Company Overview
Opening our doors in 2017, Starlight Homes builds homes designed specifically for the first-time homebuyer. Our goal is to make the dream of homeownership a reality for everyone, offering expertly crafted homes at an affordable price and ensure its customers’ first journey into home buying is simple, smooth, and reassuring. Together with our parent company, 2023’s Builder of the Year Ashton Woods, we have welcomed over 60,000 people to their new home. Our company’s commitment to innovation and continually evolving to meet the needs of the market is a key reason we have seen the success we have. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Starlight sells new homes in Atlanta, Austin, Charleston, Dallas, Houston, Myrtle Beach, Nashville, Orlando, Phoenix, Raleigh, San Antonio and Tampa.
Position Overview
The VP of Land Acquisition is responsible for providing the division with undeveloped land and finished lots enabling it to accomplish its sales, settlements, profitability, and growth targets as established in the division strategic plan. This position also partners with others on the leadership team to ensure our sales, marketing and construction requirements are met on each deal. Negotiate price and terms of property acquisitions to ensure the division has a competitive edge in our respective target submarkets. Manage zoning attorneys, our real-estate attorney, developers (both in house and outside), and local regulatory agencies to ensure that the division’s risks are eliminated or mitigated.
Responsibilities
- Lead the land acquisition department; ensure that it is competently staffed and functional.
- Participate in the creation of the division strategic land acquisition planning process. Help guide the process to competitive acquisition targets.
- Identify and submit to the Division Manager enough suitable deals in accordance with our strategic plan, to achieve financial objectives.
- Actively look for niche land positions requiring direct contracting from owners, to include assemblage opportunities and joint venture scenarios.
- Develop extensive broker connections so that we are seeing many new deals early in the selling process.
- Develop good contracts with the local developer community to provide the division with option deals in good subdivisions at competitive prices.
- Initiate the contract process, review all contract changes, oversee our attorney reviews and negotiations, identify major contractual risks (and their concurrent obligations), and ensure all our major deal point issues are addressed in each transaction.
- Manage the land feasibility package creation process. Assemble the corporate land acquisition study book for each land deal and ensure that it is submitted at least two weeks prior to any earnest money “hard date”.
- Manage the zoning and permitting processes. Ensure that we get the best possible density and conditions from the process, ensure our contracts are linked to these results.
- Manage our market knowledge and submarket analysis projects to ensure that we have current data (e.g., land prices, lot prices, road improvements, municipal requirements), needed to develop and refine our strategic land acquisition objectives.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in business, real estate, finance, or related field.
- At least 5 years’ experience in residential land acquisition, divestiture, and development.
- Residential building industry experience preferred.
- Experience with blueprints, construction drawings and addendums.
- Experience with Outlook, Excel, Word, Power Point, and ability to learn new programs.
