For the next two weeks, I will be shadowing Troy George, the division president of Lennar Homes in Raleigh, with a focus on learning about land acquisition, land entitlement, and land development.
I started the day off by sitting in on a meeting with Mr. George about Lennar’s COVID policies. Lennar has hired a full-time doctor in order to guide them on how to handle positive cases, vaccinations, mask policies, and any questions employees may have. The main concern in today’s meeting was how to address people that do not want to get vaccinated, and how the division presidents should address these employees. This was a very, very interesting discussion that gave a unique insight in the leadership qualities the division presidents need to talk to the employees, and at the same time not becoming overbearing and too invasive.
I spent the afternoon with the head of land acquisition, Gavin Williford. He has been at Lennar for eight years now since the beginning of his career, working in sales for his first four years, and in land acquisition for the past four. After lunch, he took me to James Grove, a development just off of 55 that backs up to I-540. This was one of the first big projects that Gavin worked on over 2 years ago, and he remarked at how satisfying it was to be able to drive out onto the land that he once knew as just trees, and to see his hard work finally begin to pay off. His job also entails meeting with people on a personal level – for this particular project, there were several pieces of land surrounding by a larger piece owned by a family. Once Gavin reached a deal for their land, he allowed them to pick the names of the roads that would be in the subdivision, which I thought was a nice touch that showed the human side of business deals like these.
Following our adventures at James Grove, we stopped to pick up a sewer easement grant for a development off of Apex Barbeque Road in Apex known as Depot 499. There are several pieces of property that Lennar has to string a sewer line through in order to reach their proposed development, so this was the final paperwork that allowed Lennar access to use the land.
For the most part, this concluded my day – tomorrow I will be sitting in on a land development meeting in the morning for a few hours.