We work with developers and homebuilders on the part of residential real estate that happens before anyone lists a house — finding the ground, getting it entitled, structuring the takedown, and representing the owner while it gets built.
What we do
Some clients bring us in for one of these. Others hand us the whole arc from raw ground to the last lot sold.
Front end
Finding developable ground before it's listed, and knowing which parcels have the utilities, access and topography to actually pencil once you run the cost of getting services to them.
Before you commit
Whether a site wants single-family, townhomes, multifamily or a mix — modeled against absorption, lot yield and what the finished product will actually sell for here, not on a coastal comp set.
Approvals
Pre-application through final plat, including planned unit developments where you're trading design commitments for flexibility on density, setbacks or mixed use.
Structure
Phased takedowns that keep a builder's capital working and give a developer a predictable absorption schedule — deposits, release prices, escalators and what happens when a phase runs late.
Disposition
Getting finished lots in front of the builders who are actually buying, locally and regionally, and matching the product type to the builders who know how to sell it.
Through construction
Standing in for the owner when the owner isn't a full-time developer — scope, budget, schedule, consultant selection, draw review, and someone whose job is your interest, not the job's.
The process
The sequence matters, because each step gates the next one and each one has a public meeting attached. This is the city process; county subdivisions follow the same statute with a different review body.
You sit down with Planning staff before spending money on engineering, to find out what the site will and won't support and what they'll require. The single cheapest hour in the whole process.
The city encourages you to bring the project to surrounding owners and the neighborhood council before it's formally on an agenda. Opposition that surfaces here is manageable. Opposition that first surfaces at the public hearing is not.
Petition, preliminary engineering documents, plat fee and the preliminary plat go to the Planning Office. Staff routes it to the review agencies and works through their requirements with you.
Notice runs in the Great Falls Tribune at least fifteen days ahead. The Planning Advisory Board holds the hearing and arrives at a recommendation.
The Commission takes up the Board's recommendation at a public meeting and approves, conditionally approves, or denies. Conditions are the normal outcome — the work is in knowing which ones are negotiable.
Final engineering drawings, the final plat, and an agreement carrying the terms and conditions of approval. Once review officials sign off, it goes back through the Board and gets recorded. Now you have lots.
Phased projects run this as an overall phased preliminary plat with independent platted phases and a schedule — which is what makes a staged takedown possible in the first place.
Takedowns
A takedown splits the purchase into phases on a schedule. The builder buys lots as they're needed instead of parking capital in dirt, and the developer gets committed absorption instead of hoping. It works when the terms are thought through in advance and it goes badly when they aren't.
Developer side
A schedule with teeth, deposits that hurt to walk away from, escalators that keep later phases priced to the market they'll actually close in, and a clear answer to what happens if the builder stalls after phase one.
Builder side
Release prices you can underwrite, the right to slow down if the market turns, certainty that the infrastructure will be finished when the phase is called, and an exit that doesn't cost you everything you've put in.
We structure and negotiate these. We don't draft them — your attorney writes the agreement, and it's worth paying one who has done takedowns before.
Start a conversation
Early is better than late. Some of the most useful work we do happens before anyone has signed anything.