Berkshire Hathaway Says It's Now America's 4th-Largest Homebuilder. It Also Owns More Than 10% of Lennar.

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRKB) recently completed an acquisition that makes it the nation's fourth-largest homebuilder.

This summer, the investment and insurance conglomerate built by Warren Buffett acquired Taylor Morrison, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based community developer and homebuilder, for $6.8 billion. Berkshire said it would merge Taylor Morrison with Clayton Properties Group, a Berkshire-owned collection of 15 regional and local homebuilders.

The two builders together delivered almost 23,000 site-built homes in 2025 in 21 states and 52 housing markets. Berkshire also owns a $2.2 billion stake in homebuilder Lennar (NYSE: LEN), which amounts to about 11% of that company, and small stakes in NVR (NYSE: NVR) and D.R. Horton (NYSE: DHI), two other homebuilders.

The housing market continues to struggle

The U.S. housing market has been struggling for years due to a shortage of housing supply and, more recently, soaring mortgage rates that have made home purchases impossible for many Americans. The average 30-year mortgage rate has climbed to almost 7.3% this year, more than one percentage point higher than at the beginning of 2026 and well more than double what the rate was five years ago.

Because of insufficient home construction in the years following the 2008 financial crisis -- which itself resulted from a housing bubble collapse in the U.S. -- there is a huge national shortage of homes. Estimates of that shortage range from 3.7 million homes to as many as 10 million. By any estimate, it's huge.

It's also a huge problem, and both political parties in Washington are trying to remedy it. In July, Congress passed a bipartisan bill called the 21^st Century ROAD to Housing Act that is intended to make it easier to build and finance houses. But many industry analysts say it doesn't do enough and won't make a huge dent in the housing shortage.

Image source: Getty Images.

Berkshire, of course, is known to have a very long-term investment horizon. It also likes to buy depressed assets that it believes are undervalued by the market. It purchased $53.9 million of Lennar shares in late September, a stock that is down about 20% this year.

"We don't envision a quick recovery there," Berkshire CEO Greg Abel told CNBC last month. "But we do see it as an industry that we definitely want to be invested in, and we're invested for the long-term."

I've written extensively about the housing market and companies in it, and I haven't been optimistic about them. But Berkshire's growing housing portfolio suddenly makes housing stocks much more intriguing.

Matthew Benjamin has positions in Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Berkshire Hathaway, D.R. Horton, Lennar, and NVR. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.