Meritage Homes's

The construction and sale of homes is a highly-competitive industry. We compete for sales in each of our markets with national, regional and local developers and homebuilders, as well as existing resale homes, foreclosures, and to a lesser extent, condominiums and rental housing. Some of our competitors have significantly greater financial resources and may have lower costs than we do. Competition among residential homebuilders of all sizes is based on a number of interrelated factors, including location, reputation, product type, amenities, design, innovation, quality and price. We believe that we compare favorably to other homebuilders in the markets in which we operate due to our:

experience within our geographic markets which allows us to develop and offer products that provide superior design and quality and are in line with the needs and desires of the targeted demographic;

streamlined construction processes that allow us to save on material, labor and time and pass those savings to our customers in the form of lower prices;

ENERGY STAR® standards in all of our communities (except for markets in which we had a recent company acquisition) and incremental energy-efficient features that create a variety of benefits to our customers and differentiate our product from competing new and existing home inventories;

ability to recognize and adapt to changing market conditions, from both a capital and human resource perspective;

ability to capitalize on opportunities to acquire land on favorable terms; and

reputation for outstanding service and quality products and our exceptional customer and warranty service.

Our product offerings and strategic locations are successfully competing with both existing homes inventory and surrounding new-home communities as evidenced by our relative orders volume and market share in most of our divisions. We expect that the strengths noted above will continue to provide us with long-term competitive advantages.
We have an extensive market research department that assists our operating divisions in each of our markets to better compete with other homebuilders, and the inventory of re-sale homes in surrounding neighborhoods. Our strategic operations team conducts in-depth community-level reviews in each of our markets, including a detailed analysis of existing inventory, pricing, buyer demographics and the identification of each location’s key buyer metrics. This analysis and resulting analytical tools assist in decision-making regarding product designs, positioning, and pricing and underwriting standards for land purchases and land development. Additionally, our market research department is focused on evaluating and identifying new market opportunities. The analysis of entry into a new market includes comprehensive research and surveys of buyer demographics and demands, competitor composition and performance, the surrounding job market and employment statistics, foreclosure activity and desirability of the market in general.