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Inside the shotgun marriage of Berkshire Hathaway and Taylor Morrison—and the road ahead to form America's 4th largest homebuilder
Replacing a legendary investor like Warren Buffett—who led Berkshire Hathaway for 60 years—might be one of the toughest acts ever to follow in corporate America. But that's exactly the position Greg Abel is in, having taken over as CEO on Jan. 1, 2026. His first blockbuster move in the role came on May 31, when Berkshire Hathaway announced it was acquiring Taylor Morrison, America's 6th largest homebuilder. Combined with its existing stake in Clayton Properties, America's 12th largest homebuilder, the deal makes Berkshire Hathaway America's 4th largest site-built homebuilder.
Add that’s not the only homebuilding bet Abel has made: On July 2, 2026, Mungo Homes, part of Berkshire Hathaway’s Clayton Properties, announced its acquisition of South Carolina homebuilder McGuinn Homes. And we learned on Friday that Berkshire increased its holdings of Lennar Class A shares by 30% to 13.1 million shares (worth just over $1.2 billion, including its Lennar Class B holdings)—and took a smaller new position in D.R. Horton, buying 3,600 shares.
Abel is certainly not scared off by the fact that U.S. homebuilders, particularly those in the Sun Belt, have been navigating a cyclical cooling period following the white-hot Pandemic Housing Boom of summer 2020 to summer 2022. As housing demand has come down and mortgage rates have remained elevated, many of the nation’s largest builders have had to compress their margins—offering larger buyer incentives, mortgage rate buydowns, and price concessions—to keep sales volumes from falling even further.
The fact that Berkshire Hathaway is looking through the short-term choppiness and keeping its sights on the long term isn’t too surprising. The bigger outstanding question is: How does Berkshire Hathaway plan to roll up all of these site-built homebuilders? Apart from Berkshire Hathaway-owned Clayton Homes’ massive manufactured/modular home business, the Berkshire (via Clayton Properties) built 9,953 site-built homes in 2025—operating under a host of brands it has acquired over the past decade.
To understand how Berkshire Hathaway will put together this homebuilding juggernaut, ResiClub recently interviewed Stephanie McCarty, chief marketing officer of Taylor Morrison—which built 12,997 site-built homes in 2025.
Berkshire’s site-built plan
McCarty says Clayton’s site-built operations will “roll up under” Taylor Morrison.
“All of Clayton’s manufactured and modular building will stay part of Clayton, while all of their site-built builders that they have acquired starting around 2015 will roll up under Taylor Morrison. It’s Berkshire’s desire to kind of separate their homebuilding operations from manufacturing and traditional site-built / stick-built homes. They have the desire to have a large housing platform, but to align expertise—so building a manufactured [home] in a temperature controlled warehouse requires completely different skills than what it might take to acquire plans, entitle, develop and all that stuff. That’s the plan—all the site-built builders will all unify under one large operation.”
Clayton's push into the site-built market gained momentum in 2015 when it acquired Atlanta-based Chafin Communities. It later expanded its site-built footprint through acquisitions including Mungo Homes, Goodall Homes, Summit Custom Homes, Oakwood Homes, Harris Doyle Homes, Highland Homes, Legacy Homes, and Arbor Homes (whose portfolio also brought in sister brand Silverthorne Homes and, later, Elite Homes). Clayton’s playbook was to allow regional builders to keep their brands.
With Clayton’s site-built homebuilders moving “under” Taylor Morrison, will they still keep their brands? Or start selling under the Taylor Morrison brand?
“We don’t have an answer [to the brand question yet]. We have been spending a lot of time since the announcement researching all their brands and running some tests and surveys around overall brand health. So how familiar are consumers in these markets with these brands? If they are familiar, what’s their perception of the brand? So scoring them on key brand attributes. And ultimately we’re asking their preference, ‘you’re in the market for a home today, if you had to choose today, who would you choose.’ So we are trying to gauge where in their portfolio of brands where is there some real equity? It isn’t the right move to completely disregard [their brands]. They have so many brands. So we’re taking the time to really understand where there’s real penetration and real equity. We’re not going to make any [brand] decisions in haste. We’re looking brand by brand.”
“They [Clayton Properties] do have a couple brands that are small enough that it could make sense to quickly tuck them into the Taylor Morrison brand. And they have some [other] brands that have been around a really long time and have real heritage and legacy within some of their local markets. So we want to really think through this with care.”
How the Berkshire and Taylor Morrison marriage came together: ‘blind date to the altar’
Speaking to Tri Pointe Homes CEO Doug Bauer recently, he told ResiClub that before Sumitomo announced it was buying Tri Pointe for $4.5 billion in February 2026, they had been in discussions with them for just over two years.
That was not at all the case for Berkshire Hathaway and Taylor Morrison.
“It was a very short courtship compared to Tri Pointe Homes. We went from a blind date to the altar.”
“Greg [Abel] and [Taylor Morrison CEO] Sheryl [Palmer] hit it off and had a great rapport from day 1.”
Reading through Taylor Morrison’s proxy filing in late June 2026, you can see just how fast the deal came together.
September 11, 2025 —> Taylor Morrison CEO Sheryl Palmer "initially" met with the CEO of another firm ("Party A CEO") at an industry conference—that's the same day Palmer was a speaker at Zelman's Housing Summit in Boston.
November 11, 2025 —> Taylor Morrison received an “unsolicited proposal” from “Party A” to acquire 100% of its stock for $71.00 per share.
December 9, 2025 —> Taylor Morrison’s board rejects the offer from “Party A.”
February–March 2026 —> Taylor Morrison representatives spoke with five parties ("Party B," "Party C," "Party D," "Party E," "Party F”). Those parties (B, C, D, E, and F) all passed on the opportunity to buy Taylor Morrison, citing reasons ranging from "market uncertainty," "[Taylor Morrison's] large size," "macroeconomic concerns impacting the homebuilding industry," and "execution risk in the current market."
March 27, 2026 —> Goldman Sachs representatives, knowing “Berkshire’s historical interest in the homebuilding sector and certain public positions Berkshire holds in certain of TMHC’s peers”, help set up a meeting between Taylor Morrison and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel.
April 2026 —> Taylor Morrison’s outside representatives spoke with “Party G” to gauge Party G’s interest in buying Taylor Morrison. Party G indicated that “it was not interested in pursuing the opportunity due to the associated execution risk.”
April 12, 2026 —> Sheryl Palmer and Greg Abel get connected via email and agree to a meeting.
May 6, 2026 —> Greg Abel met with Sheryl Palmer at her home in Scottsdale, Arizona for six hours. Abel discusses interest in offering an amount equal to Taylor Morrison’s 52-week trading high ($72.50 per share).
May 18, 2026 —> Greg Abel met with Sheryl Palmer again at her home in Scottsdale to discuss synergies between Clayton and Taylor Morrison.
May 30, 2026 —> Greg Abel presented Sheryl Palmer with a written offer of $72.50 per share via email.
May 31, 2026 —> Taylor Morrison accepted the offer, the agreement was executed, and the deal was publicly announced.
July 24, 2026 —> Berkshire Hathaway completes acquisition of Taylor Morrison.
Florida home prices
Here’s what the FL YoY shift looked like a year ago…
LEFT: Year-over-year shift in Florida home prices between July 2024 and July 2025, by ZIP Code
via the ResiClub Terminal
And here’s the most recent FL YoY…
RIGHT: Year-over-year shift in Florida home prices between July 2025 and July 2026, by ZIP Code
via the ResiClub Terminal
As ResiClub covered back in April 2026, the intensity of Florida’s housing market correction is easing across many pockets of the state. Some Florida metros—in particular in the Florida Panhandle and parts of Northern Florida—are even back to seeing mildly positive seasonally adjusted month-over-month home price gains. Some pockets of SWFL remain in correction-mode; however, the intensity of even the SWFL correction has eased. Additionally, as we covered for ResiClub members in May, froth is blowing off in Florida housing markets—and it's slowly changing the risk picture.
ResiClub and Moody's reach data agreement
ResiClub and Moody's Analytics just reached an agreement to bring two data points from Moody’s economics team into the ResiClub Terminal: Moody’s local home price overvalued/undervalued scores (Fundamentals tab) and local 1-year home price forecasts (Forecast tab). 🏡 📊
Firms that want a demo of the ResiClub Terminal membership, should email [email protected]
