Lennar closed at $77.08 on October 16, 2026: 0.85 times book value, 14.6 times its last twelve months of earnings, 25.0% lower this year. Berkshire Hathaway held 12.2% of the company on October 2 and owns two other homebuilders outright.
Lennar has been through a larger fall than this one. Deliveries dropped 78% from 2006 to 2011, and the company earned $4.4 billion ten years later.This workfile follows Workfile No. 5 (September 11, 2026). It does four things. It sets out Lennar’s deliveries, orders and margins for every year from 2005 to 2026, so the current numbers can be read against the last downturn. It lists what Berkshire owns in US homebuilding, from filings. It sets out a report published on October 2 about Lennar’s spinoff, Millrose, and which parts of it can be checked (section 1A). And it states what the filings do not show, because the part of the story most people repeat is the part nobody has documented: why Berkshire is buying.
A homebuilder that survived 2008, trading below book value in a year when orders and margins are both falling, with a very large holder adding to its position. Whether that holder is right is not in any filing. The position taken here rests on the business, its record and the price, and on the author’s own judgment about Berkshire’s buying, which is labelled as judgment.
| Item | September 11, 2026 | October 16, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $79.60 | $77.08 |
| Price to book | 0.89 | 0.85 |
| Price to earnings, last four quarters | 12.5 | 14.6 |
| Third-quarter results | Not yet reported | Reported September 16: orders −9.2%, deliveries −3.4%, gross margin on home sales 15.8% |
| Berkshire, Lennar Class A shares | 13,111,741 (June 30 13F) | 28,438,045 (Form 4, October 2) |
| Report on Millrose, Lennar’s spinoff | None | Published October 2; Lennar closed 6.7% lower on October 5 (section 1A) |
The price ratios move with the price. The earnings ratio moved because the third-quarter figure of $1.19 replaced a year-earlier $2.29 in the trailing four quarters, taking them from $6.39 to $5.29 a share, as filed (GAAP, diluted).
On October 2, Hunterbrook Media published a report on Millrose Properties (NYSE: MRP), the land company Lennar spun off in 2025, and followed it with a second on October 8. Both say Millrose has been buying finished Lennar homes and renting them out. Hunterbrook states in the reports that its affiliated fund, Hunterbrook Capital, is short both Lennar and Millrose. They are claims, not findings, and the home counts come from county deed records that Hunterbrook matched itself. They are set out here because the price moved on them and because parts of them can be checked against filings.
| The claim | Source | Checked? |
|---|---|---|
| Millrose changed its agreements on August 27 to allow buying completed homes to rent. | Millrose 8-K filed September 1, exhibits 10.1 and 10.2 | Yes. The amendments define “BTR Properties” as completed single-family homes bought to operate as rentals. |
| Lennar’s third-quarter deliveries cleared the bottom of its range by 340 homes. Its other four targets were missed. | Lennar’s releases of June 11 and September 16 | Yes. See the table below. |
| Millrose bought more than 700 Lennar homes, about $200 million, in about a month, at least 356 of them in the last week of Lennar’s quarter. A later count: 1,096 purchases, about $290 million. | Hunterbrook, from county deed records. For 471 of the 1,096 no price was recorded, and Hunterbrook estimated it. | No. Not in any filing read. Lennar’s 10-Q does not mention it. |
| More than 95% of the homes are advertised for ordinary rent, not rent-to-own. | Hunterbrook, from listings and phone calls | No. |
| The rentals return about 5% to 5.9% after taxes and insurance, below the 6.5% to 6.75% Millrose pays on new debt. | Hunterbrook’s estimate. The rates are in Millrose’s 8-K of October 6 ($500 million at 6.500% due 2029, $500 million at 6.750% due 2031). | Rates: yes. Return estimate: no. |
| A shareholder class action names Millrose and two of its executives, not Lennar. | Courthouse News Service, October 12: filed October 9 in the Southern District of Florida; class period February 7, 2025 to October 2, 2026; relies in part on the Hunterbrook report | Reported by a news service. The complaint was not read. |
| Law firms have announced investigations of Lennar. | Press releases from October 8 on | Announcements by firms looking for clients. No suit against Lennar turned up in the sources read. |
| Third-quarter target | Given June 11 | Reported September 16 | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| New orders | 21,000 to 22,000 | 20,879 | Below |
| Deliveries | 20,500 to 21,500 | 20,840 | Inside, 340 above the bottom |
| Average sales price | $375,000 to $380,000 | $372,000 | Below |
| Gross margin on home sales | about 16% | 15.8% | Just below |
| SG&A, share of home-sales revenue | 8.8% to 9.0% | 9.2% | Above |
On September 16 Lennar also lowered its full-year delivery target to 80,000 to 81,000 homes, from 82,000 to 83,000, and guided fourth-quarter deliveries to 22,000 to 23,000 against new orders of 19,500 to 20,500. Its backlog was 16,857 homes.
The report’s argument is simple. Deliveries of 20,840 were 340 above the bottom of the range, and it counts at least 356 Millrose purchases in the last week of the quarter. If all 356 closed in the quarter and were counted as deliveries, deliveries without them would have been 20,484, which is 16 below the bottom. That rests on a count the filings do not confirm and on an assumption about timing. Lennar’s filings do not say how many homes it delivered to Millrose. Hunterbrook itself notes that an empty-looking house does not prove no lease exists, and that calls about one property do not rule out a pilot program elsewhere.
On scale, the largest count in the reports, 1,096 homes, is about 1.4% of the 80,000 to 81,000 homes Lennar now targets for the year (the author’s arithmetic; some of those purchases fall in the fourth quarter). Hunterbrook’s own comparison is that the first month’s pace, held for a full quarter, would equal about a tenth of Lennar’s quarterly deliveries.
What has been said. As of October 18, neither Lennar nor Millrose had answered the reports in any filing or press coverage read. Lennar’s latest 8-K, October 15, settled a $600 million senior-notes offering and its text does not mention Millrose or the reports; the preliminary prospectus supplement of October 13 mentions Millrose only as the 2025 spin-off. Millrose’s latest 8-K is October 6, the notes. Hunterbrook says both ignored its requests for comment.
The price. Lennar closed at $79.81 on Friday, October 2, the day the first report was published, and at $74.44 on Monday, October 5, a fall of 6.7%. It closed at $77.41 on October 6, the day the author added at $74.75 (section 11), at $76.69 on October 9 and at $77.08 on October 16, the date of value.
What it changes. The multi-year record in section 3 is the company’s reported figures and is not restated here. The reports raise a question the filings cannot answer yet: how many of the quarter’s deliveries were homes sold to Millrose. Only later filings can say, Lennar’s fiscal fourth-quarter report and Millrose’s next quarterly report. Section 9 is unchanged.
Section 1A was added on October 15, 2026 and its dated statements were rechecked on October 18. The rest of this workfile is stamped to the date of value above.
Homes delivered fell from 49,568 in 2006 to 10,845 in 2011, a fall of 78%. Net losses were about $1.94 billion in 2007, $1.11 billion in 2008 and $0.42 billion in 2009. The stock fell 91% from $67.81 in July 2005 to $6.08 in March 2009. Lennar’s volume did not pass its 2006 level again until 2019, and by then it included the 2018 purchase of CalAtlantic. Net earnings were $4.43 billion in fiscal 2021.
| Year | Delivered | vs prior | Orders | vs prior | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | 42,359 | 43,405 | 26.0% | ||
| 2006 | 49,568 | +17.0% | 42,212 | −2.7% | 18.4% |
| 2007 | 33,283 | −32.9% | 25,753 | −39.0% | 6.0% |
| 2008 | 15,735 | −52.7% | 13,391 | −48.0% | 12.3% |
| 2009 | 11,478 | −27.1% | 11,510 | −14.0% | not found |
| 2010 | 10,955 | −4.6% | 10,928 | −5.1% | 19.7% |
| 2011 | 10,845 | −1.0% | 11,412 | +4.4% | 19.9% |
| 2012 | 13,802 | +27.3% | 15,684 | +37.4% | 22.7% |
| 2013 | 18,290 | +32.5% | 19,043 | +21.4% | not found |
| 2014 | 21,003 | +14.8% | 22,029 | +15.7% | not found |
| 2015 | 24,292 | +15.7% | 25,106 | +14.0% | 24.0% |
| 2016 | 26,563 | +9.3% | 27,372 | +9.0% | 23.0% |
| 2017 | 29,394 | +10.7% | 30,348 | +10.9% | 22.1% |
| 2018 | 45,627 | +55.2% | not found | not found | |
| 2019 | 51,491 | +12.9% | 51,439 | 20.6% | |
| 2020 | 52,925 | +2.8% | 56,169 | +9.2% | 22.8% |
| 2021 | 59,825 | +13.0% | 64,543 | +14.9% | 26.8% |
| 2022 | 66,399 | +11.0% | 61,105 | −5.3% | 27.5% |
| 2023 | 73,087 | +10.1% | 69,111 | +13.1% | 23.3% |
| 2024 | 80,210 | +9.7% | 76,951 | +11.3% | 22.3% |
| 2025 | 82,583 | +3.0% | 83,978 | +9.1% | 17.7% |
| 2026, nine months | 58,222 | −2.2% | 61,143 | −4.4% | 15.8% (Q3) |
Year-over-year changes are arithmetic on the reported figures. 2018 deliveries rose on the CalAtlantic acquisition (February 2018). “Not found” means the figure was not in the filing text read, not that none was reported. 2006 margin was 20.3% before write-downs; 2007 was 13.9% before write-downs.
Orders led deliveries down. In 2006 deliveries rose 17.0% while orders fell 2.7%. Orders then fell five years in a row, 2006 to 2010. Deliveries followed one year later.
One down year has happened since, and it reversed. Of the years where both figures were found, orders fell only in 2022 (−5.3%) and in 2026 to date (−4.4% for nine months, −9.2% in the third quarter). After 2022, orders rose 13.1% in 2023, 11.3% in 2024 and 9.1% in 2025.
The current margin is low. Gross margin on home sales of 15.8% in the third quarter is below every year from 2010 to 2025 for which the figure was found. It is above 2007 (6.0%) and 2008 (12.3%), which carried large write-downs.
A single year of lower orders is not a downturn of the 2006 kind. The pattern worth watching, from the table above, is several years in a row. The author has said he would look harder if that happened, and has not set any figure beyond that.
| Measure | Reading | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $77.08 | Close, October 16, 2026 |
| Change this year | −25.0% | From $102.80, close of Dec 31, 2025 (unadjusted, dividends excluded) |
| Change over twelve months | −37.3% | From $122.87, close of Oct 16, 2025 |
| Earnings, last four quarters | $5.29 | Sum of filed GAAP diluted quarters; the vendor calendar shows an adjusted $1.23 for the third quarter against a filed $1.19 |
| Price to earnings | 14.6 | $77.08 / $5.29 |
| Book value per share | $90.62 | $21,558,959K shareholders’ equity / 237,900,239 shares (Class A 207,876,222 plus Class B 30,024,017), August 31, 2026 10-Q |
| Price to book | 0.85 | $77.08 / $90.62 |
| Dividend | $2.00 (2.6%) | Annual, at the October 16, 2026 close |
| Net current asset value (Graham) | $19.55 | From Workfile No. 5, section 4, at the September 11 balance sheet; not recomputed here |
| Mortgage rate, 30-year fixed | 7.40% | Freddie Mac weekly average, October 8, 2026; 5.98% on February 26; highest since November 16, 2023 (7.44%) |
On “net-net.” Graham’s net-net counts only current assets less all liabilities. For Lennar that is $19.55 a share, so it is not a net-net. A search tool that reported total equity of about $91 a share was reporting book value, and book value is the right frame: the shares cost 0.85 times it. Book value includes land and inventory at cost, and those can sell for less than the books say.
Analysts. The twelve firms with a rating on record in 2026 all sit at Hold, Underperform or Sell, the latest from Wells Fargo (Equal Weight, October 7). Average price targets are $69.50 for the last month (six targets) and $77.38 across the full consensus. A figure of 17 of 19 negative ratings that appeared in a search tool was not reproduced from any source read.
| Business | How held | Size | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Taylor Morrison | Owned outright since July 24, 2026. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is the direct parent; Berkshire has said it expects to combine its site-built operations “over time.” | $72.50 a share in cash; equity value about $6.8 billion, enterprise value about $8.5 billion; 12,997 homes closed in 2025 | TMHC 8-Ks of June 1, July 22 and July 24, 2026; TMHC 2025 results |
| Clayton Homes | Owned outright | About 49,400 off-site (manufactured and modular) homes and about 10,000 site-built homes in 2025 | Berkshire 2025 10-K |
| Lennar | Public holding, Class A and Class B | 28,438,045 Class A plus 568,028 Class B at October 2: 12.19% of all shares, 13.68% of Class A, about 6.7% of votes; about $2.2 billion at $77.08 | Form 4 filed October 5, 2026; Lennar 10-Q |
| NVR | Public holding | 11,112 shares (about $76 million at June 30), unchanged since 2023 | 13F, June 30, 2026 |
| D.R. Horton | Public holding | 3,564 shares (about $0.6 million at June 30); sold twice since 2023 and bought back once | 13F filings, 2023 to 2026 |
No Berkshire 13F from 2021 to the second quarter of 2026 lists Pulte, Toll Brothers, KB Home or Meritage.
From the June 30 13F to October 2, Class A rose by 15.3 million shares, from 13,111,741 to 28,438,045. Only part of that is in dated filings.
| Period | Class A bought | Average prices | Held after |
|---|---|---|---|
| June 30 to Sept 17 | about 7.94 million | no dated trades | 21,050,601 |
| Sept 17 to 21 | 2,668,508 | $76.39 to $79.41 | 23,719,109 |
| Sept 23 to 25 | 1,662,305 | $80.58 to $81.65 | 25,378,134 |
| Sept 28 to 30 | 656,302 | $81.59 to $81.96 | 26,034,436 |
| Oct 1 to 2 | 2,403,609 | $78.37 to $81.90 | 28,438,045 |
Sources: the first row is the Form 3 (event date September 17) less the June 30 13F; Berkshire was not required to file Form 4s before it passed 10%. The other rows are its Form 4s filed September 21, September 25, September 30 and October 5, 2026. Prices are the weighted-average ranges stated in each filing.
Dated Class A purchases total 7,387,444 shares over twelve trading days. As of October 18, no Berkshire Form 4 for Lennar after the October 5 filing was on EDGAR. Berkshire’s purchases ran from about $76 to about $82 a share, and the stock closed at $77.08 on October 16, 2026.
Before September, the build was slower: 1.9 million Class A shares in March 2025, 7.05 million from mid-2025 through the end of the year, 10.1 million in March 2026, 13.1 million in June 2026. Berkshire’s earlier filings for 2023 and 2024 show a small Class B holding of 152,572 shares and no Class A.
| Rank | Builder | Homes delivered, 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | D.R. Horton | 84,863 |
| 2 | Lennar | 82,583 |
| 3 | PulteGroup | 29,572 |
| 4 | Berkshire Hathaway (Taylor Morrison 12,997 plus Clayton site-built about 10,000) | about 23,000 |
| 5 | NVR | 21,915 |
| 6 | Meritage | 15,026 |
| 7 | KB Home | 12,902 |
| 8 | Toll Brothers | 11,292 |
The fourth place is Berkshire’s own pro-forma wording (press release, July 24, 2026) and holds on the figures above by about 1,000 homes over NVR. It is pro forma: Berkshire has consolidated Taylor Morrison only since July 24. On the trailing twelve months the lead is about 1,800 homes. If Clayton’s manufactured homes are counted (49,400 shipped in 2025), the group would rank third at about 72,000, but those are shipments, not closings.
| Basis | Homes | Share of US new single-family sales (679,000, 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Owned only (Taylor Morrison plus Clayton site-built) | about 22,950 | 3.4% |
| Plus 12.19% of Lennar’s 82,583 deliveries | about 33,000 | 4.9% |
The denominator is Census new single-family houses sold in 2025, which counts contracts, not closings, and excludes manufactured homes and build-to-rent. Builder deliveries include some homes outside that scope, so these are approximate shares, not like-for-like. The Lennar share uses the October 2 holding over the August 31 share count. D.R. Horton and NVR add about 92 homes. Private builders were not checked.
In the author’s words: a falling number is not a reason to sell, and short-term swings in lumber prices or in one quarter’s margin or orders do not change his view of a business. If demand kept falling for several years in a row, that would be something to look at. That is the only condition he has stated for this position, and no figure has been attached to it. The 2006 to 2010 record in section 3 shows what that looks like.
The author owns Lennar and added to his position on October 6, 2026 at $74.75 a share. He first bought at $82, disclosed in Issue #5. The September 11 page listed three conditions: the price about 10% below $82, deliveries at least equal to a year earlier, and a gross margin at least equal to the prior quarter. On October 6 the price condition had been met, and deliveries had come in 3.4% lower (20,840 against 21,584) on September 16; the gross margin was 15.8% against 15.6%. He added anyway. His reason was the size and pace of Berkshire’s buying, which he could see in the tracker inside the Travis Valuation app, together with his view of the business. He describes the Berkshire reasoning as a gut feeling and not a forecast. The purchase came the day after the 6.7% fall described in section 1A.
No share count or new average cost is stated.