Who's the Largest Builder in America?

When Pulte merged with Centex to create PulteGroup in 2009, the company said it had created the largest home building company in the country. And it was in 2008 numbers, by both closings and revenue, if you added up the business each company did that year--39,000 homes closed and $11.6 billion in home building revenue. Those numbers at the time clearly eclipsed D.R. Horton, which closed just shy of 24,000 homes in calendar 2008 and pulled in something shy of $6 billion of revenue. What was clear then is not so clear now, a year and four months after the merger deal was finalized. Pulte now calls itself "one of the nation's largest new home builders" on its Web site. Meanwhile, D.R. Horton never stopped claiming the largest builder title. "D.R. Horton is the largest builder in America for the eighth consecutive year, and our goal clearly is to be the largest builder for the ninth consecutive year all the while focusing on the most important aspect of our business, and that is profitability," Horton CEO Don Tomnitz said during the company's Nov. 12 conference call in which it discussed its Sept. 30 year-end results. The operator at the beginning of that call started with what has become a routine greeting to analysts: "Good morning, and welcome to the D.R. Horton, America's Builder, the largest builder in the United States, 2010 fiscal-year end earnings release conference call."

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