A brokerage with a licensed civil engineer on the team can answer a different class of question than one without.
Paul Wallick is a professional engineer licensed in Colorado, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Utah, and a graduate of the University of Minnesota. Alongside his work as a broker associate at Gourmet, he is the founder and principal of Land Pro Civil, a civil engineering firm he started in 2020 with offices in Minneapolis and Boulder. His practice covers site planning and civil design, grading and drainage, stormwater management, permitting and entitlements, utility design and coordination, and construction support for residential, commercial, and solar development.
What this means on a land deal
Raw land does not come with a disclosure about what it will cost to make it buildable. Grading, drainage, utility runs, and stormwater detention are usually where a land budget either holds or falls apart, and those numbers are typically discovered after a buyer is already committed.
Paul can look at a parcel and tell you what the site is going to demand. Whether the topography drives a retaining wall you had not budgeted. Whether the stormwater requirement eats developable acreage. Whether the utility connection is a short run or a long, expensive negotiation. That assessment is ordinarily something you pay for after you are under contract. Having it available while you are still deciding whether to write the contract is a genuinely different position to negotiate from.
At Land Pro Civil he works as the engineer clients deal with directly, from the first conversation through stamping the final plans, without a project manager in between.
Paul holds Colorado real estate license FA.100081521.