Highest-Paid Public Builder CEOs: Ryland’s Chad Dreier on Top

This article first appeared in the PB September 2003 issue of Pro Builder.

Attention, builders: If you’re looking for metrics to measure your performance as a business executive, you might check how the dollars you take home stack up against those of the top public builders’ CEOs, as reported in Credit Suisse/First Boston stock analyst Ivy Zelman’s report on housing industry executive compensation. (But remember, these are only for publicly traded companies.)

Pulling total 2002 compensation data from the public builders’ filings, Zelman came up with these lists:

Top Three

1. Chad Dreier, Ryland Homes, $26.05 million
2. Bruce Karatz, KB Home, $23.87 million
3. Robert Toll, Toll Brothers, $16.74 million

Bottom Three

1. Al Hoffman, WCI Communities, $2.30 million
2. Dwight Schar, NVR, $3.01 million
3. Irving Schottenstein, M/I Homes, $4.35 million

However, when Zelman calculated total 2002 compensation as a percentage of net income, to identify the public CEOs who cost the most in the eyes of investors, she produced slightly different lists:

Top Three

1. Chad Dreier, Ryland, 14.0%
2. Larry Mizel, MDC Holdings, 8.6%
3. Robert Toll, Toll Brothers, 7.6%

Bottom Three

1. Dwight Schar, NVR, 0.9%
2. Don Tomnitz, D.R. Horton, 1.0%
3. Stuart Miller, Lennar, 1.7%

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