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Toll sees revenue drop as high-end buyers cancel


    NEW YORK (Reuters) - Toll Brothers expects quarterly revenue to decline by half as prospective buyers of its more expensive homes changed their minds, the luxury builder said on Wednesday.

    The company will generate $409.3 million in revenue from building homes, down 51 percent from a year earlier, according to preliminary results for the first quarter ended on January 31.

    The quarter's 157 cancellations, which totaled $115 million, hit the company's higher-end offerings and occurred mainly in New York, Credit Suisse analyst Dan Oppenheim wrote in a client note. The average price on a canceled home was $733,000, compared with the average net order price of $482,000.

    "We think this is particularly worrisome given the bleak outlook for high-end units in the New York area," Oppenheim said.

    Stripping out cancellations, Toll signed contracts on 266 homes in the quarter for $128.1 million, a dollar decline of 66 percent from a year earlier.

    Toll Brothers shares fell 3.4 percent to $17.95 in light trading before the market opened.

    (Reporting by Helen Chernikoff and Bhaswati Mukhopadhyay in Bangalore; Editing by Deepak Kannan and Lisa Von Ahn)