Main Responsibilities of a Forward Planner at D.R. Horton

Avery's main responsibilities as a Forward Planner at D.R. Horton center on "entitlements," working with "city staff and city politicians" to secure project approvals by altering zoning and land use designations, such as changing a site from business park to residential. This role has also expanded to include land acquisition, identifying and vetting potential residential development sites, demonstrating a career progression involving both project management and strategic planning.

Land Use Planning, Zoning Regulations, Real Estate Development, Government Relations, Land Acquisition

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Avery Jones

Forward Planner

D.R. Horton

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Environmental & Related Sciences

Real Estate

Took Out Loans, Greek Life Member

Video Highlights

1. Avery's main responsibility is entitlements, which involves getting projects approved by city staff and politicians. This includes working to change zoning and land use designations to align with D.R. Horton's development plans.

2. Avery also participates in land acquisition, identifying potential residential development sites and negotiating with cities to approve housing projects on those sites.

3. Avery's previous experience includes project management tasks such as scheduling, permit acquisition, and ensuring projects have complete plans and run smoothly. This demonstrates a range of skills within the industry

Transcript

What are your main responsibilities within your current role?

In my current role, I mainly do entitlements, which is getting projects approved. I talk to a lot of city staff and city politicians to make that happen.

Usually, if we're looking at a piece of land zoned for a business park, but the city doesn't see businesses developing it, we work with them and the land sellers. We change the zoning and general plan land use to be for residential.

Then we build our project around that, ensuring it works financially for us as a company. This year, I've also started working a bit more with land acquisition.

That involves finding sites feasible for residential development. Again, I talk to cities asking if they would consider putting housing on a particular site. Those are my main roles.

In the past, I was doing more project management work, focusing on schedules, obtaining permits, and ensuring projects had all their plans in place and were running smoothly. But now I mainly work with entitlements and land acquisition.

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