KB Home headquarters in the Westwood district of Los Angeles
KB Home is a homebuilding company based in the United States, founded in 1957 as Kaufman & Broad in Detroit, Michigan. It was the first company to be traded on the NYSE as a home builder. Its headquarters are in Los Angeles, California.
The company has built 600,000 homes since its founding.[5] It builds homes primarily for first-time home buyers.
History
1956–2007
KB Home was founded in Detroit in 1956 by Donald Bruce Kaufman and Eli Broad.[6] Their first venture together was the construction of two model homes in the Northeast Detroit suburbs, where a new generation of first-time home buyers were flocking.[6] By streamlining the construction process and eliminating basements, offering a carport instead, they could price the houses so the monthly mortgage would be less than the rent for a two-bedroom apartment. Kaufman and Broad christened this model the "Award Winner" and priced it at $13,700.[6][7] After one weekend, seventeen were sold and within two years, Kaufman and Broad had built 600 homes in the Detroit suburbs.[6]
In 1960, fearing that the Detroit economy was too dependent on the automotive business, they moved to Phoenix, Arizona[6] and expanded into California in 1963, and in 1967 were the first U.S. homebuilders to expand into France. The company completed an initial public offering in 1986, and from that time was known as Kaufman and Broad Home Corporation until 2001, when its name was shortened to KB Home.
The company has periodically acquired other homebuilders as it expanded into new markets. These purchases included New Mexico-based Opnel Jenkins in 1995, San Antonio-based Rayco Homes in 1996, Tucson, Arizona-based Estes Homes in 1998, and Upland, California-based Colony Homes in 2003. It also maintained a division in France, which was sold in 2007.[citation needed]
KB Home team at Jared Allen Homes for Wounded Warriors Frame Signing for Master Sergeant Daniel "Reese" Hines.
In 2001 KB Home was sued when homeowners in a subdivision in Arlington, Texas discovered that their homes were built on top of a practice bombing range from the 1940s and 50s which the military had cleared for development. That suit has since been settled. The Army Corps of Engineers was engaged in remediation.[9]
In November 2006, KB Home president, CEO, and chairman Bruce Karatz resigned after an internal accounting probe into his alleged backdating of stock options. KB Home also announced the resignation of its head of human resources, Gary A. Ray, and the resignation of its chief legal officer, Richard B. Hirst. The company determined that Karatz and Ray had picked grant dates under the company's stock option plans. According to the Wall Street Journal, Karatz was one of the most highly paid executives in 2005, earning almost $156 million, primarily from options.[10]
In April 2008, KB Home published its first sustainabilityreport, which outlined the company's environmental, social responsibility and economic sustainability accomplishments. The company has since produced this report annually for 15 years, with the latest report released in April 2022.[12][13]
The company was named "Most Admired Homebuilder" by Fortune in 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2011. KB Home was ranked #1 Overall Green Builder by Calvert Investments in 2010.[14]
In March 2011, KB Home, in partnership with SunPower, introduced its first community with solar as a standard feature.[15]
In fiscal year 2012, the company delivered 6,282 homes in the United States and had revenue of over $1.5 billion. This revenue figure is down from 2005 (at the height of the real estate boom), when the company delivered close to 40,000 homes and had more than $9 billion in revenue.
In 2016 KB Home settled a multi-million dollar lawsuit with the Florida Attorney General's Office for shoddy and defective construction repairs on homes that were built wrong in the first place.[16]
In January 2019, KB Home, in partnership with Builder Magazine, built a model home called KB Home ProjeKt, in Henderson, Nevada. The home was intended to showcase sustainability, smart home technology and home building technology that supports the occupant's mental, emotional and physical health, like circadian cycle lighting, antimicrobial paint and smart air purifiers.[17][18]
In April 2022, KB Home earned its 12th Energy Star Partner of the Year – Sustained Excellence Award.[23][24] In July, the company confirmed plans to build homes in California, Nevada, and Arizona to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s WaterSense specifications.[25] In November, the company announced it had established the first all-electric solar and battery-powered microgrid community in California.[26] The following month, Newsweek listed KB Home as one of America’s Most Responsible Companies for environmental and social responsibilities.[27]
In October 2023, KB Home announced that it is moving forward to build 800 homes on San Jose’s Communications Hill.[28]
GreenHouse
KB Home built the company's first net-zero-energy home in January 2011. The GreenHouse was designed by KB Home and Martha Stewart and was featured as the "Idea Home" at the International Builders Show that year.[29] The house is located in Windermere, Florida.[30]
ZeroHouse 2.0
The successor to the GreenHouse is the ZeroHouse 2.0, which combines energy efficiency measures and solar panels to achieve net-zero energy usage.[31] Introduced in 2011, the first model ZeroHouse 2.0 was built in Tampa, FL, closely followed by models in San Antonio and Austin, TX.[31]
KB Home expanded the ZeroHouse 2.0 to the Mid-Atlantic states in June 2012 with the unveiling of the first of its kind in Waldorf, Maryland. The 4,000-square-foot model home project was completed with the installation of a 40-panel SunPower system by Solar Energy World.[32]
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Eli Broad was an American businessman and philanthropist. In June 2019, Forbes ranked him as the 233rd-wealthiest person in the world and the 78th-wealthiest in the United States, with an estimated net worth of $6.7 billion. He was known for his philanthropic commitment to transforming public K–12 education to a charter school model, scientific and medical research, and the visual and performing arts.
Hovnanian Enterprises, Inc. is an American real estate company which is involved in every aspect of marketing homes, including design, construction and sales. The company works with individual detached housing as well as higher-occupancy dwellings, including townhouses, condominiums and retirement homes. In most cases, the company acquires and develops the land on which these developments are built, but in some geographic regions, Hovnanian offers to build their proprietary house designs on private land. The company consists of two operating groups, homebuilding and financial services.
A low-energy house is characterized by an energy-efficient design and technical features which enable it to provide high living standards and comfort with low energy consumption and carbon emissions. Traditional heating and active cooling systems are absent, or their use is secondary. Low-energy buildings may be viewed as examples of sustainable architecture. Low-energy houses often have active and passive solar building design and components, which reduce the house's energy consumption and minimally impact the resident's lifestyle. Throughout the world, companies and non-profit organizations provide guidelines and issue certifications to guarantee the energy performance of buildings and their processes and materials. Certifications include passive house, BBC—Bâtiment Basse Consommation—Effinergie (France), zero-carbon house (UK), and Minergie (Switzerland).
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A Zero-Energy Building (ZEB), also known as a Net Zero-Energy (NZE) building, is a building with net zero energy consumption, meaning the total amount of energy used by the building on an annual basis is equal to the amount of renewable energy created on the site or in other definitions by renewable energy sources offsite, using technology such as heat pumps, high efficiency windows and insulation, and solar panels.
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Meritage Homes Corporation is a publicly traded American real estate development company that constructs a variety of single-family detached homes across the United States. It is the fifth largest home builder in the United States, based on 2023 home sales. The company also develops active adult communities and luxury real estate in Arizona.
Kaufman & Broad is a publicly traded real estate development and construction company headquartered in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. It was a subsidiary of the American homebuilding company KB Home until May 2007, when it was sold to the private equity firm PAI Partners for 601 million euros. It is Paris's largest homebuilder.
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Bruce E. Karatz is an American businessman and philanthropist. He served as Chairman and CEO of KB Home, and engaged in philanthropic efforts to help rebuild both Los Angeles after the L.A. Riots and New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Karatz was CEO for two decades while KB Home grew revenues from $491 million to $11 billion and annual home deliveries increased from 4,500 homes in 1986 to over 39,000 homes in 2006. In March 2013, Karatz was a recipient of The Malibu Times' 23rd Annual Dolphin Awards. Karatz operates BK Capital LLC based in Beverly Hills, California.
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ICI Homes is a custom homebuilding company based in the United States, founded in 1979 as Intervest Construction, Inc. in Daytona Beach, Florida, its present-day headquarters. The company has built over 10,000 homes since its founding.
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US$4.55 billion (2019) [2] [3] 
US$5.02 billion (2019) [2] [3] 
