In the morning today, I had the pleasure of working with Mark Cain, a customer care representative for Lennar. His job is to teach future homeowners about all of the aspects of their new homes, which includes things as big as the HVAC unit, all the way down to the recommended cleaner for the countertops. While he was a very personable guy, he more importantly knew all of the finite details of the home, making it extremely easy for him to answer any of the clients questions. My task, while he was showing them around, was to mark any scratches on the walls with tape to make it easy for the repairmen when they come back for the final inspection. Ultimately, this home had only 5 major issues that needed to be addressed, which is generally quite low compared to an average house. Overall, very intriguing morning that taught me a lot, but also showed how difficult it can be to work in customer care.
Author: davidh176
Day 6: James Grove Sales Team
After a great memorial day weekend, Mr. George decided to send me with the sales team for James Grove, the same development that I had been working with over the previous week. As seen in the featured image above, I worked with Haley and Stephanie, the sales team that was put in charge of selling James Grove. Typically, the sales team works out of a trailer built on site, however Haley and Stephanie will be resigned to a tent for the next month or so until the trailer is completed. While this made for a hot day, it was nothing short of eventful. There were 12 total appointments, where either Haley or Stephanie had to meet with the client and their agent to discuss the Lennar Offer Process and give them a detailed overlook of the available lots. The best part of today’s experience was having a fly-on-the-wall perspective of the conversations with the clients. Their reactions when we told them the starting bidding prices would be $515K (mind you, for a 2300 square foot townhome) was priceless on many occasions, however Haley and Stephanie both demonstrated incredible experience and professionalism addressing the clients concerns. While my initial interest at Lennar was land acquisition, I walk away from today knowing that sales is also something that I would enjoy tremendously.
Day 5: Lumber Crisis
Today, I sat in on probably the most interesting two meetings of the week: the quarterly summaries. In short, this is when all the DP’s in the region meet to go through how many closings they had total over the past 3 months to ensure that the region hits its projections. One of the biggest concerns among the region was the huge inflation of lumber prices. To just build one home alone, it is costing the Raleigh division $9000 more than it usually would, which hurts profits tremendously. Lennar is fortunate in the sense that it is one of, if not the biggest homebuilder in the country, making it easier for them to purchase supply. However, like Mr. George was telling me, many of the smaller of custom homebuilders are struggling, making them a target to acquire for larger homebuilders.
Day 4: Ellis Walk Development
In the afternoon, I ventured out to Durham to visit the Ellis Walk development with Shawn Harling, the senior manager of land development at Lennar Raleigh. As I had already heard a day earlier, Ellis Walk had had a road paved to the incorrect width, thus the reason we were having to go out to the site and make sure it would be properly fixed. Shawn described this as the ‘baby-sitting’ aspect of his job, and it was easy to see how it can be frustrating to have to travel around to ensure that the construction workers are doing their job correctly. I think this ties into one of the themes I have seen within the Lennar workplace thus far: managing people. Fortunately, I have seen many different levels of workplace authority, from the division president, all the way down to the construction site managers. While at the end of the day everyone must do their job, managing the people that work for you is an essential task to being successful in a professional environment. Knowing who they are personally, where they come from, who their family is, and their strengths and weaknesses are all just a few details needed to get the best out of someone else.
Day 3: Edge of Auburn Development
Like yesterday, I started the day off by sitting in on a few meetings, with the most interesting one pertaining to land banking. This is when outside groups purchase rural, undeveloped land with the hopes that in 10-25 years, urban sprawl will reach their land and make it of higher value. In regard to Lennar, Mr. George met with a representative of the investment group down in Garner at the Edge of Auburn development in order to answer any final questions the group had and to push the deal through. Once this meeting was finished, we toured 3 of the Lennar’s model homes for the development, all of which ranged in size and layout. The image below includes the plat layout for the future Edge of Auburn development, and the featured image is of the nearby Auburn Village amenities center.
Day 2: Land Development and Sales Meetings
Unlike yesterday, today was spent in the office. For 3 hours, I sat in on a land development update meeting, which entailed going through a spreadsheet of all the current developments the Lennar Raleigh division is a part of. While this is a tedious process, it is also essential to being successful, as all departments must be on the same page in order to ultimately get to the point of beginning construction on homes. A particular development that we spent a long time on was called Ellis Crossing in Durham. In phase 1 of the development a section of the road had been paved too narrow, thus making construction on the homes that backed up this part of the road impossible. Because of this communication, Lennar knows that they need to make sure those houses aren’t started yet in order to avoid further mistakes on the project.
In the afternoon, I sat in on a kickoff meeting for the James Grove development I visited yesterday. The two home consultants, Haley and Stephanie, were in this meeting to understand the details of the homes that they will be selling customers in the coming weeks. I will be shadowing them next Tuesday in order to understand the sales aspect of Lennar.
Day 1: James Grove Development
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.