Another national home building company slipped into Oklahoma City early last year — a rare thing — and hit the shovel-ready ground running: Lennar Corp., based in Miami, Florida.

Lennar, the second-largest home construction company in the country, joins D.R. Horton, based in Arlington, Texas, the nation's largest home building company, in the tiny club of national companies that are building houses here.

D.R. Horton expanded to Oklahoma City in 2005 and stayed with the market through thick and thin — twice — the national boom driven by easy money that ended in bust in 2007-09, the Great Recession, and the more recent boom driven by mortgage rates that were historically low, until they weren't.

Lennar got here early in 2022, filing plans for an addition in southwest OKC at the peak of the recent boom, when Oklahoma City was down to a 15-day supply of homes listed for sale with Realtors (not counting any offered directly by builders or for-sale-by-owner).

Lennar Corp. started building homes in Oklahoma City just as mortgage rates started to rise fast

Lennar chose not to participate in the construction slowdown that hit when mortgage rates, still under 4% but already on the rise when the company arrived, really took off over the course of 2022. Rates are nearly 7% now.

Lennar 's Ashton Court addition, west off of S Sara Road between SW 15 and SW 29, is the most active subdivision in the Oklahoma City area so far in 2023, according to Dharma Inc.'s Builder Report.

The 70 homes Lennar has started this year in the addition, the first of several planned, landed it in seventh place among metro-area builders through May, Dharma reported. Prices start at around $250,000.

Ashton Court features four floor plans between 1,260 and 1,784 square feet with three to four bedrooms and two bathrooms. The neighborhood has a playground. The addition is in Oklahoma City, but in the Mustang public school district, with Yukon postal addresses. Lennar's model home and sales office is at 2313 Claire Drive.

More: At this rate, Oklahoma City could sell out of homes in 15 days

Keep an eye on Lennar Corp. Could its success attract another national home builder to Oklahoma City?

Lennar bears watching, although with smallish houses on small lots, it doesn't seem to be crawling out on much of a limb. Those could be first-time buyer homes, or at least everyday people kinds of homes.

It bears watching for the sheer fact of Lennar's investment in OKC. Regional builders have come and gone, and one or two have come and stayed, but D.R. Horton is the only national building company to have made a successful go of it here for more than a few years.

In the 1980s, national companies including Florida-based U.S. Homes, Ryan Homes, based in Pittsburgh, and Gemcraft Homes in Forest Hill, Maryland, built homes here but left before long.

Why? The real estate bust that accompanied the '80s oil bust, probably. Until that bust, local longtime builders say they couldn't compete with the relatively low profit margins most metro-area builders accept, and they couldn't approach the craftsmanship that buyers are accustomed to getting for their money from most local builders.

Lennar is a production builder. Ashton Court was a madhouse of new houses this week. The housing shortage is still on. We will see how Lennar fares, and whether high demand with inventory still low, and OKC's strong local economy, attracts even more national builder attention.

Most active home builders in the Oklahoma City metro area so far in 2023

According to Dharma Inc's Builder Report, the most active builders in the metro area through May were:

• Rausch Coleman Homes OKC, 244 homes started.

• D.R. Horton Inc., 210 starts.

• Homes By Taber, 198 starts.

• Ideal Homes, 117.

• Home Creations, 92.

• AMMP Studio, 87.

• Lennar Corp., 70.

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Senior Business Writer Richard Mize has covered housing, construction, commercial real estate and related topics for the newspaper and Oklahoman.com since 1999. Contact him at rmize@oklahoman.com. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Real Estate with Richard Mize.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Lennar Corp. is the second national builder to build houses in OKC