D.R. Horton Aims for Market Domination

D.R. Horton is ready, willing, and able to take your market share. That strong message was repeated several times Monday as Donald Tomnitz, CEO of the biggest volume builder in the United States, talked with housing analysts about the super-sized company’s super-sized positive earnings and sales results for 2012’s first quarter. An improving market was partly responsible for the company’s $40.6-million profits, Tomnitz said. But he added that the economy’s macro-economic conditions remain shaky and the improvement has only been underway for a few months and hasn't yet resulted in notably higher selling prices. The larger share of Horton’s success came from picking up market share from faltering, less nimble, less rich builders, he said. “We see uneven improvement across our operating markets,” Tomnitz said. “However we are finding opportunities to take market share in [the company’s] existing markets while evaluating new sub-markets.” Horton is gathering market share from private builders, as it has said before. But the business of other publicly held builders, like itself, is within its sights as well. “I think frankly, this time around, the private builders have been devastated more than they have been devastated in any previous downturn,” Tomnitz said. “So I see our markets and our sub-markets around the country, and the one thing that is consistent among all these markets is that there are fewer and fewer private builders in there who are [still] alive, and if they are alive, [they] can’t get a loan from a bank.”

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