Bruce Karatz

Antigone A. Agris

Bruce Karatz
Chairman and CEO
KB Home

Bruce Karatz serves as chairman and chief executive officer of KB Home. He has worked to transform the industry with his revolutionizing KBnxt concept of building homes only after they have been sold, abandoning the traditional, yet vulnerable, model of building inventory first and selling second. As a result, KB Home delivered over 37,140 homes in 2005 compared to less than 4,000 when he became CEO in 1986, and less than 7,000 when he was named Chairman in 1993. In fact, Karatz has enjoyed helping nearly 400,000 families achieve the "American Dream" during his tenure.

Karatz often refers to homebuilding as the core American business, and KB Home as a core American company. His passion for the industry radiates through every word that he speaks and every strategic move that he makes. From the time he joined the company as an in house attorney over 30 years ago, to the point soon thereafter when he realized he needed to make the career-defining leap to the operations side, Karatz has brought a fresh and innovative approach. Whether he was identifying and acquiring land in California in the mid ‘70s, or running French operations in the late ‘70s, he was creating and contributing to dramatic growth levels.

In the past decade, Karatz has taken the company into 40 of the U.S. major markets. During the same span, KB Home went from building in just three states to 16, through organic expansion or strategic acquisitions in the most robust areas.

Karatz is known for his marketing and promotional prowess, from partnering with Martha Stewart Omnimedia to build homes inspired by Martha’s own homes, to building a new two-story home in less than a week for a deserving family in north Las Vegas for ABC’s hit television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, to building a 3,000-square-foot model home in midtown Manhattan, and building a model home on top of the 11-story Au Printemps department store in Paris, he has always been known for creating unique opportunities to broaden KB Home’s brand awareness, which is the most recognizable in homebuilding. His construction of a life-sized replica of The Simpson’s cartoon house in Las Vegas earned him the praise of pulling off "the most successful promotion in the homebuilding industry," according to Builder magazine.

In 2005 he was named “Best Chairman” by the American Business Awards as well as Ernst & Young’s Master Entrepreneur of the Year for greater Los Angeles. In 2004 he was ranked the top homebuilding executive on Builder Magazine’s list of the most influential people in homebuilding, coming in sixth behind Alan Greenspan, Franklin Raines, President George W. Bush, Jerry Howard and Andres
Duany. The 1992 inductee into the California Building Industry Hall of Fame has often been recognized
for his deep commitment to his business and civic communities. Karatz received one of his greatest honors when the President of the French Republic named him Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in
1999. In 2003 he was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations Foundation, Inc. He was past Chairman of the California Business Roundtable, the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, and Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees for RAND Corporation and is currently a director of Edison International and Honeywell International. In addition, he is a member of the USC Board of Trustees, Chairman of the Board of Councilors of USC Gould School of Law and serves on the Board of Directors for the California Commission for Jobs and Economic Growth.

A graduate of The Blake School in Minneapolis and Boston University, Karatz earned his law degree from the University of Southern California. He has three children, Elizabeth, Matt, and Ted, and three grandchildren, Juliette, Thomas, and Clara.

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