Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett bets big on homebuilders

Businessman and investment icon Warren Buffett is making waves in the housing industry. Documents filed last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed that Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has made major investments in homebuilders Lennar and D.R. Horton. 

According to the filing, during the first half of 2025, Berkshire Hathaway has purchased over 7 million shares in Lennar worth nearly $800 million. During the second quarter alone, the firm bought 5.3 million shares of Lennar for $575 million. 

This investment comes after Berkshire Hathaway purchased 1.5 million shares in Texas-based homebuilder D.R. Horton during Q1 2025, for roughly $203 million. In Q2 2025, Buffett’s firm sold off 27,000 D.R. Horton shares for an estimated $3.3 million. 

Some of Buffett’s previous investments in struggling companies and industries that garnered strong results include Apple, as well as the oil and banking industries. For some, Buffett’s investments in Lennar and D.R. Horton signal that the housing market is not dying, but instead that it is about to get its second wind. 

In a post on LinkedIn, business consultant Rich Swerbinsky argues that there is plenty of logic behind Buffett’s recent investments, noting that the nation’s housing supply is still millions of homes short, and that the Trump administration advocates for deregulation when it comes to both zoning and capital gains tax on home sales. Additionally, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has recently announced that fixing housing affordability issues is one of his “big projects” this fall.

Steve Murray, the co-founder of RealTrends Consulting also notes that Berkshire Hathaway like to “own businesses where there is some kind of ‘moat’ around it.  

“The large homebuilders own significant amounts of land for development throughout the country; and they have the capital to do large scale development, the teams to execute and the information to know what to build and when,” Murray wrote in an email. “[It’s] very hard to replicate what the large production builders have done and many of them have also integrated mortgage and title insurance as well.” 

Ealier this year, it appeared that Buffett was looking to get out of the housing industry, with rumors about the potential sale of HomeServices of America to Compass. The real estate sector of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway vehemently denied these rumors, with then CEO Gino Blefari telling HousingWire that no such deal was in the works.