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Lennar, Icon 3D-printing venture a long-term play despite turbulent market

Chairman Stuart Miller brushed off troubled market as backdrop to housing shortage

The housing market has hit dramatic highs and lows in the year since homebuilding giant Lennar teamed up with Texas construction startup Icon on a 3D-printed development.

But Lennar executive chairman Stuart Miller recently doubled down on the future of the Miami-based firm’s venture with Icon. In a Thursday appearance on CNBC, Miller noted the cyclical nature of the market as a backdrop to the companies’ “long-term program” targeting the nationwide housing crisis.

“At some point, the interest rates are going to moderate and the housing market is going to come back,” Miller said.

Lennar took a deep dive into a technological future for construction with Icon, announcing plans last October for 100-home 3D-printed community near Austin, Texas. Icon’s proprietary Vulcan technology offers a quicker turnaround than traditional single-family home construction.

“We expect to bring this to scale, and at scale, bring cycle times down and also bring costs down,” Miller said.

Rising rates have roiled homebuilders this year, but the S&P Supercomposite Homebuilding Index notched a 12 percent gain on Nov. 10. Lennar led the sectors’ largest boost since April 2020 with a 13 percent gain.

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Icon previously flexed its expedited construction technology in 2018, when it produced the nation’s first permitted 3D-printed home, a 350-square-foot structure built in roughly 47 hours.

The system can help create 3,000-square-foot homes with the ability to outlast traditional building methods and materials. Icon is printing the wall system for the community’s homes, while Lennar is constructing framing and drywall.

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In February, Icon raised another $185 million to grow its 3D home-printing business. The funding round was an extension of the company’s $207 million Series B round from the previous summer, bringing Icon’s total equity raised to $451 million.

An anonymous source told TechCrunch at the time the company’s estimated valuation was approaching $2 billion.

As one part of Lennar’s operations plays the long game with the housing shortage, another is contending with the immediate issue of inventory stacking up. The company recently authorized its agents to offer price reductions on homes in an attempt to dump suddenly oversaturated inventory by the end of the year.

— Holden Walter-Warner

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ConstructionHousing MarketLennarTechnology