Berkshire Hathaway doubled down on its bet on Lennar and the homebuilding industry, boosting its stake by 30 percent from the first quarter to almost $1.2 billion.
The Omaha, Nebraska-based company’s recent SEC filings show it held 13.4 million Lennar shares across the company’s Class A and Class B stock as of June 30, including 13.1 million Class A shares, which represented a 6.2 percent ownership stake. Lennar’s Class B shares carry 10 votes per share, compared with one vote per share for Class A shares.
Berkshire first publicly disclosed investments in Miami-based Lennar in 2023, buying a small position in its Class B shares, before beginning a much larger buildup of Class A shares in the first three months of 2025. Its Lennar position represents less than 1 percent of Berkshire Hathaway’sthe company’s U.S. stock portfolio.
The investment firm also acquired a position in Texas-based D.R. Horton, buying 3,564 shares valued at $580,000. Berkshire previously held a much larger stake in the homebuilder before exiting the position last year. D.R. Horton is the nation’s largest homebuilder by volume, followed by Lennar.
These share purchases came months after Berkshire agreed to acquire Taylor Morrison for $6.8 billion in cash, in a deal with an enterprise value of $8.5 billion including debt, and more than two decades after it acquired Clayton Homes for $1.7 billion in 2003.
Billionaire Warren Buffett stepped down as the company’s CEO on Dec. 31 after six decades at the helm, with longtime deputy Greg Abel succeeding him on Jan. 1. Buffett remains chairman. Lennar is led by billionaire chairman and CEO Stuart Miller, who recently returned to the CEO role after co-CEOs Jon Jaffe and Richard Beckwitt stepped down.
Berkshire’s investments in the homebuilding industry could signal bullish sentiment in the sector despite broader headwinds from high mortgage rates, rising construction costs, and in South Florida’s case, growing land scarcity for single-family home and townhome communities.
This year, Lennar’s land bank strategy has caught the attention of Wall Street, with some analysts raising questions about its exposure and the potential risk it could carry.
Lennar has aggressively pursued a “land-light” strategy, opting to control more lots through option agreements rather than purchasing them outright, which reduces the amount of capital tied up in land and limits its exposure to swings in the housing market.
However, the homebuilder pays third-party landowners and land banks to secure lots, typically through option fees and ultimately the purchase price when it acquires the lots. That can increase costs when land values rise and leaves Lennar more dependent on land developers to deliver lots on time.
Recent SEC filings show Lennar owns just 2 percent of its nearly 500,000 homesites, with the rest controlled through options and other arrangements, including land banks.
Lennar does not separately disclose how much it pays in land-bank fees. Instead, option maintenance fees paid to land banks are capitalized alongside deposits and other pre-acquisition costs rather than immediately expensed. The company had $7 billion of such costs as of May 31, including $2.6 billion tied to land-bank contracts.
Lennar’s total revenue has dropped for five consecutive quarters, although the decline narrowed to 5.2 percent in the second quarter from 13.3 percent in the first. The homebuilder generated over $14.5 billion for the six months ended May 31, compared to $16 billion for the time period last year.
As of 3 p.m. Wednesday, Lennar’s stock was trading at $87.46 a share, down a quarter of a percent from the open and nearly 15 percent since the year started.
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