D. R. Horton is BuilderOnline.com's 2017 Builder of the Year
Excerpt taken from BuilderOnline.com | Credit: John McManus
Operational excellence drives Horton's success.
Left to Right: Don Horton, David Auld, Michael Murray, and Bill Wheat
Lots are like people: they're made up of identical basic elements but wind up very different. An A lot essentially is the same stuff as any other piece of dirt in residential real estate. It's a slice of ground, the dimensions of which range across varying amounts of square footage, and, like any other homesite in the detached single-family for-sale world, an A lot normally fronts a street, with one or more properties surrounding its borders.
Which doesn't, of course, account for why A lots tend to carry nearly mystical powers and, with some, such astronomical prices, this being home building's and residential real estate's most-finite of necessary resources. Unlike Coca-Cola or Apple or Nike or American Express, which offer fiercely consistent user experiences of their brands everywhere on the planet, A lots are different, and different from one another, wherever you go.
A typical home builder looks at an A lot as opportunity, given the alternative choices. It's one of residential real estate's best shots to expand the distance between input and indirect costs and the ultimate price tag on a home. This lends a sense of optimal value to a home buyer, and it shows up as a healthy gross margin on the sale to the builder. So, if the typical home builder can snag an A lot—or 50, or 3,000 of them—with capital that doesn't have to yield returns immediately, they'll normally go all in and do it.
Read the full article here: http://www.builderonline.com/builder-100/leadership/dr-horton-is-our-2017-builder-of-the-year_o
