Forestar is a national residential lot developer. The company buys raw land, installs horizontal infrastructure (roads, utilities, grading), and sells finished single-family residential lots to homebuilders. Forestar's primary customer is D.R. Horton, the largest U.S. homebuilder, which owns roughly 62% of Forestar's stock. Under a Master Supply Agreement, D.R. Horton gets right of first offer on lots from jointly sourced projects, and roughly 83% of Forestar's lot deliveries go to D.R. Horton. The remaining 17% goes to other local, regional, and national homebuilders. Forestar's core growth opportunity is increasing its share of D.R. Horton's lot starts from roughly 1 in 7 today to 1 in 3. Forestar emphasizes short-duration, phased projects that pace lot deliveries with market demand, limiting capital tied up in slow-moving inventory. A key part of Forestar's business model is its use of unsecured corporate-level debt rather than the project-level loans most competitors rely on, which Forestar argues gives it lower effective cost of capital and more flexibility. Forestar operates across 64 markets in 23 states, and targets a minimum 15% pretax return on average inventory with a return of initial cash investment within 36 months. At FY25 year-end, Forestar owned roughly 65,100 lots and controlled another 34,700 through purchase option contracts, for a total pipeline of roughly 99,800 lots.
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