The Housing Chronicles Blog: Who are the most admired home builders?

Monday, March 2, 2009

Who are the most admired home builders?

Although the current state of the housing market makes it an odd time to be declaring the 'most admired home builders,' for the second year in a row, Fortune magazine compiled their list of 'most admired' companies based on input from businesspeople in all types of industries. Number 1 across all industries? A tech-related company called Apple, followed by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

In the home building sector, KBHome took top honors, followed very closely by Toll Brothers, which specializes in luxury housing. According to the press release issued by KBHome (which is helpful because it was hard to find on the Fortune Web site), the survey methodology was as follows:

FORTUNE’s survey partners at Hay Group, a global management consulting firm, started with some 1,400 companies: the FORTUNE 1,000—the 1,000 largest U.S. companies ranked by revenue; non-U.S. companies in FORTUNE’s Global 500 database with revenues of $10 billion or more; and the top foreign companies operating in the U.S. They then sorted the companies by industry and selected the 15 largest for each international industry and the ten largest for each U.S. industry.

The survey covers 64 industries: 25 international industries and 39 primarily U.S.-market industries. To create the 64 industry lists, Hay Group asked executives, directors, and analysts to rate companies in their own industry on nine criteria, from investment value to social responsibility. This year only the best are listed: a company’s score must rank in the top half of its industry survey.

In other words, if a builder isn't listed below, then 'better luck next year!'

Following are the Top 5 'most admired' as well as the next 'contenders.'

Most Admired
Company Industry Overall score
1 KB Home 6.58
2 Toll Brothers 6.53
3 Centex 6.24
4 Pulte Homes 6.06
5 NVR 5.71


Contenders
Company Industry Overall score
6 D.R. Horton 5.09
7 Ryland Group 4.89
8 Lennar 4.70
9 Hovnanian Enterprises 3.84
10 Standard Pacific 3.45

Finally, Fortune also compiled a list of 'least admired' companies in various sectors, which you can find here.

The survey will be published in the March 16 edition of Fortune magazine.

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