Green Brick Orders Jump 19% as Home Prices Keep Sliding
Green Brick Partners posted a 19% jump in net new home orders even as revenue fell 9.9% to $481.6 million on lower prices.
Green Brick Partners (GRBK) reported net new home orders up 19% year over year to 1,079 units in the second quarter, an acceleration from flat order growth in the first quarter and a slight increase in the fourth quarter of 2024. The homebuilder's revenue nonetheless fell 9.9% to $481.6 million, as price cuts outpaced steady delivery volume.
The quarter captured a familiar tension in Green Brick's results: demand is picking up, but at lower prices. Average sales price of homes delivered dropped 11.9% year over year to $450,300, while unit deliveries were roughly flat at 1,047 versus 1,042 a year earlier. Homebuilding gross margin came in at 29.8%, up 90 basis points from the first quarter's 28.9% but down 150 basis points from 31.3% a year earlier, extending a streak of year-over-year margin declines that included a 160-basis-point drop in the third quarter of 2024 and a 410-basis-point drop in the second quarter of that year. The company reclassified closing-cost incentives, including interest-rate buydowns, from cost of revenues to a reduction of residential revenue for 2023 through 2025, a restatement that lowered historical revenue and raised historical margin without affecting net income but complicates comparisons to those prior periods.
Net income attributable to Green Brick fell 9.5% to $74.2 million, or $1.70 a diluted share, continuing declines seen in the first quarter ($60.9 million) and the fourth quarter of 2024 ($78 million, down 24.5% year over year). Backlog told a similar story: units fell 6.7% year over year to 681 and backlog revenue dropped 23.6% to $387.4 million, though both figures rose sequentially from the first quarter's 649 units and $381.3 million as new orders outpaced deliveries during the quarter.
One segment moved in the opposite direction. Financial services operating income rose 91% year over year to $5.7 million, and 108% for the first half of 2026 to $10.0 million, as loan originations climbed 256.8% to 521 loans totaling $196.5 million in principal. The segment was broken out separately starting in the first quarter of 2026, giving investors a first full look at its scale as it becomes a larger contributor to results.
Green Brick also widened its land position and pulled back on leverage. Owned lots grew 7% sequentially to 39,588, up 11.6% year over year, even as the company's homebuilding debt-to-total-capital ratio fell to 11.2% (6.1% net of cash), down from 14.4% (9.4% net) a year earlier and from 12.8% at year-end 2025. The company also disclosed a $9.6 million land sale in the quarter, a transaction that pushed land and lots revenue up 371% to $9.6 million even though zero lots closed, versus 18 lots sold in the same period last year.
Cancellation rates improved to 7.8% from 9.9% a year earlier, continuing a broader downward trend from 6.7% in the third quarter of 2024. The company also delivered its first homes in the Houston market during the quarter, following a groundbreaking in the third quarter of 2024 and first sales in the first quarter of 2026, adding a new revenue stream as the company's geographic footprint expands.
Share repurchases continued but at a slower clip, with the company buying back $9.4 million, or 143,026 shares, in the second quarter, up modestly from $7.2 million in the first quarter but well below the $23 million pace in the fourth quarter of 2024, under the company's $150 million buyback authorization. With order growth accelerating and leverage falling, the company enters the back half of the year with more capacity to build even as price-driven margin pressure persists.