Buffett’s Final Stock Pick…

The week Warren Buffett stepped down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, his successors bought $212 million of one stock in a single day. Then they kept buying, adding another $400 million in September alone, making it one of the most closely watched Warren Buffett stock picks on the market today.

That stock is Lennar, one of the largest home builders in America, and it has quickly become the most talked-about name among current Warren Buffett stock picks.

Berkshire now owns roughly 10% of Lennar and keeps adding, even with bond yields at their highest level since 2002 and the stock down nearly 40% from its high. To most investors, buying a home builder while rates are soaring looks like a silly investment.

To Berkshire, it looks like the setup Buffett spent his entire career hunting for.

Warren Buffett Stock Picks: What Is Berkshire Buying Now?

A home builder, bought aggressively into weakness.

Berkshire's most aggressive recent buy is Lennar, a major U.S. home builder. The position started in the second quarter of 2025, while Buffett was still holding the reins, and it has since been more than tripled by his successors even as the stock fell.

Berkshire's team purchased 7 million shares of Lennar in that second quarter. Since then, CEO Greg Abel and portfolio manager Ted Weschler have taken the position from 7 million shares to about 26 million shares, a stake worth roughly $2.1 billion.

That's more than three and a half times the size of the position Buffett originally built. And most of it was bought while the stock was falling.

Berkshire isn't the only large pool of capital betting on housing. In the second quarter, the Gates Foundation took a brand new $353 million position in Home Depot.

When the smartest money in the world puts fresh capital into housing-related names at the same time rates are climbing, that deserves your attention.

Why Buy a Home Builder Now?

The pain is mechanical, not structural.

When rates go up, fewer buyers can afford the monthly payment on a new home. So builders like Lennar step in and pay, out of their own pocket, to buy down the buyer's mortgage rate. That keeps homes selling. It also eats directly into profits.

You can see it in last quarter's numbers.

On the surface, that looks ugly. It is. It's why the stock got hammered.

But the business is not broken. Not even close. This is a function of a rapid rise in interest rates, nothing more. The moment rates come down, Lennar stops buying down mortgages and that money flows straight back into the profit column.

This isn't a distressed company. It's a patient one.

What Lennar Did While Things Looked Bad

• Still earned $284 million in a single quarter
• Paid off $400 million of debt
• Bought back $256 million of its own stock
• Carries debt equal to just 16.6% of capital, versus 46% at competitor Dream Finders Homes

A company that's drowning doesn't pay down debt and repurchase shares in the same quarter. Lennar did both. That's a business playing offense while the market treats it like it's on defense.

What valuation made Lennar a buy for Berkshire?

Ninety cents on the dollar.

Lennar has about $21.6 billion of stockholders' equity. That's everything the company owns, the land, the homes under construction, the equipment, the cash, minus everything it owes. Wall Street calls it book value.

Right now the stock market values the entire company at less than that figure. About 90 cents on the dollar.

Buying at today's price means buying one of the biggest home builders in America for less than what's sitting on its books. All the future profits are free. And because the company keeps repurchasing shares, that ratio only improves in your favor.

Buffett built a career on one idea: be greedy when others are fearful. Right now, almost everybody is fearful of housing. That fear created the discount.

Did Buffett or his successors buy more Lennar stock?

Same playbook, pressed harder.

Buffett opened the position in the second quarter of 2025 with 7 million shares. Abel and Weschler took it to 26 million shares and a $2.1 billion stake, buying most of the additional shares as the price dropped.

That's the opposite of what most investors do. Most people sell into weakness. Berkshire's team bought into it, repeatedly, right through September.

If you track Berkshire Hathaway stock and the moves its managers make for clues about where disciplined capital is headed, this is one of the clearest examples available. You can follow the firm's reported holdings directly through SEC filings.

What Would Change This Story?

Only one thing: rates that never stop rising.

A rate cut may not come in October, but one is coming in 2027. And markets don't wait for the actual cut. As soon as the market believes the Fed is about to move, rates start coming down in anticipation.

The stocks that got hit hardest by rising rates are the first ones in line to bounce. Home builders sit at the top of that list.

Let's be blunt. This is not a typical leading breakout buy. The stock is in a clear downtrend, trading around where it traded back in 2022, the last time rates soared like this. Heads up: the stock doubled the next year.

What you're buying today is fear. That's what Berkshire is doing. That's what good value investors always do.

Where the Price Stands Today

A better entry than Buffett got.

Berkshire paid somewhere between $75 and $82 a share in September. Buffett himself was buying at $110 last year. Today the stock trades for roughly $80 a share.

So current buyers get in meaningfully below the price Buffett originally paid, while the balance sheet, the buybacks and the dividend remain unchanged. That's the simplest version of Warren Buffett stock picks for beginners: a profitable, dividend-paying company trading below book value during a stretch of temporary margin pressure.

Lennar doesn't need a housing boom. It just needs rates to stop going up. In the meantime, this is a company that is:

• Still profitable through heavy margin compression
• Still paying a 2.5% dividend
• Still buying back its own stock
• Still trading at roughly 90 cents on the dollar to book value

That combination is rare. It's one of the very few real value stocks in the market today. Most stocks trading below book value are cheap because something is genuinely broken. Lennar is cheap because rates went up fast and the market punished the entire sector without discriminating.

What could Berkshire do next with its Lennar stake?

The Fed decides the timing, not housing demand.

As the rate-cut timeline plays out toward 2027, the builders that absorbed the worst of the margin pain, Lennar chief among them, are the first ones in line to bounce once sentiment turns.

Anyone tracking Warren Buffett stock picks should keep an eye on how this position evolves. Berkshire's successors have shown they'll keep adding into weakness.

A Value Stock Hiding in Plain Sight

Berkshire isn't buying Lennar because housing is booming. It's buying because fear pushed a profitable, well-capitalized company below what it's worth on paper.

Rising rates forced Lennar to spend heavily on mortgage buydowns and cut quarterly profit in half. The company still paid down debt, still repurchased stock, and still runs a balance sheet far cleaner than its competition.

That's the entire case. A $21.6 billion book value. A stock at 90 cents on the dollar. A management team that more than tripled its stake while the price fell. And an entry point roughly 30% below where Buffett was buying a year ago.

This is what a real value stock looks like when the headlines are at their worst. Watch what Berkshire does when everyone else is selling, not what they say.