NAHB analyzed the national market share data BUILDER Magazine published in a previous blog post. Last month, BUILDER Magazine released new data on the top 10 homebuilders in each of the top 50 new home markets in the U.S. (ranked by single-family building permits) (Figure 1). It is important to note that this post does not specifically analyze the top 10 homebuilders nationally, and that the composition of the top 10 homebuilders in each market may differ.
The shares of the top ten builders vary from 40.1% of single-family building permits in the Kansas City metropolitan area to 98.8% in Columbia, SC. In 11 metropolitan areas, the market share of the top ten builders exceeded 90%. In the 50 largest metropolitan areas, the average market share of the top ten builders was 78.2%, up from 73.3% in 2022.
Looking at the results on a map, we can see that Florida, South Carolina, Virginia and Southern California have several highly concentrated markets. Texas and the Northwest include markets with a lower level of concentration.
DR Horton made the top 10 builder list in 47 markets, the most of any builder. It was followed by Lennar and PulteGroup, which made the top 10 builder list in 45 and 35 different metropolitan markets, respectively.
From 2022 to 2023, 34 metropolitan areas saw an increase in the market share of their top ten construction companies, while nine metropolitan areas saw decreases. The five metropolitan areas with the largest increases were:
- Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA (90.3%, +26 percentage points)
- Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, SC-NC (92.3%, +16.4 percentage points)
- Riverside-San Bernadino-Ontario, CA (94.9%, +16.1 percentage points)
- Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL (96.2%, +15.3 percentage points)
- New York-Newark-New Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA (62.6%, +14.9 percentage points)
Of the nine metropolitan markets where the share of single-family building permits controlled by the top ten builders declined, the five largest declines occurred in:
- Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA (66%, -8.7 percentage points)
- North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, FL (79.1%, -7.4 percentage points)
- Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, FL (72.4%, -7.2 percentage points)
- Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA (59.4%, -5.5 percentage points)
- Salt Lake City, Utah (59.3%, -4.3 percentage points)
