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Back in his 1996 letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett famously wrote: If you arent willing to own a stock for 10 years, dont even think about owning it for 10 minutes.
That statement only makes the recent homebuilder stock purchases and sales by Berkshire Hathawayled by Buffett, who will step down as CEO at the end of 2025even more eyebrow-raising.
Heres the timeline.
August 2023: Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that in Q2 2023, the company made a bet on U.S. homebuilders and bought 5,969,714 shares of D.R. Horton, 152,572 shares of Lennar, and 11,112 shares of NVR.
February 2024: Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that in Q4 2023, the company had sold off 5,969,714 shares of D.R. Hortonthe vast majority of Buffetts big homebuilder bet he made early in 2023.
August 2025: Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that during Q2 2025 (the three months ending June 30), the company made a bet on U.S. homebuilders by purchasing around 1.5 million shares of D.R. Horton (valued at around $191.5 million). In the first half of 2025, Berkshire Hathaway acquired just over 7 million shares of Lennar, valued at nearly $800 million.
November 2025: Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that it has sold its D.R. Horton stake of around 1.5 million shares.
While Berkshire Hathaway has sold off its shares of D.R. Horton (No. 123 on the Fortune 500), it still owns around 7.2 million shares of Lennar (No. 129 on the Fortune 500) and around 11,112 shares of NVR (No. 396 on the Fortune 500), according to ResiClubs review of Berkshire Hathaways latest SEC filings.
Given Buffetts own adviceIf you arent willing to own a stock for 10 years, dont even think about owning it for 10 minutesits probably fair to avoid drawing sweeping long-term housing market conclusions from Berkshire Hathaways homebuilder stock trades over the past two years. After all, the firm bought them, sold them, bought them again, and sold them four times in just over a two-year window.
That said, if you forced me to speculate, Id guess Berkshire Hathaway initially eyed homebuilder stocks in the first half of 2023, after their sharp pullback in 2022, as builders adjusted to the rate shock. But heading into 2024, Berkshire Hathaway may have gotten cold feet on homebuilders as a long hold, as it became clear that the housing markets early-2023 firming was a bit of a head fakeand that a bigger power shift toward buyers, further housing-market softening, and additional homebuilder margin compression were still ahead.
After that played out, earlier this year, Berkshire Hathaway may have concluded that most of that margin compression had already been priced in and that it wanted back in on homebuilders.
That speculation does leave one remaining question: Why would Berkshire Hathaway now sell off D.R. Horton while still holding onto Lennar and NVR?
First, D.R. Hortons stock has had a stronger bounce-back over the past few months, while Lennar and NVR have not. (Perhaps Berkshire Hathaway believes that bounce-back still awaits.) So it might not be that D.R. Horton has fallen out of favor with Berkshire Hathaway, but instead simply that D.R. Hortons stock has already priced in much of its short-term upside.
Secondand this is me reading deep between the linesperhaps Berkshire Hathaway likes that Lennar has been more aggressive during this soft window in taking market share. While all the public homebuilders that ResiClub tracks have compressed profit margins over the past three years to offer larger incentives and affordability adjustments in an attempt to avoid a sharper pullback in housing starts, Lennar has been the most aggressive on that front.
In fact, Lennar has compressed its margins all the way back to 2009 levels, and is spending the equivalent of roughly 14.3% percent of final sales on incentives (compared with the typical 5% to 6% in normal times) in order to grow home sales and capture market share.
In September 2025, Lennar executives acknowledged that its finally time to pause [that strategy] and let the market catch up a little bit. That doesnt mean theyre completely reversing course or losing the market share theyve recently gained while using the strategy. Instead, it means they cant be as aggressive in early 2026 in pursuing additional market share, given how much margin compression theyve already absorbed.
Some investors, including Berkshire Hathaway, might like that Lennar has pursued a bigger market share through this choppy stretch and is now starting to defend margins.
Here’s what Stuart Miller, co-CEO of Lennar, said during the company’s September 19, 2025, earnings call:
For Lennar, this is n opportune time to pause and let the market catch up a little bit. Even though mortgage rates began to trend downward toward the end of the quarter, stronger sales have not yet followed. We have certainly begun to see early signs of greater customer interest and stronger traffic entering the market. With lower mortgage rates, purchasers are showing greater interest in considering their home purchase. And this is generally an early signal of stronger sales activity to follow, assuming rates remain lower.
And if interest rates continue to fall, we’re quite optimistic that this all will happen soon. The extended period of higher interest rates for longer than expected forced us, however, to adjust construction costs [lower average sales price] in order to enable sales in difficult market conditions. Our lower construction cost structure, together with reduced margin [bigger incentives], enabled us to meet affordability and support the supply-and-demand balance.
We drove sales pace to match production pace, and we fortified our market share and position in each of our strategic markets. We are now situated with a lower cost structure, efficient product offerings, and strong market positions to accommodate pent-up demand as rates moderate and confidence ultimately returns. As I said before, this is the right time. This is just the right time for us to pull back just a little bit.
We believe that we’ve gotten ahead of the current market realities, and we have built what we believe is a stronger long-term margin-driving platform. We know that this has taken some time as the market has remained weaker for longer, but we also know that our strategy has helped build a healthier housing market and has positioned Lennar for strong cash flow and bottom-line growth in the future.
While our deliveries were just below our goal for the quarter, and while we sold more homes than expected during the quarter, these accomplishments came at the expense of further deterioration of margin, which came down to 17.5%. Accordingly, we’re going to begin to ease back our delivery expectations for the fourth quarter and full year in order to relieve the pressure on sales and deliveries and help establish a floor on margin. We will reduce our delivery expectations for the fourth quarter to 22,000 to 23,000 homes, and we will reduce our full-year expectation to 81,500 to 82,500.
In addition to the Lennar and NVR homebuilder shares that Berkshire Hathaway still owns, the firm also fully owns Clayton Homesthe largest U.S. builder of manufactured and modular homesand HomeServices of America, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate (under Berkshire Hathaway Energy) that offers a wide range of real estate services including brokerage, mortgage origination, and title and escrow.
