done a great deal of the heavy lifting on impairment and are now situated with stated assets that can and will produce improving margins when the rate of decline in market pricing subsides. While this is an ongoing process in a declining market we’ve come quite a long way.
As you can see from our press release we have continued to reduce the number of our joint ventures. The number of unconsolidated joint ventures has fallen from its peak at 270 joint ventures in 2006 to 83 joint ventures currently and that’s down from 95 last quarter. Additionally, we’ve continued to reduce the maximum recourse debt to the company to approximately $442 million from $474 million last quarter and from $1.8 billion at the peak or approximately a 76% decline.
We will continue to update the more detailed information on our top 10 joint ventures that we filed with our first quarter disclosures and we will file that update with our 10-Q in the second week of July. We hope that these disclosures will continue to shed light on the substantial progress that we are making on this part of our business strategy and Bruce and Scott will be working to answer questions as you have time to review these materials when they come out.
Our balance sheet remained strong at the end of the quarter with a substantial cash position of $1.4 billion. Additionally, there’s nothing borrowed on our revolver and we have a responsible total debt to capital position net of cash that is at 32.9%. Our balance sheet cash position continued to provide stability as the market declined and enable us to seize opportunity where distress creates unique value as the market stabilizes. Accordingly, as you can see in our release today we have continued to fortify our balance sheet as we seek to provide further buffer against further erosion in the marketplace while having available liquidity to capture opportunity as some markets stabilize and improve. To that end we retired $281 million of senior notes in the past quarter while we issued $400 million of senior notes and approximately $126 million in equity.
In conclusion, let me say that we have made a great deal of progress in our second quarter even while the market has remained difficult. We have prepared our company for market conditions as they currently exist. We are well prepared for more downside even while we are beginning to see signs of real improvement. Although it is too early to say that the market has stabilized, one can sense that resolution is not far off. Although it is sometimes difficult to find reason to be optimistic in these turbulent market conditions the homebuilding market will rebound, it will have to in order to stimulate the rest of the economy back to its feet and as the market finds the bottom and begins to recover we will be well positioned to participate.
At Lennar, we have made significant progress in repositioning our homebuilding business as a scaled down and lean operation. We strategically positioned our balance sheet to be able to participate as opportunity presents itself and we have adequate resources to weather the difficult market conditions that are in front of us and we continue to focus on the operational element that will drive us to profitability and continued positive cash flow in the future.
Thank you, and Bruce.
Bruce E. Gross
Thank you, Stuart and good morning. In the second quarter we made significant progress on strengthening our balance sheet and liquidity position and we improved that liquidity position by generating positive cash flow from operations as well as by accessing the capital markets.
Operationally, we generated cash by carefully managing our inventory. As Stuart mentioned, we cut our completed unsold number of homes by 53% from 1,321 to 626. We also continued to reduce our starts base down 39% year over year to 2,724 homes. Our homes under construction also declined year over year 38% to 4,025 in this quarter.
We continued to reduce our land purchases and land development spend as well. Land purchases were only $58 million in the quarter and that compares to $162 million in the prior year’s quarter. Land development spend was reduced to $16 million from 55 million in the prior year’s quarter
Sequentially, our inventory before consolidated inventory not owned declined from $3.9 billion in the first quarter to $3.7 billion this quarter. We accessed the capital markets for both debt and equity this quarter. During the quarter, we announced an equity drawdown program to have access to the equity markets in a flexible manner if we choose to issue equity.
During the quarter, we issued 12.8 million shares raising $126 million at an average price just under $10 per share. Additionally, we raised $400 million of senior notes maturing in 2017 and this debt was issued with an investment grade covenant package.
During the quarter, we paid off our maturing 7.5%, 8% senior notes totaling $281 million. These capital market transactions along with the positive cash generated from operations had positioned the company with $1.4 billion of cash which is ample liquidity to fund near-term debt maturities, JV fundings, operations as well as new opportunities as they present themselves.
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