Below is LandTech’s land acquisition and development philosophy, summarized in ten basic operating principles, to which LandTech assiduously adheres:
1. Land Planning Potential
The property selected facilitates creating a land plan that is environmentally friendly, protects the beauty of nature, and accommodates various community and lifestyle features and multiple product uses, and permits development to be accomplished in harmony with the natural attributes of the land.
2. Visibility and Accessibility
Ensure sufficient property frontage exists on a major thoroughfare for a dramatic entrance feature, and is easily accessible to major transportation arteries, such I-20, I-26 and I-77 in Columbia, within ten to fifteen minutes of the main entrance.
3. Award Winning School District
Select property located within one of the top school districts in the area, and an elementary school not more than three to five miles of the community.
4. Various Lifestyle Opportunities
Develop unique lifestyle opportunities that are unmatched in the surrounding market, and a land plan that embraces safety needs of facilities including individual sidewalked-neighborhoods, amenities, and any commercial components can be linked with bike and hiking paths.
5. Market Saturation
Avoid mature or saturated markets where land and home prices have peaked, opting instead for areas with high-growth potential, in areas where growth is a natural evolution of an expanding mature market area, and by the quality of the school district.
6. A Choice of Product and Price
Provide conventional single-family detached homes in various architectural styles and floor plans in at least three distinctive price ranges, such as $130,000-$185,000, $185,000-$250,000, and $250,000 and up. Depending on the development size and market, include smaller components of traditional single-family, patio and townhomes, each situated within a separate neighborhood with its own entry feature.
7. Creation of a Marketing Magnet and a Statement of Excellence
Introduce the community to the marketplace by a signature sculpted and lushly landscaped entryway with an amenity visible from the entrance, which together will draw people who are passing by into the community for investigation. The entry monument will be dramatic, making a statement of excellence and maturity, and be designed in such a manner that a resident's front door starts as he or she enters the community. Amenities will provide diverse leisure and recreational family-style opportunities that exceed by a wide margin that which is the norm in the area. Ideally amenities will include a lake or other significant watercourse feature.
8. Develop an Aggressive Community Awareness Marketing Program
In addition to the marketing efforts by the homebuilders within the community, develop a community awareness marketing program consisting of fixed advertising (the entry boulevard and monument, one or more billboards, community signage along the perimeter of the community on main access roads where possible); various print media (e.g., newspaper and local real estate booklets and magazines), and a Web page.
9. Adopt Strict Architectural and Landscape Standards and Other Community Covenants
Recognizing that buying a house is one of the biggest investments that most families will make, develop strict architectural and landscape in lifetime covenants of the community to protect and enhance the value and lifestyle opportunities that will be created by the master plan. Include in these standards is a requirement for architectural approval, standardized lighting, signage and mailboxes.
10. Credibility
Establish credibility with the marketplace by the landplan, marketing collaterals, and completion of all regulatory matters by bringing sewer and water to the property before sales begin, and by affiliation with quality homebuilders. More particularly, however, LandTech will establish its credibility by developing the community infrastructure (entranceway and monument and amenities) at the beginning of a development, which is not the norm for most developers. We prefer that homebuilders and homeowners know what the community will look like before the first home is built. Both know that talking about your vision is one thing, but building it is another. At LandTech, we remove that uncertainty.
While the Company principally acquires and develops land for its own purposes, it operates in a family of related companies, which provide ancillary services to homebuilders and property owners in the communities it develops, such as marketing and selling new and owner-occupied homes and association and property management services. From time to time, it may also provide development management services to third parties when such services do not compete with its own developments.
