Understand any stock in simple English
Enter a ticker to learn what the company does and how it makes money.
D.R. Horton, Inc.
D.R. Horton builds and sells new single-family homes and attached homes to buyers across the United States.
D.R. Horton is America's biggest homebuilder. It buys land, puts up houses, and sells them to ordinary people who want a place to live — mostly first-time buyers, but also move-up buyers and downsizers. The business is simple to describe but hard to run: land is expensive, construction takes months, and the buyer has to qualify for a mortgage before the deal closes.
The company makes money on the spread between what a house costs to build and what it sells for. It buys land cheaply, builds efficiently at scale, and sells through its own sales offices. It also has a mortgage arm that lends to its own buyers, plus a title insurance business, so it can capture more of the transaction. Its main competitors are other big public builders like Lennar, PulteGroup, and Toll Brothers, though most homes in America are still built by small local firms. Housing is a cyclical business, and D.R. Horton is built to survive the down years. It keeps a large inventory of ready-to-move-in homes, which lets buyers skip the long wait of a custom build — a real advantage when rates are high and people want certainty. But that same inventory can become a burden if demand suddenly dries up. Interest rates matter enormously: when mortgage rates rise, buyers can afford less, and the company often has to offer incentives or buy down rates to keep selling.
D.R. Horton is also a big user of cash. It pays a dividend, buys back shares, and reinvests in land and inventory. The company was founded in 1978 by Donald R. Horton in Fort Worth, Texas, where it is still headquartered. It has grown from a small local builder into the largest homebuilder in the country by closings, and its size gives it bargaining power with suppliers and trades that smaller builders cannot match.
Saved answer · last researched 12 Nov 2026