Each year, BUILDER magazine releases its list of the top 200 builders from the previous year—the BUILDER 100 and the Next 100. These builders are ranked by the number of closings they had in a calendar year. RESNET undertook an analysis of the BUILDER 100 and the Next 100 to see how many of the top builders were getting their homes HERS rated.

Who is building HERS-rated homes? BUILDER’s top 200 list spans an array of builders that closed as few as 190 homes to more than 71,000 in 2020. In total, these 200 builders closed more than 441,000 homes.

• Of those 441,000-plus homes, 43% received a RESNET HERS Index Score, a 4% jump over the prior year;
• 135 of the 200 builders chose to have their homes HERS rated; and
• 85 of the top 100 builders chose to have their homes HERS rated.

The 19 publicly traded building companies on the top 200 list were responsible for nearly 127,000 HERS ratings in 2020 (compared with 96,847 in 2019). That amounts to 47% percent of their total closings last year, a 7% jump over 2019.

The importance of HERS ratings to publicly traded builders has been increasing as investors look more at environmental, social, and governance factors in their investment decisions. Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing found that 95% of millennials are interested in sustainable investing and 85% believe their investment decisions can influence the amount of climate change caused by human activities. This is important because millennials are now the largest generation of home buyers. The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board has a corporate reporting standard specifically for the home building industry. In its standard, SASB recommends that builders report on the number of homes they had HERS rated, the average HERS Index Score, and how many Energy Star homes they certified. All this data is readily available to builders of HERS-rated homes. RESNET’s National Registry houses all HERS ratings completed since 2013. Learn more about using HERS data for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reports on June 16 at 2 pm ET.

In 2020, RESNET recorded 299,755 HERS ratings by more than 10,000 home building, remodeling, and development companies (compared with more than 6,000 in 2019). Just over 600 builders recorded 50 or more ratings, while the rest recorded fewer than 50. The top builder by volume of ratings registered more than 25,000 in 2020. When RESNET looked at the top 20 builders by number of ratings, it saw that they ordered more than 143,000 ratings, accounting for 48% of all ratings last year (compared with 43% in 2019).

Below is a list of the top 20 builders with the most HERS-rated homes in 2020 (in alphabetical order). Not all builders on this list reported closings for the BUILDER 100 and the Next 100.

• Beazer Homes (p)
• Century Communities (p)
• Clayton Properties Group
• David Weekley Homes
• D.R. Horton (p)
• Express Homes
• Highland Homes
• Hovnanian Enterprises (p)
• KB Home (p)
• Lennar Homes (p)
• Mattamy Homes
• Meritage Homes (p)
• M/I Homes (p)
• NVR (p)
• Perry Homes
• PulteGroup (p)
• Richmond American Homes (p) (M.D.C. Holdings)
• Stanley Martin Homes
• Taylor Morrison (p)
• Toll Brothers (p)

(p) = publicly traded builder.

Even though large national and regional builders are recording thousands of HERS ratings each year, there are thousands of smaller, local builders also doing ratings. In 2020, more than two-thirds of all builders doing HERS ratings registered three or fewer ratings. For more information, visit www.resnet.us and www.hersindex.com.