Housing affordability is so stretched that D.R. Horton is leaning even harder on 3.99% mortgage rate buydowns

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D.R. Horton, America’s largest homebuilder, is doubling down on mortgage rate buydowns to keep its sales volumes up amidst an affordability-strained housing market.

On its October 28 earnings call, the builder said 73% of its homebuyers in fiscal Q4 2025 received a mortgage rate buydown—up slightly from 72% in the previous quarter.

“As we anticipated on our last call, we did expect to lean in more heavily to the offering of 3.99% [mortgage rate buydown],” said Jessica Hansen, D.R. Horton’s senior vice president of investor relations. “That is something that we’ve been doing, and we saw the mortgage rate in our backlog come down. It’s actually below 5% today coming into thi