John Rausch always said no when potential buyers came asking about acquiring Rausch Coleman Homes, a company he has led for two decades.
Rausch, 41, has been building homes since he was a teenager at the elbow of his grandfather, Buddy Coleman, and was focused on the continued growth of the Fayetteville company, which built 5,400 homes in 2024. In the summer of 2024, a local broker arranged a meeting between Rausch and executives from Lennar Corp. of Miami, and Rausch agreed to attend with no intention of changing his mind.
Lennar, the second-largest homebuilder in the United States, was a big fan of Rausch Coleman and pushed aggressively for a deal. Eventually, Rausch saw the wisdom of the proposal, as well as the freedom that selling would bring, and agreed to a deal.
Lennar created a subsidiary, Millrose Properties, to take Rausch Coleman’s 24,000 land sites for $900 million, and Lennar paid $254 million for Rausch Coleman’s building operations. John Rausch said that even though it was a prosperous and fair deal, selling Rausch Coleman Homes was still like losing a family member.
Rausch said it helped that Buddy Coleman wholeheartedly supported the sale of the company he and his grandson had built. The deal was finalized in February 2025; Buddy Coleman died at age 89 in December.
“It was the toughest, toughest thing we’ve ever done,” Rausch said. “But we had a lot of good, wise counsel from people within the company and people outside the company. We didn’t make a knee-jerk reaction.
“We took our time and really evaluated it and looked at it. We knew that it had to be a large enough number that made sense. It had to be something that said we can’t say no to it. This makes sense, and we will be able to do a lot more because of this than what we were doing now.”
Bigger & Better Things
John Rausch didn’t divest of his homebuilding company with plans for a ride off into the sunset. If anything, Rausch is busier than ever.
Rausch is the CEO of Rausch Cos., which has subsidiaries involved in developing apartment complexes, managing rental homes and oil and gas leases. Rausch said the windfall from the Lennar sale helped create momentum for those outlets as well as the charitable Rausch Family Foundation, which he runs with his wife, Ashley.
“For us, it was never a question of ‘Hey, we’re going to just go put all this in the stock market and sit back and wait,’” Rausch said. “We want to actively invest and actively operate the companies that we’re doing and be able to look at it from that lens, obviously not building homes.
“It is time to move on and do bigger, better, different things.”
Rausch said his company had employed approximately 1,000 people, of whom 800 or so went into Lennar’s homebuilding subsidiary. The remaining 200, mostly office personnel, stayed with Rausch Cos.
“I would say the excitement of being an entrepreneur is really fun,” Rausch said. “And these things, I love being able to see them grow. We’ve got so many folks that helped us build Rausch Coleman that were able to stay on with us and stay with Rausch Cos. into the future. This is an opportunity to say, ‘Let’s go grow a bunch more companies into the future.’”
One of those companies, Calara, is a land development group that will prepare homesites for builders such as Lennar. Rausch Coleman’s geographical footprint was heavy in Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas — states into which Lennar was able to expand much more easily through the acquisition, which included 980 homes built by Rausch Coleman.
A Look Back
Rausch is a forward-looking entrepreneur, but the sale of Rausch Coleman understandably brings reflection. Buddy Coleman, who built homes for six decades, attended Rausch’s family Christmas gathering in December just days before his death Dec. 22.
Rausch is happy that his grandfather got to experience a trip in February 2025 to the New York Stock Exchange to help Lennar and Millrose — both public companies — celebrate the deal.
“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about he and I somewhere in our Ford pickup truck, looking at land or looking at homes and learning,” Rausch said. “He was just an incredible teacher and mentor. And he loved the homebuilding side, but he really loved the real estate side. Buying and selling is what he loved to do.
“I think that’s what made this so exciting for him. It really is something I think about all the time, obviously have gotten [a chance] to reflect on it.”
Rausch said when he was deciding whether to take Lennar’s offer for the company, he sought the advice of his grandfather and David Frye, who served as the company’s chief financial officer for 25 years and died in March, a month after the sale was finalized.
“I mentioned it to [Coleman] and our former CFO, David Frye, who passed away last year as well,” Rausch said. “They both were ecstatic. They were tickled pink. Obviously, neither one of them knew that last year would be their last year, but I think it was just a total God thing that they got to see the completion of it, built and sold before they passed.”
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