Handoff to Builder/Developer

Exact steps

1. Pick one target metro area and draw a mental (or literal) 50-mile radius around it — this is the search zone for everything below.
2. Search Google for "top 100 builders [current year]" to get a ranked national list, then for each name that looks active in your area, search "[Builder name] + [your target city]" to confirm they actually build there.
3. Separately, search "home builders in [your city]" to surface local and regional builders — these almost never show up on national top-100 lists, so skip this step and you'll miss most of the local market.
4. Go to Zillow, search new-construction communities in your target area, and open each listing — the listing links out to the builder's own community page, which tells you who's actively building nearby.
5. Drop every builder name you find into a single spreadsheet with columns: Builder Name, Local or National, Website, Source (Google/Zillow/other).
6. Once you have 10-15 builder names, go to Apollo (apollo.io), search by company name + your target location, and filter job titles loosely with a keyword like "land" instead of an exact title — land-acquisition titles vary a lot company to company.
7. For each company, pull the named contact's email and, if you have an Apollo credit to spend, reveal their direct-dial number — a direct dial beats a generic company switchboard every time you actually need to reach someone.

Exact steps

1. Before you pitch anyone, figure out which kind of client you're talking to: a self-developing home builder (does its own horizontal construction, then builds houses on the finished lots) or a pure horizontal developer (entitles and builds infrastructure, then sells finished lots to a separate builder) — the course calls the second type "a dying breed," so expect more of the first.
2. Ask directly whether the client pays a flat fee or structures deals as a JV (joint venture) with equity-like upside — don't assume, since both exist and neither is standard across the industry.
3. If it's fee-based, ask how the fee is calculated: a flat lump sum, a per-lot amount, a per-house amount (paid as homes are actually built), a percentage of the land purchase price, or a percentage of profit-per-lot.
4. List out the possible payment-trigger points on a timeline: PSA signed with landowner, developer's due diligence complete, annexation/zoning approved, land use or preliminary plat approved, construction drawings approved/permit-ready, land purchase closes, horizontal construction complete and lots sold, homes actually sold.
5. Remember the general rule: the later the payment trigger sits on that timeline, the bigger the payment tends to be — earlier payment means smaller amounts but faster cash.
6. Propose getting paid at more than one milestone instead of waiting for a single big payout at the end — this balances near-term cash flow against staying in the deal longer for more total upside.
7. If the client is Allied, know that their partnership program has defined, published terms already — with any other client, expect to negotiate bespoke terms deal-by-deal, because most of the industry has nothing this formalized.

Exact steps

1. Before you call or email, remind yourself: developers and builders are "deal junkies" — they don't care whether good deal flow comes from you or from someone else, so your job is to prove you ARE good deal flow, not to be liked.
2. Walk into the conversation with genuine confidence — "fake it till you make it" if you have to — because a qualified property plus a ready, willing seller is a genuinely scarce thing, and you're allowed to act like it.
3. Open the call by explicitly framing it as being in service of their needs, not a pitch for yourself — literally say something like "I want to understand what you're looking for so I only bring you deals that actually fit."
4. Ask direct questions about their buy box: what acreage and density ranges they want, what markets they're active in, what disqualifies a deal for them immediately.
5. Listen for what they can't or won't do (not just what they want) — that's often more useful than the positive criteria, because it tells you what to screen out before you ever bring them something.
6. Write down their answers right after the call, while they're fresh, so the next property you bring them is pre-filtered to their specific criteria instead of a generic pitch.

Exact steps

1. Go to /packet and select the Partner Referral Packet template — this is the direct, field-for-field build of the real deal-submission form builders and developers expect to receive.
2. In the Property Basics section, confirm the APN, county, and acreage are pulled in correctly from the Calculator — if a deal spans multiple tax lots under common ownership, make sure every APN is listed, not just the first one.
3. Check that the recommended offer and lot yield fields are populated from the Calculator's output — these should already be filled in if you ran the parcel through /calculator first.
4. Fill in your Submitter Info — your name and contact details — so whoever receives the packet knows who referred the deal.
5. Complete the Prior-Contact Status section honestly: has the listing agent been contacted, has a planner or engineer been contacted, what's the listing status (on-market, off-market, pocket listing, etc.), what's the asking price, and has the owner verbally confirmed interest in selling.
6. In Owner Contact & Conversation Summary, write a short free-text recap of your actual conversation with the owner so far — this tells the receiving builder how far along the relationship already is.
7. Work through the buy-box checklist section (restated as yes/no questions: lower-48 location, ASP $450K+, acreage/density band, touches public right-of-way, 3+ builders within 20 miles, within 2 miles of a developed area, zoned or rezonable SFR, public sewer/water) — these should largely auto-populate from the Qualification Checklist if you completed /checklist first, but review each one before submitting.
8. Add your supporting attachments — a Google Maps pin-drop, boundary image note, utility map note, and future land-use note — then review the full 9-category underwriting checklist table at the bottom before generating the final packet.

Exact steps

1. Near the end of any call with a property owner, after you've covered prior-contract history, environmental constraints, and existing-home details, ask the closing catch-all question word for word: "Is there anything about the property that would be useful to me to know as I take a look at your property from a development perspective?"
2. When asking about creeks or water features, use the exact phrasing "year-round or seasonal creek" rather than a bare "is there a creek" — owners often don't mention a dry-part-of-year creek unless you ask specifically.
3. If you suspect a neighboring parcel also has development potential, ask the current owner directly: "Do you happen to know your neighbor at [address], and would you be willing to share their contact info?" — this is a zero-cost way to expand your lead list off an already-warm conversation.
4. Write down the owner's answer to the catch-all question verbatim — don't paraphrase it, since the value is often in an offhand detail you wouldn't have thought to ask about directly.
5. If you get a neighbor referral, log the neighbor's name and contact info right away, tagged as a warm referral, before you move on to anything else.