Lennar Corp., the country’s second largest home builder, is entering the Des Moines market. The screenshot is from a website announcing the company’s entry into the market.
Lennar Corp., the nation’s second largest home-building company, is entering the Des Moines market, a move that will likely increase competition among area home builders and provide more affordably priced homes for consumers.
This spring, the company created a Lennar Iowa Facebook page announcing that the Miami, Fla.-based homebuilder was entering the Des Moines-area market with “move-in ready homes” at prices beginning in the $300,000 range. The Facebook page links to a website announcing “We’re Coming, Des Moines.”
Bill Burgess
“We are very excited about being part of the Des Moines market,” Bill Burgess, Lennar’s Midwest regional president, wrote in an email. “We are under contract on several locations in the Des Moines area and anticipate starting construction in the next few months and being open for sale by late summer.”
Burgess declined to say where in the Des Moines area the company had land “under contract.” A spokesperson said Lennar won’t announce where it is purchasing land until construction begins. Home sales will begin before construction on the houses is completed, the spokesperson said.
Lennar, a publicly traded company, is the second national homebuilder to enter the Des Moines market. DR Horton, the largest homebuilder by volume in the U.S., acquired Ankeny-based Classic Builders in late 2018. At the time, Classic Builders was the largest home builder by volume in the Des Moines area.
“Competition is healthy and we need competition in the marketplace to keep the quality of products up to par,” said Mitch Johnson, a partner with Johnson Development and president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Des Moines. “There’s always going to be somebody new to town and I think there’s still a lot of pie, so to speak, that can be divided.”
DR Horton’s growth in Des Moines
Since entering the Des Moines market, publicly traded DR Horton has become the metro’s largest homebuilder, pulling nearly 25% of the building permits issued in 2025 for single-family homes and townhouses — 725 permits in all, data compiled by Home Builders Association of Greater Des Moines shows. Jerry’s Homes, based in West Des Moines, took out 290 residential building permits in 2025.
Lennar’s entry into the Des Moines market is a vote of confidence in the region’s growth, jobs, schools and affordability, said Kalen Ludwig, a residential Realtor at Peoples Co. and a partner in Ground Breaker Homes.
Lennar and DR Horton likely vetted the market for several years before expanding into it.
“You have to feel good as an investor, builder or business owner that they are here because it signals that this is a good place to be,” Ludwig said.
Johnson agrees. “They are like a Starbucks. They won’t come unless they see certain numbers hit from a growth perspective. [Lennar’s] entry to the market means Des Moines is growing and becoming a popular place to do business,” he said.
It’s difficult to immediately know what Lennar’s entry into the Des Moines market will be on local home builders, said Cara Lavendar, senior research manager, for-sale, for John Burns Research & Consulting, a leading independent research and advisory firm focused exclusively on the housing industry. However, sellers of existing homes may begin finding it more challenging to sell their properties, she said.
“We know that Lennar will come in with an entry-level product, and because they have that national scale and capital capacity to offer very enticing rate buy down incentives that will help that entry-level, monthly payment strapped buyer,” Lavendar said. “These national builders have the ability to offer really good buy downs.
“That’s good for the entry-level buyer but if you’re a resale seller, you can’t offer that. I think resale sellers will feel some of the pain with listings staying on the market longer and pressure to lower their pricing,” she said.
Along with Lennar homebuilding, Lennar Mortgage will also enter the Des Moines-area market, Burgess wrote. The lender, a full-service affiliate of Lennar Corp., “will allow us to provide buyers with competitive mortgage rates,” he wrote.
Lennar Mortgage offers home buyers rate buydowns as well as down payment assistance of up to 5% to help lower upfront closing costs. The company also offers competitive adjustable-rate mortgages in some market areas.
“Those lower rates are going to be very compelling when you’re an entry-level home buyer,” Lavendar said. “Couple that with Lennar’s ‘Everything’s included’ program, they will be very hard to ignore.”
Lennar’s US expansion
Lennar’s expansion across the U.S. has been done mostly through acquisitions of existing home builders, spreading its business operations across several locations, and turning over inventory quickly.
Lennar entered the Phoenix market in 1973 with the acquisition of established home builders Mastercraft Homes Inc. and Womack Development Co. A short time later, Lennar expanded into the Detroit and Minneapolis-St. Paul markets through the acquisition of other home building companies. Last August, Lennar entered the Rochester, Minn. market with the $15.7 million purchase of 367 acres of farmland that had recently been annexed into the city, according to an article in the Rochester Post-Bulletin.
Lennar currently builds houses in 1,678 U.S. communities, 6% more than a year ago, according to its first quarter earnings report. The company has “additional communities opening up in the second quarter,” Stuart Miller, Lennar’s executive chairman, CEO and president, said in the earnings call. “We are very well positioned, with a strong and growing national footprint … and cost structure that is materially more efficient than it was two years ago.
The arrival of national home builders to Central Iowa is reshaping the local housing market, particularly at the entry-level price point, said Ludwig, who annually hosts a luncheon for home builders, where she provides an analysis of the market.
DR Horton and Lennar’s presence in the Des Moines market will force local builders to “tighten up,” clarify what they do best and adjust how they compete, Ludwig said. “I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing; it’s just going to change market shares and how home builders do business.”
Kalen Ludwig
Ludwig contrasted the national homebuilders’ standardized, largely non-customizable homes with the more flexible, design-forward approach of local companies such as Ground Breaker Homes. She said local builders can differentiate themselves from DR Horton and Lennar by offering more custom features, unique architecture and the ability to be more flexible with buyers — advantages she doesn’t see national builders being able to match.
“Personally, I’m thinking about what Ground Breaker can do that Lennar can’t,” she said. “Lennar can’t change their plans because they are all standardized. We can, and do.”
Ludwig said it may be difficult for Lennar to quickly secure land on which to develop residential lots. Iowa’s economy relies heavily on agriculture, which could make it hard to rezone farm land to residential, she said. Builders must be able to work with local governments on voluntary annexations and zoning amendments, a process that is costly and takes time.
Some local home builders, in an effort to keep residential lots out of the grasp of national builders, are banding together to buy entire plats, Ludwig said. “We have had that happen recently with a plat [Diligent Development, which Ludwig is also associated with] is developing.
“Now it’s, ‘How do we protect our livelihoods and our businesses?’” she said. The national builders “are fine playing over there, and we’ll play right here. … I think everyone is re-strategizing.”
