The expensive part is not the land
The purchase price of a parcel is the number everyone focuses on, and it is usually not the number that decides the outcome. What decides the outcome is the cost of turning that parcel into lots a builder can build on.
Grading. Drainage. Stormwater detention. Utility extensions. Road improvements the jurisdiction requires as a condition of approval. Water rights and tap fees. The length of the entitlement process and the carrying cost of every month it runs long.
None of that is visible on a plat map, and most of it is discovered after a buyer is already under contract with a due diligence clock running.
What we do differently
A broker associate at Gourmet is a professional engineer licensed in Colorado, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Utah. His civil practice covers site planning, grading and drainage design, stormwater management, permitting and entitlements, and utility coordination.
That means when a client brings us a parcel, the site can be looked at by someone qualified to say what it will demand, at the stage where the answer still changes the decision. Whether the topography drives a retaining wall nobody budgeted. Whether the detention requirement consumes acreage the yield assumed was sellable. Whether the utility connection is a short run or a long negotiation with a district.
That assessment is normally something a buyer pays for after going under contract. Having it in hand while deciding whether to write the contract is a materially different negotiating position.
Colorado-specific constraints worth knowing
Water. In much of the Front Range and nearly all of the eastern plains, water is the binding constraint on density rather than zoning. Whether a parcel is served by a district with available taps, or depends on augmentation and well permits, can change the achievable lot count enough to invalidate a pro forma. The Colorado Division of Water Resources administers well permitting statewide.
Jurisdictional variation. Douglas County, Boulder County, and the City and County of Denver do not approve the same project the same way, on the same timeline, or with the same required improvements. A schedule built on experience in one is not transferable to another.
Topography. Foothills parcels in Jefferson County and Evergreen carry grading and access costs that flatland comparables do not. We have developed in both, including 51 custom homes and lots at White Deer Valley in Jefferson County and home sites plus 20 custom homes at Saddleback Mountain in Evergreen.
Wildfire and slope. Foothills and mountain parcels increasingly carry defensible space, access width, and material requirements that affect both cost and marketability.
From raw ground to lots
Our development work has covered the full arc rather than a slice of it.
- Coal Creek Ranch, Louisville, development through sellout, 385 custom and semi-custom homes
- Country Vista, Adams County, 210 single-family homes
- Amrepco at Brandywine, Broomfield, 250 single-family homes
- Bradbury Ranch, Parker, three separate development, sales, and marketing engagements totaling 286 homes across the Amrepco, Adare, and MacKenzie neighborhoods
- Wright Farms, Thornton, single-family home lots
- Observatory Park, Denver, true custom homes on infill sites
- Battlement Mesa, Garfield County, leases, land, and new homes
What an engagement looks like
We are usually brought in at one of three points.
Before a parcel is identified, to define what the client should be looking for based on what they build well and where the demand is.
On a specific parcel under evaluation, to assess feasibility, model the yield and the absorption, and tell the client whether the price works.
After acquisition, to take the ground through entitlement, engineering, and platting, and then into marketing and on-site sales.
The most useful engagement is the first or second. By the time a client is in the third, most of the value has already been determined by decisions made earlier.
