Berkshire Hathaway invests heavily in Lennar, barely in D.R. Horton

The investment in affordable homebuilders signals a long-term bet on housing, despite elevated rates and persistent cost pressures

Berkshire Hathaway has built a stake of more than 11% in Lennar. It bought about $400 million of the homebuilder’s stock in the last two weeks of September and kept buying into October. Its most recent position in rival D.R. Horton amounts to a negligible $580,000 or less than a percent of ownership. 

The Lennar purchases are a long-term bet on the housing market at a time when middle America is struggling to afford the sticker price of homes, let alone ever-climbing interest rates. They also show that Berkshire is choosing sides as it sold out of D.R. Horton, the nations largest homebuilder last year, now holding a much smaller stake.

Berkshire bought D.R. Horton shares in the first quarter of 2025. By the second quarter of that year, it held close to 1.5 million shares in Horton along with just over 7 million shares of Lennar. Berkshire then exited the Horton stake in the third quarter of 2025, while simultaneously buying Alphabet shares.

The firm’s decades-long strategy has been buying fundamentally strong businesses trading below their intrinsic value. Its latest round of buying Lennar shares began on Sept. 17, a day after the homebuilder reported that quarterly profit fell 52% to $284 million. Berkshire’s Lennar holdings are now worth just over $2 billion.

Lennar’s shares have fallen about 20% since the start of the year, and 17 of the 19 analysts tracked by Yahoo Finance rate the stock a hold or worse. Because Berkshire owns more than 10% of the company, it must disclose each trade within two business days, which makes its buying unusually visible. The steady stream of purchases points to confidence in Lennar despite weaker earnings and a shaky customer base.

“In many of our markets, almost 50% of our visitors cannot immediately qualify,” Lennar Chief Executive Officer Stuart Miller said on the company’s Sept. 17 earnings call.

D.R. Horton, the nation’s largest homebuilder by volume, and Lennar, right behind it, chase many of the same cost-conscious buyers. In August, they went opposite ways. Horton cut its price per square foot by 1.2%, its steepest drop since November, while Lennar raised its by 1.5%, its first increase since March, according to Wells Fargo analysts who track listings on the builders’ websites in eight Sunbelt markets. Lennar also shrank its average discount to 7.6% of the original price, down from 10.4% in January. The analysts say Horton is trading cheap mortgage deals for lower sticker prices, while Lennar is trying to protect its profit margins.

For D.R. Horton, BTIG and Evercore both cut their price targets in late September amid concerns about affordability and mortgage costs. Its profit fell 12% to $904.9 million in its fiscal third quarter, which ended June 30, and it lowered its full-year revenue forecast to $32.5 billion to $33 billion, from $33.5 billion to $34.5 billion.

The purchases are among the first big housing moves by Greg Abel, who succeeded Warren Buffett as CEO of in January. In July, Berkshire also acquired homebuilder Taylor Morrison for $6.8 billion acquisition. Abel told CNBC in early September that he doesn’t see “any type of immediate recovery” for homebuilders and described Berkshire’s investments as long-term bets.