Director of Land Acquisition

Director of Land Acquisition | Residential Land Development
Stockton / Central Valley, California •Direct hire, full time

The Opportunity

A long established, privately held Northern California land developer and homebuilder is creating a Land Acquisition department and hiring its first leader. This is not a seat inside an existing machine. There is no playbook to inherit, no pipeline handed over, and no team in place. The person who takes this role writes the policies and procedures, builds the underwriting standard, and sets the acquisition criteria that everyone hired after them will work inside.

The company has been developing residential and commercial land across Northern California and the Central Valley for decades, with a portfolio that runs from master planned communities to large scale redevelopment. What has been missing is a dedicated function whose full time job is finding the next generation of deals rather than executing the ones already on the books. That is what this role is for.

Core Responsibilities

• Build the function. Stand up the land acquisition department from zero: acquisition criteria, underwriting model, feasibility and due diligence process, deal approval workflow, broker and landowner relationship program, and market tracking. Document it so it outlasts any one person.
• Source unentitled residential land. Develop proprietary, off market deal flow rather than bidding on marketed listings. Direct to landowner outreach, broker and consultant relationships, county and municipal records, distressed and legacy holdings, and sites that have been passed over because the path to entitlement was not obvious.
• Underwrite and evaluate. Own the financial model on every pursuit: land basis, horizontal development costs, absorption assumptions, entitlement timeline and risk, carry cost, and residual land value. Present recommendations to ownership with a defensible number, and know when to walk away.
• Structure and negotiate acquisitions. Letters of intent, purchase and sale agreements, option and rolling takedown structures, seller financing, joint venture and land banking arrangements. Negotiate contingency periods that give the entitlement work room to work.
• Drive entitlements. Carry sites from raw ground through tentative and final map. Manage the CEQA process and the consultant team across civil, environmental, planning, and legal. Work city councils, planning commissions, and agency staff directly.
• Develop and dispose of lots. Take acquired land to finished lots and manage disposition through builder lot sales, bulk takedowns, and the internal handoff to the company's own operations. Know what a builder will pay for a finished lot in each submarket and reverse engineer the acquisition price from it.

The Creative Mandate

The company is looking for someone who can get creative with land. In practice that means someone who looks at a half empty office building on a commercial corridor and sees a housing site, who reads a regulatory change as an opening rather than an obstacle, and who can explain to a landowner why the deal that failed for the last three buyers will work this time.

The California regulatory environment is moving quickly. CEQA reform, the commercial and office to residential conversion statutes, density bonus law, and the by right and ministerial approval paths have all changed what is possible on sites that were considered dead a few years ago. This search is for a candidate who has already used these tools on real deals, not one who has read about them.

Required Qualifications

• Unentitled land. Demonstrated track record acquiring unentitled residential land, not solely entitled or finished lots. This is the single non negotiable requirement.
• Depth. Eight or more years in land acquisition for a homebuilder, land developer, or owner developer. Brokerage only backgrounds are not a fit; this role requires someone who has closed on land and lived with the outcome.
• Underwriting ownership. Residual land value analysis, pro forma modeling, and sensitivity analysis, with the judgment to defend a number in front of ownership.
• California entitlements. Hands on entitlement experience in California including CEQA compliance and public hearing exposure. Has personally presented to a planning commission.
• Deal structuring. Negotiation experience across purchase and sale agreements, options, and takedown structures.
• Regulatory currency. Working knowledge of current California land use regulation, including the streamlining and commercial to residential conversion statutes.
• Education. Bachelor's degree in real estate, finance, urban planning, civil engineering, business, or equivalent experience.
• Authorization. U.S. work authorization.

Strongly Preferred

• Experience standing up or substantially rebuilding a land function, or operating as the sole land person inside a builder or developer.
• Adaptive reuse or commercial to residential conversion experience.
• Central Valley and Northern California market knowledge across San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Sacramento, and surrounding counties.
• Lot development and lot sales experience on the disposition side.
• Established landowner, broker, consultant, and municipal relationships in the target markets.
• Comfort with land banking and joint venture structures.

First Year Measures of Success

• Written acquisition criteria and underwriting standard in place within the first quarter.
• A tracked, proprietary pipeline of unentitled opportunities within the first six months.
• Deals under contract, entitlements in motion, and a clear recommendation on the department's next hire.

Confidential executive search conducted by SBR Jobs (Silicon Beach Recruiter), Construction Executive Search.