In 1994, the ten largest builders had just 10% of the national market. By 2018, the top ten builders had a little less than a third. Partly this consolidation is due to a credit crunch. During the financial crisis from 2007-2012, 55% of residential developers disappeared. There were also post-crisis mergers, like Pulte Homes and Centex, Lennar and CalAtlantic, Tri Pointe and Weyerhauser, and so forth, but many of the acquisitions these days are smaller roll-ups, like D.R. Horton buying an Arkansas specialty builder Riggins Custom Homes, Gulf Coast builder Truland Homes, or lot developer Forestar Group, or Lennar acquiring developer WCI Communities. Analysts are projecting 2024 to be another strong year for M&A.
Of course, such numbers understate consolidation; national shares matter very little, since housing is local, and concentration is higher when you get to local levels. In Miami-Fort Lauderdale, for instance, Lennar has 47% of the market for new homes, in Los Angeles, D.R. Horton has about a third. As economist Luis Quintero noted in a paper, 60% of local markets are now âhighly concentrated,â a new phenomenon. In 25 of the top 82 markets, one builder controls at least 25% of the market. Thatâs 60% of the housing markets in âVirginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and western Pennsylvania.â
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So why all the consolidation? And more importantly, why hasnât the number of builders bounced back? If margins are up, why arenât there new entrants coming in to take profit and share? To answer this question I started by reading a bunch of investor documents from the big homebuilders. And I realized that to call these businesses âhomebuildersâ is misleading. Itâs striking how little of their business has to do with, well, building. For instance, hereâs D.R. Horton in 2023: âSubstantially all of our land development and home construction work is performed by subcontractors.â Hereâs Lennar in 2023: âWe use independent subcontractors for most aspects of land development and home construction.â I suspect most of the other big guys would say something similar. These arenât builders, they are financiers that borrow cheaper than real developers and use that cheap credit to speculate in land, hiring contractors to do the work. They are, in other words, middlemen.