White Deer Valley

The challenge

The developer, TCD North of P&O, owned a 400-plus acre parcel of land in the southwestern metro area of Denver, Colorado. TCD North wanted to know if the highest and best use for their land was to turn it into a quarry.

It’s a bigger question than it sounds. A quarry pays predictably, to a known buyer, with no marketing risk at all. A custom community pays a great deal more over a much longer horizon — but only if a long chain of things holds up: that you can attract the right builders, that brokers will bring you buyers, that those buyers exist at the price you need, and that the design standards protecting everyone’s value can actually be enforced.

Both answers are permanent. Lean too far toward residential and the land sits. Lean toward the quarry and the higher use is gone for good.

What we did

TCD North retained our marketing and real estate companies to oversee the property as a high-end custom community, selling homes at prices from $800,000 to over $3 million.

We built a strategic plan to attract qualified, innovative, design-conscious, craft-oriented custom builders, along with the brokers and buyers who’d appreciate them. At this price point, your builder roster is your product. A custom community is only as good as the least careful builder you let in, because that house sets the ceiling for every home around it. Choose carefully and everyone’s value goes up together.

We made one decision here worth sharing, because it’s unusual: our sales staff sold real estate at White Deer Valley and nowhere else. No referring buyers off site.

That costs something in the short term — a salesperson who can send a prospect elsewhere earns on people who aren’t right for this community. Take that option away and every hour of selling goes into solving the buyer’s problem here. It points the sales floor at the developer’s interest, and it works when ownership genuinely commits to it.

Alongside that, we built the community’s whole position around cooperating brokers.

The result

The strategy worked. We beat the sales proforma’s absorption schedule by several years and substantially exceeded gross sales and profits, while building a neighborhood that adhered to strict architectural design guidelines.

Almost 100% of the sales were made with the assistance of cooperating real estate brokers.

That’s the number worth sitting with. Brokers weren’t a commission line to be trimmed here — they were the engine. Essentially the entire performance that beat the proforma by years came through them.

And beating an absorption schedule by years does more than bring revenue forward. It shortens the whole period you’re carrying costs, running marketing, and spending management attention. That’s why the profit improvement ran ahead of the sales improvement.

What you can use

• Test the highest and best use of your land before you commit it to the safe answer. It’s a cheap question to ask and an expensive one to skip.
• At the top of the market, your builder roster is your product. Select for financial strength and craft.
• Point your sales incentives at the outcome the developer needs, and make sure ownership backs it.
• Get to know your brokers and bring them in properly. It’s often the whole strategy, and it’s the subject of one of the NAHB courses we’re accredited to teach.

Want us to take a look at your project? Call +1 303.500.3400 or send us a message.